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When compounds in spent nuclear fuel break down, they can release radioactive elements into the ground and water. Scientists know that one fuel compound, neptunium dioxide, reacts with water, but they do not fully understand the process. This new study found that neptunium tends to dissolve where grains of the material come together, and larger grains are less likely to dissolve.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $1 million for a one-year collaborative research project to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms for biomedical, personal healthcare, or other privacy-sensitive datasets.

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To map the structures in the universe, Anže Slosar scaled up Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey data. He uses light from very distant cosmic objects called quasars as a backlight to illuminate the structure in the universe in front of them.

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Researchers are using smaller tokamaks and computer models to test approaches for suppressing runaway electrons in plasmas. This research used measurements and modeling to demonstrate that perturbations to the magnetic field in a tokamak fusion plasma can suppress high-energy runaway electrons. The results could help improve the operation of ITER and other future fusion devices.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $16 million for five collaborative research projects to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms for enabling scientific insights and discoveries from data generated by computational simulations, experiments, and observations.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it is accepting proposals for the 2022 DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program to support the research of outstanding scientists early in their careers.

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New evidence suggests protons and neutrons go through a “first-order” phase transition to reach their melted state, a soup of quarks and gluons. This is a kind of stop-and-go change in temperature is similar to how ice melts: energy first increases the temperature.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $7.6 million to support nine frontier plasma science projects at five different DOE National Laboratories.

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Critical materials are essential for many key technologies, including batteries and wind turbines. The Department of Energy is working to reduce the need for them, recycle them, and expand domestic sources of them.

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Protons and neutrons orbit atomic nuclei in shells with caps on how many protons or neutrons they can hold. Full shells mean stable, compact nuclei. Physicists call the number of protons or neutrons in a “magic” numbered full shell. New research shows that a previously reported “magicity” for number 32 does not appear in neutron-rich potassium isotopes.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $13.7 million in funding for nine research projects that will advance the state of the art in computer science and applied mathematics.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $30 million in funding for 13 national lab and university-led research projects to develop new technologies that will help secure the supply of critical materials that build clean energy technologies.

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In a conventional tokamak, the cross-section of the plasma is shaped like the letter D. Facing the straight part of the D on the inside side of the donut-shaped tokamak is called positive triangularity. New research suggests that reversing the plasma—negative triangularity--reduces how much the plasma interacts with the surfaces of the tokamak for reduced wear.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $26 million in funding to harness cutting-edge research tools for new scientific discoveries fundamental to clean energy solutions.

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To reduce the need for computer power, researchers typically simulate how quarks combine to make up larger particles by simulating quarks heavier than quarks found in nature. Now, using the Summit supercomputer, a team simulated much lighter quarks than possible in the past. This produced more realistic results that will help scientists investigate the Higgs boson.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $17.5 million in funding for advanced research projects in particle accelerator science and technology as well as university-based traineeships that will build a diverse, skilled pipeline of American scientists and engineers in the fields of high energy physics accelerators and instrumentation.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced nearly $54 million for 10 new projects led by DOE’s National Laboratories to increase energy efficiency in microelectronics design and production.

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In modern optoelectronic devices, performance depends in part on the movement of excitons. Researchers have now created a new perovskite nanocrystal system and taken direct visualizations of the movement of an exciton from crystal to crystal over a record 200 nanometers, much longer than the previous record. This paves the way for new commercial application.

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The “superheavy” elements are found only in labs. The small amounts of material available means chemists must use special techniques to study them. This research developed a new way to study the chemistry of metallic elements with extremely low concentrations of material. This may lead to better methods of recovering iridium, an element that is critical to national security and the economy.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $2.8 million for six research projects to develop faster and more efficient ways to apply high-performance computing for scientific discoveries.

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Protons inside the nucleus cling to neighboring protons and neutrons. However, it may be possible to knock out protons so that they interact less with nearby particles as they exit the nucleus, a phenomenon called color transparency. Physicists have observed color transparency in two-quark particles. But physicists hunting for signs of color transparency in protons in a more complicated three-quark system recently came up empty handed.

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Scientists have developed a technique called plasmon engineering to create nanomaterials with near-atomic scale control of patterning in silicon. This new research used a specific plasmon engineering method, aberration-corrected electron beam lithography, to control the optical and electronic properties of silicon. This approach could one day be applied to industrial applications.

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Scientists demonstrated that ultrathin films of samarium nickel oxide can mask the thermal radiation emitted by hot materials. This is due to the material undergoing a gradual transition from insulator to conductor. This study shows that quantum materials such as samarium nickel oxide can manage thermal radiation with potential applications in infrared camouflage, privacy shielding, and heat transfer control.

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In support of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to build the American economy back better, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced a plan to provide $37 million for small businesses pursuing climate and energy research and development (R&D) projects as well the development of advanced scientific instrumentation through a funding opportunity announcement (FOA).

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At North Carolina State University, associate professor James Kneller studies neutrinos emitted from exploding stars.

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Scientists have learned how to place crystalline defects in new materials with atomic-scale precision. This enables materials that can control excitons—energy carriers similar to subatomic particles. New research reveals how to create local energy wells that “capture” the excitons. This small but important step could lead to smaller, more efficient components for optical telecommunications.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $15.1 million for three collaborative research projects, at five universities, to advance the development of a flexible multi-tiered data and computational infrastructure to support a diverse collection of on-demand scientific data processing tasks and computationally intensive simulations.

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Researchers have for the first time used a quantum computer to generate accurate results from materials science simulations that can be verified with practical techniques. Eventually, such simulations on quantum computers could be more accurate and complex than simulations on classical digital computers.

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New research paves the way to a systematic way to design quantum algorithms that outperform conventional algorithms. The research involves logic gates, the fundamental building blocks of conventional digital computing and quantum computing systems. This new research is the first attempt to determine the number of logic gates that quantum states need to process information.

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Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science announced a plan to provide $100 million over the next four years for university-based research on a range of high energy physics topics through a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA).

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Chemists create catalysts for use in industry and other applications. One of the methods to create these catalysts is by using light to break down organometallic compounds, a process called photodissociation. This study used ultrafast infrared spectroscopy to study how ultraviolet light photodissociates gas phase iron pentacarbonyl. These insights may help scientists design new photocatalysts.

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Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $7.7 million in funding for 11 studies to improve understanding of Earth system predictability and DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), a state-of-the-science climate model.

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Today, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science (SC) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced $9.35 million for 21 research projects in High-Energy Density Laboratory Plasmas (HEDLP).

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Supported by his Early Career Research Program Award, University of Wisconsin – Madison professor Michael S. Arnold found new ways to make graphene nanostructures with smooth edges. This technology will enable next-generation energy and electronics applications.

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Scientists generally expect species networks to be more stable under climate change if they have many species connected by many lines of interaction. This study investigated this pattern in microbial interactions in soils. It found that microbes might interact in more complex ways when soil is warmer, indicating the possibility that warming could lead to more robust networks.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $73 million in funding to advance quantum information science (QIS) research to help scientists better understand the physical world and harness nature to benefit people and society.

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Researchers have demonstrated the production, purification, and potential application of cerium-134. The isotope decays into lanthanum-134, which is useful for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. The results mean that cerium-134 could support medical treatments based on actinium-225 or thorium-227.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $11 million in funding for new research studying how critical ecosystems, such as forests, arid lands, and coastal environments, are impacted by extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, and heat waves.

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One isotope of the extremely rare element Astatine has shown promise in the treatment of malignant brain tumors, ovarian cancer, advanced blood and lymph system cancers. However, because of its short half-life, scientists need a rapid system with high yield to recover the isotope, At-211, for medical use. Scientists have developed a new purification system that results in a high purity, high yield recovery of At-211.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced more than $13 million for five advanced-computing projects across nine states, including $4.4 million to U.S. universities.

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Scientists have developed a new system for producing radioisotopes for cancer therapy. The system uses a simple radionuclide generator to repeatedly separate thorium-226 from its longer-lived parent isotope, uranium-230. The uranium-230/thorium-226 pair has the unique advantage of emitting multiple alpha particles as they decay, delivering more destructive energy to cancer cells.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced awards totaling $127 million to a diverse set of small businesses working on advanced scientific tools and clean, secure energy for the American people.

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The slow neutron-capture process (the s-process) in nucleosynthesis results in about half of the elements heavier than iron in the universe. Two important reactions in the s-process are Neon-22 (alpha, gamma) and Neon-22 (alpha, neutron), which affect the abundances of elements such as Selenium, Krypton, Rubidium, Strontium, and Zirconium. Researchers recently used two indirect methods to study the reactions.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $28 million in funding for five research projects to develop software that will fully unleash the potential of DOE supercomputers to make new leaps in fields such as quantum information science and chemical reactions for clean energy applications.

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Applications are currently being accepted for the Spring 2022 term of two undergraduate internship programs offered by the DOE Office of Science: the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program and the Community College Internships (CCI) program.

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Zeke Unterberg is a senior research scientist at Oak Ridge National Lab, studying ways to optimize the operations and materials for future nuclear fusion reactors.

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Aluminum-26 has a quantum state difficult to study in a lab. Scientists instead use ion beam-target interactions to create an environment that adds a neutron to the radioactive isotope Silicon-26 to study excited quantum states in Silicon-27. This approach is possible because of the symmetry between protons and neutrons. This provides rare insight into processes in stars.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today awarded $15.6 million for new research studying the properties, formation, and interactions between atmospheric clouds and the aerosols that form them.

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science today announced that 22 million node-hours for 41 scientific projects under the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) program.

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The Department of Energy (DOE) today awarded $2.1 million across 9 collaborative projects between DOE national laboratories and private industry aimed at overcoming challenges in fusion energy development.