Journalists are invited to join an October 12 Zoom media briefing with U.S. scientists and agency experts involved in the yearlong international research expedition MOSAiC: Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate.
After burning their fuel, most stars become white dwarf stars. The high-energy-density states in these stars are extremely difficult to reach and characterize in the laboratory. Now, scientists have conducted new experiments on these high-pressure conditions using the world’s most energetic laser.
Atomic nuclei exhibit increased stability when they have certain numbers of protons or neutrons. Proton-neutron pairs in these nuclei favor spherical shapes. However, deformed shapes can develop when the long-range part of the proton-neutron interaction overcomes the short-range interaction.
Two new experiments have demonstrated the correlation between natural radiation levels and the duration of qubit coherence. If radiation cannot be mitigated, it will limit the coherence time of qubits to a few milliseconds.
To predict the properties of matter in a neutron star, physicists consider a theoretical model that consists of an infinite system of pure neutrons that interact by the strong nuclear force. This allows them to calculate the neutron matter equation of state and thus how much weight the star can support before gravity crushes it into a black hole.
The nuclei of some isotopes with a specific number of protons and neutrons are more tightly bound than isotopes with more or fewer protons or neutrons. Scientists have now gained a new understanding of the nucleus of mercury-207, an isotope with just two protons less than the magic number 82 and one neutron more than the magic number 126.
Instabilities in tokamak confinement fields can damage reactor walls by exposing them to plasma. Resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) suppresses instabilities, but it was thought to impair confinement. New research shows that RMP has no effect on confinement and actually improves tokamak operation.
When scientists use two different techniques to measure the neutron lifetime, they get two different results. While it may be experimental uncertainties, it may also be a sign of new physics. With the Department of Energy’s support, scientists are working to figure out why this discrepancy exists.
Nuclear materials scientists have developed new artificial intelligence computer vision models that automate the detection of defects in alloys used for nuclear power plant reactors. This tool provides defect quantification to better understand the effects of irradiation damage on materials performance.
Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced over $1 billion in awards for the establishment of 12 new artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science (QIS) research institutes nationwide.
The Department of Energy is supporting the development of both conventional exascale supercomputers and quantum computers. Each provide benefits that could transform scientific research.
Victoria Orphan is the James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.
Martin Centurion is the Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In the First-Person Science series, scientists describe how they made significant discoveries over years of research. Chris Polly is a physicist at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab and co-spokesperson for the Muon g-2 project.
Researchers have designed and demonstrated a new bullseye lens for very bright, very fast electron sources. The lens combines atomically flat surfaces with concentric grooves that direct the interactions of the surface electrons to form an intense electron beam in the center of the bullseye. The lens can generate pulses lasting less than 10 femtoseconds.
A new paradigm in particle accelerator design paves the way to dramatically smaller accelerators. The novel “dephasingless laser wakefield accelerator” concept uses a new technology called "flying focus." That combines special optics to shape an ultra-short, high-intensity laser pulse.
Researchers studied different microbiomes to determine if the constituent species were equally good at breaking down leaf litter. The research helped to identify the microbial traits that might lead to related carbon storage or loss and found that the makeup of a soil microbiome is critical to the fate of carbon in soil.
Mixtures of nanoparticles show promise for solar fuels production. For example, gold donor particles absorb sunlight well, but they need an acceptor material to efficiently make fuel. Now, scientists have found a way to count electrons as they transfer between the two materials during these chemical reactions.
Scientists have used simulations to discover a special polymer liquid that, when elongated don’t just stretch out; they also tie themselves into knots. This forms massive molecular chains that can increase the fluid’s viscosity, or resistance to flow, by a factor of 20.
Digital cancer registries collect, manage, and store data on cancer patients to help identify trends in diagnoses and treatment. However, cancer pathology reports are complex. To better leverage data, scientists developed an artificial intelligence-based natural language processing tool to help extract information from textual pathology reports.
Nuclear physicists have developed a new method for quickly emulating the quantum properties of atomic nuclei. The emulator starts with a training stage that uses a small set of exact calculations, then generates 1 million predictions for the ground-state energy and charge radius of nuclei of oxygen-16. The process takes less than an hour on a personal computer.
Nuclear scientists recently found that the nucleus of the radioactive isotope selenium-72 has a football-like shape. This is similar to the stable, nonradioactive isotopes of selenium, but different from the disk-like shape of radioactive selenium-70 nuclei. This finding helps explain how the interaction between protons and neutrons in nuclei leads to collective behavior.
Scientists do not fully understand the mechanisms that plants use to extract phosphorus from soil and incorporate it into their biomass. Now, researchers have developed a new technique to visualize the activity and distribution of enzymes that mobilize phosphate around plant roots.
When stars explode as supernovas, they produce shock waves in the plasma that blast cosmic rays into the universe at relativistic speeds. How exactly they do that remains a mystery. New experiments using powerful lasers have recreated a miniature version of these supernova shocks in the lab, where scientists can observe how they accelerate particles.
Scientists have developed a machine learning technique for materials research at the atomic and molecular scales. The technique visualizes and quantifies the atomic and molecular structures in three-dimensional samples in real time. It is designed primarily to identify and characterize microstructures in 3D samples.
Creating biofuels from plant material requires ionic liquids (ILs) to break down plant cells. We also need microbes such as yeast to convert the resulting plant material into biofuel. However, ILs often keep microbes from growing. Scientists have now learned how one strain of yeast strengthens its membranes and holds up better to ILs.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) named three National Laboratory scientists as DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientists Fellows
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $5 million in funding for six new research projects in computational biology.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $19 million in funding for 31 new projects in atmospheric sciences aimed at improving the power of Earth system models to predict weather and climate.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $7 million in funding for nine studies aimed at improving DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), the first comprehensive model of the Earth system to take full advantage of the world-leading supercomputing capabilities at DOE's national laboratories.
In a press conference today at the University of Chicago, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) unveiled a report that lays out a blueprint strategy for the development of a national quantum internet, bringing the United States to the forefront of the global quantum race and ushering in a new era of communications.
Molecular dynamics is central to many questions in modern chemistry. However, computer models of molecular dynamics must balance computational cost and accuracy. Scientists have now used a machine learning technique called transfer learning to create a novel model of molecular motion that is as accurate as calculations that use quantum-mechanical physics but much faster.
Researchers developed a novel memory storage device that uses soft biomaterials to mimic synapses. The device consists of two layers of fatty organic compounds called lipids. The lipid layers form at an oil-water interface to create a soft membrane. When scientists apply an electric charge to the membrane, the membrane changes shape in ways that can store energy and filter biological and chemical data.
Scientists can alter genes and transfer them from one organism to another using genetic engineering. To do this, genetic engineers use DNA recombination techniques to move fragments of DNA between organisms. Scientists can then modify the gene however they want. This process is called. Now scientists have developed a fast method to find new proteins involved in DNA recombination that can improve the efficiency of genetic engineering.
Organisms in phototropic microbial communities survive by exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide with each other. Using a combination of computational modeling and experiments, researchers found that two different kinds of microorganisms can coexist in either in a cooperative or competitive fashion depending on resource availability, the environment, and the microorganisms’ genetic background.
Scientists at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have for the first time studied the internal structure and stability of high-energy runaway electron (RE) beams in a tokamak. The finding could provide a way to control the damaging potential of RE beams and could contribute to future power production using tokamak fusion power plants.
Scientists have revealed the exact structure of a catalyst that transforms carbon dioxide and water into liquid fuel in the presence of light. The researchers studied a specific promising catalyst, Copper(I) oxide. The research is an important step in the design of photocatalysts for the conversion of carbon dioxide into liquid fuels.
Scientists have completed an important and timely study of cloth masks. The study examined the filtration efficiency of fabrics and focused on aerosol particles in a range of sizes relevant to viral transmission through respiratory exposures. The best-performing masks used hybrid designs that include high thread-count cotton and electrostatic layers such as silk or polyester chiffon.
Scientists have confirmed a theoretical prediction for high-temperature superconductors. In a superconductive state, like-charged electrons overcome their repulsion to pair up and flow freely. Different states of matter make superconductivity possible. One of those theorized states of matter is called a pair density wave. The scientists confirmed pair density waves using advanced microscopic imaging techniques.
Chemical reactions transform reactants to products through intermediate states. These intermediates are often short-lived, making them hard to study. But by bringing a molecule to a temperature barely above absolute zero, scientists can “trap” the reaction in the intermediate stage for a much longer time. In this study, scientists used photoionization to directly observe a reaction’s reactants and products.
Athena Safa Sefat is a Senior Research Scientist and a former Wigner Fellow in the Materials Science & Technology Division of the Physical Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
After working on a climate change experiment that showed plants adapt to additional carbon dioxide by putting extra carbon into their roots, Colleen Iverson has been on a mission to understand the role of roots in the environment, especially the tundra.
To focus its efforts against the COVID-19 pandemic, DOE is bringing the national laboratories together into the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory.
All living organisms have systems that can link multiple signals to manage tasks. This ability, called complex signal integration, is not found in artificial systems. This new study demonstrates a pathway for simple, soft artificial materials called hydrogel polymers to use multiple signals from external sources to produce distinct responses.
Researchers demonstrated novel ways to design and build materials for controlling light. The new materials have two layers of metasurfaces, overcoming the limits on conventional single-layer materials. The novel two-layer design enables a new level of control over light properties and more functionality for devices that use these materials.
Scientists are developing “synthetic trees” that work like their natural counterparts to serve in specific applications. In an important step, scientists fabricated synthetic leaves using nanoporous disks that control moisture at the scale of molecules to mimic natural transpiration. The disks use a novel, layered design topped with silicon pores to trap water vapor.
By connecting electromagnetic waves and magnetism to create a system made of magnon polaritons, scientists demonstrated the existence of an “exceptional surface” for the first time. Exceptional surfaces were originally a purely mathematical concept, but recent research shows they have potential physical, real-world applications.
Scientists developed a new technique that uses intense X-ray pulses to measure how atoms move in a sheet of material one molecule thick. Scientists showed that movement of the atoms in a tungsten-selenium “blanket” layer caused the layer to stretch but not wrinkle. The research can help produce materials with new optical and electronic properties.
Scientists tested the performance of a dry, oil-free lubricant that could improve efficiency and decrease waste in industrial machinery. The dry solid lubricant includes diamond nanoparticles. It creates a surface coating that reduces friction 20-fold compared to oil-based lubricants.
Scientists developed a new method of selectively attaching DNA strands to specific regions of nanoparticles. The DNA strands then dictate how the nanoparticles assemble into more complex architectures. The team used this approach to demonstrate 24 different nanoarchitectures.
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