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How True Is Conventional Wisdom About Price Volatility of Tech Metals?
Preliminary research by the Colorado School of Mines (Mines) and funded by the Critical Materials Institute (CMI) suggests that conventional wisdom about the high price volatility of by-product metals and minerals is generally true, but with several caveats.
Graphene Leans on Glass to Advance Electronics
Scientists have developed a simple and powerful method for creating resilient, customized, and high-performing graphene: layering it on top of common glass. This scalable and inexpensive process helps pave the way for a new class of microelectronic and optoelectronic devices--everything from efficient solar cells to touch screens.
SLAC X-Ray Laser Turns Crystal Imperfections Into Better Images of Important Biomolecules
Often the most difficult step in taking atomic-resolution images of biological molecules is getting them to form high-quality crystals needed for X-ray studies of their structure. Now researchers have shown they can get sharp images even with imperfect crystals using the world's brightest X-ray source at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Scientists Take Nanoparticle Snapshots
An international team of researchers led by X-ray scientist Christoph Bostedt of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Tais Gorkhover of DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used two special lasers to observe the dynamics of a small sample of xenon as it was heated to a plasma.
'Lasers Rewired': Scientists Find a New Way to Make Nanowire Lasers
Scientists at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have found a simple new way to produce nanoscale wires that can serve as bright, stable and tunable lasers--an advance toward using light to transmit data.
Chiral Magnetic Effect Generates Quantum Current
Scientists at the U.S Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have discovered a new way to generate very low-resistance electric current in a new class of materials. The discovery, which relies on the separation of right- and left-"handed" particles, points to a range of potential applications in energy, quantum computing, and medical imaging, and possibly even a new mechanism for inducing superconductivity--the ability of some materials to carry current with no energy loss.
Scientists Propose "Pumpjack" Mechanism for Splitting and Copying DNA
New close-up images of the proteins that copy DNA inside the nucleus of a cell have led a team of scientists to propose a brand new mechanism for how this molecular machinery works. The scientists studied proteins from yeast cells, which share many features with the cells of complex organisms such as humans, and could offer new insight into ways that DNA replication can go awry.
Graphene Is Strong, but Is It Tough?
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed the first known statistical theory for the toughness of polycrystalline graphene, which is made with chemical vapor deposition, and found that it is indeed strong, but more importantly, its toughness--or resistance to fracture--is quite low.
Scientists Guide Gold Nanoparticles to Form "Diamond" Superlattices
Using bundled strands of DNA to build Tinkertoy-like tetrahedral cages, scientists have devised a way to trap and arrange nanoparticles in a way that mimics the crystalline structure of diamond. The achievement of this complex yet elegant arrangement may open a path to new materials that take advantage of the optical and mechanical properties of this crystalline structure for applications such as optical transistors, color-changing materials, and lightweight yet tough materials.
Scientists Take Key Step Toward Custom-Made Nanoscale Chemical Factories
Scientists have for the first time reengineered a building block of a geometric nanocompartment that occurs naturally in bacteria. The new design provides an entirely new functionality that greatly expands the potential for these compartments to serve as custom-made chemical factories.
Story Tips From the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, February 2016
Batteries for grid, stationary uses get a boost with new technology; ORNL hosting neuromorphic computing workshop; ORNL part of team developing cleaner biomass cookstove; ORNL has key role in Critical Materials Institute work; Study of nanocrystal growth key to developing new materials; U.S. coastal populations face potential risks with climate change.
New Galaxy-hunting Sky Camera Sees Redder Better
A newly upgraded camera that incorporates light sensors developed at Berkeley Lab is now one of the best cameras on the planet for studying outer space at red wavelengths that are too red for the human eye to see.
Coupling 2 'Tabletop' Laser-Plasma Accelerators, a Decisive First Step Toward Tomorrow's Ultrapowerful Compact Machines
In an experiment packed with scientific firsts, researchers at Berkeley Lab's BELLA Center demonstrated that a laser pulse can accelerate an electron beam and couple it to a second laser plasma accelerator, where another laser pulse accelerates the beam to higher energy.
Tiniest Particles Shrink Before Exploding When Hit with SLAC's X-Ray Laser
Researchers assumed that tiny objects would instantly blow up when hit by extremely intense light from the world's most powerful X-ray laser at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. But to their astonishment, these nanoparticles initially shrank instead - a finding that provides a glimpse of the unusual world of superheated nanomaterials that could eventually also help scientists further develop X-ray techniques for taking atomic images of individual molecules.
Putting Silicon 'Sawdust' in a Graphene Cage Boosts Battery Performance
Scientists have been trying for years to make a practical lithium-ion battery anode out of silicon, which could store 10 times more energy per charge than today's commercial anodes and make high-performance batteries a lot smaller and lighter. But two major problems have stood in the way: Silicon particles swell, crack and shatter during battery charging, and they react with the battery electrolyte to form a coating that saps their performance.
You'll Never Be-Leaf What Makes Up This Battery
Scientists at the University of Maryland have a new recipe for batteries: Bake a leaf, and add sodium. They used a carbonized oak leaf, pumped full of sodium, as a demonstration battery's negative terminal, or anode, according to a paper published yesterday in the journal ACS Applied Materials Interfaces.
Scientists Discover Protein's Starring Role in Genome Stability, and Possibly Cancer Prevention
A protein called XPG plays a previously unknown and critical role helping to maintain genome stability in human cells. It may also help prevent breast, ovarian, and other cancers associated with defective BRCA genes.
Seagrass Genome Sequence Lends Insights to Salt Tolerance
Coastal seagrass ecosystems cover some 200,000 square kilometers and account for an estimated 15 percent of carbon fixed in global ocean. In Nature, a team including DOE Joint Genome Institute researchers describes the first marine angiosperm genome: the eelgrass Zostera marina.
Simplifying Solar Cells with a New Mix of Materials
An international research team has simplified the steps to create highly efficient silicon solar cells by applying a new mix of materials to a standard design. Arrays of solar cells are used in solar panels to convert sunlight to electricity. The special blend of materials eliminates the need for a process known as doping that steers the device's properties by introducing foreign atoms to its electrical contacts.
Imaged 'Jets' Reveal Cerium's Post-Shock Inner Strength
"Jets" formed after shock waves passed through cerium metal provided the yield stress of cerium in its post-shock state, indicating the stress that would cause it to become permanently deformed.
Uncovering Hidden Microbial Lineages from Hot Springs
Published January 27, 2016 in Nature Communications, a team led by researchers at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility, utilized the largest collection of metagenomic datasets to uncover a completely novel bacterial phylum - "Kryptonia."
Ames Laboratory DNP-NMR Spectrometer Offers Higher Speed, More Precision
In just a little over a year of operation, the U.S. Department of Energy Ames Laboratory's dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer has successfully characterized materials at the atomic scale level with more speed and precision than ever possible before.
Microbes Take Their Vitamins - for the Good of Science
Scientists have made a "vitamin mimic" - a molecule that looks and acts just like a natural vitamin to bacteria - that offers a new window into the inner workings of living microbes.
Assessing the Impact of Human-Induced Climate Change
Researchers at Berkeley Lab and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research develop and apply new method to determine whether specific climate impacts can be traced to human-caused emissions.
New Theory of Secondary Inflation Expands Options for Avoiding an Excess of Dark Matter
A new theory from physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Stony Brook University, which will publish online on January 18 in Physical Review Letters, suggests a shorter secondary inflationary period that could account for the amount of dark matter estimated to exist throughout the cosmos.