Story Tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, July 2015
ORNL study demonstrates economic value of variable flow heat pumps; New catalyst provides potential solution to meet emissions challenges; ORNL, UK researchers working to develop cleaner crude oil; New climate data easily accessed at Data.gov
Closer Look at Microorganism Provides Insight on Carbon Cycling
An Argonne/University of Tennessee research team reconstructed the crystal structure of BAP, a protein involved in the process by which marine archaea release carbon, to determine how it functioned, as well as its larger role in carbon cycling in marine sediments.
Mass Map Shines Light on Dark Matter
An international team of researchers has developed a new map of the distribution of dark matter in the universe using data from the Dark Energy Survey.
Gut Microbes Enable Coffee Pest to Withstand Extremely Toxic Concentrations of Caffeine
Scientists discovered that coffee berry borers worldwide share 14 bacterial species in their digestive tracts that degrade and detoxify caffeine. They also found the most prevalent of these bacteria has a gene that helps break down caffeine. Their research sheds light on the ecology of the destructive bug and could lead to new ways to fight it.
New Design Could Dramatically Boost Efficiency of Low-Cost Solar Panels
A new material design tested in experiments at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory could make low-cost solar panels far more efficient by greatly enhancing their ability to collect the sun's energy and release it as electricity.
Neutrons Find "Missing" Magnetism of Plutonium
Groundbreaking work at two Department of Energy national laboratories has confirmed plutonium's magnetism, which scientists have long theorized but have never been able to experimentally observe.
The MiSIng Piece Revealed: Classifying Microbial Species in the Genomics Era
A team from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and their collaborators developed and evaluated the MiSI method for classifying microbial species that could be supplemented - as needed - by traditional approaches relied on by microbiologists for decades.
Smart Stuff: IQ of Northwest Power Grid Raised, Energy Saved
Smart grid technologies and approaches can improve energy efficiency and possibly reduce power costs, according to the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project's final report.
Berkeley Lab Study Finds that Future Deployment of Distributed Solar Hinges on Electricity Rate Design
Future distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment levels are highly sensitive to retail electricity rate design, according to a newly released report by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The study also explores the feedback effects between retail electricity rates and PV deployment, and suggests that increased solar deployment can lead to changes in PV compensation levels that either accelerate or dampen further deployment.
Scientists Study Ways to Integrate Biofuels and Food Crops on Farms
Planting bioenergy crops like willows or switchgrass in rows where commodity crops are having difficulty growing could both provide biomass feedstock and also limit the runoff of nitrogen fertilizer into waterways -- all without hurting a farmer's profits. This is what a group of Argonne National Laboratory scientists has discovered through careful data collection and modeling at a cornfield in Fairbury, Illinois.
Scientists Drive Tiny Shock Waves Through Diamond
Researchers have used an X-ray laser to record, in detail never possible before, the microscopic motion and effects of shock waves rippling across diamond. The technique, developed at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, allows scientists to precisely explore the complex physics driving massive star explosions, which are critical for understanding fusion energy, and to improve scientific models used to study these phenomena.
Autonomous Taxis Would Deliver Significant Environmental and Economic Benefits
Imagine a fleet of driverless taxis roaming your city, ready to pick you up and take you to your destination at a moment's notice. While this may seem fantastical, it may be only a matter of time before it becomes reality. And according to a new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, such a system would both be cost-effective and greatly reduce per-mile emissions of greenhouse gases.
Aluminum Clusters Shut Down Molecular Fuel Factory
When aluminum atoms bunch up, porous materials called zeolites lose their ability to convert oil to gasoline. An international team of scientists created the first 3-D atomic map of a zeolite in order to find out how to improve catalysts used to produce fuel, biofuel and other chemicals.
New CMI Process Recycles Magnets From Factory Floor
A new recycling method developed by scientists at the Critical Materials Institute, a U.S. Department of Energy Innovation Hub led by the Ames Laboratory, recovers valuable rare-earth magnetic material from manufacturing waste.
Homegrown Solution for Synchrotron Light Source
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory advanced ngle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to help study the electronic properties of new materials.
Scientists Propose New Model of the Source of a Mysterious Barrier to Fusion Known as the "Density Limit"
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed a detailed model of the source of a puzzling limitation on fusion reactions. The findings, published this month in Physics of Plasmas, complete and confirm previous PPPL research and could lead to steps to overcome the barrier if the model proves consistent with experimental data.
Magnetic Attraction
Researchers studying a broad spectrum of science, including biofuel production processes, climate effects on carbon cycling in the soil and carbon transformations in the atmosphere will soon have access to EMSL's new 21 Tesla Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer. Scientists are eager to start getting molecular-level information for their research, and six inaugural studies were selected to use the new instrument through a Special Science Call.
X-Rays and Electrons Join Forces To Map Catalytic Reactions in Real-Time
A new technique pioneered at Brookhaven National Laboratory reveals atomic-scale changes during catalytic reactions in real time and under real operating conditions.
Helium 'Balloons' Offer New Path to Control Complex Materials
Researchers have developed a new method to manipulate a wide range of materials and their behavior using only a handful of helium ions.
Studying the Canadian Oil Sands
The Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory this week released a study that shows gasoline and diesel refined from Canadian oil sands has a higher carbon impact than fuels derived from conventional domestic crude sources.
Silica 'Spiky Screws' Could Enhance Industrial Coatings, Additive Manufacturing
It took marine sponges millions of years to perfect their spike-like structures, but research mimicking these formations may soon alter how industrial coatings and 3-D printed to additively manufactured objects are produced.
X Marks the Spot: Researchers Confirm Novel Method for Controlling Plasma Rotation to Improve Fusion Performance
Timothy Stoltzfus-Dueck, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has demonstrated a novel method that scientists can use to manipulate the intrinsic - or self-generated - rotation of hot, charged plasma gas within fusion facilities called tokamaks.
Sweeping Lasers Snap Together Nanoscale Geometric Grids
New technique developed by Brookhaven Lab scientists to rapidly create multi-layered, self-assembled grids could transform the manufacture of high-tech coatings for anti-reflective surfaces, improved solar cells, and touchscreen electronics.
New 'Molecular Movie' Reveals Ultrafast Chemistry in Motion
Scientists for the first time tracked ultrafast structural changes, captured in quadrillionths-of-a-second steps, as ring-shaped gas molecules burst open and unraveled. Ring-shaped molecules are abundant in biochemistry and also form the basis for many drug compounds. The study points the way to a wide range of real-time X-ray studies of gas-based chemical reactions that are vital to biological processes.
New Tool on Horizon for Surgeons Treating Cancer Patients
Surgeons could know while their patients are still on the operating table if a tissue is cancerous, according to researchers from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School.