2015 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Taking Stock of the Atmosphere

For the next year, a Cessna 206 aircraft from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility will sweep through the skies multiple times, skimming 500 feet above the Earth’s surface and soaring up to 17,500 feet, allowing scientists to gain an accurate picture of trace gas concentrations in the atmosphere over the ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) facility.

Atoms to Engines

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, FCA US LLC, and the foundry giant, Nemak of Mexico, are combining their strengths to create lightweight powertrain materials that will help the auto industry speed past the technological roadblocks to its target of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Microbes Map Path Toward Renewable Energy Future

In the quest for renewable fuels, scientists are taking lessons from a humble bacterium that fills our oceans and covers moist surfaces the world over. When blue-green algae captures light to make food using photosynthesis, scientists have found that it simultaneously uses the energy from that captured light to produce hydrogen.

On the Way to Multiband Solar Cells

Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division are working to understand and develop a modified solar cell structure that would capture a wider range of available energies across the solar spectrum.

Titan Takes on Earthquakes

A team led by Thomas Jordan of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), headquartered at the University of Southern California (USC), is using the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to develop physics-based earthquake simulations to better understand earthquake systems, including the potential seismic hazards from known faults and the impact of strong ground motions on urban areas.

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PPPL Physicists Find Clue to Formation of Magnetic Fields Around Stars and Galaxies

Physicists Jonathan Squire and Amitava Bhattacharjee at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found a clue to the answer in the collective behavior of small magnetic disturbances.

CinderBio Harnesses Extreme Microbes for Greener Industry

Basic biology research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has led to the formation of Cinder Biological, or CinderBio, a startup company producing a new class of enzymes made from microbes that thrive in hot volcanic waters.

ESnet and NERSC Blaze 400G Production Network Path

The Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) have built a 400 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) super-channel, the first-ever 400G production link to be deployed by a national research and education network.

New Electron Microscopy Method Sculpts 3-D Structures at Atomic Level

Electron microscopy researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a unique way to build 3-D structures with finely controlled shapes as small as one to two billionths of a meter.

Visualizing Single Cell Growth Dynamics

As part of the Mesoscale to Molecules In-situ Bioimaging project at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), which is sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research, researchers from PNNL and EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, constructed a microfluidic device consisting of separate channels for growing individual hyphae—the long, branching, filamentous units making up fungi.

Ames National Laboratory Unpacks New Microscopes

Ames National Laboratory is in the process of installing nearly $6 million in microscope equipment at its soon-to-be-opened Sensitive Instrument Facility.

New ORNL Device Combines Power of Mass Spectrometry, Microscopy

A tool that provides world-class microscopy and spatially resolved chemical analysis shows considerable promise for advancing a number of areas of study, including chemical science, pharmaceutical development and disease progression.