2018 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Researchers Link Sedentary Behavior to Thinning in Brain Region Critical for Memory

Sitting too much is linked to changes in a section of the brain that is critical for memory, according to a preliminary study by UCLA researchers of middle-aged and older adults.

W&M Physicist Elected Co-Spokesperson for NOvA Neutrino Experiment

Tricia Vahle, professor of physics at William & Mary and longtime NOvA leader and scientist, was elected as NOvA’s new co-spokesperson in 2018 and assumed her role on March 21.

Machine-Learning System Processes Sounds Like Humans Do

Using a machine-learning system known as a deep neural network, MIT researchers have created the first model that can replicate human performance on auditory tasks such as identifying a musical genre.

Liquid Cell Transmission Electron Microscopy Makes a Window into the Nanoscale

A team of scientists and engineers dug into the mechanisms that degrade sample quality in liquid cell transmission electron microscopy (LC-TEM). They developed an LC-TEM device that uses multiple windows and patterned features to explore the impacts of high-energy electron bombardment on nanoparticles and sensitive biological samples.

Electrochemical Tuning of Single Layer Materials Relies on Defects

Perfection is not everything, according to an international team of researchers whose 2-D materials study shows that defects can enhance a material's physical, electrochemical, magnetic, energy and catalytic properties.

UT Nuclear Engineering Student Chosen for Top Fellowship

UT’s Eric O’Quinn, a graduate student in nuclear engineering, has been chosen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science for enrollment in its graduate student research program.

Strained Materials Make Cooler Superconductors

University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have added a new dimension to our understanding of why straining a particular group of materials, called Ruddlesden-Popper oxides, tampers with their superconducting properties.

Supercomputing the Emergence of Material Behavior

A team of chemists at the University of California, San Diego has now designed a two-dimensional protein crystal that toggles between states of varying porosity and density. This is a first in biomolecular design that combined experimental studies with computation done on several supercomputing systems: the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the National Institute for Computational Sciences, and the Texas Advance Computing Center.

Artificial Intelligence Accelerates Discovery of Metallic Glass

A group led by scientists at Northwestern University, the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has reported a shortcut for discovering and improving metallic glass — and, by extension, other elusive materials — at a fraction of the time and cost.

Renewed Project Could Protect Environment for Millennia

A team that has included more than 85 researchers from three South Carolina universities is receiving $2 million to continue investigating how buried nuclear waste would react with soil and groundwater if it were to leak into the environment.

Light ‘Relaxes’ Crystal to Boost Solar Cell Efficiency

A collaboration led by Rice University and Los Alamos National Laboratory found that constant illumination relaxes the lattice of a perovskite-like material, making it more efficient at collecting sunlight and converting it to energy.

New Self-Assembling Protein Hydrogels May Hold Many Applications for Biomedicine

Delivering medications safely and accurately is of great interest to researchers and, of course, to people who need them. So is restoring function to damaged body parts. Jin K. Montclare, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has taken a big step towards meeting both of these goals.