University Research | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

New Technique Makes Light Metallic Nanofoam

UC Davis physicists Dustin Gilbert, Kai Liu and colleagues have come up with a new method to make a nanofoam of palladium. The foamy metal could be used to store hydrogen in vehicles or for other purposes.

Mapping the Microbiome of … Everything

In the Earth Microbiome Project, an extensive global team co-led by researchers at University of California San Diego, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory collected more than 27,000 samples from numerous, diverse environments around the globe.

Georgia State Physicist Gets $400,000 Grant to Study Solar Energy Conversion

Dr. Gary Hastings, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University, has received a two-year, $400,000 federal grant to study solar energy conversion in photosynthesis.

Computer Scientists Aid in Major Astronomical Discovery

In a major advance in astronomy, scientists announced last month that they had observed two neutron stars colliding, a never-before-seen cosmic event that made headlines the world over — and two UC Merced computer scientists were instrumental in making it happen.

Penn Researchers Demonstrate How to Control Liquid Crystal Patterns

When Lisa Tran, a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences, set out to investigate patterns in liquid crystals, she didn’t know what to expect. When she first looked through the microscope, she saw dancing iridescent spheres with fingerprint-like patterns etched into them that spiraled and flattened as the solution they were floated in changed.

Researchers Discover Super-Elastic Shape-Memory Material

UConn materials science and engineering researcher Seok-Woo Lee and his colleagues have discovered super-elastic shape-memory properties in a material that could be applied for use as an actuator in the harshest of conditions, such as outer space, and might be the first in a whole new class of shape-memory materials.

Researchers Explore Extraterrestrial Ice

A group of Stanford researchers recently published a paper on their first-of-its-kind research that captured water freezing into an alternative form called ice VII (“ice seven”), which is found within other planetary bodies.

Mapping 'Damage Trails' Lets Researchers Follow the Water in Photosystem II

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have traced the paths of three water channels in an ancient photosynthetic organism to provide the first comprehensive, experimental study of how that organism uses and regulates water to create energy.

Zwicky Transient Facility Opens Its Eyes to the Volatile Cosmos

A new robotic camera with the ability to capture hundreds of thousands of stars and galaxies in a single shot has taken its first image of the sky, an event astronomers refer to as "first light."

Iowa State Named a Partner in New Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center

Iowa State University is a partner institution in a new, $104 million research center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the project will study the next generation of plant-based, sustainable, cost-effective biofuels and bioproducts.

Protecting Plants from the Power of Sunlight

Steffie Tietz, a former post-doc in the Kramer lab at Michigan State University, is proposing a way to measure, in realtime, how plants prevent burn out from too much sunlight.

Neutrino Project to Fuel Particle Physics Research

South Dakota State University researchers are doing preliminary work on an international physics research project that will push the limits of engineering and could lead to new discoveries in particle physics.