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

Part of $4.5 Million DOE Grant Goes to Georgetown Physics Professor

Physics professor James Freericks is part of a team that recently won a $4.5 million competitive research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Freericks will work with a team of physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Los Alamos National Laboratory on how X-rays can be used in solids.

Does Rain Follow the Plow?

There are many factors that play a role in whether or not it rains, and research from the University of Arizona shows that human activity such as cultivating agricultural fields may be one of them.

Read more about Does Rain Follow the Plow?

3 Colorado School of Mines Graduate Students to Conduct Research at DOE Labs

Natalie Seitzman, Nathan Patrick Bessen and Randy Lemons were among 47 graduate students at 36 universities nationwide selected for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program.

Scientists Design New Metabolic Technology to Open Scientific Data for Everyone

Patients want to see their medical information. Researchers want to share their data. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have released a new technology designed to make these measurements easier to perform and more accessible to practitioners, scientists and the general public.

In Neutron Stars, Protons May Do the Heavy Lifting

A new study in Nature, co-led by MIT researchers, suggests that some properties of neutron stars may be influenced not only by their multitude of densely packed neutrons, but also by a substantially smaller fraction of protons — positively charged particles that make up just 5 percent of a neutron star.

Fluorescence Activating Protein Made from Scratch

For the first time, scientists have created, entirely from scratch, a protein capable of binding to a small target molecule. Researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine report the advance in the Sept. 12 issue of the journal Nature.

UW’s Liu Receives DOE Grant to Improve Predictability of Interactions Between Mixed-Phase Clouds, Aerosols

Xiaohong Liu, a UW professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science and the Wyoming Excellence Chair in Climate Science, will receive a $588,118 DOE grant for his project, titled “Improving GCM Predictability of Mixed-Phase Clouds and Aerosol Interactions at High Latitudes with ARM Observations.”

Nanotube ‘Rebar’ Makes Graphene Twice as Tough

In a new study in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano, Rice materials scientist Jun Lou, graduate student and lead author Emily Hacopian and collaborators, including Rice chemist James Tour, stress-tested rebar graphene and found that nanotube rebar diverted and bridged cracks that would otherwise propagate in unreinforced graphene.

FRIB Accelerates First Beams in Three of Forty-six Superconducting Cryomodules

On 11-12 July, the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams achieved a major project milestone by accelerating its first beams in three of forty-six superconducting cryomodules. This demonstrates for the first time that the major systems (front end, liquid helium plant, superconducting cryomodules) which were commissioned individually, work well together and can successfully accelerate beams of atomic particles.

Studying Universe Requires 'Archaeology on the Grand Scale,' Physicist Says

As director of the Dark Energy Survey, an international collaboration to map several hundred million galaxies using one of the world’s most powerful digital cameras, Fermilab scientist and University of Chicago professor Josh Frieman, PhD’89, leads more than 400 scientists from over 25 institutions across the world in the quest to unravel mysteries of the universe.

Neutron Stars May Hold an Answer to Neutron Puzzle on Earth

According to University of Illinois physicist Douglas H. Beck, "Neutrons play some unusual roles in our world. Free neutrons decay in about 900 s but, bound in nuclei, they are stable and make up somewhat more than half the mass of the visible universe."

A Superconductor Story with a Twist

There’s a literal disturbance in the force that alters what physicists have long thought of as a characteristic of superconductivity, according to Rice University scientists.