2017 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Four Faculty Honored With Presidential Early Career Awards

Four Northwestern University professors — physicist Eric Dahl, chemists Danna Freedman and T. David Harris and mechanical engineer Sinan Keten — have been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

UW Entrepreneurial Pipeline Lands Lactic Solutions in Biofuels Marketplace

When Jim Steele thinks back over the last seven years, from the early research on biofuels, followed by a dream of moving Lactic Solutions LLC technology to the marketplace, and now the acquisition of the company by Lallemand Biofuels & Distilled Spirits (a unit of Lallemand Inc.) last month, he is thankful for the network of UW–Madison entrepreneurial experts.

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."

Giant Middle East Dust Storm Caused by a Changing Climate, Not Human Conflict

A dust storm that blanketed seven nations in the Middle East in late summer 2015 was caused by climate factors and unusual weather, not human conflict in Syria, concluded researchers from Princeton, Marquette, Boston, Duke Universities and the Agricultural Research Organization.

Creating a Sustainable Earth: Batteries Included

Esther Takeuchi of Brookhaven National Lab and Stony Brook University –- who is credited with more than 150 U.S. patents and developed the battery technology that implanted cardiac defibrillators employ today — is directing a U.S. Department of Energy $10 million Energy Frontier Research Center award on innovative battery systems.

Real-Time Scans of Self-Healing Nanoparticles Show their Energy Storage Potential

Through long shifts at the helm of a highly sophisticated microscope, researchers at Stanford University recorded reactions at near-atomic-scale resolution.

Plant Cell Walls' Stretch-But-Don't-Break Growth More Complex than Once Thought

A close-up look at the growth of plant cell walls, which largely determines the way a plant grows and takes shape, offers a better understanding of how the tough-but-flexible walls expand, researchers have found in a recent study.