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

Broad Genome Analysis Shows Yeasts Evolving by Subtraction

A team of researchers led by labs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Vanderbilt University sequenced and compared the genomes of 332 species of budding yeasts, all members of a subphylum of yeasts that multiply by producing daughter cells from buds on their surface.

UMass Engineers Make Crossbar Arrays of the Smallest Memristors

A research team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst says it has developed a promising building block for the next generation of nonvolatile random-access memory, artificial neural networks and bio-inspired computing systems.

Amazonian Peatlands May Soon Switch from a Carbon Sink to a Carbon Source

Researchers at Arizona State University have discovered land-use disturbances may reverse the effect of the most efficient natural carbon sink on the planet.

'Magnetic Topological Insulator' Makes its Own Magnetic Field

A team of U.S. and Korean physicists has found the first evidence of a two-dimensional material that can become a magnetic topological insulator even when it is not placed in a magnetic field.

Researcher Gets Grant To Study Materials Moving Through Tiny Spaces

Dr. Gangli Wang, professor of chemistry at Georgia State University, has received a three-year, $485,263 federal grant to study how nanostructured materials, or materials with hollow structures on the nanometer scale, affect how other substances pass through them.

UK Joins U.S. Department of Energy Battery Research Partnership

The University of Kentucky has been named a partner on a $120 million, five-year second phase of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Innovation Hub focused on advancing battery science and technology.

U of A Partners With DoE, National Labs in New Field of Topological Materials

University of Arkansas physicists are exploring the new field of “topological quantum materials,” which are unusual in that they have a robustness of electrical properties regardless of temperature shifts or changes in structural form.

SUNY Poly Professors Awarded $330,000 for Two Distinct Cutting-Edge Nanotechnology-Centered Research Projects

Dr. Serge Oktyabrsky received $200,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop next-gen scintillation detectors based on quantum dots to enable a better understanding of basic particles. Dr. Spyros Gallis received $130,000 from the National Science Foundation to develop critical material and physical properties of new erbium-doped silicon carbide photonic nanostructures for enhanced biological imaging, quantum communications applications.

Quantum Sound Waves to Open Door for More Powerful Sensors

In a first, scientists with the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory have built a mechanical system—a tiny “echo chamber” for sound waves—that can be controlled at the quantum level, by connecting it to quantum circuits.

Rare and Diverse Giant Viruses Unexpectedly Found in a Forest Soil Ecosystem

biologist Jeff Blanchard and Ph.D. student Lauren Alteio at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with others at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), discovered giant viruses – relatively speaking the size of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons – in soil at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts.

Microbial Community Members Play Distinct Roles in Biosynthesis

Insights into a microbial metabolic network set the stage for designing microbiomes to synthesize desired bioproducts.

Solving a 75-Year-Old Mystery Might Provide a New Source of Farm Fertilizer

Thanks to a specialized X-ray source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have confirmed the existence of a long-hypothesized interaction between nitrogen and titanium dioxide (TiO2) – a common photoactive material also known as titania – in the presence of light.