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

Electrons Slowing Down at Critical Moments

In a new study, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have determined that electrons in some oxides can experience an “unconventional slowing down” of their response to a light pulse.

SLAC’s Ultra-High-Speed ‘Electron Camera’ Catches Molecules at a Crossroads

An extremely fast “electron camera” at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has produced the most detailed atomic movie of the decisive point where molecules hit by light can either stay intact or break apart. The results could lead to a better understanding of how molecules respond to light in processes that are crucial for life, like photosynthesis and vision, or that are potentially harmful, such as DNA damage from ultraviolet light.

Meet Claire Lee: Particle Physicist and Non-Traditional Science Communicator

Lee, who is from South Africa, is a postdoctoral research associate at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. She works on the ATLAS experiment, one of seven particle detector experiments analyzing data from collisions of particles such as protons and lead ions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe.

ALCF Hands-on Workshop Connects Researchers with HPC Experts

For three days this May, more than 40 researchers visited the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, to improve the performance of their computational science codes by working alongside the experts who know the facility’s supercomputers best.

10 Questions for Steven Cowley, New Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Steven Cowley, a theoretical physicist and international authority on fusion energy, became the seventh Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) on July 1 and will be Princeton professor of astrophysical sciences on September 1.

Fermilab Computing Experts Bolster NOvA Evidence, 1 Million Cores Consumed

The NOvA neutrino experiment, in collaboration with the Department of Energy’s Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC-4) program and the HEPCloud program at DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, was able to perform the largest-scale analysis ever to support the recent evidence of antineutrino oscillation, a phenomenon that may hold clues to how our universe evolved.

X-Ray Experiment Confirms Theoretical Model for Making New Materials

Experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have confirmed the predictive power of a new computational approach to materials synthesis. Researchers say that this approach, developed at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, could streamline the creation of novel materials for solar cells, batteries and other sustainable technologies.

High-School Students Studying Carbon-Based Nanomaterials for Cancer Drug Delivery Visit Brookhaven Lab's Nanocenter

The 11th graders from Islip High School brought the graphene oxide microspheres they made at Stony Brook University to the Center for Functional Nanomaterials for imaging.

New Simulations Break Down Potential Impact of a Major Quake by Building Location and Size

A team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national labs, is leveraging powerful supercomputers to portray the impact of high-frequency ground motion on thousands of representative different-sized buildings spread out across the California region.

ALCF Selects Data and Learning Projects for Aurora Early Science Program

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, has selected 10 data science and machine learning projects for its Aurora Early Science Program (ESP). Set to be the nation’s first exascale system upon its expected 2021 arrival, Aurora will be capable of performing a quintillion calculations per second.

Student Interns Dive into Plasma in One-week Course

PPPL launched about 60 student interns into a summer of research by hosting an intensive one-week course in plasma physics the week of June 11. The students, including 32 students in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program, attended lectures by experts at PPPL and from institutions around the country.

Separate But Together: Ultrathin Membrane Both Isolates and Couples Living and Non-Living Catalysts

Bioelectrochemical systems combine the best of both worlds – microbial cells with inorganic materials – to make fuels and other energy-rich chemicals with unrivaled efficiency. Yet technical difficulties have kept them impractical anywhere but in a lab. Now researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a novel nanoscale membrane that could address these issues and pave the way for commercial scale-up.