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

Guts to Glory?

In findings published in the journal Nature Microbiology, researchers at UC Santa Barbara and more than 20 co-investigators describe a new complex of enzymes discovered in herbivore gut fungi that may have applications in sustainable fuels and chemicals.

Howe Receives 2017 MSU Innovation Center Award

Dr. Gregg Howe, an MSU Foundation Professor at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has been awarded the 2017 Innovation of the Year for his pioneering work challenging a long-held assumption that plants cannot both grow and defend optimally at the same time.

“Bad Metal” Offers Clues to High-Temperature Superconductivity

A Stony Brook University PhD student and a team of scientists found that “stripes” of electronic charge, which may play a key role in superconductivity, persist across surprisingly high temperatures, shape conductivity, and have direction-dependent properties.

Scientists Make “Squarest” Ice Crystals Ever

An international team of scientists has set a new record for creating ice crystals that have a near-perfect cubic arrangement of water molecules—a form of ice that may exist in the coldest high-altitude clouds but is extremely hard to make on Earth.

Researchers Develop Dynamic Templates Critical to Printable Electronics Technology

Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed bio-inspired dynamic templates used to manufacture organic semiconductor materials that produce printable electronics.

Caltech Grad Student Makes Ultra-Sensitive Measurement of Deformation

Xiaoyue Ni, who studies materials science in the lab of Julia R. Greer, a Caltech professor of materials science and mechanics, has shown that metals undergo permanent deformation even prior to yielding—the threshold at which a material under strain becomes permanently deformed.

How Some Battery Materials Expand Without Cracking

A team of researchers at MIT, the University of Southern Denmark, Rice University, and Argonne National Laboratory may have determined why fairly brittle electrode materials in batteries don’t crack under the strain of expansion and contraction cycles when they are used and recharged.

LSU Among the Top Universities to Receive Energy Department Graduate Research Awards

LSU is one of five universities in the U.S. with more than one graduate student awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research, or SCGSR, program.

Forget Sponges: The Earliest Animals Were Marine Jellies

A team of evolutionary biologists from Vanderbilt University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have devised a new approach designed specifically to settle contentious phylogenetic tree-of-life issues.

Proton-Nuclei Smashups Yield Clues About ‘Quark Gluon Plasma’

Findings from Rice University physicists working at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are providing new insight about an exotic state of matter called the “quark-gluon plasma” that occurs when protons and neutrons melt.

400 Million Years of a Stable Relationship: Clues to the Molecular Basis of Balance in AM Symbiosis

Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute studying the interaction of root systems with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi have determined that transcription factors control a degeneration process that regulates the stability of the root-and-fungi symbiosis.

X-Ray Study Reveals Long-Sought Insights Into Potential Drug Target

Wei Liu and his colleagues at ASU’s Biodesign Institute, along with a team led by Haitao Zhang and Vadim Cherezov of USC have examined one promising drug target in luminous detail, using a device known as an X-ray free electron laser, or XFEL.