U.S. Department of Energy Research News

16-Nov-2012
Growth Forum offers networking nirvana
A greener detergent, a better solar-cell coating, an off-the-grid freezer -- clean-tech entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to money-men and -women in 10-minute bursts at the 2012 Industry Growth Forum last month in Denver. The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory held the 25th Industry Growth Forum, an annual event that features presentations from emerging clean energy companies, provocative panels led by thought leaders, one-on-one meetings, and organized networking opportunities.

22-Oct-2012
Schools raise the roof on solar energy
Colorado's largest school district leads by combining solar panels with solar curriculum.

25-Sep-2012
Student geothermal competitors tap Idaho expertise
Idaho's Snake River Plain was the focus of the US Department of Energy's National Geothermal Student Competition this year. Most of the eight finalist teams, which included three Idaho universities, visited Idaho and consulted with INL and Idaho experts.

12-Sep-2012
Fresh water feeds hurricanes' fury
PNNL researchers discovered that hurricanes and tropical cyclones become up to 50 percent more intense when passing over oceans inundated with fresh water. Their findings might help improve predictions of a hurricane's power in certain regions.

21-Aug-2012
Berkeley Lab scientists develop new way to study inner workings of algae cells
Berkeley Lab scientists have developed a way to send molecules and proteins across the cell wall of algae, a feat that opens the door for a new way to study and manipulate these tiny organisms. The research could advance the development of algae-based biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and other useful compounds.

21-Aug-2012
Scientists create new diamond-denting carbon
A new super-hard form of carbon has been created by an international team of scientists working with X-rays at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.

17-Jul-2012
Special report: Graphics processing units speed results in extreme-scale supercomputers
Can scientists and engineers benefit from extreme-scale supercomputers that use application-code accelerators called GPUs (graphics processing units)? Comparing GPU accelerators with today's fastest central processing units (CPUs), early results from diverse areas of research show 1.5- to 3-fold speedups for most codes. That acceleration means increased realism of simulations and decreased time to results. A special report details these findings.

12-Jul-2012
Idaho researcher building used nuclear fuel sensor
Much of the 6,200 metric tons of used nuclear fuel generated by US power plants over the last 40 years is stored safely in giant stainless steel casks. Darryl Butt, a Boise State University professor, is part of a team researching whether it can be stored that way for at least 60 more.

29-Jun-2012
2011 Thesis Prize winner explores strange matter
Studying the strange side of nuclear physics has reaped Biplab Dey a rich reward: Dey was recently named the winner of the 2011 JSA Thesis Prize.

21-Jun-2012
Small worlds come into focus with new Sandia microscope
Paul Kotula recently told a colleague that Sandia's new aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (AC-STEM) was like a Lamborghini with James Bond features.

5-Jun-2012
Snubbed protons tattle on neutron structure
Protons and neutrons are the fraternal twins of the sub-atomic world and the building blocks of all atomic nuclei. While similar in many respects, it's their differences that give them their unique properties. Now, scientists are exploiting these differences to gain deeper insight into these fundamental particles that build our visible universe.

24-May-2012
Supernovas explode in 3-D detail at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Understanding a Type Ia supernova -- an exploding white dwarf star -- requires supercomputers. A team of astrophysicists and computational scientists is using the power of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar to virtually blow up these white dwarfs. In the process the researchers are revealing the secrets of the biggest thermonuclear explosions in the universe and finding the answers needed to measure the size of the universe.

23-May-2012
New research shows brain injuries from blasts similar to football impacts
In an advance that may someday provide health benefits for soldiers and athletes, a team of researchers has discovered a mechanism that could be the cause of traumatic brain injuries in blast-exposed soldiers.

7-May-2012
NREL catalyst brings drop-in fuels closer
We live in a petroleum-based society, and the oil we use comes from plants that were buried eons ago and changed under pressure and high temperatures. As countries across the globe face dwindling oil supplies and the environmental impacts of tapping hard-to-process shale oil, the question arises: is there a greener way to replicate Mother Nature?

17-Apr-2012
New nanoparticle technology cuts water use, energy costs
Nuclear and coal power plants are some of the thirstiest machines on earth. The turbines that spin inside of them to generate electricity require tons and tons of steam, and all of that water has to come from somewhere.

4-Apr-2012
Carbon dioxide caused global warming at ice age's end, pioneering simulation shows
Climate science has an equivalent to the "what came first -- the chicken or the egg?" question: what came first, greenhouse gases or global warming? A multi-institutional team led by researchers at Harvard, Oregon State University, and the University of Wisconsin used a global dataset of paleoclimate records and the Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to find the answer. The results, published in the April 5 issue of Nature, analyze 15,000 years of climate history.

28-Mar-2012
Using equations to mine nuclear energy resources
INL research scientist Peter Zalupski is taking a modern approach to nuclear fuel recycling.

20-Mar-2012
New catalyst for safe, reversible hydrogen storage
A new catalyst reversibly converts hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide to a liquid under very mild conditions, with applications for efficient, safe storage and transport of hydrogen fuel.

29-Feb-2012
Climate scientists compute in concert
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are sharing computational resources and expertise to improve the detail and performance of a scientific application code that is the product of one of the world's largest collaborations of climate researchers. The Community Earth System Model couples components of atmosphere, land, ocean, and ice to reflect their complex interactions. By continuing to improve science representations and numerical methods in simulations, and exploiting modern computer architectures, researchers expect to further improve the CESM's accuracy in predicting climate changes.

29-Feb-2012
Computation proves predictive capabilities of nuclei through fluorine-14 simulation
Aa team led by Iowa State University physicist James Vary used Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and Argonne Leadership Computing Facility resources to predict the behavior of fluorine-14, a relatively unknown isotope. It published its predictions in Physical Review C in February 2010. Six months later, a group of researchers at Texas A&M University's Cyclotron Institute performed an experiment producing fluorine-14, and the results nearly mirrored those of Vary's group.

22-Feb-2012
Big, bad bacterium is an 'iron pirate'
Life inside the human body sometimes looks like life on the high seas in the 1600s, when pirates hijacked foreign vessels in search of precious metals.

8-Feb-2012
Computer scientists collect computing tools for next-generation machines
Researchers using the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility's can foresee substantial changes in scientific application code development. The OLCF's new supercomputer, Titan, will use a hybrid architecture of conventional, multipurpose CPUs and high-performance GPUs. The machine will supplant the OLCF's current fastest supercomputer, Jaguar, a Cray XT5 using an entirely CPU-based platform. Members of the OLCF's Application Performance Tools group understand the challenge. Their goal is to make the transition as smooth as possible.

26-Jan-2012
Nanotube 'glow sticks' transform surface science tool kit
Many physical and chemical processes necessary for biology and chemistry occur at the interface of water and solid surfaces. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory publishing in Nature Nanotechnology have now shown that semiconducting carbon nanotubes -- light-emitting cylinders of pure carbon -- have the potential to detect and track single molecules in water.

11-Jan-2012
Biofuels from bacteria is biochemist's goal
Environmental proteomics does not just aid development of new biofuels but helps further understanding of the impact of climate change and the use of organisms for bioremediation.

30-Dec-2011
Foy's fun with science a career highlight
During a science experiment, Frances Foy helped a fifth grade student dip a blown-up balloon into a container of liquid nitrogen. As the balloon shriveled amid a cloud of white vapor while classmates 'oohed' and 'aahed' in amazement, Foy asked, "What is happening? Something is changing." For two decades, Foy has been demonstrating the wonders of science like this one that explains the states of matter.