U.S. Department of Energy Research News

Public Release: 23-Oct-2012
Iowa State researchers double down on heat to break up cellulose, produce fuels and power
Iowa State University engineers and researchers have built and are testing a bio-oil gasifier. It will allow them to combine two thermochemical technologies to produce the next generation of fuels from renewable sources such as corn stalks and wood chips.

US Department of Energy, Iowa Energy Center

Public Release: 22-Oct-2012

Astrophysical Journal
Milky Way's black hole getting ready for snack
Get ready for a fascinating eating experience in the center of our galaxy. The event involves a black hole that may devour much of an approaching cloud of dust and gas known as G2. A supercomputer simulation prepared by two Lab physicists and a former postdoc suggests that some of G2 will survive, although its surviving mass will be torn apart, leaving it with a different shape and questionable fate.

Public Release: 22-Oct-2012

Physics Review Letters
State-of-the-art beams from table-top accelerators
"Table-top accelerators" � laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) that propel electron pulses to high energies within a few centimeters � promise far less expensive future accelerators with far less environmental impact than today's conventional machines. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have devised novel methods to test the quality of uniquely challenging LPA beams.

Public Release: 21-Oct-2012

Nature Climate Change
Rice agriculture accelerates global warming, new research finds
More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, coupled with rising temperatures, is making rice agriculture a larger source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, according to a study published today in Nature Climate Change by a research team that includes a University of California, Davis, plant scientist.

US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Irish Research Council, Marie Curie Actions

Public Release: 19-Oct-2012
Chemistry building at Brookhaven Lab named Historic Chemical Landmark
The New York Section of the American Chemical Society has designated the Chemistry Building at Brookhaven National Laboratory as an Historic Chemical Landmark for the synthesis of 18^FDG, a radiotracer that has had a revolutionary and global impact on cancer diagnosis and management and brain research.

Department of Energy Office of Science, National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012
ORNL study confirms magnetic properties of silicon nano-ribbons
Nano-ribbons of silicon configured so the atoms resemble chicken wire could hold the key to ultrahigh density data storage and information processing systems of the future.

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012
New military apparel repels chemical and biological agents
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and collaborators are developing a new military uniform material that repels chemical and biological agents using a novel carbon nanotube fabric.

Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012

Environmental Health Perspectives
Elevated indoor carbon dioxide impairs decision-making performance
Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) can significantly impair people's decision-making performance. The results were unexpected and may have particular implications for schools and other spaces with high occupant density.

State University of New York

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012
From form to function: 2013 DOE JGI Community Sequencing Program portfolio announced
For genomics researchers, the term "form to function" could be applied to the ongoing transition from not just studying an organism's genetic code to also understanding the roles those genes play. All the projects selected for the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute's 2013 Community Sequencing Program portfolio combine sequence data generation with large-scale experimental and computational capabilities to enable fuller functional genome annotation.

US Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012

Physical Review Letters
Tiny travelers from deep space could assist in healing Fukushima's nuclear scar
Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory have devised a method to use cosmic rays to gather detailed information from inside the damaged cores of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, which were heavily damaged in March 2011 by a tsunami that followed a great earthquake.

Public Release: 17-Oct-2012

Angewandte Chemie International Edition
New cobalt-graphene catalyst could challenge platinum for use in fuel cells
There's a new contender in the race to find an inexpensive alternative to platinum catalysts for use in hydrogen fuel cells. Brown University chemist Shouheng Sun and his students have developed a new material -- a graphene sheet covered by cobalt and cobalt-oxide nanoparticles -- that can catalyze the oxygen reduction reaction nearly as well as platinum does and is substantially more durable.

US Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Fuel

Public Release: 16-Oct-2012

PLOS ONE
New insights into how genetic differences influence breast cancer risk from low-dose radiation
Scientists from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have identified tissue mechanisms that may influence a woman's susceptibility or resistance to breast cancer after exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation, such as the levels used in full-body CT scans and radiotherapy.

Public Release: 16-Oct-2012

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Jelly-like atmospheric particles resist chemical aging
"Our research provides the first experimental evidence that the chemical aging process of atmospheric particles is limited by phase," says principal investigator Scot Martin, at Harvard.

US Department of Energy, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Public Release: 16-Oct-2012
Pitt engineers to design affordable CO2 thickener to augment oil extraction
Crude oil extraction could be improved significantly and accessible domestic oil reserves could be expanded with an economical CO2 thickener being developed by University of Pittsburgh engineers, thanks to a $1.3 million grant from the US Department of Energy.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 16-Oct-2012
SDSU receives Department of Energy grant for solar research
The grant, from the SunShot Initiative, will enable Dr. Fletcher Miller and his team of graduate and undergraduate student researchers to take a lab-scale model and, over the next four years, develops a full-scale model that will be tested at the National Solar Thermal Testing Facility in New Mexico.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 15-Oct-2012

Nature Materials
Another advance on the road to spintronics
Using a new technique called HARPES, for Hard x-ray Angle-Resolved PhotoEmission Spectroscopy, Berkeley Lab researchers have unlocked the ferromagnetic secrets of dilute magnetic semiconductors, materials of great interest for spintronic technology.

US Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 12-Oct-2012

Physical Review Letters
'Invisibility' could be a key to better electronics
An MIT team applies technology developed for visual 'cloaking' to enable more efficient transfer of electrons.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 11-Oct-2012

2012 Fusion Energy Conference
Mug handles could help hot plasma give lower-cost, controllable fusion energy
New hardware lets engineers maintain the plasma used in fusion reactors in an energy-efficient, stable manner, making the system potentially attractive for use in fusion power plants.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 11-Oct-2012

Climatic Change
Earth sunblock only needed if planet warms easily
A new computer analysis of future climate change that considers emissions reductions together with sunlight reduction shows that such drastic steps to cool the earth would only be necessary if the planet heats up easily with added greenhouse gases. The analysis, reported in the journal Climatic Change, might help future policymakers plan for a changing climate.

Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research

Public Release: 11-Oct-2012

Astrophysical Journal
When galaxies eat galaxies
Using gravitational "lenses" in space, University of Utah astronomers discovered that the centers of the biggest galaxies are growing denser � evidence of repeated collisions and mergers by massive galaxies with 100 billion stars.

National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation/Sloan Digital Sky Survey, NASA/ESA, US Department of Energy

Public Release: 11-Oct-2012
University of Tennessee receives DOE funds to improve nuclear safety
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will take part in two US Department of Energy projects totaling more than nine million dollars which involve a team of institutions to improve upon nuclear energy safety and efficiency.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 10-Oct-2012

Journal of Forensic Sciences
Cold cases heat up through Lawrence Livermore approach to identifying remains
In an effort to identify the thousands of John/Jane Doe cold cases in the United States, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher and a team of international collaborators have found a multidisciplinary approach to identifying the remains of missing persons.

Public Release: 10-Oct-2012

ACS Nano
Improving nanometer-scale manufacturing with infrared spectroscopy
While there have been significant breakthroughs in nano-manufacturing, there has been much less progress on measurement technologies that can provide information about nanostructures made from multiple integrated materials. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Anasys Instruments Inc. now report new diagnostic tools that can support cutting-edge nano-manufacturing. Using atomic force microscope based infrared spectroscopy to characterize polymer nanostructures and systems of integrated polymer nanostructures, researchers were able to chemically analyze polymer lines as small as 100 nm

DARPA, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, US Department of Energy

Public Release: 10-Oct-2012

Nature Chemistry
The best of both catalytic worlds
Berkeley Lab researchers have combined the best properties of heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts by encapsulating metallic nanoclusters within the branched molecular arms of dendrimers. The results are heterogenized homogeneous nanocatalysts that are sustainable and feature high reactivity and selectivity.

US Department of Energy/Office of Science

Public Release: 10-Oct-2012

Journal of Biological Chemistry
Biologists describe details of new mechanism for molecular interactions
Scientists have discovered a new mechanism that may alter principle understandings of molecular interactions within a cell's nucleus. In four papers, the scientists describe the details of how particular proteins use a "molecular sled" to slide along DNA -- much like a train running along its tracks -- to find and interact with other proteins. The findings suggest this mechanism may be universal.

US Department of Energy/Office of Science, NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Science Foundation, and others