U.S. Department of Energy Research News

Public Release: 28-Nov-2012

Nature
Tiny algae shed light on photosynthesis as a dynamic property
Many of the world's most important photosynthetic eukaryotes such as plants got their light-harnessing organelles (chloroplasts) indirectly from other organisms through endosymbiosis. In some instances, this resulted in algae with multiple, distinct genomes, some in residual organelles (nucleomorphs). To better understand why nucleomorphs persist after endosymbiosis, an international team including researchers at the DOE Joint Genome Institute collaborated to sequence and analyze two tiny algae. Their report appeared online Nov. 29, 2012 in Nature.

Public Release: 26-Nov-2012

Physical Review Letters
Modeling the breaking points of metallic glasses
Metallic glass alloys (or liquid metals) are three times stronger than the best industrial steel, but can be molded into complex shapes with the same ease as plastic. These materials are highly resistant to scratching, denting, shattering and corrosion. Mathematical methods developed by a Berkeley Lab scientists will help explain why liquid metals have wildly different breaking points.

Public Release: 21-Nov-2012

Nature
New structures self-assemble in synchronized dance
With self-assembly guiding the steps and synchronization providing the rhythm, a new class of materials forms dynamic, moving structures in an intricate dance. Researchers from the University of Illinois and Northwestern University have demonstrated tiny spheres that synchronize their movements as they self-assemble into a spinning microtube. Such in-motion structures, a blending of mathematics and materials science, could open a new class of technologies with applications in medicine, chemistry and engineering.

National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, US Army Research Office

Public Release: 19-Nov-2012

Astrophysical Journal Letters
Failed explosions explain most peculiar supernovae
Supercomputer simulations have revealed that a type of oddly dim, exploding star is probably a class of duds -- one that could nonetheless throw new light on the mysterious nature of dark energy.

US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Public Release: 19-Nov-2012

Physical Review Letters
BaBar experiment confirms time asymmetry
Digging through nearly 10 years of data from billions of BaBar particle collisions, researchers found that certain particle types change into one another much more often in one way than they do in the other, a violation of time reversal symmetry and confirmation that some subatomic processes have a preferred direction of time.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 15-Nov-2012

Environmental Science and Technology
Airborne particles smuggle pollutants to far reaches of globe
Pollution from fossil fuel burning and forest fires reaches all the way to the Arctic, even though it should decay long before it travels that far. Now, lab research can explain how pollution makes its lofty journey: rather than ride on the surface of airborne particles, pollutants snuggle inside, protected from the elements on the way. The results will help scientists improve atmospheric air-quality and pollution transport models.

Department of Energy

Public Release: 14-Nov-2012
Titan is also a green powerhouse
Not only is Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Titan the world's most powerful supercomputer, it is also one of the most energy efficient.

Public Release: 14-Nov-2012
Bug repellent for supercomputers proves effective
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have used the Stack Trace Analysis Tool, a highly scalable, lightweight tool to debug a program running more than one million MPI processes on the IBM Blue Gene/Q-based Sequoia supercomputer.

Public Release: 14-Nov-2012
Traumatic brain injury patients, supercomputer simulations studied to improve helmets
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico are comparing supercomputer simulations of blast waves on the brain with clinical studies of veterans suffering from mild traumatic brain injuries to help improve helmet designs.

Office of Naval Research

Public Release: 13-Nov-2012

Supercomputing 2012
PNNL expertise highlighted at Supercomputing
PNNL research describing new and improved ways to crunch massive amounts of data will be presented at the Supercomputing 2012 conference. Papers to be presented include how to use matching approximation to find similar patterns in different data sets and a new software that helps speed up parallel computations by automatically translating MPI code.

Public Release: 13-Nov-2012
Department of Energy's ESnet rolls out world's fastest science network
The US Department of Energy's (DOE) ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) is now operating the world's fastest science network, serving the entire national laboratory system, its supercomputing centers, and its major scientific instruments at 100 gigabits per second -- 10 times faster than its previous generation network.

Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 6-Nov-2012
Global metabolomic initiative announced
Investigators at Washington University and The Scripps Research Institute have announced the launch of a "Global Metabolomic Initiative" to facilitate meta-analyses on studies of the metabolism of bacteria, yeast, plants, animals and people. Although metabolomics has existed as a discipline for only a decade, it has already provided insights into many difficult-to-treat diseases, including chronic pain. Many more are expected to fall out of the meta-analyses.

National Institutes of Health, US Department of Energy, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine

Public Release: 29-Oct-2012
ORNL debuts Titan supercomputer
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory launched a new era of scientific supercomputing today with Titan, a system capable of churning through more than 20,000 trillion calculations each second--or 20 petaflops--by employing a family of processors called graphic processing units first created for computer gaming. Titan will be 10 times more powerful than ORNL's last world-leading system, Jaguar.

Public Release: 23-Oct-2012

ACS Synthetic Biology
Training your robot the PaR-PaR way
PaR-PaR, a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language developed by researchers at JBEI and Berkeley Lab, uses an object-oriented approach to make it easier to integrate robotic equipment into biological laboratories. Effective robots can increase research productivity, lower costs and provide more reliable and reproducible experimental data.

US Department of Energy/Office of Science

Public Release: 23-Oct-2012
Neutron experiments give unprecedented look at quantum oscillations
Researchers at ORNL have found that nitrogen atoms in the compound uranium nitride exhibit unexpected, distinct vibrations that form a nearly ideal realization of a physics textbook model known as the isotropic quantum harmonic oscillator.

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: 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
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: 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: 8-Oct-2012

Plant Physiology
Computational model IDs potential pathways to improve plant oil production
Using a computational model they designed to incorporate detailed information about plants' interconnected metabolic processes, scientists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified key pathways that appear to "favor" the production of either oils or proteins. The research, now published online in Plant Physiology, may point the way to new strategies to tip the balance and increase plant oil production.

US Department of Energy/Office of Science

Public Release: 8-Oct-2012
Grant-winning PPPL scientists lead fusion to the edge
A center based at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has won a highly competitive $12.25 million grant to develop computer codes to simulate a key component of the plasma that fuels fusion energy. The five-year DOE award could produce software that helps researchers design and operate facilities to create fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for generating electricity.

US Department of Energy/Office of Science

Public Release: 8-Oct-2012

Nature Methods
A welcome predictability
Berkeley Lab researchers have developed an adapator that makes the genetic engineering of microbial components substantially easier and more predictable.

National Science Foundation

Public Release: 4-Oct-2012
Story tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, October 2012
These are story ideas from recent research from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Public Release: 4-Oct-2012

SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics
Toward an artificial pancreas: Math modeling and diabetes control
In a paper published today in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, authors Mingzhan Huang, Jiaxu Li, Xinyu Song, and Hongjian Guo propose novel mathematical models for injection of insulin in type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The models simulate injections of insulin in the manner of insulin pumps, which deliver periodic impulses in diabetes patients.

National Institutes of Health, US Department of Energy