Public Release: 30-Nov-2012 ORNL develops lignin-based thermoplastic conversion process
Turning lignin, a plant's structural "glue" and a byproduct of the paper and pulp industry, into something considerably more valuable is driving a research effort headed by Amit Naskar of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Public Release: 30-Nov-2012 Team led by Argonne National Lab selected as DOE's Batteries and Energy Storage Hub
Energy Secretary Steven Chu joined Illinois dignitaries in announcing that a team led by Argonne National Laboratory was selected for an award of up to $120 million over five years to establish a new Batteries and Energy Storage Hub. The Hub -- the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research -- will combine the R&D firepower of five DOE national laboratories, five universities, and four private firms in an effort toward achieving revolutionary advances in battery performance.
US Department of Energy
Public Release: 29-Nov-2012 Lawrence Livermore's Keane and Long elected AAAS Fellows
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Christopher Keane and Jane Long have been awarded the distinction of fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Public Release: 29-Nov-2012 Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences A human-caused climate change signal emerges from the noise
By comparing simulations from 20 different computer models to satellite observations, Lawrence Livermore climate scientists and colleagues from 16 other organizations have found that tropospheric and stratospheric temperature changes are clearly related to human activities.
Public Release: 29-Nov-2012 Greener storage for green energy
Renewable energy solutions like wind and solar operate on nature's timetable. Power is plentiful -- but not necessarily at the moments when consumers need it. To give renewables a fighting chance, a team led by engineers and chemists at Harvard will use a one-year, $600,000 innovation grant from the US Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy program to develop a new type of storage battery.
US Department of Energy
Public Release: 29-Nov-2012 2 Berkeley Lab scientists named AAAS Fellows
Susan Celniker of the Life Sciences Division and Wim Leemans of the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been named 2012 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
US Department of Energy
Public Release: 29-Nov-2012 Science X-ray laser helps fight sleeping sickness
An international group of scientists working at SLAC has mapped a weak spot in the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, pinpointing a promising new target for treating a disease that kills tens of thousands of people each year.
US Department of Energy
Public Release: 28-Nov-2012 ARPA-e awards $130 million for transformation energy technology projects
Sixty six cutting-edge research projects have been selected by the Energy Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to receive a total of $130 million in funding.
US Department of Energy
Public Release: 28-Nov-2012 NREL updates solar radiation database
The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and collaborators released a 20-year updated version of the US National Solar Radiation Database, a web-based technical report that provides critical information about solar and meteorological data for 1,454 locations in the US and its territories.
US Department of Energy
Public Release: 28-Nov-2012 Science NREL researchers use imaging technologies to solve puzzle of plant architecture
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the BioEnergy Science Center combined different microscopic imaging methods to gain a greater understanding of the relationships between biomass cell wall structure and enzyme digestibility, a breakthrough that could lead to optimizing sugar yields and lowering the costs of making biofuels.
US Department of Energy
Public Release: 27-Nov-2012 The installed price of solar photovoltaic systems in the US continues to decline at a rapid pace
The installed price of solar photovoltaic power systems in the United States fell substantially in 2011 and through the first half of 2012, according to the latest edition of Tracking the Sun, an annual PV cost-tracking report produced by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
US Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Program, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Public Release: 26-Nov-2012 Nature Communications Penn researchers make flexible, low-voltage circuits using nanocrystals
Electronic circuits are typically integrated in rigid silicon wafers, but flexibility opens up a wide range of applications in a world where electronics are becoming more pervasive. Finding materials with the right mix of performance and manufacturing cost, however, remains a challenge.
Now researchers from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that nanoscale particles, or nanocrystals, of the semiconductor cadmium selenide can be "printed" or "coated" on flexible plastics to form high-performance electronics.
US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation
Public Release: 26-Nov-2012 Researchers test novel power system for space travel
A team of researchers, including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has demonstrated a new concept for a reliable nuclear reactor that could be used on space flights.
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: 22-Nov-2012 Science Magnesium oxide: From Earth to super-Earth
The mantles of Earth and other rocky planets are rich in magnesium and oxygen. Due to its simplicity, the mineral magnesium oxide is a good model for studying the nature of planetary interiors. New work from a team led by Carnegie's Stewart McWilliams studied how magnesium oxide behaves under the extreme conditions deep within planets and found evidence that alters our understanding of planetary evolution.
US Department of Energy, US Army Research Office, Krell Institute, Miller Institute, University of California
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
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.
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