NEWS RELEASES

Veterans of the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program are bringing their expertise to the Department of Energy’s High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, applying the same precision and discipline that powers the Navy’s fleets to America’s science, energy and security missions.

A groundbreaking new study has made significant contributions to the long-running vision of “materials that compute,” a concept that has evolved from the pioneering collaborations between researchers Balazs and Levitan. This vision aims to create materials capable of processing information in a manner similar to traditional computing systems, but with the added benefits of flexibility and adaptability inherent in physical materials.

A surprising discovery about a quantum well of germanium-tin with silicon-germanium-tin barriers points to the potential role of short-range ordering of atoms in semiconductor performance. 

A $2.5 million grant from the federal Department of Energy EPSCoR program will enable University of Nebraska-Lincoln physicists to investigate the use of ferroelectric oxides in emergent quantum phases. It also will provide support for early career faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students who will participate in the three-pronged research project. 

In California’s Death Valley, where summer temperatures regularly soar above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, life seems almost impossible. Yet among the cracked earth and blinding sunlight, one native plant not only survives — it thrives. That plant, Tidestromia oblongifolia, has helped Michigan State University scientists uncover how life can flourish in extreme heat, revealing a potential blueprint for engineering crops that can adapt to our changing climate. In a new paper published in Current Biology, Research Foundation Professor Seung Yon “Sue” Rhee and Research Specialist Karine Prado report that T. oblongifolia grows faster in Death Valley’s summer conditions by rapidly adjusting its photosynthetic system to withstand the heat. 

In a Nov. 5 article in the journal Nature, a Princeton team reported their new qubit lasts for over 1 millisecond — three times longer than the best ever reported in a lab setting and nearly fifteen times longer than industry standard processors. The team built a fully functioning quantum chip to validate the performance of their new qubit, clearing major obstacles to efficient error correction and scaling for industrial systems.

The UA Power Group designed a silicon carbide-based motor drive for the hybrid version of a plane commonly used as an air taxi between islands.