NEWS RELEASES

A newly developed highly sensitive detector is making it possible for the first time in decades to expand the search for dark matter, the elusive particles believed to make up roughly 85% of the universe but that have never been directly observed in a lab. The advance could either generate the first direct evidence of dark matter or rule out broad classes of theories that have yet to be tested.

Plants and microbes often have a symbiotic relationship, relying on each other for nutrients or shelter. Understanding and engineering such symbioses is an essential step in the journey towards tackling global challenges such as food security, carbon capture and ecosystem restoration. Now in The ISME Journal, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have reported in depth on the symbiotic relationships and microbial communities within Azolla ferns, bringing new insights to these important plants.

A public-private partnership between PPPL and Commonwealth Fusion Systems has led to a new artificial intelligence approach that is significantly faster at finding the magnetic shadows in a fusion vessel: safe havens protected from the intense heat of the plasma. Speeding up these calculations, which predict where the heat will hit and what parts of the tokamak will lie safe in the shadows of other parts, brings fusion power one step closer to reality.

CABBI researchers have re-engineered the metabolism of the yeast Issatchenkia orientalis to improve its ability to ferment plant glucose into succinic acid – an important industrial chemical used in food additives and a diverse array of agricultural and pharmaceutical products. Succinic acid is one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s top 12 bio-based value-added chemicals, and a well-engineered microbial strain is highly sought after for its efficient and economical production.

A Kennesaw State University researcher recieved a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, one of 40 awarded nationally. KSU’s computing infrastructure, thanks largely to the Center for Research Computing and computing resources in the Department of Physics, also helps foster the research, which will lead to bigger and better projects on a national level. The Brookhaven National Laboratory is building a particle collider to complement the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, and KSU’s research will contribute toward its development.

A team of chemists and physicists at Columbia University have discovered that atomic orbitals, not just a material's underlying crystal lattice, can act a new source of electron frustration that researchers can now tap to create quantum behaviors.