Feature Articles

Ames Laboratory

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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 17-Jun-2026 19:16 ET (17-Jun-2026 23:16 GMT/UTC)

Complicating the opioid epidemic: the many faces of Fentanyl

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

PNNL scientists are protecting first responders and others by expanding what’s known about fentanyl, the driver of the opioid epidemic. They’re expanding the library of known fentanyl analogs and predicting new forms that might exist someday.

Funder: U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Alexandre M. Tartakovsky: Then and Now / 2011 Early Career Award Winner

DOE/US Department of Energy

Supported by his 2011 Early Career Research Program award, Alexandre Tartakovsky developed modeling methods. The models explain how mass spreads from highly concentrated areas to less concentrated areas and the interactions of several fluids.

Scientists discover a surprising structural change in metal oxide at low temperature

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Scientists from Argonne, University of Florida and UCLA report a surprising structural change in metal oxide at low temperature. It could help resolve a 60-year-old mystery and find applications in thermochromic devices and energy-efficient systems.

Journal: Physical Review Letters

A day in the life of two accelerator experts

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Upgrading a particle accelerator is a lot like modernizing a house. It just requires extra teamwork, a mountain of parts and a highly specialized understanding of the physics and technology that make accelerators work.

Major milestone for B61-12 life extension program

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories

Sandia National Laboratories marked a major milestone when the Nuclear Security Enterprise successfully produced the first completely refurbished bomb for the B61-12 life extension program in November 2021. More than 5,000 employees have worked on the B61-12 life extension program at Sandia during the last decade. As part of the program, Sandia worked to refurbish, replace or reuse about 50 different components and sub-systems that make up the B61-12.

Battle-ready recycling: DARPA ReSource project enlists INL research team

DOE/Idaho National Laboratory

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – DARPA – has enlisted Idaho National Laboratory to help create a mechanical system that soldiers can use to separate their garbage and turn it into everything they need to survive: food and water for their bodies, fuel and lubricants for their vehicles.

Why we need hydropower for a resilient grid

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

A new PNNL study quantifies hydropower's contribution to grid stability. When other power sources go out, hydropower can ramp up, recoup shortfalls, and stabilize the grid nearly instantaneously.

Forging the future of nuclear power: INL team assembles microreactor prototype

DOE/Idaho National Laboratory

Machinists at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) have successfully fabricated a full-scale, electrically heated prototype for the Department of Energy’s Microreactor Applications Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) project in just nine months.

Argonne ecologist Julie Jastrow inducted into AAAS

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne ecologist Julie Jastrow has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Supercomputing for swift protein modeling

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory

A team at Arizona State University used the nation's fastest supercomputer, Summit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to simulate millions of structures and gain new insights into how proteins transition to different shapes.

Journal: Matter
Funder: Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery