Feature Articles

As the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement user facility marks 30 years of collecting continuous measurements of the Earth’s atmosphere this year, the ARM Data Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is shepherding changes to its operations to make the treasure trove of data more easily accessible and useful to scientists studying Earth’s climate around the world.

Zhiyang Zhai, an associate biologist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, is one of 83 scientists from across the nation selected to receive funding for research as part of the DOE Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program. Zhai will use the funding to explore the role of a key enzyme in regulating plants’ metabolic processes, including the synthesis and accumulation of oil, with the aim of getting plants to produce net-zero carbon fuels.

Practical fusion energy is not just a dream at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Experts in fusion and material science are working together to develop solutions that will make a fusion pilot plant — and ultimately carbon-free, abundant fusion electricity — possible.

Two decades in the making, a new flagship facility for nuclear physics opened on May 2, and scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have a hand in 10 of its first 34 experiments. ORNL researchers and their partners at other national laboratories and universities launched the first experiment on May 11. The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Michigan State University, will produce more than 1,000 new rare isotopes.

Some analysts say that the end of Moore’s Law is near, but Patrick Naulleau, the director of Berkeley Lab’s Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO), says that it could be decades before the modern chip runs out of room for improvement, thanks to advances in materials and instrumentation enabled by the CXRO.

A new capability developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to identify urban neighborhoods, down to the block and building level, that are most vulnerable to climate change could help ensure that mitigation and resilience programs reach the people who need them the most.

ORNL’s suite of LandScan population distribution models is available online to the global public for the first time ever under a new open-source creative commons license.