News By Location

21-Jun-2023

Fusion simulations reveal the multi-scale nature of tokamak turbulence

DOE/US Department of Energy

Creating efficient, self-sustaining fusion power requires good confinement of the heat in the plasma. This requires understanding particle and energy losses due to turbulence. A new analysis studied the complex interaction in turbulence between the slow, large-scale motion of hydrogen fuel ions and the fast, small-scale motion of electrons. It found that this so-called “multi-scale turbulence” is mostly responsible for the heat losses in the edge region of tokamak experiments.

Journal

Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion

20-Jun-2023

Directly imaging quantum states in two-dimensional materials

DOE/US Department of Energy

When some semiconductors absorb light, the process can create excitons, quasi-particles made of an electron bound to an electron hole. Two-dimensional crystals of tungsten disulfide have unique but short-lived exciton states. Scientists developed a new approach called time-resolved momentum microscopy to create separate images of these individual quantum states. The study found that the coupling mechanisms that lead to mixing of the states may not fully match current theories.

Journal

Physical Review Letters

15-Jun-2023

STAR physicists track sequential ‘melting’ of upsilons

DOE/US Department of Energy

Recent data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider show how three distinct variations of particles called upsilons “melt,” or dissociate, in the hot particle soup that existed in the very early universe. The results from the STAR experiment support the theory that this hot matter is a soup of “free” quarks and gluons. Measuring how different upsilons dissociate helps scientists learn about the quark-gluon plasma.

Journal

Physical Review Letters

14-Jun-2023

To advance microbiome research, the national microbiome data collaborative ambassador program promotes microbiome data standards

DOE/US Department of Energy

To study microbes, scientists need to collect, process, and share data in a standardized way. The National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) Ambassador Program launched in 2021 to increase awareness and adoption of microbiome metadata standards. During the program’s year-long term in 2021 and 2022, more than 800 researchers attended 23 Ambassador-hosted presentations.

Journal

Nature Microbiology

13-Jun-2023

Getting to the bottom of when the smallest meson melts

DOE/US Department of Energy

Bottomonium mesons consist of a heavy bottom quark bound to an antibottom quark, and the two quarks can be bound loosely, more tightly, and very tightly (creating the smallest bottomonium meson). New calculations that predict the temperature at which these mesons will melt show that the smallest bottomonium particles can stay intact at very high temperatures. This may explain why collisions at different particle accelerators produce different numbers of bottomonium particles.

Journal

Physical Review D

12-Jun-2023

Researchers demonstrate first precision gene editing in miscanthus

DOE/US Department of Energy

Miscanthus thrives on marginal lands with limited fertilization and tolerates drought and cool temperatures, making it an ideal bioenergy candidate. Previous efforts to genetically improve miscanthus focused on introducing external genes at random places in the plant’s genomes. This research developed gene-editing procedures using CRISPR/Cas9 that will allow scientists to selectively target existing genes to knock out their function and introduce new genes into precise locations.

Journal

Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts

12-Jun-2023

Kevin Wilson: Then and Now / 2012 Early Career Award Winner

DOE/US Department of Energy

Kevin Wilson studies how chemistry proceeds at liquid interfaces on cloud droplets, atmospheric aerosols, and ocean surfaces. With the support of his 2012 Early Career award, his team focused on reactions between gases and surfaces of ozone and hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere.

7-Jun-2023

Scientists develop inorganic resins for generating and purifying radium and actinium

DOE/US Department of Energy
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Targeted alpha therapy using radioisotopes such as actinium-225 can destroy cancerous cells without harming healthy cells. However, making actinium-225 by bombarding radium targets with neutrons poses a challenge: how to chemically separate the radium from the actinium. A new approach uses radiation-resistant inorganic resin scaffolds as platforms for separating radium, actinium, and lead, improving production time, cost, and safety.

Journal

Applied Radiation and Isotopes

6-Jun-2023

Precision nuclear physics in Indium-115 beta decay spectrum using cryogenic detectors

DOE/US Department of Energy

Nuclei such as Indium-115 (In-115) are extremely long lived, with half-lives of more than 100 billion years. These nuclei allow scientists to probe elusive high energy nuclear states. In a new study, scientists theoretically determined the electron energy spectrum from decays of In-115 based on data collected in a specialized detector. The scientists also performed the world’s most precise measurement of the half-life of In-115.

Journal

Physical Review Letters

5-Jun-2023

New strategy can harvest chemical information on rare isotopes with a fraction of the material

DOE/US Department of Energy

Studying radioactive materials is very difficult due to the potential health risks, the cost, and the difficulty of producing some radioisotopes. Scientists recently developed a new approach to harvest detailed chemical information on radioactive and/or enriched stable isotopes. The new approach is much more efficient, requiring 1,000 times less material than previous state-of-the-art methods, with no loss of data quality.

Journal

Inorganic Chemistry