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In some metals, there is strength in order

DOE/US Department of Energy

Metal alloys often have one primary element and smaller amounts of other elements. Now scientists have discovered a new class of alloys that have several elements combined in equal amounts. These alloys are very strong, and high-resolution microscopy indicates that unexpected atomic-scale clusters are the source of the alloys’ high strength.

Journal: Nature

Quantum material should be a conductor but remains an insulator

DOE/US Department of Energy

New research sheds light on the mechanism behind how a special quantum material, lanthanum strontium nickel oxide, transitions from an electrical insulator to a conductive metal. The mechanism is associated with atomic vibrations that trap electrons and thus impede electrical conduction. The results will help validate theoretical models of materials with strongly interacting electrons and contribute to the design of new materials.

Journal: Scientific Reports

Superconductivity on the edge

DOE/US Department of Energy

Scientists recently discovered novel quantum materials whose charge carriers exhibit ‘topological’ features that result in the charge’s transport not being affected by continuous transformations. Because of this “protection,” topological materials often show peculiar quantum states on their surfaces and edges. This study observed superconducting edge currents for what the researchers believe is the first time.

Journal: Science

Microbes offer a glimpse into the future of climate change

DOE/US Department of Energy

Microbes release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they eat and represent a huge amount of the Earth’s biomass. As a result, they have a huge effect on carbon dioxide emissions. Predicting the size of that effect and how global warming will affect it is challenging. Researchers showed that measuring certain features of microbes allows them to reliably predict how respiration in those microbes will change as temperatures rise.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Studied for clean energy, carbon nanotubes find new potential in anticancer drug delivery

DOE/US Department of Energy

Small diameter carbon nanotube porins have previously found applications in energy technology. Now these nanotubes have been assembled in a new way to deliver a cancer drug. The nanotubes pull liposomes and cancer cells together, allowing the membranes of the liposome and cancer to mix. This fusion process allows the drug to freely pass from the liposome to the cell for very effective drug delivery.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Cultivating the microbiome of populus tree roots

DOE/US Department of Energy

Scientists can create synthetic communities of bacteria and other microbes to learn how they affect their plant hosts. New research presents a culture collection of 3,211 individual strains of bacteria from the root community of Populus trees. This huge new collection will help scientists study how microbes can assist plant hosts and may help improve these trees’ resistance to stresses.

Journal: mSystems

Peter Lindstrom: Then and Now / 2011 Early Career Award Winner

DOE/US Department of Energy

Peter Lindstrom is the project leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing, where he develops efficient ways to avoid bottlenecks while moving data.

Making matter from collisions of light

DOE/US Department of Energy

Scientists have used a powerful particle accelerator to create matter (and antimatter)—electrons (and positrons)—directly from collisions of light. The idea of creating matter from light stems from Einstein’s famous E=mc2 equation, but using light energy to test this idea—and proving that the photons are real and long-lived, not “virtual” and short-lived—has been challenging. This marks the first time scientists have achieved this process in a single direct step.

Journal: Physical Review Letters

Bacterial Carbon Cycling in Soil Is Not a Shared Effort

DOE/US Department of Energy

A tool called quantitative stable isotope probing (qSIP) lets scientists identity bacteria in a community and their demographic data. In a new qSIP study, scientists found that in many soil environments just a few types of bacteria use more than half of the available carbon. The results will help scientists focus future research on key soil functions such as carbon cycling.

Journal: Nature Communications

For the first time, scientists rigorously calculate three-particle scattering from theory

DOE/US Department of Energy

Quarks and gluons are found deep inside protons and neutrons but also combine in less common configurations to make other subatomic particles. A new theory method aids in scientists’ efforts to study these configurations by predicting which less-common particles an experiment will produce. The method allowed physicists to make the first complete numerical prediction from theory for a three-particle system consisting of three positively charged pions.

Journal: Physical Review Letters

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