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Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory developed a software toolkit called Wire-Cell that reconstructs and isolates neutrino data in 3D. This software directly enabled the long-awaited results from the MicroBooNE experiment announced today by Fermilab in four complementary analyses. The Wire-Cell team at Brookhaven Lab led one of the four analyses—the most sensitive analysis of the electron-neutrino interaction. Some components of the Wire-Cell toolkit were also used in the other three analyses.

The American Physical Society (APS) has elected two scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory as 2021 APS fellows. The honorees—Kétévi Adiklè Assamagan and Swagato Mukherjee—represent experiments, computational modeling, and educational/outreach efforts in nuclear and particle physics.

José Rodriguez, a chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and an adjunct professor in the departments of Chemistry and Materials Science and Chemical Engineering at Stony Brook University, has been named a 2021 Fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS). The award recognizes Rodriguez for his contributions in the field of catalysis.

Scientists seeking to explore the teeming microcosm of quarks and gluons inside protons and neutrons report new data delivered by particles of light. The light particles, or photons, come directly from interactions of a quark in one proton colliding with a gluon in another at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). By tracking these "direct photons," members of RHIC's PHENIX Collaboration say they are getting a glimpse—albeit a blurry one—of gluons' transverse motion within the building blocks of atomic nuclei.

This story, profiling theoretical physicist Jennifer Rittenhouse West, is a pilot project conceived by the Software Working Group of the EIC User Group to become part of a series of profiles of future users of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). The EIC is a next-generation nuclear physics research facility being built at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory in partnership with DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and collaborators around the world.

Scientists studying superconducting qubits identified structural and chemical defects that may be causing quantum information loss—an obstacle to practical quantum computation.

A team of atmospheric scientists from around the nation is descending on the Houston, Texas, area for the next 14 months to seek answers to a vexing question: Do tiny specks of soot, dust, smoke, and other particles suspended in Earth’s atmosphere help determine the severity of thunderstorms? The knowledge gained may make weather forecasts more accurate and provide crucial data for improving predictions about how aerosols may affect Earth’s future climate. It will also give scientists a unique opportunity to explore the effects of industry, vehicle emissions, and the built environment on weather and climate.

Atmospheric scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have deployed a unique method of collecting climate data in cities, aiming to address infrastructure and energy needs across the Nation. Rather than relying on stationary instruments, researchers at Brookhaven’s Center for Multiscale Applied Sensing (CMAS) have integrated sophisticated research tools into a pickup truck, creating a mobile observatory that captures precise, local data on wind, temperature, rain, and clouds across entire cities.

Scientists seeking to unravel the details of how plants produce and accumulate oil have identified a new essential component of the assembly line. They discovered a particular sterol—a molecule related to cholesterol—that plays a key role in the formation of oil droplets. The findings may suggest new ways to engineer the oil content of a variety of plant tissues for potential applications in bioenergy, chemical engineering, and nutrition.

An international collaboration of scientists has taken a significant step toward the realization of a nearly “green” zero-net-carbon technology that will efficiently convert carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, and hydrogen into ethanol, which is useful as a fuel and has many other chemical applications.