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Researchers are working alongside state troopers to test and validate screening technologies that can automatically detect brake, wheel and tire problems as a vehicle enters the weigh station. High-resolution subsurface exploration could get a boost with innovative approaches that take advantage of the underlying dynamics of atomic force microscopy. Climate models still provide useful information that should be considered by civil engineers and planners making decisions about infrastructure.

Catalysts are just one area of investigation for a multi-institutional team whose 70 publications in 3 years detail prodigious scientific output from the world's fastest chemistry simulations. "Our long-term goal is enabling the design of new generations of clean and sustainable technologies to produce, transmit, and store energy," said team leader Robert Harrison, a computational chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Billions of dollars lost each year as waste heat from industrial processes can be converted into electricity with a technology being developed at the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Researchers at ORNL have achieved a friction-stir technology milestone. By applying the magnetic properties of iron nanodots to materials, a research team has overcome an obstacle to getting ultra-thin films to perform on par. An application and algorithm tweaked by ORNL researchers to dramatically increase a supercomputer's functionality is providing researchers with the potential to solve problems faster. A study published in Advanced Functional Materials has revealed several mechanisms behind ferroelectric relaxors behavior.

With the creation of a 3-D nanocone-based solar cell platform, a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jun Xu has boosted the light-to-power conversion efficiency of photovoltaics by nearly 80 percent.

Novel properties of ferroelectric materials discovered at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are moving scientists one step closer to realizing a new paradigm of electronic memory storage.

A newly sequenced bacterial genome from a team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could contain clues as to how microorganisms produce a highly toxic form of mercury.

Metal alloy manufacturer Carpenter Technology Corp. has licensed an alumina-forming austenitic stainless steel alloy developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

This release contains the April 2011 story tips from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.