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Carbon-rich pollution converted to a jet fuel will power a commercial flight for the first time today. The Virgin Atlantic Airlines' flight from Orlando to London using a Boeing 747 will usher in a new era for low-carbon aviation that has been years in the making. Through a combination of chemistry, biotechnology, engineering and catalysis, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and its industrial partner LanzaTech have shown the world that carbon can be recycled and used for commercial flight.

A deep neural network running on an ordinary desktop computer is interpreting highly technical data related to national security as well as -- and sometimes better than -- today's best automated methods or even human experts. The research probes incredibly complex data sets filled with events called radioactive decays.

Scientists have captured the most information yet about proteins within a single human cell, giving scientists one of their clearest looks yet at the molecular happenings inside a human cell. The team detected on average more than 650 proteins in each cell -- many times more than conventional techniques capture from single cells.

For the first time, researchers have created five grams of yellowcake -- a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power production -- using acrylic fibers to extract it from seawater.

ASTM International recently revised ASTM D7566 Annex A5 -- the Standard Specification for Aviation Turbine Fuel Containing Synthesized Hydrocarbons -- to add ethanol as an approved feedstock for producing alcohol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJ-SPK). The revision clears the way for increased adoption of sustainable aviation fuels because ethanol feedstocks can be made from so many different low-cost sources.

Approximately three gallons of low-activity Hanford tank waste were vitrified at PNNL's Radiochemical Processing Laboratory in April. The laboratory-scale demonstration is an important step toward the eventual treatment of millions of gallons of hazardous waste generated during past plutonium production at Hanford.

Hurricanes that intensify rapidly -- a characteristic of almost all powerful hurricanes -- do so more strongly and quickly now than they did 30 years ago, according to a study published recently in Geophysical Research Letters. The phenomenon is due largely to a climate cycle known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed and successfully tested a novel process -- called Friction Stir Dovetailing -- that joins thick plates of aluminum to steel. The new process will be used to make lighter-weight military vehicles that are more agile and fuel efficient.