Feature Articles

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered a single gene that simultaneously boosts plant growth and tolerance for stresses such as drought and salt, all while tackling the root cause of climate change by enabling plants to pull more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

A team performed simulations on the Summit supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and found that electrons in cuprates interact with phonons much more strongly than was previously thought, leading to experimentally observed "kinks," or sudden changes, in the relationship between an electron's energy and the momentum it carries.

Researchers from Georgia Tech and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville uncovered hidden and unexpected quantum behavior in a simple iron-iodide material (FeI2) discovered almost a century ago. The new insights were enabled using neutron scattering experiments and theoretical physics calculations at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The team's findings solves a 40-year-old puzzle about the material's mysterious behavior and could be used as a map to unlock a treasure trove of quantum phenomena in other materials.

Deborah Frincke, one of the nation's preeminent computer scientists and cybersecurity experts, serves as associate laboratory director of the National Security Science Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

At the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists use artificial intelligence, or AI, to accelerate the discovery and development of materials for energy and information technologies.

Nuclear physicist Caroline Nesaraja of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory evaluates nuclear data vital to applied and basic sciences. Her work ensures that the scientific community has the best nuclear data for fundamental research and applications including medical isotopes, nuclear energy and national and international security.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee developed an automated workflow to speed the search for new materials to advance solar energy technologies.

A team of researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, along with colleagues at Purdue University, has taken an important step toward a quantum communications milestone by harnessing the frequency, or color, of light.

Physicists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a measurement technique to better understand beam loss--stray particles that travel outside the confinement fields of a particle accelerator. Mitigating beam loss is paramount to realizing more powerful accelerators at smaller scales and lower costs.

A team at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory used two DOE supercomputers, together with a machine learning program called Eureqa, to find a new extrapolation formula from existing fusion device data to the future the ITER device. The team then completed new simulations that confirm their previous ones, which showed that in full-power ITER, the component that removes exhaust heat may be more likely to maintain its integrity than was predicted by the current trend.