News By Location

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing computational tools to rapidly design and build new molecular structures and screen them before synthesizing the real molecule. The power of this approach is illustrated in the April 26, 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Four Northwest research organizations are bringing together industry, processors, growers, universities and federal laboratories to develop new methods for converting agricultural and food processing residue and wastes into commercially valuable "bio-based" energy and industrial products. They will examine and develop methods for converting agricultural and food processing residue and wastes into bio-based fuels, power and industrial products, such as chemicals for plastics, solvents and fibers.

Since acute weather conditions, like monsoons and drought, can wreak havoc on a region's economy and population, these events need to be accurately simulated and forecasted by weather and climate models. Drought and monsoons are conditions that occur at the U.S. Department of Energy's newest Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) site in Darwin, Australia, a location that will enable scientists to collect new data important to refining computer models that simulate climate change.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory see a vivid picture of the DNA repair process using single-molecule spectroscopy.

A promising method for creating and studying chemically tailored nanocrystalline surface materials was recently developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Results are reported in the April 11, 2002, issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

PNNL has launched a collaboration with Advanced Biotherapy Inc. and New Horizon Diagnostics Inc. and Russian scientists to develop a more effective treatment for autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, which afflict nearly 50 million Americans. The scientists have created unique humanized antibodies to gamma interferon, a protein that when overproduced triggers and exacerbates various autoimmune conditions. This work is a major step toward creating a much-improved treatment for certain autoimmune diseases.

This quarterly news tipsheet highlights research conducted at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The Department of Energy's Office of Science will acquire a $24.5 million HP Linux-based supercomputer that, when fully operational, will be the world's most powerful Linux-based supercomputer and one of the top supercomputers in the world.

DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Hewlett-Packard today announced that PNNL has ordered a $24.5 million HP Linux-based supercomputer that will allow researchers to apply computational science to answer fundamental questions such as how radioactive waste can be processed and stored, and how proteins interact and behave in order to model a living cell. Once fully operational, the supercomputer should be the world's most powerful Linux-based supercomputer and one of the top supercomputers in the world.

The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory celebrated the arrival of the world's largest, highest-performance nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer—a first-of-its-kind 900 megahertz (MHz) wide-bore system developed by Oxford Instruments and Varian Inc.