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In the early 1970s, scientists at laboratories worldwide raced to unravel the mystery of how billions of miles of DNA are packaged inside the cells of the human body.

ORNL’s Don and Ada Olins were the first to discover the critical structure—the nucleosome—that winds DNA around proteins like thre...

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What do you do when you can’t test your technology?

The United States faced that question when it halted nuclear weapons testing in 1992. The answer came in the form of virtual tests using high-performance computers.

Although “stockpile stewardship,” as it was known, drove the rapid developmen...

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Conspiracy theories are nothing new. When President Zachary Taylor took sick and died 16 months into his presidency in 1850, he had been a relatively healthy war hero. A fatal gastric malady struck after he consumed fruit and iced milk at a July 4th celebration.

Slavery was the issue of the day, ...

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You can gain a lot by creating and sorting ions.

Mass spectrometry, as the technique is known, was the basis for the calutrons at the nearby Y-12 Plant that enriched uranium for Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and it continues be a powerful analytical tool today.

“From the very orig...

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In outer space, beyond what is considered our solar system, a small spacecraft that looks like a TV satellite dish is still transmitting back to Earth. Deep-space missions have revealed the secrets of the solar system and beyond for nearly a half century. ORNL technology helps make these missions...

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As use of electric vehicles grows, ORNL is working to make them better. A battery research team led by chemist Nancy Dudney, an internationally recognized leader in energy storage, focuses on technologies that make EV batteries crash- tolerant while keeping them relatively lightweight and cos...

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Two years after the detonation of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bill and Liane Russell came to Oak Ridge with a purpose: to explore the genetic effects of radiation on mammals.

The work of this husband-and-wife team shaped our modern-day understanding of how radiation affects the bo...