Most criminals know about robots armed with cameras and shotguns, but there's a new law enforcement weapon on the horizon. Actually, the weapon is a micro-robot about the size of a june bug, so it's only on the horizon if you're at floor level. And that's the idea, according to developers in ORNL's ...
Thousands of landfills around the nation may be serving as bioreactors, turning inorganic mercury into methylated - or organic - mercury, according to a study by researchers at ORNL. An unknown but likely significant amount of methylated mercury, which is far more toxic than inorganic mercury, is be...
Working with SpectruMedix Corp., researchers at ORNL could soon find mutations in mice in months instead of years. Researchers are using the Temperature-Gradient Capillary Electrophoresis system to identify mutations simultaneously in 96 samples in less than an hour. This scanning technique has 13 t...
According to popular culture, survival depends on rugged individualism, ruthless cunning and athletic prowess. In practice, however, real-world survivors more often exhibit benevolent leadership, personal sacrifice and endurance born of sheer will, says Jerry Dobson, a geographer at ORNL and directo...
While Greg Maddux's curveball might break 19 inches at Atlanta's Turner Field, conditions at Denver's Coors Field can cut the amount of break by 10 percent, according to some groundbreaking research performed at ORNL. The fluid mechanics research, which aims to precisely quantify the interaction bet...
Turning the drab brownish-gray zebrafish green isn't a St. Patrick's Day stunt for researchers at ORNL. Actually, the research is helping scientists study the effects of contamination on fish and relates the effects back to other wildlife and people. Of particular interest are chemicals such as pest...
Like the Visible Man and Visible Woman, the Digital Pig could serve as an important model in cardiovascular and pulmonary studies as well as other areas of biomedical research. Researchers at ORNL, Walter Reed Army Institute Research and the University of South Florida envision the digital pig as be...
ORNL researchers are saving key industries of the future hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy costs with a process that starts by simply taking a look around. The DOE program, called BestPractices, encourages industries to examine their most energy-intensive plant utility systems and make impr...
Power market restructuring in California has focused the nation's attention on the problems, but they can be fixed as the market is allowed to adjust. Brendan Kirby of the lab's Power Systems Research program notes that deregulation of the telephone industry caused a temporary uproar but consumers a...
Genetically, mice are similar to humans, so the discovery of a fat gene in mice at ORNL could lead to a better understanding of why some people have more problems than others keeping their weight under control. Even though researchers had these particular mice on a low-fat diet since they were born,...