Katy Bradford: Cassette approach offers compelling construction solution
After retiring from Y-12, Scott Abston joined the Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate to support isotope production and work with his former manager. He now leads a team maintaining critical equipment for medical and space applications. Abston finds fulfillment in mentoring his team and is pleased with his decision to continue working.
Jeremiah Sewell leads a team at ORNL, working on xenon-129 production for lung imaging. Reflecting on his career, Sewell views each opportunity as a "door" he steps through, leveraging over 25 years of experience in nuclear power and centrifuge operations to advance the facility’s mission.
At ORNL, a group of scientists used neutron scattering techniques to investigate a relatively new functional material called a Weyl semimetal. These Weyl fermions move very quickly in a material and can carry electrical charge at room temperature. Scientists think that Weyl semimetals, if used in future electronics, could allow electricity to flow more efficiently and enable more energy-efficient computers and other electronic devices.
The world’s fastest supercomputer helped researchers simulate synthesizing a material harder and tougher than a diamond — or any other substance on Earth. The study used Frontier to predict the likeliest strategy to synthesize such a material, thought to exist so far only within the interiors of giant exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.
Brian Sanders is focused on impactful, multidisciplinary science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, developing solutions for everything from improved imaging of plant-microbe interactions that influence ecosystem health to advancing new treatments for cancer and viral infections.
Advanced materials research to enable energy-efficient, cost-competitive and environmentally friendly technologies for the United States and Japan is the goal of a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, between the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Japan’s National Institute of Materials Science.
Researchers set a new benchmark for future experiments making materials in space rather than for space. They discovered that many kinds of glass have similar atomic structure and arrangements and can successfully be made in space. Scientists from nine institutions in government, academia and industry participated in this 5-year study.
The BIO-SANS instrument, located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Flux Isotope Reactor, is the latest neutron scattering instrument to be retrofitted with state-of-the-art robotics and custom software. The sophisticated upgrade quadruples the number of samples the instrument can measure automatically and significantly reduces the need for human assistance.
Plans to unite the capabilities of two cutting-edge technological facilities funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science promise to usher in a new era of dynamic structural biology. Through DOE’s Integrated Research Infrastructure, or IRI, initiative, the facilities will complement each other’s technologies in the pursuit of science despite being nearly 2,500 miles apart.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved the registration and use of a renewable gasoline blendstock developed by Vertimass LLC and ORNL that can significantly reduce the emissions profile of vehicles when added to conventional fuels.