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Biologists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have confirmed that microorganisms called methanogens can transform mercury into the neurotoxin methylmercury with varying efficiency across species.

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Mircea Podar has travelled around the world and to the bottom of the ocean in pursuit of scientific discoveries, but it is the uncharted territory he encounters when working with new microbes that inspires his research at ORNL.

A simulation of runaway electrons in the experimental tokamak at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility at General Atomics shows the particle orbits in the fusion plasma and the synchrotron radiation emission patterns. Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory,

Fusion scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory are studying the behavior of high-energy electrons when the plasma that generates nuclear fusion energy suddenly cools during a magnetic disruption. Fusion energy is created when hydrogen isotopes are heated to millions of degrees...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Arnab Banerjee has charted several accomplishments in his neutron studies of quantum phenomena.

Raman. Heisenberg. Fermi. Wollan. From Kolkata to Göttingen, Chicago to Oak Ridge. Arnab Banerjee has literally walked in the footsteps of some of the greatest pioneers in physics history—and he’s forging his own trail along the way. Banerjee is a staff scientist working in the Neu...

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A shield assembly that protects an instrument measuring ion and electron fluxes for a NASA mission to touch the Sun was tested in extreme experimental environments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory—and passed with flying colors. Components aboard Parker Solar Probe, which will endure th...

Julie Smith

It may take a village to raise a child, according to the old proverb, but it takes an entire team of highly trained scientists and engineers to install and operate a state-of-the-art, exceptionally complex ion microprobe. Just ask Julie Smith, a nuclear security scientist at the Depa...

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Working backwards has moved Josh Michener’s research far forward as he uses evolution and genetics to engineer microbes for better conversion of plants into biofuels and biochemicals. In his work for the BioEnergy Science Center at ORNL, for instance, “we’ve gotten good at engineering microbes th...

ORNL bioscience researcher Jerry Tuskan had an early interest in plant genetics.

It’s been 10 years since the Department of Energy first established a BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and researcher Gerald “Jerry” Tuskan has used that time and the lab’s and center’s resources and tools to make good on his college dreams of usi...

By wet-sieving stream sediment, (from left) Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Kenneth Lowe, Melanie Mayes and John Dickson sort sediment into different particle size in this stream near Rocky Top.

An Oak Ridge National Laboratory study is providing an unprecedented watershed-scale understanding of mercury in soils and sediments. Researchers focused on evaluating mercury and soil properties along the banks of a mercury-contaminated stream in Oak Ridge, Tenn., sampling 145 loca...

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Through a network that consists of hundreds of low-cost monitors that plug into standard 110-volt outlets, GridEye can play a role in ensuring the reliability of the nation's power grids. The system, developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, provides real-time information about dyna...