Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or accumulates in the environment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a technology that converts a conventionally unrecyclable mixture of plastic waste into useful chemicals, presenting a new strategy in the toolkit to combat global plastic waste.
Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Northeastern University modeled how extreme conditions in a changing climate affect the land’s ability to absorb atmospheric carbon — a key process for mitigating human-caused emissions. They found that 88% of Earth’s regions could become carbon emitters by the end of the 21st century.
An advance in a topological insulator material — whose interior behaves like an electrical insulator but whose surface behaves like a conductor — could revolutionize the fields of next-generation electronics and quantum computing, according to scientists at ORNL.
At the National Center for Computational Sciences, Ashley Barker enjoys one of the least complicated–sounding job titles at ORNL: section head of operations. But within that seemingly ordinary designation lurks a multitude of demanding roles as she oversees the complete user experience for NCCS computer systems.
Growing up in China, Yue Yuan stood beneath the world’s largest hydroelectric dam, built to harness the world’s third-longest river. Her father brought her to Three Gorges Dam every year as it was being constructed across the Yangtze River so she could witness its progress.
Andrew Ullman, Distinguished Staff Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is using chemistry to devise a better battery
Alice Perrin is passionate about scientific research, but also beans — as in legumes.
Warming a crystal of the mineral fresnoite, ORNL scientists discovered that excitations called phasons carried heat three times farther and faster than phonons, the excitations that usually carry heat through a material.
When Addis Fuhr was growing up in Bakersfield, California, he enjoyed visiting the mall to gaze at crystals and rocks in the gem store.
ORNL researchers have identified a mechanism in a 3D-printed alloy – termed “load shuffling” — that could enable the design of better-performing lightweight materials for vehicles.