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red and green sphagnum moss

A type of peat moss has surprised scientists with its climate resilience: Sphagnum divinum is actively speciating in response to hot, dry conditions. 

ORNL’s Fulvia Pilat and Karren More recently participated in the inaugural 2023 Nanotechnology Infrastructure Leaders Summit and Workshop at the White House, held Sept. 11–13. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL’s Fulvia Pilat and Karren More recently participated in the inaugural 2023 Nanotechnology Infrastructure Leaders Summit and Workshop at the White House.

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The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility at ORNL, is pleased to announce a new allocation program for computing time on the IBM AC922 Summit supercomputer.

Director of ORNL’s AI Initiative Prasanna Balaprakash addresses attendees at the Generative AI for ORNL Science Workshop. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosted its Smoky Mountains Computational Science and Engineering Conference for the first time in person since the COVID pandemic broke in 2020. The conference, which celebrated its 20th consecutive year, took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Knoxville, Tenn., in late August.

Steven Hamilton, an R&D scientist in the HPC Methods for Nuclear Applications group at ORNL, leads the ExaSMR project. ExaSMR was developed to run on the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s exascale-class supercomputer, Frontier. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The Exascale Small Modular Reactor effort, or ExaSMR, is a software stack developed over seven years under the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project to produce the highest-resolution simulations of nuclear reactor systems to date. Now, ExaSMR has been nominated for a 2023 Gordon Bell Prize by the Association for Computing Machinery and is one of six finalists for the annual award, which honors outstanding achievements in high-performance computing from a variety of scientific domains.  

Oak Ridge National Laboratory entrance sign

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has selected three ORNL research teams to receive funding through DOE’s new Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment initiative.

A new nanoscience study led by an ORNL quantum researcher takes a big-picture look at how scientists study materials at the smallest scales. Credit: Getty Images

A new nanoscience study led by a researcher at ORNL takes a big-picture look at how scientists study materials at the smallest scales.

top view of cicada wing

Over the past decade, teams of engineers, chemists and biologists have analyzed the physical and chemical properties of cicada wings, hoping to unlock the secret of their ability to kill microbes on contact. If this function of nature can be replicated by science, it may lead to products with inherently antibacterial surfaces that are more effective than current chemical treatments.

3D supernova simulations

As a result of largescale 3D supernova simulations conducted on the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit supercomputer by researchers from the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, astrophysicists now have the most complete picture yet of what gravitational waves from exploding stars look like. 

A new method to control quantum states in a material is shown. The electric field induces polarization switching of the ferroelectric substrate, resulting in different magnetic and topological states. Credit: Mina Yoon, Fernando Reboredo, Jacquelyn DeMink/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

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.