Bringing custom microbes to the business of recycling plastic
Scientists working on a solution for plastic waste have developed a two-step chemical and biological process to break down and upcycle mixed plastics into valuable bioproducts.
Environmental Science
Art Ragauskas receives Environment Prize from Royal Society of Chemistry
Art Ragauskas, Governor’s Chair for Biorefining at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, has been named winner of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Environment Prize. The Royal Society of Chemistry cited Ragauskas’ pioneering work developing several widely used tools and approaches in biorefining, including the mechanistic understanding of
ARM plans upgrades as it marks 30 years of collecting atmospheric data
The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Data Center is shepherding changes to its operations to make the treasure trove of data more easily available accessible and useful to scientists studying Earth’s climate.
Campbell Scientific licenses ORNL system to monitor wide-scale plant health
Technology developed at ORNL to monitor plant productivity and health at wide scales has been licensed to Logan, Utah-based instrumentation firm Campbell Scientific Inc.
Improved Dynamic Likelihood Approach to Filtering
In this work we focus on dynamics problems described by waves, i.e. by hyperbolic partial differential equations.
Climate Q&A
Tackling the climate crisis and achieving an equitable clean energy future are among the biggest challenges of our time. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest Department of Energy science and energy laboratory in the country, is deeply invested in the big science capabilities and expertise needed to address the climate challenge on multiple fronts.
Advancing understanding of Arctic ecosystems means doing science at −10°F
Since 2012, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Stan Wullschleger has served as director and principal investigator for the Department of Energy’s Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments Arctic project. Wullschleger leads a team of 140 scientists from 4 national laboratories and several universities as part of the project, which targets a better predictive understanding of future climate in the
Bryan Piatkowski: Building the evolutionary framework for hardy plants
Bryan Piatkowski, a Liane Russell Distinguished Fellow in the Biosciences Division at ORNL, is exploring the genetic pathways for traits such as stress tolerance in several plant species important for carbon sequestration
Bioenergy scientists discover genetic pathway for better biofuel processing
A team of researchers working within the Center for Bioenergy Innovation at ORNL has discovered a pathway to encourage a type of lignin formation in plants that could make the processing of crops grown for products such as sustainable jet fuels easier and less costly.
Carbon-negative platform turns waste gases into valuable chemicals
A team of scientists from LanzaTech, Northwestern University and ORNL have developed carbon capture technology that harnesses emissions from industrial processes to produce acetone and isopropanol
Self-Supervised Novelty Detection for Continual Learning
A research team from ORNL, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Arizona State University has developed a novel method to detect out-of-distribution (OOD) samples in continual learning without forgetting the learned knowledge of preceding tasks.
Climate — Drier air
A new analysis from Oak Ridge National Laboratory shows that intensified aridity, or drier atmospheric conditions, is caused by human-driven increases in greenhouse gas emissions. The findings point to an opportunity to address and potentially reverse the trend by reducing emissions.