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Fernanda Foertter
Fernanda Foertter, a user support specialist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, considers herself a tinkerer. Foertter’s tinkering started when she was a child, but her innate inquisitiveness still influences her work at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing...
An illustration of the dopamine transporter in its outward- (left) and inward-opening (right) state. Note that the inward opening has brought about an outward closing and change in the number of water molecules (blue, pink spheres) inside and outside the

In an era of instant communication, perhaps no message-passing system is more underappreciated than the human body. Underlying each movement, each mood, each sight, sound, or smell, an army of specialized cells called neurons relays signals that register in the brain and connect us to our environment.

Illustration shows the one dimensional Yb ion chain in the quantum magnet Yb2Pt2Pb. The Yb orbitals are depicted as the iso-surfaces, and the green arrows indicate the antiferromagnetically aligned Yb magnetic moments.
A new study by a multi-institutional team, led by researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University, has revealed exotic magnetic properties in a rare-earth based intermetallic compound. Similar studies suggest a better understanding of those types of behavio...
A simulation of combustion within two adjacent gas turbine combustors. GE researchers are incorporating advanced combustion modeling and simulation into product testing after developing a breakthrough methodology on the OLCF’s Titan supercomputer.

In the United States, the use of natural gas for electricity generation continues to grow. The driving forces behind this development? A boom in domestic natural gas production, historically low prices, and increased scrutiny over fossil fuels’ carbon emissions. Though coal still acco...

Department of Energy national lab researchers found strain dramatically influences low-temperature oxygen electrocatalysis on perovskite oxides, enhancing bifunctional activity essential for fuel cells and metal–air batteries.

Catalysts make chemical reactions more likely to occur. In most cases, a catalyst that’s good at driving chemical reactions in one direction is bad at driving reactions in the opposite direction. However, a research team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory ...

A 3D structure of the HIV-1 protease in cartoon representation with bound clinical drug darunavir (shown as sticks).
A team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron analysis to better understand a protein implicated in the replication of HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. The enzyme, known as HIV-1 protease, is a key drug target for HIV and AIDS therapies. &nbs...
The silo-shaped tower for the 25-megavolt Tandem Electrostatic Accelerator also serves as an ORNL landmark.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's 25-megavolt Tandem Electrostatic Accelerator received an opportunity for one last hurrah in a series of experiments that ended in late March, nearly four years after the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam (RIB) Facility at the Department of Energy national l...
SuperORRUBA detectors like the one being connected by ORNL researcher Kelly Chipps will play a big role in the JENSA experiment at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. (ORNL photo by Jason Richards)

Physicists studying stellar explosions, the origin of life and just about everything in between could gain light years in precision because of a system inspired by a team led by Kelly Chipps of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. As the sophistication of rad...

Interpreting the results of collision induced dissociation (CID) experiments, simulations on Titan predict the formation of an unusually bonded uranium-nitrosyl molecule. Credit: J. Am. Chem. Society. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b02420
Radioactive materials have long been a part of American history—from the Manhattan Project to the development of nuclear power. The materials central to these innovations are actinides, or elements 89–103 on the periodic table that release large amounts of energy when atoms are spli...
Sturgeon

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are taking a closer look at how sturgeon, a prehistoric — and now imperiled — group of fish species may better be helped to get around the dams that block their migrations. Hydropower is a major renewable ener...