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Caption: Jaswinder Sharma makes battery coin cells with a lightweight current collector made of thin layers of aligned carbon fibers in a polymer with carbon nanotubes. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Electric vehicles can drive longer distances if their lithium-ion batteries deliver more energy in a lighter package. A prime weight-loss candidate is the current collector, a component that often adds 10% to the weight of a battery cell without contributing energy.

ORNL intern Jack Orebaugh holds the drone used in his research to help locate human remains. Credit: Lena Shoemaker/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Jack Orebaugh, a forensic anthropology major at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a big heart for families with missing loved ones. When someone disappears in an area of dense vegetation, search and recovery efforts can be difficult, especially when a missing person’s last location is unknown. Recognizing the agony of not knowing what happened to a family or friend, Orebaugh decided to use his internship at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to find better ways to search for lost and deceased people using cameras and drones. 

Symposium guests view posters in the poster competition. Credit: Laetitia Delmau/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The 21st Symposium on Separation Science and Technology for Energy Applications, Oct. 23-26 at the Embassy Suites by Hilton West in Knoxville, attracted 109 researchers, including some from Austria and the Czech Republic. Besides attending many technical sessions, they had the opportunity to tour the Graphite Reactor, High Flux Isotope Reactor and both supercomputers at ORNL.

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Armed with an automated weigh-in-motion system being developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), U.S. military forces could increase mobility and decrease mistakes when loading vehicles on transport planes and ships.ORNL plans to develop and demonstrate technology ...
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Tiny defects in the surface of common material - from silicon to steel - determine the properties of material and how it can be used. Unfortunately, many of these pores, called vacancies, are so small they cannot be accurately measured. In the past, measurement of vacancies has seriously limited ...
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Solar energy could get a megaboost, effectively gaining a threefold improvement over conventional technology, with a system being developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).The "full-spectrum solar energy system" harnesses the clean and abundant energy found in sun...
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Dr. Rusi Teleyarkhan, group leader and program manager in the Engineering and Technology Division of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has been elected a fellow by the board of directors of the American Nuclear Society.
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Dr. Robert Lauf, group leader in the Metals and Ceramics Division of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has been named 1999's Tennessee Industrial Scientist of the Year.
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Bill Schwenterly, research staffer in the Fusion Energy Division of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been appointed associate editor for the journal Transactions on Applied Superconductivity.The journal is published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic En...
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Dr. William A. Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering, will deliver the next Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distinguished Lecture at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9 in ORNL's Wigner Auditorium.