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arial view of Coca river

ORNL drone and geospatial team becomes first to map the Coca River in the Amazon basin as erosion and sediment threaten Ecuador’s lands.

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. 

This section of a serpentine channel reactor shows the parallel reactor and feeder channels separated by a nanoporous membrane. At left is a single nanopore viewed from the side; at right is a diagram of metabolite exchange across the membrane.
Lives of soldiers and others injured in remote locations could be saved with a cell-free protein synthesis system developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The device, a creation of a team led by Andrea Timm and Scott Retterer of the ...
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An ultra-high-resolution technique used for the first time to study polymer fibers that trap uranium in seawater may cause researchers to rethink the best methods to harvest this potential fuel for nuclear reactors. The work of a team led by Carter Abney, a W...
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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have received six R&D 100 Awards, increasing the lab’s total to 193 since the award’s inception in 1963. The competition, sponsored by R&D Magazine, recognizes advances in the nation’s ...

Using high-performance computing, ORNL researchers are modelling the atomic structure of new alloys to select the best candidates for physical experimentation.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, FCA US LLC, and the foundry giant, Nemak of Mexico, are combining their strengths to create lightweight powertrain materials that will help the auto industry speed past the technological

Chaitanya Narula led analysis of an ORNL biofuel-to-hydrocarbon conversion technology to explain the underlying process.

A new study from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory explains the mechanism behind a technology that converts bio-based ethanol into hydrocarbon blend-stocks for use as fossil fuel alternatives. Scientists have experimented for decades with a cl...

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Trane Commercial Systems and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have coaxed 20 percent greater performance out of a baseline commercial rooftop air conditioning unit with the potential for even better efficiency by switching refrigerants. Through a cooperative research and develo...

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The next-generation Earth system model will simulate climate systems at unprecedented resolution over an unprecedented time scale in order to understand climate change, Earth system feedbacks and potential tipping points. The Accelerated Climate Model for Energy project, led...