Plants and other biomass can be converted into a variety of renewable high-value products including carbon fibers, plastics, and liquid fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel that are beneficial for reducing petroleum use and vehicle emissions. Breaking down plants in order to release...
Electron microscopy at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is pointing researchers closer to the development of ultra-thin materials that transfer electrons with no resistance at relatively high temperatures.
The study delivers direct evidence of high-tem...
ORNL Director Thom Mason got an up-close look at the results of UT-Battelle’s investment in distance learning Thursday.
Mason visited an Honors Math Computer Science course in a Farragut High School classroom that’s linked to West High School, where two students joined v...
Winners of the inaugural Buildings Crowdsourcing Community Campaign were announced today at the Department of Energy’s Industry Day event at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ORNL launched the crowdsourcing platform in March 2015 to give innovators an opportunity to present idea...
When it’s up and running, the ITER fusion reactor will be very big and very hot, with more than 800 cubic meters of hydrogen plasma reaching 170 million degrees centigrade. The systems that fuel and control it, on the other hand, will be small and very cold. Pellets of frozen gas will be shot int...
Since its 1977 launch, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has travelled farther than any other piece of human technology. It is also the only human-made object to have entered interstellar space. More recently, the agency’s New Horizons mission flew past Pluto on July 14, giving us our first close-up lo...
fuel carbon emissions, a distinction it still maintains. But exactly how much carbon China releases has been a topic of debate, with recent estimates varying by as much as 15 percent. “There’s great scruti...
For early career researchers, a fellowship can be a valuable foot in the door, exposing them to the opportunity to gain experience in areas of science and technology of national importance.
Viruses are tiny—merely millionths of a millimeter in diameter—but what they lack in size, they make up in quantity.
In the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, the state of the art of materials science defined technology’s zenith and accelerated economies. Now, in the Information Age, data is beginning to drive the development of advanced materials, from photovoltaics for solar energy and superconductors for efficient el...