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An Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team used a sophisticated X-ray scattering technique to visualize and quantify the movement of water molecules in space and time, which provides new insights that may open pathways for liquid-based electronics
A novel approach to studying the viscosity of water has revealed new insights about the behavior of water molecules and may open pathways for liquid-based electronics.
Robert Wagner is director of the National Transportation Research Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Photo credit: Jason Richards, ORNL.

Some engineers are attracted to fuels and engine research out of a love of cars. For Robert Wagner, however, enthusiasm for combustion science and chaos theory drew him to this area of research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After years of delivering breakthroughs for cleane...

Lianhong Gu is an environmental scientist in the Ecosystem Science Group at ORNL.
Photosynthesis is one of the most important processes on Earth. Without it the food chain would collapse, and we would lose a primary source of oxygen for all life. Yet it is a process that is still poorly understood outside the laboratory. With the help of an Oak Ridge Nation...
Inspired by the brain’s web of neurons, deep neural networks consist of thousands or millions of simple computational units.

Deep neural networks—a form of artificial intelligence—have demonstrated mastery of tasks once thought uniquely human. Their triumphs have ranged from identifying animals in images, to recognizing human speech, to winning complex strategy games, among other su...

Eugene Mamontov and the BASIS beam line at the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL. Photo credit: Jason Richards, ORNL.
Eugene Mamontov’s background in both basic and applied science has made him a valued partner for scientists who come to the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL in search of a better understanding of the water dynamics in their research—projects as diverse as studying plant cellulos...
Fidget spinner
One drop of liquid, a cutting-edge laser 3D-printer and a few hours are all it takes to make a fidget spinner smaller than the width of a human hair. The tiny whirligig was created by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences to illustrate the facility’s unique resources and expertise available to scientists across the world.
The Department of Energy’s INCITE program promotes transformational advances in science and technology through large allocations of time on state-of-the-art supercomputers.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science announced 55 projects with high potential for accelerating discovery through its Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. The projects will share 5.95 billion core-hours on t...

Chlorite dismutase - Journal cover art reprinted with permission from ACS Catalysis, vol. 7, issue 11, November 3, 2017. Further permissions related to the material excerpted should be directed to the ACS.

A new study sheds light on a unique enzyme that could provide an eco-friendly treatment for chlorite-contaminated water supplies and improve water quality worldwide. An international team of researchers led by Christian Obinger from the University of Vienna used neutron analys...

Rose Ruther

In the quest for better batteries, Rose Ruther has found that the positives nearly always outweigh the negatives, and that’s what keeps her coming back to the lab. Ruther works on novel materials to create batteries with higher energy density at a lower cost as part of the Roll to Roll Manufactur...

Neutrons probed two mechanisms proposed to explain what happens when hydrogen gas flows over a cerium oxide (CeO2) catalyst that has been heated in an experimental chamber to different temperatures to change its oxidation state. The first mechanism sugges
Having the right tool for the job enabled scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and their collaborators to discover that a workhorse catalyst of vehicle exhaust systems—an “oxygen sponge” that can soak up oxygen from air and store it for later use in oxidation reactions—may also be a “hydrogen sponge.”