Decompositional odors released from corpses in clandestine graves are providing a chemical fingerprint that could help law enforcement officials find these burial sites and provide evidence that ultimately points to the victim's killer. A team led by Arpad Vass, a forensics expert in Oak Ridge Natio...
A tiny microbe may hold the key to simpler, lower-cost production of ethanol from biomass sources such as trees, grasses and cornstalks. Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are studying a bacterium known as Clostridium thermocellum, which has the ability to both deg...
ORNL researchers performing basic research have discovered a carbon nanotube-based system that functions like an atom-scale switch. Their approach is to perform first-principles calculations on positioning a molecule inside a carbon nanotube to affect the electronic current flowing across it. The re...
Homeowners could see their electric bills reduced considerably with Oak Ridge National Laboratory's integrated heat pump. The unit, which combines water heating with heating and cooling, dehumidification and ventilation functions, can use 50 percent less energy than standard heat pumps and water hea...
Fiber-reinforced polymer material to construct pipelines that will transport hydrogen to service stations of the future is being developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Oak Ridge's Tim Armstrong says a one-mile stretch of polymer piping could cost half the amount of...
A prototype device to forewarn epileptic seizures is being developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Oak Ridge researcher Lee Hively says the SeizAlert system studies brain waves.
A patented technique originally developed to measure temperatures inside turbine engines and fuel cells could play a key role in making electromagnetic weapons, or railguns, a reality. While several challenges remain, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers' ability to accurately measure the tempe...
Soon, men and mice won't be the only beneficiaries of CT technology's diagnostic wonders. Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are developing ways to use a computer tomography machine originally designed for small laboratory animals to analyze wood, with potential applications in the pulp, pape...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's SensorNet augmented by a system being developed by Enterra Solutions could become a first line of defense against terrorist attacks or natural disasters. ORNL and Enterra are teaming up to support SensorNet, a collection of systems to detect, identify and assess chemi...