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Researchers gained new insights into the mechanisms some methane-feeding bacteria called methanotrophs (pictured) use to break down the toxin methylmercury. Credit: Andy Sproles/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy; Jeremy Semrau/Univ. of Michigan

A team led by ORNL and the University of Michigan have discovered that certain bacteria can steal an essential compound from other microbes to break down methane and toxic methylmercury in the environment.

The Oak Ridge National Environmental Research Park encompasses a 20,000 acre area that includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Anyone familiar with ORNL knows it’s a hub for world-class science. The nearly 33,000-acre space surrounding the lab is less known, but also unique.

Researchers at Colorado State University and ORNL evaluated 14 urban megaregions to simulate the effects of climate change on water resources. Credit: CSU/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Oak Ridge National Laboratory worked with Colorado State University to simulate how a warming climate may affect U.S. urban hydrological systems.

Pengfei Cao

Pengfei Cao, a polymer chemist at ORNL, has been chosen to receive a 2021 Young Investigator Award from the Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering Division of the American Chemical Society, or ACS PMSE.

As the leader of ORNL’s Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Group, environmental scientist Teresa Mathews works to understand the impacts of energy generation on water and solve challenging problems, including mercury pollution. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Moving to landlocked Tennessee isn’t an obvious choice for most scientists with new doctorate degrees in coastal oceanography.

Parans Paranthaman, a researcher in the Chemical Sciences Division at ORNL, coordinated research efforts to study the filter efficiency of the N95 material. His published results represent one of the first studies on polypropylene as it relates to COVID-19. Credit: ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Parans Paranthaman suddenly found himself working from home like millions of others.

Nesaraja split her effort between nuclear data evaluation and experimentation at ORNL’s now-closed Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Nuclear physicist Caroline Nesaraja of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory evaluates nuclear data vital to applied and basic sciences. 

Urban climate modeling

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have identified a statistical relationship between the growth of cities and the spread of paved surfaces like roads and sidewalks. These impervious surfaces impede the flow of water into the ground, affecting the water cycle and, by extension, the climate.

SCGSR Awardee Jacob Zettlemoyer, Indiana University Bloomington, led data analysis and worked with ORNL’s Mike Febbraro on coatings, shown under blue light, to shift argon light to visible wavelengths to boost detection. Credit: Rex Tayloe/Indiana University

The COHERENT particle physics experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has firmly established the existence of a new kind of neutrino interaction.

The researchers embedded a programmable model into a D-Wave quantum computer chip. Credit: D-Wave

Since the 1930s, scientists have been using particle accelerators to gain insights into the structure of matter and the laws of physics that govern our world.