Smelling is Believing
Pacific Northwest National LaboratoryPNNL vapor detection technology quickly and accurately identifies explosives, deadly chemicals, and illicit drugs
PNNL vapor detection technology quickly and accurately identifies explosives, deadly chemicals, and illicit drugs
Wind energy costs at all-time lows, as wind turbines grow larger
Two Chief Engineers at PNNL given Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
This research is a fundamental discovery of how to engineer proteins onto non-biological surfaces. Artificial proteins engineered from scratch have been assembled into nanorod arrays, designer filaments and honeycomb lattices on the surface of mica, demonstrating control over the way proteins interact with surfaces to form complex structures previously seen only in natural protein systems. The study provides a foundation for understanding how protein-crystal interactions can be systematically programmed and sets the stage for designing novel protein-inorganic hybrid materials.
April Castañeda, a senior executive with 20 years of experience leading human resources programs at Caltech and NASA’s Jet propulsion Laboratory, has been named director of Human Resources at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Scientists have shown how a tiny flaw in a protein results in damaged enamel that is prone to decay in people with a condition known as amelogenesis imperfecta. Such patients don’t develop enamel correctly because of a single amino acid defect in the critical enamel protein called amelogenin.
Using a novel Solid Phase Processing approach, a research team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory eliminated several steps that are required during conventional extrusion processing of aluminum alloy powders, while also achieving a significant increase in product ductility. This is good news for sectors such as the automotive industry, where the high cost of manufacturing has historically limited the use of high-strength aluminum alloys made from powders.
PNNL's Dr. Svitlana Volkova and her the team analyzed three years worth of discussions on Reddit from January 2015 to January 2018 measuring the speed and scale of discussion spread related to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero cryptocurrencies.
Scientists have taken one of the most in-depth looks ever at the riot of protein activity that underlies colon cancer and have identified potential new molecular targets to try to stop the disease.
Human-caused pollution spurs the production of climate-changing particles known as secondary organic aerosols much more than previously thought. Researchers made the finding by analyzing air samples that were captured aboard a research aircraft as it zig-zagged between pristine air over the Amazon rainforest and polluted air over the city of Manaus.
Scientists have developed a deep neural network that sidesteps a problem that has bedeviled efforts to apply artificial intelligence to tackle complex chemistry – a shortage of precisely labeled chemical data.
A detailed analysis of blood samples from Ebola patients is providing clues about the progression of the effects of the virus in patients and potential treatment pathways. The findings point to a critical role for a molecular pathway that relies on the common nutrient choline, as well as the importance of cellular bodies known as microvesicles.
PNNL researchers have been able to observe in unprecedented detail how rust happens.
News Release RICHLAND, Wash. — Hundreds of surrogate "fish" will be put to work at dams around the world through an agreement between ATS - Advanced Telemetry Systems - and the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to improve operations and increase sustainability. PNNL developed the Sensor Fish to understand what happens to fish as they pass through turbulent waters and turbines at hydroelectric facilities.
Feature RICHLAND, Wash. — Kids lying on their backs in a grassy field might scan the clouds for images—perhaps a fluffy bunny here and a fiery dragon over there. Often, atmospheric scientists do the opposite—they search data images for the clouds as part of their research to understand Earth systems.Manually labeling data images pixel by pixel is time-consuming, so researchers rely on automatic processing techniques, such as cloud detection algorithms.
News Release RICHLAND, Wash. — A new collaborative study led by a research team at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of California, Los Angeles could provide engineers new design rules for creating microelectronics, membranes, and tissues, and open up better production methods for new materials.
News Release RICHLAND, Wash. — When mass casualty incidents occur — shootings, earthquakes, multiple car pile ups — first responders can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer number of victims. When every second counts, monitoring all the victims in a chaotic situation can be difficult. Researchers at the U.S.
Carbon-rich pollution converted to a jet fuel will power a commercial flight for the first time today. The Virgin Atlantic Airlines’ flight from Orlando to London using a Boeing 747 will usher in a new era for low-carbon aviation that has been years in the making. Through a combination of chemistry, biotechnology, engineering and catalysis, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and its industrial partner LanzaTech have shown the world that carbon can be recycled and used for commercial flight.
The vast reservoir of carbon stored beneath our feet is entering Earth’s atmosphere at an increasing rate, according to a new study in the journal Nature. Blame microbes: When they chew on decaying leaves and dead plants, they convert a storehouse of carbon into carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere.
Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are exploring deep learning to interpret data related to national security, the environment, the cosmos, and breast cancer. In one project a deep neural network is interpreting data about nuclear events as well as – sometimes better than – today’s best automated methods or human experts.
Scientists have captured the most information yet about proteins within a single human cell, giving scientists one of their clearest looks yet at the molecular happenings inside a human cell. The team detected on average more than 650 proteins in each cell – many times more than conventional techniques capture from single cells.
News Release SEQUIM, Wash. — For the first time, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and LCW Supercritical Technologies have created five grams of yellowcake — a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power production — using acrylic fibers to extract it from seawater."This is a significant milestone," said Gary Gill, a researcher at PNNL, a Department of Energy national laboratory, and the only one with a marine research facility, located in Sequim, Wash.
News Release RICHLAND, Wash. — ASTM International recently revised ASTM D7566 Annex A5 — the Standard Specification for Aviation Turbine Fuel Containing Synthesized Hydrocarbons — to add ethanol as an approved feedstock for producing alcohol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJ-SPK). The revision of ASTM D7566 Annex A5 clears the way for increased adoption of sustainable aviation fuels because ethanol feedstocks can be made from so many different low-cost sources.
News Release RICHLAND, Wash. — In a first-of-its-kind demonstration, researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have vitrified low-activity waste from underground storage tanks at Hanford, immobilizing the radioactive and chemical materials within a durable glass waste form.Approximately three gallons of low-activity Hanford tank waste were vitrified at PNNL's Radiochemical Processing Laboratory in April.
A collaboration between the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Oregon Health & Science University has been chosen as a national center for a Nobel Prize-winning method of imaging, cryo-electron microscopy, that is revolutionizing structural biology.
Hurricanes that intensify rapidly – a characteristic of almost all powerful hurricanes – do so more strongly and quickly now than they did 30 years ago, according to a study published recently in Geophysical Research Letters. The phenomenon is due largely to a climate cycle known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed and successfully tested a novel process - called Friction Stir Dovetailing - that joins thick plates of aluminum to steel. The new process will be used to make lighter-weight military vehicles that are more agile and fuel efficient.
When it comes to the special sauce of batteries, researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered it's all about the salt concentration.
A mix of factors is contributing to an increasing mortality rate of trees in the moist tropics, where trees in some areas are dying at about twice the rate that they were 35 years ago.
News Release DALIAN, China — Energy storage allows power operators across the nation to balance electricity supply and demand instantaneously, affording ratepayers a more resilient power supply.Now the focus on energy storage is global. In January, energy storage experts at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory joined forces with their counterparts around the world to forge the International Coalition for Energy Storage and Innovation, or ICESI.
News Release PORTLAND, Ore. — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and OHSU today announced a joint collaboration to improve patient care by focusing research on highly complex sets of biomedical data, and the tools to interpret them.The OHSU-PNNL Precision Medicine Innovation Co-Laboratory, called PMedIC, will provide a comprehensive ecosystem for scientists to utilize integrated 'omics, data science and imaging technologies in their research in order to advance precision medicine — an approach to disease treatment that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyle for each person.
New solutions for cybersecurity, energy and medical research are in the hands of companies who can use them to create new products and services, thanks to efforts to transfer them from the lab to industry. The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory received three awards for excellence in technology transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium.
Tiny particles fuel powerful storms and influence weather much more than has been appreciated, according to a study in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Science. The tiny pollutants – long considered too small to have much impact on droplet formation – are, in effect, diminutive downpour-makers.
PNNL scientists have created new tiny tubes that could help with water purification and tissue engineering studies.
Kelsey Stoerzinger, Pauling Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is one of the 2018 Caltech Young Investigator Lecturers in Engineering and Applied Physics.
News Release RICHLAND, Wash. — As cars become more fuel-efficient, less heat is wasted in the exhaust, which makes it harder to clean up the pollutants are emitted. But researchers have recently created a catalyst capable of reducing pollutants at the lower temperatures expected in advanced engines. Their work, published this week in Science magazine, a leading peer-reviewed research journal, presents a new way to create a more powerful catalyst while using smaller amounts of platinum, the most expensive component of emission-control catalysts.
Scientists have identified a set of biomarkers that indicate which patients infected with the Ebola virus are most at risk of dying from the disease. The results come from one of the most in-depth studies ever of blood samples from patients with Ebola.
New technologies are being developed to grow seaweed in the open ocean so it can be converted into biofuel with support from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, also known as ARPA-E.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Connected Lighting Test Bed is helping advance smart and energy-efficient connected lighting systems.
PNNL researchers have measured the forces that cause certain crystals to assemble, revealing competing factors that researchers might be able to control. The work has a variety of implications in both discovery and applied science. In addition to providing insights into the formation of minerals and semiconductor nanomaterials, it might also help scientists understand soil as it expands and contracts through wetting and drying cycles.
New director will increase impact of PNNL's science and technology
The results of the fifth and latest Collaborative Materials Exercise of the Nuclear Forensics International Technical Working Group, a global network of nuclear forensics experts, will be discussed at the American Chemical Society’s national meeting in Washington D.C. on August. 24.
Magnesium — the lightest of all structural metals — has a lot going for it in the quest to make ever lighter cars and trucks that go farther on a tank of fuel or battery charge.Magnesium is 75 percent lighter than steel, 33 percent lighter than aluminum and is the fourth most common element on earth behind iron, silicon and oxygen.
Jiwen Fan of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been selected to receive a 2017 Early Career Research Program award from the U.S. Department of Energy. Fan will use the award to study severe thunderstorms in the central United States – storms that produce large hail, damaging winds, tornadoes, and torrential rainfall.
Study finds opinion and emotion in tweets change when you get sick, a method public health workers could use to track health trends.
The ThermalTracker software analyzes video with night vision, the same technology that helps soldiers see in the dark, to help birds and bats near offshore wind turbines.
America’s use of distributed wind - which is wind power generated near where it will be used - continues to grow, according to the 2016 Distributed Wind Market Report.
Scientists, community leaders and others will gather Aug. 3-4 to celebrate the achievements of the first 20 years of EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.
Ruby Leung of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been named a Battelle Fellow -- the highest recognition from Battelle for leadership and accomplishment in science. She is one of eight Battelle fellows at PNNL.
Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Oregon Health & Science University are part of a nationwide effort to learn more about the role of proteins in cancer biology and to use that information to benefit cancer patients.