The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Tennessee Valley Authority have signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate a new generation of flexible, cost-effective advanced nuclear reactors.
To better leverage cancer data for research, scientists at ORNL are developing an artificial intelligence (AI)-based natural language processing tool to improve information extraction from textual pathology reports. In a first for cancer pathology reports, the team developed a multitask convolutional neural network (CNN)—a deep learning model that learns to perform tasks, such as identifying key words in a body of text, by processing language as a two-dimensional numerical dataset.
The researchers examined satellite imagery, air temperature data and phenology (plant life cycle) models for 85 large cities and their surrounding rural areas from 2001 through 2014 to better understand changes in tree leaf emergence, also called budburst, on a broad scale across the United States. The study can help scientists improve their modeling of the potential impacts of future warming.
Energy storage startup SPARKZ Inc. has exclusively licensed five battery technologies from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed to eliminate cobalt metal in lithium-ion batteries. The advancement is aimed at accelerating the production of electric vehicles and energy storage solutions for the power grid.
An international team of researchers has discovered the hydrogen atoms in a metal hydride material are much more tightly spaced than had been predicted for decades—a feature that could possibly facilitate superconductivity at or near room temperature and pressure. The scientists conducted neutron scattering experiments at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory on samples of zirconium vanadium hydride.
Rigoberto “Gobet” Advincula has been named Governor’s Chair of Advanced and Nanostructured Materials at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee.
A team of quantum researchers from ORNL have conducted a series of experiments to gain a better understanding of quantum mechanics and pursue advances in quantum networking and quantum computing, which could lead to practical applications in cybersecurity and other areas.
As a scientist at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Liam Collins advances atomic force microscopy techniques to enable researchers to study materials and their properties on a nanometer length scale.
Neutron spectroscopy is an important tool for studying magnetic and thermoelectric properties in materials. But often the resolution, or the ability of the instrument to see fine details, is too coarse to clearly observe features identifying novel phenomena in new advanced materials. To solve this problem, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, developed a new super-resolution software, called SRINS, that makes it easier for scientists to better understand materials’ dynamical properties using neutron spectroscopy.
Scientists from Xavier University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutrons to explore the atomic structure of ice, which sometimes features mysterious molecular anomalies in its otherwise crystalline structure. Learning more about these ionic defects could help researchers learn more about similar inconsistencies found in other materials.
British Petroleum researchers invited ORNL data scientists to give the company’s high-performance computing team a tutorial of the laboratory’s ADIOS I/O middleware. ADIOS has helped researchers achieve scientific breakthroughs by providing a simple, flexible way to describe data in their code that may need to be written, read, or processed outside of the running simulation. ORNL researchers Scott Klasky and Norbert Podhorszki demonstrated how it could help the BP team accelerate their science by helping tackle their large, unique seismic datasets.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a quantum chemistry simulation benchmark to evaluate the performance of quantum devices and guide the development of applications for future quantum computers.
Researchers cannot collect enough observational data to practice analyzing the huge quantities expected from the Square Kilometre Array, which will be the world’s largest radio telescope. Instead, an international team recently used Summit to simulate the SKA’s expected output, then used ADIOS to process the simulated data.
Nuclear physicists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created the GODDESS detector to provide insight into astrophysical nuclear reactions that produce elements heavier than hydrogen.
Researchers led by the University of Manchester used neutron scattering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the development of a catalyst that converts biomass into liquid fuel with remarkably high efficiency and provides new possibilities for manufacturing renewable energy-related materials.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory and five leading building equipment industries will collaborate to improve the energy performance of heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems and investigate climate-friendly alternative refrigerants.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an innovative control system for repurposed electric vehicle battery packs to store electricity for home use and are scaling up the technology to a large, power grid-level project.
Colorado State researchers used neutron scattering at ORNL to study an ytterbium silicate material that exhibits a Bose-Einstein condensate, an unusual quantum phase of matter that may help better understand similar phenomena in other quantum materials.
An additively manufactured polymer layer applied to specialized plastic proved effective to protect aircraft from lightning strikes in lab test; injecting shattered argon pellets into a super-hot plasma, when needed, could protect a fusion reactor’s interior wall from runaway electrons; ORNL will celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Liane Russell on December 20.
A technology developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and scaled up by Vertimass LLC to convert ethanol into fuels suitable for aviation, shipping and other heavy-duty applications can be price-competitive with conventional fuels while retaining the sustainability benefits of bio-based ethanol, according to a new analysis.
A team led by the University of Manchester has developed a metal-organic framework material providing a selective, reversible and repeatable capability to capture a toxic air pollutant, nitrogen dioxide, which is produced by combusting fossil fuels. The material then requires only water and air to convert the captured gas into nitric acid for industrial use.
Two high school students developed software to analyze images of diatoms—algae that produce silicon for constructing cell walls—to determine the differences between wild and genetically modified strains of these organisms. This work was instrumental to a research team interested in optimizing diatoms for biomineralization, the process of making materials from biological systems.
A team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University made the first experimental observation of a material phase that had been predicted but never seen.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science announced allocations of supercomputer access to 47 science projects for 2020—awarding 60 percent of the available time on some of the nation’s most powerful supercomputers, with the ultimate goal of accelerating discovery and innovation. In 2020, 14 projects will run on Theta and 39 projects on Summit, where six of these projects will receive an allocation on both systems.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory will give college students the chance to practice cybersecurity skills in a real-world setting as a host of the Department of Energy’s fifth collegiate CyberForce Competition on Nov. 16.
In this Q&A, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Dan Jacobson talks about his team’s work on a genomic selection algorithm, his vision for the future of environmental genomics, and the space where simulation meets AI.
A team at Georgia Tech created a new turbulence algorithm optimized for the Summit supercomputer. It reached a performance of less than 15 seconds of wall-clock time per time step for more than 6 trillion grid points—a new world record surpassing the prior state of the art in the field for the size of the problem.
A UTokyo team transformed its UNICORN code into an AI-like algorithm to more quickly simulate a tectonic plate deformation that leads to earthquakes. The team ran UNICORN at 416 petaflops and gained a 75-fold speedup from a previous state-of-the-art solver using the Summit supercomputer.
An ORNL team used the Titan supercomputer to model every building serviced by the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga—all 178,368 of them—and discovered that EPB could potentially save $11–$35 million per year by adjusting electricity usage during peak critical times.
By blasting a frustrated mixture of materials with quick pulses of laser light, researchers transformed a superlattice into a supercrystal, a rare, repeating, three-dimensional structural much larger than an ordinary crystal. Using machine learning techniques, they studied the underlying structure of this sample at the nanoscale level before and after applying the laser pulse treatment.
Researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, are pioneering a novel technique to solve highly elaborate magnetic structures using neutrons at the Spallation Neutron Source. Their aim is to develop the technique to establish a baseline approach that can be adapted to a broad class of magnetic materials with different structures.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers will lead two new projects and support seven more to enhance the reliability and resilience of the nation’s power grid as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2019 Grid Modernization Lab Call.
ORNL and NREL took demonstrated a miniaturized gyroscope. ORNL created and tested new wireless charging designs. If humankind reaches Mars this century, an ORNL-developed experiment testing advanced materials for spacecraft may play a key role. ORNL and Georgia Tech found that critical interactions between microbes and peat moss break down under warming temperatures. ORNL and industry demonstrated that an additively manufactured hot stamping die can withstand up to 25,000 usage cycles.
A team used the Summit supercomputer to simulate a 10,000-atom magnesium dislocation system at 46 petaflops, a feat that earned the team an ACM Gordon Bell Prize finalist nomination and could allow scientists to understand which alloying materials to add to improve magnesium alloys.
A team simulated a 10,000-atom 2D transistor slice on the Summit supercomputer and mapped where heat is produced in a single transistor. Using a new data-centric version of the OMEN nanodevice simulator, the team sustained the code at 85.45 petaflops and earned a Gordon Bell Prize finalist nomination.
MOSAiC, the largest polar expedition of all time, will produce demanding quantities of data. ORNL staff in the field and the lab collect, store and process it to share with collaborators around the world.
Corning researchers are using neutrons at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source to better understand the correlations between the structure and properties of glass to develop new compositions tailored for a range of applications.
A joint research team from Google Inc., NASA Ames Research Center, and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has demonstrated that a quantum computer can outperform a classical computer at certain tasks, a feat known as quantum supremacy.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee and Texas A&M University demonstrated bio-inspired devices that accelerate routes to neuromorphic, or brain-like, computing.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and The University of Toledo have entered into a memorandum of understanding for collaborative research into the advanced design and manufacturing of high-strength, intelligent, lightweight materials for use by the automotive sector.
ORNL story tips: Reaching the boiling point for HVACs; showcasing innovation for technology transfer; using neutrons to lend insight into human tissue; and heating the core in a fusion prototype experiment.
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a way to isolate and grow targeted bacteria using genomic data, making strides toward resolving the grand challenge of uncultivated microbial “dark matter” in which the vast majority of microorganisms remain unstudied in the laboratory.
To accelerate promising artificial intelligence applications in diverse research fields, ORNL has established a labwide AI Initiative. This internal investment brings the lab’s AI expertise, computing resources and user facilities together to facilitate analyses of massive datasets.
Profiled is physicist Gaute Hagen of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who runs advanced models on powerful supercomputers to explore how protons and neutrons interact to “build” an atomic nucleus from scratch.
The National Alliance for Water Innovation, a partnership of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, other national labs, university and private sector partners, has been awarded a five-year, $100 million Energy-Water Desalination Hub by DOE to address water security issues in the United States.
Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a method to insert genes into a variety of microorganisms that previously would not accept foreign DNA, with the goal of creating custom microbes to break down plants for bioenergy.
As a computational hydrologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Ethan Coon combines his talent for math with his love of coding to solve big science questions about water quality, water availability for energy production, climate change, and the movement of contaminants through watersheds.
Three researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will lead or participate in collaborative research projects aimed at harnessing the power of quantum mechanics to advance a range of technologies including computing, fiber optics and network communication.