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Tag: Department of Energy

  • Department of Energy Announces $105 Million for Research to Support the Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) Initiative

    Department of Energy Announces $105 Million for Research to Support the Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) Initiative

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    Newswise — WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $105 million for research in biopreparedness. This funding, provided by the Office of Science, will support fundamental research to accelerate breakthroughs in support of the Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) initiative. 

    “BRaVE will take advantage of DOE’s unique capabilities and facilities in physical, computational, and life sciences to support our nation’s biopreparedness and response to future pandemics and other biological threats,” said Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, DOE’s Director of the Office of Science. “The knowledge and capabilities advanced by this research will have broader impacts in energy, climate change, food security, health, sustainability, and other areas critical to national and economic security.”    

    During the COVID crisis, DOE’s national laboratory researchers provided epidemiological information to decision makers, assessed and developed new virus testing protocols, identified high potential candidates for antiviral drugs and delivered manufacturing solutions to stem the shortages of face masks, test kits, and other supplies. In addition, DOE’s user facilities supported researchers in the fight against COVID-19, including providing X-ray structural information that supported the development of all three vaccines approved in the U.S., as well as FDA-approved antiviral drugs and antibodies.

    BRaVE will build upon these high impact results to provide the underpinning science to enable DOE’s strategy for biopreparedness and response by focusing on five focus areas.

    • Decipher Host-pathogen Dynamics in Real Time for New Mitigation Strategies
    • Reveal Molecular Interactions Across Biological Scales for Design of Targeted Interventions
    • Elucidate Multiscale Ecosystem Complexities for Robust Epidemiological Modeling
    • Realize Understanding to Accelerate Design, Discovery, and Manufacturing of Materials
    • Advance Innovations in User Facility Instrumentation, Experimental Techniques, and Data Analytics

    Applications are open to the DOE national laboratories. Partnerships with other institutions, including academia, other national laboratories, not-for-profit organizations, or industry, are strongly encouraged. To strengthen the commitment to promoting a diversity of investigators and institutions supported by the DOE Office of Science, applications are explicitly encouraged that involve Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). 

    Total combined planned funding is up to $105 million over three years, with $35 million in Fiscal Year 2023 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. The funding anticipated for each award is $2M to $4M per year.   

    The program announcement, sponsored by the Offices of Advanced Scientific Research Computing, Basic Energy Sciences, and Biological and Environmental Research within the Department’s Office of Science, can be found here.

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Deblurring Can Reveal 3D Features of Heavy-Ion Collisions

    Deblurring Can Reveal 3D Features of Heavy-Ion Collisions

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    The Science

    When the nuclei of atoms are about to collide in an experiment, their centers never perfectly align along the direction of relative motion. This leads to collisions with complex three-dimensional geometry. Emissions from the dense hot region of nuclear matter form patterns during a collision. In relation to the geometry of the collisions, the patterns of emissions offer insights into characteristics of the compressed matter. The proposed deblurring strategy can reveal the emission patterns as if the initial nuclear centers were under a tight control in an experiment.

    The Impact

    The proposed strategy offers a new way to analyze and present data from the collisions of atomic nuclei. The strategy may make it easier for physicists to arrive at qualitative conclusions from collision data when the results from an experiment refer directly to the geometry of a collision. Until now, this sort of direct reference to collision geometry was only possible with theoretical simulations. This means simulations can focus on what researchers had believed was beyond the reach of experiment. This will help scientists to better understand compressed matter. The optical strategy may also help in nuclear experiments where the methodology makes it hard to obtain the desired information.

    Summary

    The deblurring strategy was inspired by a deblurring algorithm used in optics experiments to sharpen images. Outside of nuclear science, deblurring is used to decipher speed-camera photos. It was suggested by a research collaboration between the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at Michigan State University, and RIKEN Nishina Center in Japan. The strategy is an effective means of finding triple-differential distributions of products from heavy-ion collisions for a fixed direction of the reaction plane. The reaction plane is defined by the direction of relative velocity and the centers of nuclei entering a collision. At intermediate energies for the collisions, products emerge from a collision exhibiting correlations with the plane. Those correlations help to coarsely identify the orientation of that plane in an experiment. The proposed strategy can benefit the analysis of data from experiments focusing on properties of the compressed nuclear matter at facilities worldwide.

     

    Funding

    This research was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics.


    Journal Link: Physical Review C
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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Three Techniques, Three Species, Different Ways to Fight Drought

    Three Techniques, Three Species, Different Ways to Fight Drought

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    The Science

    Rising temperatures and increasing droughts have scientists looking for ways to better predict how plants will react to stress. Every study offers a little more information. Now, scientists have discovered a way to yield a wealth of insights in a single study. Combining three advanced research techniques that are rarely used together, they found they could pinpoint how different types of plants protect themselves from harsh conditions. Even more surprising? Plants try various strategies to assure their survival.

    The Impact

    When used together, the three techniques reveal a surprising amount of information about the chemical processes inside plants. Scientists can also look for patterns across plant communities. The results can help identify when plants require more water or more nutrients to keep growing during times of stress, even in diverse environments. How plants respond to drought can also have profound impacts on the movement of carbon through the environment, which ultimately influences climate. 

    Summary

    Working under the Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) program, scientists examined the effects of drought on chemical processes inside the roots of three tropical rainforest species. The team included researchers from the University of Arizona, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the University of Freiburg. To understand the plant’s chemical functioning, including how it utilized carbon, the team combined cutting-edge metabolomic and imaging technologies at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a Department of Energy (DOE) user facility. They used powerful nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to identify the type and structure of molecules in the plant roots. They then created detailed images of tissues using mass spectrometry (matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry) and took nanoscale measurements of elements and iisotopes (nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry).

    This combination of techniques yielded insights into different defense mechanisms plants use to survive drought. One species added woody lignin to thicken its roots. The second secreted antioxidants and fatty acids as a biochemical defense. The third appeared less affected by drought conditions, but the soil around it had a higher level of carbon. This indicates that the plant and the microbes in the soil were working together to protect the plant. Overall, this study demonstrates how multiple techniques can be combined to identify different drought-tolerance strategies and ways to keep plants thriving.

     

    Funding

    A portion of this research was performed under the FICUS exploratory effort and used resources at the DOE Joint Genome Institute and EMSL, both of which are DOE Office of Science user facilities. This research was supported in part by the European Research Council and the DOE Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research program. The Philecology Foundation and the European Research Council also provided financial support.


    Journal Link: Environmental Science & Technology

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Whole Ecosystem Warming Stimulates Methane Production from Plant Metabolites in Peatlands

    Whole Ecosystem Warming Stimulates Methane Production from Plant Metabolites in Peatlands

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    The Science

    Newswise — Scientists working at the ongoing Department of Energy’s (DOE) Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments (SPRUCE) experiment use the site’s northern Minnesota bog as a laboratory. SPRUCE allowed scientists to warm the air and soil by zero to 9 degrees C above ambient temperatures to depths more than 2 m below ground. This warming simulates the effects of climate change on the carbon cycle at the whole ecosystem scale over the long term. The research found that the production of the potent greenhouse gas methane increased at a faster rate than carbon dioxide in response to warming. The results indicate that carbon dioxide release and methane production are stimulated by plants‘ release of metabolites, chemicals that plants create for protection and other functions.

    The Impact

    Soil carbon has accumulated over millennia in peatlands. These results demonstrate that peatlands’ vast, deep carbon stores are vulnerable to microbial decomposition in response to warming. This research suggests that as climate change causes peatland vegetation to have a greater proportion of vascular plants relative to mosses, peatlands will produce more methane and amplify their contribution to climate change.

    Summary

    Northern peatlands store approximately one-third of Earth’s terrestrial soil organic carbon due to their cold, water-saturated, acidic conditions, which slow decomposition. To study these soils, researchers leveraged the Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments (SPRUCE) experiment, where they combined air and peat warming in a whole ecosystem warming treatment. The team included Georgia Institute of Technology, Florida State University, the University of Arizona, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Chapman University, the University of Oregon, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

    The scientists hypothesized that warming would enhance the production of plant-derived metabolites, resulting in increased labile organic matter inputs to the surface peat, thereby enhancing microbial activity and greenhouse gas production. In support of this hypothesis, the researchers observed significant correlations between metabolites and temperature consistent with increased availability of labile substrates, which may stimulate more rapid turnover of microbial proteins. An increase in the abundance of methanogenic genes in response to the increase in the abundance of labile substrates was accompanied by a shift towards acetoclastic- and methylotrophic methanogenesis. The results suggest that peatland vegetation trends towards increasing vascular plant cover with warming will be accompanied by a concomitant shift towards increasingly methanogenic conditions and amplified climate-peatland feedbacks.

     

    Funding

    This material is based upon work supported by the DOE Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research program. A portion of this research was performed using the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Metagenome sequence data were produced by the DOE Joint Genome Institute in collaboration with the user community.


    Journal Link: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • For Protons and Neutrons, Things Aren’t the Same Inside Nuclei

    For Protons and Neutrons, Things Aren’t the Same Inside Nuclei

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    The Science

    Newswise — The building blocks of protons and neutrons—quarks—are distributed differently in free protons and neutrons versus inside nuclei. Nuclear physicists call this difference “the EMC effect.” Each proton is made of three quarks, with two called up quarks and one called a down quark. Neutrons have two down quarks and one up quark. Scientists previously thought that the EMC effect treated the up and down quarks equally. New high-precision data from the MARATHON experiment made possible a new global analysis of experimental data on this phenomenon. The complex analysis indicates that the EMC effect may exert more influence on the distribution of down quarks compared to up quarks inside nuclei.

    The Impact

    Prior to this result, nuclear physicists thought they could treat protons and neutrons, and their quarks, similarly in certain cases. This allowed a simpler understanding of how up and down quarks arrange themselves inside protons and neutrons, without the need to account for confounding effects of the environment inside nuclei. The new results from MARATHON appear to contradict this simple picture. Nuclear physicists need to conduct further investigations of this phenomenon to better characterize this effect. If confirmed, the result could affect experiments in neutrino physics, heavy-ion physics, astrophysics, and other fields.

    Summary

    When protons and neutrons live inside an atom’s nucleus, their internal quarks are distributed differently versus those inside protons or neutrons that roam free. This effect was first observed by the European Muon Collaboration at CERN in the 1980s, and it has remained a mystery for decades. The MARATHON collaboration has now collected new data on this phenomenon in an experiment carried out at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility’s Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility particle accelerator, a Department of Energy (DOE) user facility. The data came from helium-3 and tritium nuclei. Helium-3 has two protons (each with two up quarks and one down quark) and one neutron (with two down quarks and one up quark). Tritium has one proton and two neutrons. Helium-3 and tritium have the same number of up quarks compared to the other nucleus’ down quarks. This new data enabled a sophisticated global analysis by the Jefferson Lab Angular Momentum (JAM) collaboration. The JAM analysis revealed that the distributions of down quarks may be more modified by the environment inside nuclei compared to the up quark distributions. This means that experiments seeking to reveal new information about the quark structure of nucleons will need to account for the nuclear environment.

     

    Funding

    This research was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, the National Science Foundation, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian Research Council.


    Journal Link: Physical Review Letters

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Watching Plants Switch on Genes

    Watching Plants Switch on Genes

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    The Science

    Biologists often use green fluorescent protein (GFP) to see what happens inside cells. GFP, which scientists first isolated in jellyfish, is a protein that changes light from one color into another. Attaching it to other proteins allows researchers to find out if cells produce those proteins and where within cells to find them. This in turn shows how cells deliver and use genes. The problem is that this usually requires expensive equipment, such as fluorescence microscopes, and it can be time consuming. In this study, researchers describe how a special type of GFP can be used to ‘see’ protein production with the unaided eye. Modifying the genes of plants allowed the team to see GFP production using a simple black light to provide long-wave ultraviolet (UV) light.

    The Impact

    The research demonstrates real-time imaging of cellular and molecular events in a wide range of plants with the unaided eye and a black-light flashlight. This will enable quick and affordable screening for research and development or for real time monitoring of molecular events in mature plants.

    Summary

    Reporter genes are attached to other genes of interest to provide an inexpensive, rapid, and sensitive assay for studying gene delivery and gene expression. These reporters have long been an essential tool for live-cell imaging. Today, imaging and analysis are becoming more accessible through the development of UV-visible fluorescent reporters. This research from scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory aimed to advance the use and efficiency of these reporters in two herbaceous plant species (Arabidopsis and tobacco) and two woody plant species (poplar and citrus).

    After designing and building a GFP UV reporter protein (eYGFPuv) that provides enhanced signals for all tested plant species, the researchers demonstrated that strong fluorescence could be captured using either a fluorescence microscope or UV light. Moreover, this UV‐excitable reporter can be observed across a wide range of scales from sub‐meter level seedlings to whole plants without need for special emission filters. For instance, by using a simple UV flashlight, the scientists demonstrated how this new reporter can facilitate rapid quantification of transformation efficiency in plant systems. These improved features will make this newly developed GFP-UV reporter a valuable tool for a wide range of applications in plant science research.

     

    Funding

    The research was supported by the Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI), a Department of Energy (DOE) Research Center and the Secure Ecosystem Engineering and Design (SEED) project funded by the Genomic Science Program of the DOE Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) as part of the Secure Biosystems Design Science Focus Area (SFA).

    SEE ORIGINAL STUDY

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    Department of Energy, Office of Science

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  • Kronos Fusion Energy Urges U.S. Legislation to Keep Up With the Rest of the Globe in the Growing Fusion Energy Industry

    Kronos Fusion Energy Urges U.S. Legislation to Keep Up With the Rest of the Globe in the Growing Fusion Energy Industry

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    Press Release
    –

    Mar 15, 2022


    WASHINGTON, March 15, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    From learning how to measure masses of low-mass elements to discovering nuclear fusion being possible and technological advances to match, there’s no denying the evolution of fusion power. For many years, the U.S., UK and USSR performed work in secret even though they were convinced that controlled fusion research had no military applications. Despite not having an internationally collaborative approach, energy advancements continued to climb.

    Around 1951, the U.S. started its magnetic fusion energy program within the Atomic Energy Commission and was declassified in 1957. Due to declassification, international scientific collaborations and discussions of fusion research were yet again enabled. Plasma confinement conceptual achievements were accomplished through the 1960s, such as the stellarator, tokamak, and more. These successes were especially promising through the 1970s fossil fuel energy crisis, as political interest created the will to invest in large-scale tokamak studies. As the energy crisis waned, funding in fusion energy declined again in the mid-1980s. The fusion energy sciences program was overseen by the Department of Energy, and it encountered difficulties in acquiring funding for the large tokamak projects. The successor to the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, the Compact Ignition Torus was subject to significant planning in the late 1980s. Due to lack of funding and political interest, the CIT project was canceled by Congress in the early 1990s.

    Since the 1980s, significant investment in fusion technology by the U.S. government has been limited to membership and partial funding of the international collaborative effort in France (ITER). While a valuable source of research and development, by focusing on this international experimental reactor, the U.S. government has not made substantive efforts to pursue American fusion energy projects with the aim of commercial or military applications. Energy shortages, endless cries for clean energy, and more needs of our planet have created the realization that now is the time to act. The federal government only began publicly developing options for a regulatory framework for fusion energy systems in late 2020.

    Kronos Fusion Energy’s Partner and Chief Legislative Officer Ethan J. Bond sees the need for legislative framework. “We’ve met perfect timing for the emergence and application of our company’s hard work. Kronos Fusion Energy realizes this is just the exordium of a new era in energy generation for the world. To set us up for success, we must be accompanied and supported by our government and legislation.”

    On a global level, years of research, development, and experiments have led up to the White House event: Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy. The event promises to convene fusion energy leaders to showcase progresses and advancements in fusion strategy. Kronos Fusion Energy is delighted by the recent advancements of the industry so we can do our part in creating a clean, limitless energy future.

    Press Contact:
    Erin Pendleton 
    e.pendleton@kronosfusionenergy.com

    Source: Kronos Fusion Energy

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