ReportWire

Tag: Office of Science

  • Understanding the Origin of Matter with the CUORE Experiment

    Understanding the Origin of Matter with the CUORE Experiment

    [ad_1]

    The Science

    There is so much that we do not yet know about neutrinos. Neutrinos are very light, chargeless, and elusive particles that are involved in a process named beta decay and that can help us to understand the origin of matter in Universe. Beta decay is a type of radioactive decay that involves a neutron converting into a proton emitting an electron and an antineutrino. Beta decay is very common– it occurs about a dozen of times per second in a banana. There might also be an ultra-rare kind of beta decay that emits two electrons but no neutrinos. Nuclear physicists around the world are searching for this neutrinoless-double beta decays (NLDBD) in different nuclei. The interest in these decays arises from their potential to reveal unsolved mysteries related to the Universe’s creation of matter. They can also provide hints towards our understanding of the currently unknown mass of neutrinos.

    The Impact

    The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) can search for these rare NLDBD processes using different nuclei. Scientists rely on complementarity among searches using different nuclei to have a better understanding of the underlying physics in the process. Complementarity in physics involves theories that contrast with each other but that both explain part of the same phenomena. CUORE recently searched for NLDBD using a nucleus that had not previously been studied with CUORE, Tellurim-128. The researchers have so far found no evidence for NLDBD. However, they show that the half-life of Tellurim-128 to decay by NLDBD is longer than 3.6 septillion years (ultra-rare decays have very long half-lives). This lower limit is about 30 times higher than those from prior experiments using the same technique. This new search pushes forward scientists’ knowledge on these rare nuclear decays. This opens another path to our understanding of the origin of matter in our Universe.

    Summary

    CUORE is one of the world-leading experiments searching for extremely rare nuclear processes. Because of the rareness of these processes, CUORE needs a very low-radioactivity environment achieved by using extremely clean materials and by the Gran Sasso Mountain, which shields the experiment from cosmic rays. CUORE consists of almost 1,000 crystals that are kept at a temperature close to absolute zero by a dedicated refrigeration structure. The temperature of the crystals is measured 1,000 times per second, saved to disk, and analyzed to spot the tiny amount of temperature variations caused by the rare decays. Since the beginning of its operation in 2017, CUORE has collected a huge amount of data and it will continue for at least two more years. Researchers expect better results in the search for NLDBD processes on the nucleus Tellurim-128 in the near future. After CUORE, the next-generation experiments have the potential to unravel several nuclear and particle physics mysteries through the exploration of these elusive processes.

     

    Funding

    This work was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics; the National Science Foundation; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; the University of Wisconsin Foundation; Yale University; and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. 


    Journal Link: Physical Review Letters, Nov-2022

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

  • Signs of Gluon Saturation Emerge from Particle Collisions

    Signs of Gluon Saturation Emerge from Particle Collisions

    [ad_1]

    The Science

    Nuclear physicists collide protons with heavier ions (atomic nuclei) to explore the fundamental constituents that make up those ions. By tracking particles that stream out of the collisions, they can zoom in beyond the ions’ protons and neutrons to study those particles’ innermost building blocks—quarks and gluons. Recent results revealed a suppression of certain back-to-back pairs of particles that emerge from interactions of single quarks from the proton with single gluons in the heavier ion. The suppression was greatest in collisions with the heaviest nuclei. The results suggest that gluons in heavy nuclei recombine, as predicted by the theory of the strong force, quantum chromodynamics.

    The Impact

    Previous experiments have shown that when ions are accelerated to high energies, gluons split to multiply to very high numbers. But scientists suspect that gluon multiplication can’t go on forever. Instead, in nuclei moving close to the speed of light, where relativistic motion flattens the nuclei into speeding gluon “pancakes,” overlapping gluons should start to recombine. Seeing evidence of recombination would be a step toward proving that gluons reach a postulated steady state called saturation, where gluon splitting and recombination balance out. The new results match with theoretical models postulating this saturated state.

    Summary

    To search for signs of gluon recombination, scientists with the STAR Collaboration used the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility. They were looking for a telltale signal produced in collisions of protons with a range of ions when a single quark from the proton interacts with an individual gluon in the ion. That signal is a pair of neutral pions striking a forward detector at back-to-back angles. If gluons in the nuclei recombine, scientists would expect to see a suppression in this back-to-back signal because fewer gluons would be available for the quark-gluon interactions. They looked for the signal in collisions of protons with different sized ions.

    Theorists had predicted that gluon recombination would be more prominent the larger the ion. That’s because heavy ions (nuclei) have more quark-and-gluon-containing protons and neutrons. When accelerated to near the speed of light, these ions flatten out, making the abundant gluons overlap and more likely to merge. Bigger nuclei with more gluons, should mean more merging and more suppression in the signal. That’s exactly what the scientists found. The results provide evidence that gluons recombine—and a strong suggestion that gluon splitting and recombination could produce the predicted saturated state.

     

    Funding

    This research was funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Nuclear Physics program, the National Science Foundation, and a range of international agencies listed in the published paper.

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

  • Hitting Nuclei with Light May Create Fluid Primordial Matter

    Hitting Nuclei with Light May Create Fluid Primordial Matter

    [ad_1]

    The Science

    A new analysis supports the idea that particles of light (photons) colliding with heavy ions create a fluid of “strongly interacting” particles. The calculations are based on the hydrodynamic particle flow seen in collisions of various types of ions at both the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). With only modest changes, these calculations also describe flow patterns seen in near-miss collisions at the LHC. In these collisions, photons that form a cloud around the speeding ions collide with the ions in the opposite beam.

    The Impact

    The results indicate that photon-heavy ion collisions can create a strongly interacting fluid that responds to the initial collision geometry, exhibiting hydrodynamic behavior. This further means that these collisions can form a quark-gluon plasma, a system of quarks and gluons liberated from the protons and neutrons that make up the ions. These findings will help guide future experiments at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a facility planned to be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory over the next decade.

    Summary

    It may seem surprising that photon-heavy ion collisions can produce a hot and dense fluid. But it’s possible because a photon can undergo quantum fluctuations to become another particle with the same quantum numbers. A likely example is a rho meson, made of a quark and antiquark held together by gluons. When a rho meson collides with a nucleus, it forms a collision system very similar to a proton-nucleus collision, which also exhibits flow-like signals.

    The current analysis by theorists at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Wayne State University sought to explain data from the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The theorists found that accounting for the energy difference between the rho meson and the much higher energy of the incoming nucleus was the most important ingredient for their calculations’ ability to reproduce the experimental results. In the most energetic heavy ion collisions, the pattern of particles emerging transverse to the colliding beams generally persists no matter how far you look from the collision point along the beamline. But in lower-energy photon-lead collisions, the model showed that the geometry of the particle distributions changes rapidly with increasing longitudinal distance. This decorrelation had a large effect on the observed flow pattern, showing that 3D hydrodynamic modeling is essential for simulating these low energy photon-lead collisions.

     

    Funding

    This research was funded by Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics and the National Science Foundation. The research used computational resources of the Open Science Grid, supported by the National Science Foundation.


    Journal Link: Physical Review Letters

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

  • Shape-Shifting Experiment Challenges Interpretation of How Cadmium Nuclei Move

    Shape-Shifting Experiment Challenges Interpretation of How Cadmium Nuclei Move

    [ad_1]

    The Science

    Atomic nuclei take a range of shapes, from spherical (like a basketball) to deformed (like an American football). Spherical nuclei are often described by the motion of a small fraction of the protons and neutrons, while deformed nuclei tend to rotate as a collective whole. A third kind of motion has been proposed since the 1950s. In this motion, known as nuclear vibration, atomic nuclei fluctuate about an average shape. Scientists recently investigated cadmium-106 using a technique called Coulomb excitation to probe its nuclear shape. They found clear experimental evidence that the vibrational description fails for this isotope’s nucleus. This finding is counter to the expected results.

    The Impact

    This research builds on a long quest to understand the transition between spherical and deformed nuclei. This transition often includes vibrational motion as an intermediate step. The new result suggests that nuclear physicists may need to revise the long-standing paradigm describing how this transition occurs. Scientists have not yet answered the question of what behavior takes place during this transition, but new evidence points to a description based on rotational motion of a nucleus together with a reorganization of its outermost protons and neutrons. The results make clear that scientists need more data to shed light on nuclei they have traditionally thought to be vibrational.

    Summary

    A multinational team of nuclear physicists used the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne National Laboratory, to accelerate a beam of cadmium-106 nuclei to nine percent of the speed of light and direct it onto a 1-micron thick lead-208 target foil. During the collision, gamma rays from the cadmium-106 nuclei were emitted and detected by the Gamma-Ray Energy Tracking In-beam Nuclear Array (GRETINA), and the recoiling lead and cadmium nuclei were detected by the Compact Heavy Ion Counter 2 (CHICO2). The intensities of the gamma rays provided a measure of the probability of exciting cadmium-106 nuclei via the electromagnetic interaction, from which the electromagnetic properties of cadmium-106 were established.

    The researchers integrated these properties into a model-independent measure of the nuclear shape and compared the result to expectations from several leading nuclear theories. The results indicate that at low-energies, cadmium-106 is not vibrational but instead more in line with the rotation of a slightly deformed triaxial rotor – a shape akin to a deflated American football.

     

    Funding

    This research was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, and used resources of Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne National Laboratory.


    Journal Link: Physics Letters. B

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

  • A Trial Run for Smart Streaming Readouts

    A Trial Run for Smart Streaming Readouts

    [ad_1]

    The Science

    Nuclear physics experiments are data intensive. Particle accelerators probe collisions of subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons, and quarks to reveal details of the bits that make up matter. Instruments that measure the particles in these experiments generate torrents of raw data. To get a better handle on the data, nuclear physicists are turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning methods. Recent tests of two streaming readout systems that use such methods found that the systems were able to perform real-time processing of raw experimental data. The tests also demonstrated that each system performed well in comparison with traditional systems.

    The Impact

    Streaming readout systems use advanced computer software to collect and analyze data generated by a device in real time. They feature a less complex physical infrastructure than traditional systems. In addition, they can be far more powerful, efficient, faster, and flexible. A streaming readout system can maximize the information that can be extracted from an experiment, from initial decisions about which data to save to flagging unexpected physics captured in very complex detector systems. These systems also store more of the original data for analysis. This allows for a more holistic picture of events by providing the whole of the event instead of just triggering on some small part of it.

    Summary

    Nuclear physics is demanding and getting more so every year. Advances in experiments require powerful software and computing resources to make sense of the extreme amounts of raw data that experiments produce. For instance, the powerful Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) is a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) that initiates cascades of subatomic particles thousands of times per second. These experiments generate enormous amounts of raw data every day. To harness the data, nuclear physicists have relied on hardware-based “triggered” systems to help them pre-sort data based on timed events. These systems only record data for a short period once a particular event is detected.

    Now, nuclear physicists are replacing triggered systems with software-based streaming readout systems. These systems harness artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to process — in real time — the vast amounts of data that nuclear physics experiments produce. In this way, all data are streamed to a data center to be analyzed, tagged, and filtered. The system automatically sifts through the enormous amount of data to filter out unnecessary background and record the interesting bits. With this work done by a streaming readout system, the actual data analysis can take a fraction of the time.

     

    Funding

    This material is based on work supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Projects of Great Relevance within Italy/U.S. Scientific and Technological Cooperation, and by the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.


    Journal Link: European Physical Journal Plus

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

  • Discovering Unique Microbes Made Easy with DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase)

    Discovering Unique Microbes Made Easy with DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase)

    [ad_1]

    The Science

    Microbes are foundational for life on Earth. These tiny organisms play a major role in everything from transforming sunlight into the fundamental molecules of life. They help to produce much of the oxygen in our atmosphere. They even cycle nutrients between air and soil. Scientists are constantly finding interactions between microbes and plants, animals, and other macroscopic lifeforms. As genomic sequencing has advanced, researchers can investigate not only isolated microbes, but also whole communities of microorganisms – known as microbiomes – based on DNA found in an environment. The genomes extracted from these communities (metagenomic sequences) can identify the organisms that carry out biogeochemical processes, contribute to health or disease in human gastrointestinal microbiomes, or interact with plant roots in the rhizosphere. The Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) recently released a suite of features and a protocol for performing sophisticated microbiome analysis that can accelerate research in microbial ecology.

    The Impact

    The widespread adoption of DNA sequencing in microbiology has generated huge amounts of genomic data. Researchers need computational tools to recover high-quality genomes from environmental samples to understand which organisms live in an environment and how they might interact. The combination of usability, data, and bioinformatics tools in a public online resource makes KBase a uniquely powerful web platform for performing this task. These new features in KBase will allow biologists to obtain genomes from microbiome sequences with easy-to-use software powered by Department of Energy computational resources. This will reduce the time required to process sequencing data and characterize genomes. Scientists can use KBase to collaboratively analyze genomics data and build research communities to solve common problems in microbial ecology.

    Summary

    Obtaining genomes of uncultivated microbes directly from the environment using DNA sequencing is a recent advance that allows scientists to discover and characterize novel organisms. Sequencing the DNA of all the microbes in a given environment produces a “metagenome.” Performing genetic analysis of metagenomes has emerged as a way to explore microbial traits and behaviors and community interactions in an environmental context. Methods for obtaining metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) have varying degrees of success, depending on the techniques used. An increasing number of researchers generate microbiome sequences, but many do not have ready access to the expertise, tools, and computational resources necessary to extract, evaluate, and analyze their genomes.

    The KBase team added and updated several metagenome analysis tools, data types, and execution capabilities to provide researchers the tools that accelerate the discovery of microbial genomes and uncover the genetic potential of microbial communities. A recent paper in Nature Protocols presents a series of analysis steps, using KBase apps and data products for extracting high quality MAGs from metagenomes. These capabilities, including computing, data storage, and sharing of data and analyses, are provided free to the public via the KBase web platform. This protocol allows scientists to both generate putative genomes from organisms only found in the environment and analyze them with tools to understand who they are, what they are doing, who they are interacting with, and their role in the ecosystem.

     

    Funding

    KBase is funded by the Genomic Science Program in the Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research.


    Journal Link: Nature Protocols

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

  • Department of Energy Announces $9.1 Million for Research on Quantum Information Science and Nuclear Physics

    Department of Energy Announces $9.1 Million for Research on Quantum Information Science and Nuclear Physics

    [ad_1]

    Newswise — WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $9.1 million in funding for 13 projects in Quantum Information Science (QIS) with relevance to nuclear physics. Nuclear physics research seeks to discover, explore, and understand all forms of nuclear matter that can exist in the universe – from the subatomic structure of nucleons, to exploding stars, to the emergence of the quark-gluon plasma seconds after the Big Bang.

    Quantum computers have the potential for computational breakthroughs in classically unsolvable nuclear physics problems. Quantum sensors exploit distinct quantum phenomena that do not have classical counterparts, to acquire, process, and transmit information in ways that greatly exceed existing capabilities or sensitivities.

    “Although we are just beginning to develop the knowledge and technology needed to power a revolutionary paradigm shift to quantum computing, there is a clear line of sight on how to proceed,” said Tim Hallman, DOE Associate Director of Science for Nuclear Physics. “These awards will contribute to advancing nuclear physics research and to pressing future quantum computing developments forward.”

    The selected projects are at the forefront of interdisciplinary research in both fundamental research and use-inspired challenges at the interface of nuclear physics and QIS technologies. Projects include advancing the development of next generation materials and architectures for high coherence superconducting quantum bits, or “qubits,” and a solid-state quantum simulator for applications in nuclear theory. Projects will also develop quantum sensors to enhance sensitivity to new physics beyond the Standard Model and improve precision measurements of nuclear decays. The quantum computing projects explore difficult nuclear physics problems using hardware advantages offered by different near-term quantum platforms.

    The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement for Quantum Horizons: QIS Research and Innovation for Nuclear Science.

    Total funding is $9.1 million for projects lasting up to 3 years in duration. The list of projects and more information can be found here.

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]

    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.

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

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

    Deblurring Can Reveal 3D Features of Heavy-Ion Collisions

    [ad_1]

    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
    Journal Link:

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

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

    Three Techniques, Three Species, Different Ways to Fight Drought

    [ad_1]

    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

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

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

    Whole Ecosystem Warming Stimulates Methane Production from Plant Metabolites in Peatlands

    [ad_1]

    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

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

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

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

    [ad_1]

    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

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link

  • Watching Plants Switch on Genes

    Watching Plants Switch on Genes

    [ad_1]

    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

    [ad_2]

    Department of Energy, Office of Science

    Source link