NEWS RELEASES

DOE Funded News

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 15-May-2025 09:09 ET (15-May-2025 13:09 GMT/UTC)

14-May-2025

Rice engineers tackle sunlight intermittency in solar desalination

Rice University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of Rice engineers has developed a system that could transform desalination practices, making the process more adaptable, resilient and cheaper. The new system is powered by sunlight and uses a creative approach to heat recovery for extended water production ⎯ with and without sunshine.

Journal: Nature Water
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology, Welch Foundation, DOE/US Department of Energy

14-May-2025

Professor challenges long-held assumptions of symmetry in physics

Mississippi State University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Mississippi State Professor of Physics Dipangkar Dutta is a principal investigator on a groundbreaking experiment—revealing “symmetry” in physics doesn’t always behave as scientists once believed—recently published in the prestigious journal Physics Letters B.

Journal: Physics Letters B
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. National Science Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

13-May-2025

With AI, researchers predict the location of virtually any protein within a human cell

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers developed a new machine learning method that, given a relevant amino acid sequence, can automatically predict the location of a protein in any human cell line down to the single-cell level. This advance could help clinicians identify certain diseases, streamline the process of drug discovery, and give biologists new insights into the effects of protein mutations.

Funder: Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Searle Scholars Foundation, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Merkin Institute, Office of Naval Research, DOE/US Department of Energy

9-May-2025

Tapping a new toolbox, engineers buck tradition in new high-performing heat exchanger

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers created a twisty high-temperature heat exchanger that outperformed a traditional straight channel design in heat transfer, power density and effectiveness and used an innovative technique to 3D print and test the metal proof of concept.

Journal: International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, U.S. National Science Foundation

7-May-2025

The buried treasure in your old smartphone

Texas A&M University
Grant and Award Announcement

To help reduce the United States’ reliance on foreign sources of critical materials, the U.S. Department of Energy is investing $17 million into 14 projects focused on strengthening the domestic supply chain through safe, sustainable, and cost-effective solutions. Among the selected projects is a collaboration led by Texas A&M University researchers who are developing a new way to pull rare earth elements out of old electronics like tablets, phones and circuit boards.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

7-May-2025

MIT physicists snap the first images of “free-range” atoms

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

MIT physicists captured the first images of individual atoms freely interacting in space. The pictures reveal correlations among the “free-range” particles that until now were predicted but never directly observed.

Journal: Physical Review Letters
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office, DOE/US Department of Energy, Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, MIT Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship

5-May-2025

University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fusion energy

University of Texas at Austin
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new shortcut can help engineers design leak-proof magnetic confinement systems for fusion reactors 10 times as fast as the gold standard method, without sacrificing accuracy. While several other big challenges remain for all magnetic fusion designs, this advance addresses the biggest challenge that’s specific to a type of fusion reactor first proposed in the 1950s, called a stellarator.

Journal: Physical Review Letters
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

2-May-2025

Antivenom neutralizes the neurotoxins of 19 of the world’s deadliest snakes

Cell Press
Peer-Reviewed Publication

By using antibodies from a human donor with a self-induced hyper-immunity to snake venom, scientists have developed the most broadly effective antivenom to date, which is protective against the likes of the black mamba, king cobra, and tiger snakes in mouse trials. Described May 2 in the Cell Press journal Cell, the antivenom combines protective antibodies and a small molecule inhibitor and opens a path toward a universal antiserum.

Journal: Cell
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health, DOE/US Department of Energy