Feature Articles

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 6-Jun-2026 01:15 ET (6-Jun-2026 05:15 GMT/UTC)

More than meets the eye: Material’s transformation could lead to better-performing devices

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Manganese coupled with sulfide, when under pressure, transitioned from a soft insulator, to a metal, and back again. The materials understanding based on this discovery could lead to new components, such as on-off switches or conducting wires, for better-performing electronics.

Researchers pioneer a new view of deep rock fractures for geothermal energy

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

A team led by researchers at PNNL demonstrated a new way to monitor deep subsurface fractures.

Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth

Artificial Intelligence magnifies the utility of electron microscopes

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

In electron microscopy, some material properties are hard to capture. To overcome these challenges, Argonne researchers are using AI tools. Their solution has been shown to improve microscope sensitivity and accuracy without requiring expensive hardware changes.

Journal: npj Computational Materials

Accelerating discovery: optimizing workflows to advance the use of AI for science

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Artificial intelligence techniques have the potential to advance science in a variety of fields. Argonne scientists are making some of those techniques faster and more efficient, speeding up the process of scientific discovery.

Common ‘Core’: Using molecular fragments to detect deadly opioids

DOE/Sandia National Laboratories

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a method to detect trace amounts of synthetic opioids. They plan to combine their approach with miniaturized sensors to create a hand-portable instrument easily used by law enforcement agents for efficient detection in the field.

Argonne scientists advance global climate models by embarking on two new field campaigns

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Scientists from multiple national laboratories and universities are pursuing two new ARM field campaigns. The campaigns will track climate-related processes, delivering data that will be use to improve global climate models and simulations.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory supercomputers support Nobel Prize–winning research

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory

In October, a scientist whose research was supported by modeling and simulation efforts on supercomputers at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021.

Journal: Science

SLAC researchers for a challenging future of X-ray science

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

The ePix series of detectors is designed to keep pace with ever more demanding experiments at SLAC and elsewhere.

Closing In on Fusion

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory

A team used the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to model plasma turbulence in a nuclear fusion device to capture energy loss in fusion plasmas. The team’s simulations will help inform the design of next-generation tokamaks like ITER with optimum confinement properties.

Journal: Physics of Plasmas

Security researchers discover abundant, cost-effective way to make new cancer medicine

DOE/Idaho National Laboratory

By bombarding a natural vanadium target with high-energy photons, INL researchers created a pure, low-cost form of Scandium-47 which can be used to treat prostate, lung, intestinal and pancreatic cancers, among others.

Journal: Applied Radiation and Isotopes