Feature Articles

To investigate what happens inside cells when they are at risk of becoming cancerous, scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have been using neutron scattering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The team is searching to better understand the altered state of the nucleolus--a membrane-less organelle inside the cell--when the cell is compromised. Novel insights into cell behavior at the atomic and molecular scales will enable better detection and treatment of cancer in its many forms.

As Hurricane Dorian raged through the Bahamas, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory worked around the clock to aid recovery efforts for one of the Caribbean's worst storms ever, providing geographic data that guided decisions on everything from where to open emergency shelters to how to staff first-aid centers.

The COHERENT experiment makes the most of the Spallation Neutron Source's neutrino factory with five detectors sited along a 164-foot, or 50-meter, long hallway that has come to be called Neutrino Alley. Here, Marcel Demarteau, director of the Physics Division at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, explains its successes and possibilities.

A Georgia State University team has used the nation's fastest supercomputer, the IBM AC922 Summit at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to find the optimal path that one E. coli enzyme uses to switch between building and editing DNA to rapidly remove misincorporated pieces of DNA.

Led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a new study clears up a discrepancy regarding the biggest contributor of unwanted background signals in specialized detectors of neutrinos. Better characterization of background could improve current and future experiments to detect real signals from these weakly interacting, electrically neutral subatomic particles and understand their role in the universe.

As ORNL's fuel properties technical lead for the U.S. Department of Energy's Co-Optimization of Fuel and Engines, or Co-Optima, initiative, Jim Szybist has been on a quest for the past few years to identify the most significant indicators for predicting how a fuel will perform in engines designed for light-duty vehicles such as passenger cars and pickup trucks.

Chuck Kessel leads the national Blanket and Fuel Cycle program, the national Fusion Energy Systems Studies program and the Virtual Laboratory of Technology and co-leads the Liquid-Metal Plasma-Facing Components program. He's devoted his career to making commercial fusion power a viable future option.

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and three partnering institutions have received $4.2 million over three years to apply artificial intelligence to the advancement of complex systems in which human decision making could be enhanced via technology.

A radioisotope researcher in the Radioisotope Science and Technology Division at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Davern is focusing on ways to use nanoparticles -- particles 100 nanometers or smaller that can have special properties -- to contain those radioisotopes and deliver them directly to cancer cells, where they can decay into different isotopes that irradiate those cells.

A collaboration between the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a Florida-based medical device manufacturer has led to the addition of 500 jobs in the Miami area to support the mass production of N95 respirator masks.