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Environmental Sciences

LATEST ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES NEWS

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 2-Jul-2025 02:10 ET (2-Jul-2025 06:10 GMT/UTC)

ORNL researchers recognized as among world’s most cited

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

Four researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory were recognized as Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate, a data analytics firm that specializes in scientific and academic research; Clarivate calculates impact factor using data from Web of Science. Highly Cited Researchers rank in the top 1% by citations for their field and publication year.

Teletrix expands augmented reality training platform with new commercial license

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Business Announcement

Teletrix, a company specializing in radiation training tools, has transitioned from a research and development license to a commercial license for its augmented reality, or AR, platform that simulates ionizing radiation. This advanced platform, known as VIZRAD AR, was developed using technologies licensed from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and allows users to interact with virtual radiological environments in real time.

DOE partners with UK’s DESNZ and Tokamak Energy Ltd. to accelerate fusion energy development through a $52M upgrade to the privately owned ST40 facility

DOE/US Department of Energy
Grant and Award Announcement

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the U.K.’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and the private fusion company Tokamak Energy Ltd. (TE) today announced a plan to jointly sponsor a $52 million upgrade to the ST40 experimental fusion facility to advance fusion science and technology needed to deliver a future fusion pilot plant. Fusion powers the sun and stars, and, if harnessed on Earth, could provide an abundant, safe, and carbon-emissions-free energy source. This collaboration was selected through the 2025 fiscal year Office of Science open funding opportunity.

Seven researchers named to Battelle Distinguished Inventor cadre

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

Seven scientists affiliated with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been named Battelle Distinguished Inventors in recognition of being granted 14 or more United States patents. Since Battelle began managing ORNL in 2000, 104 ORNL researchers have reached this milestone.

AI helps researchers dig through old maps to find lost oil and gas wells

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Undocumented orphaned wells pose hazards to both the environment and the climate. Scientists are building modern tools to help locate, assess, and pave the way for ultimately plugging these forgotten relics.

Journal: Environmental Science & Technology

Faster, more informed environmental permitting with AI-guided support

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Reports and Proceedings

Federal environmental permitting process to be fast-tracked with AI-powered tools and cloud-supported data analysis.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

'Spooky action' at a very short distance: Scientists map out quantum entanglement in protons

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have a new way to use data from high-energy particle smashups to peer inside protons. Their approach uses quantum information science to map out how particle tracks streaming from electron-proton collisions are influenced by quantum entanglement inside the proton. The results reveal that quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks that make up a proton’s structure, are subject to so-called quantum entanglement.

Journal: Reports on Progress in Physics
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Improved catalyst turns harmful greenhouse gases into cleaner fuels, chemical feedstocks

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A chemical reaction can convert two polluting greenhouse gases into valuable building blocks for cleaner fuels and feedstocks, but the high temperature required for the reaction also deactivates the catalyst. A team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has found a way to thwart deactivation. The strategy may apply broadly to other catalysts.

Journal: Nature Communications
Funder: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science

Gordon Bell Climate Prize goes to Kaust Frontier Users’ Exascale Climate Emulator

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

A team of researchers led by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, Saudi Arabia, are this year’s winner of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling. The team developed an exascale climate emulator with radically enhanced resolution but without the computational expense and data storage requirements of state-of-the-art climate models.

Game-changing quantum chemistry calculations on frontier earn Gordon Bell Prize

DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

Researchers led by the University of Melbourne, Australia, are winners of the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize in supercomputing for conducting a quantum molecular dynamics simulation 1,000 times greater in size and speed than any previous simulation of its kind. Using Frontier, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the team calculated a system containing more than 2 million correlated electrons.

Funder: Advanced Scientific Computing Research

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