Technology developed by scientists at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows great promise for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms arise. Using the Advanced Light Source and Molecular Foundry user facilities, they ran a proof-of-principle study to use accessible skin cells as surrogates to predict the status of the disease in the brain.

Saharan dust is an important source of phosphorus for parts of the world’s oceans and American lowland tropical rainforests. However, the phosphorus’s bioavailability largely depends on its chemical form. Researchers from the University of Wyoming found that as the dust moves over the Atlantic Ocean, the composition of the phosphorus likely makes it more available to marine ecosystems but less available to rainforests.

Scientists on the PHENIX Collaboration at DOE’s Brookhaven Laboratory have reported new data from particles of light. This collaboration studies the quarks and gluons inside of protons and neutrons. The light particles (photons) are the result of interactions of a quark in one proton colliding with a gluon in another at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. These photons are giving scientists a glimpse of how gluons move within the building blocks of nuclei.

An international team of researchers, led by scientists in the University of Minnesota, found that distortions in quantum materials that cause imperfections in their crystal structure can improve these materials' superconducting and electrical properties. These findings could help scientists develop the next generation of quantum-based computing and electronic devices.

Researchers have discovered a hard-to-observe type of spin in a quantum mechanical system. Spins are magnetic particles in a quantum system. The researchers successfully simulated and measured how spins can exhibit a specific type of motion in solid materials at various temperatures. Scientists could use this knowledge in the field of spintronics, which can save energy in computing.

Axios: The next 30 years of extreme weather

Climate change is increasing the number and intensity of extreme weather events. This summary of the effects quotes Claudia Tebaldi from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

DOE’s Office of Science has selected 65 graduate students representing 29 states for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research program’s 2021 Solicitation 1 cycle. This program provides world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources at DOE national laboratories. It prepares graduate students to enter jobs of critical importance to the DOE mission and secures our national position at the forefront of discovery and innovation.