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28 July 2022
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Editor’s Note: CommUnique will be going on summer hiatus during the month of August. See you in September! |
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NASA aims to land humans on Mars by 2040, overcoming enormous engineering obstacles – in particular, designing a vehicle that can land on the red planet safely.
Mars is surrounded by mostly carbon dioxide, an atmosphere about a hundredth as dense as Earth’s nitrogen- and oxygen-rich air. As such, spacecraft would fly much differently on Mars than on Earth, and there’s no way to fully test here how a lander would perform there.
To carry people and cargo to the surface of Mars, a lander will be the size of a two-story house or bigger, so researchers working on lander designs need the scale that only emerging high-performance computing systems can offer.
Learn more about how scientists are using the Department of Energy (DOE)’s supercomputers to understand how Mars spacecraft would handle entry, descent, and landing.
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Cellular Gateways: A nuclear pore is a vital component of a cell. It allows important things, like RNA and proteins, to enter and exit a cell’s nucleus. Researchers from Caltech and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute recently mapped the nuclear pore complex’s atomic structure. They used the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, the Advanced Photon Source, and the National Synchrotron Light Source II DOE Office of Science user facilities. |
Better Solar Cells: To help bring halide perovskites – promising materials for solar cells – from the lab to commercialization, researchers at Florida State University and DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory examined them under real-world conditions. The scientists found that light and electric fields can create changes in the material’s basic properties and affect the lattice structure that’s crucial to keeping the material stable. |
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Urban Heat Islands: Scientists from DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have mapped Houston’s urban heat island—a phenomena thought to be associated with a dome of hotter air centered around a city’s densest development—at an unprecedented scale. Their work could help improve climate prediction models and address infrastructure and energy needs across the nation. |
Breaking Down Plant Matter: Liquid fuels made of biomass could help replace fuels made of petroleum. Researchers at Michigan State University have developed a chemical method using electricity and water that can break the strong chemical bonds in plant matter. It could be applied to lignin, a key structural material in plant cell walls. |
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Fusion Mystery: Through high-resolution computer simulations, researchers at DOE’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have resolved a seeming paradox in fusion research. They figured out why the more heat they beamed into a spherical tokamak, a type of facility that mimics the process that powers the sun and stars, the less the central temperature increased. This could help develop future fusion power plants. |
Magic-Angle Twisted Graphene: Engineers at Caltech have developed the ability to turn superconductivity off and on with a flip of a switch of an electric field in a material called “magic-angle twisted graphene.” This material can be made into either an insulator or superconductor, where electricity flows through it with no loss of energy. This work may shed new light on superconductivity in general. |
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The Office of Science posted four new highlights between 7/13/22 and 7/28/22.
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Observing Quantum Devices: For the first time, researchers have observed a quantum electronic device as it operates. They used ultrafast electron diffraction, an ultrafast camera for detecting tiny atomic movements. The images showed subtle changes in the atomic arrangement over millionths of a second. This finding could lead to faster and more energy-efficient computing devices. The team included scientists from DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, and Hewlett Packard Labs. |
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Axios: Experts saw Europe's devastating heat wave coming
This news article quoting Michael Wehner from DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory describes how Europe’s heat wave is just one of many extreme heat events that would be virtually impossible without climate change.
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JGI at 25: Building a Better Bean
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The common bean – a species that includes pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans, and navy beans – is a vital source of protein in many countries around the globe, as well as a valuable cash crop. It also plays an important role in soil health through nitrogen fixation. In 2014, a team of researchers led by the Joint Genome Institute, a DOE Office of Science user facility, sequenced and analyzed the genome of the common bean. They identified genes related to disease-resistance, flowering time, nitrogen metabolism, seed weight, and domestication. One of their major discoveries was the “slow-darkening” trait. This trait has since become standard for pinto beans, helping them cook faster, retain their iron content, and have a longer shelf-life. Researchers are now working to transfer that trait into other types of common beans. |
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Internships and Faculty Program for DOE National Laboratories Now Open for Applications
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Our Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships and Community College Internships are now open for applications! Through these programs, undergraduate students discover science and technology careers at the DOE national laboratories. They work directly with national laboratory scientists and engineers, assisting them on research or technology projects that support the DOE mission.
We have also opened applications for our Visiting Faculty Program. This program seeks to increase the research competitiveness of faculty members and their students at institutions historically underrepresented in research to expand the workforce vital to DOE mission areas.
For all three programs, applications for the spring 2023 term are due on October 5, 2022.
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Please see the CommUnique archive on Energy.gov for past issues.
No. 85: 28 July 2022
CommUnique provides a review of recent Office of Science Communications and Public Affairs stories and features. This is only a sample of our recent work promoting research done at universities, national labs, and user facilities throughout the country.
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