-
Scientists at the DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed and tested an all-solid lithium-sulfur battery with approximately four times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion technologies that power today's electronics.
The ORNL battery design, which uses abundant low-cost elemental sulfur, also addresses flammability concerns experienced by other chemistries.
"Our approach is a complete change from the current battery concept of two electrodes joined by a liquid electrolyte, which has been used over the last 150 to 200 years," said Chengdu Liang, lead author on the ORNL study published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Full Story
-
Using data derived from nuclear weapons testing of the 1950s and '60s, Lawrence Livermore scientists have found that a small portion of the human brain involved in memory makes new neurons well into adulthood.
The research may have profound impacts on human behavior and mental health. The study supports the importance of investigating the therapeutic potential of applying adult neurogenesis to the treatment of age-related cognitive disorders.
Neurogenesis is the process by which neurons are generated from neural stem and progenitor cells and, until now, were believed to be most active during pre-natal development.
Full Story
-
Towering structures that mark the point at which England is closest to continental Europe, the chalky white cliffs of Dover are built from the exoskeletons of single-celled photosynthetic alga known as Emiliania huxleyi. Even though the process by which the alga’s “armor” forms releases carbon dioxide, Ehux can trap as much as 20 percent of organic carbon, derived from CO2, in some marine ecosystems. Its versatility in either contributing to primary production of organic compounds from carbon dioxide or adding to CO2 emissions makes Ehux a critical player in the marine carbon cycle.
Full Story
-
When common household metals, such as copper, gold, or silver, are reduced in size to clusters that consist of a few dozen atoms, the materials develop completely unexpected properties. One example occurs for gold, which is inert in its bulk form, but which develops the ability to efficiently catalyze chemical reactions when made as atomic-scale clusters that are over 1,000 times smaller than a human hair and invisible to the eye. These properties result from quantum confinement effects, a term scientists use to describe how small clusters and particles evolve with size. Quantum effects are the principal driving force behind the field of nanotechnology, where engineers manipulate the colors, electrical conductivity, and chemistry of matter simply by controlling and constraining size at the atomic scale.
Researchers at DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory have been using quantum effects to design radical new catalysts capable of converting CO2 emissions into fuels, chemicals, and plastics. Their unique discovery involves shrinking gold into a system consisting of just 25 atoms, commonly referred to as Au25.
Full Story
