Argonne

Federally-funded project part of long-range lab modernization plan

ARGONNE, IL (November 17, 2009) – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is providing $8 million to Argonne National Laboratory for detailed design work for a new, world-class energy research facility. This is the first step in beginning work on what is expected to be a $95 million construction project.

The Energy Sciences Building (ESB) will provide an environment that will accelerate the pace of discovery by bringing together interdisciplinary teams of researchers in a space that can be adjusted to accommodate an evolving energy-related science agenda. Construction is scheduled to begin during fiscal year 2011.    » read more »

Heads for disposal facility in New Mexico

ARGONNE, Ill. (Nov. 16, 2009) – The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has been removing transuranic (TRU) waste from its site for three years, but the Oct. 15 shipment of radioactive material to a disposal facility near Carlsbad, New Mexico marked the first time the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) picked up the tab.

The cleanup work is paid for by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The influx of ARRA funds will allow the laboratory to ship out more than four times as much TRU waste (including both remote- and contact-handled) in the next 24 months as it has since the project was conceived three years ago.    » read more »

November 12, 2009 -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have refined a technique to manufacture solar cells by creating tubes of semiconducting material and then "growing" polymers directly inside them. The method has the potential to be significantly cheaper than the process used to make today’s commercial solar cells.

Funding for this research was provided by the Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences and by the NSF-Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Chicago.    » read more »

Lab’s modeling and simulation supports energy policy and planning

ARGONNE, Ill. (Oct. 14, 2009) — The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will play a key role in the commonwealth of Kentucky’s comprehensive energy plan designed to develop clean, reliable, affordable energy sources that will improve energy security, reduce carbon emissions and provide economic prosperity.    » read more »

Scientists will examine cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient computing paradigm to accelerate discoveries in biology, climate change and physics.

October 14, 2009 -- ARGONNE, IL, and BERKELEY, CA –- Cloud computing is gaining traction in the commercial world, but can such an approach also meet the computing and data storage demands of the nation’s scientific community?

A new program funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will examine cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient computing paradigm for scientists to accelerate discoveries in a variety of disciplines, including analysis of scientific data sets in biology, climate change and physics.    » read more »

Quantum criticality in chromium is a stand-in for more complex systems

ARGONNE, Ill. (June 18, 2009) — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago have reached a milestone in the study of emergent magnetism.

Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.    » read more »

BASF proposes construction of lithium-ion battery material production plant in Elyria, Ohio

ARGONNE, Ill., and FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (June 3, 2009) – The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and BASF, the world's largest chemical company, have signed a world-wide licensing agreement to mass produce and market Argonne's patented composite cathode materials to manufacturers of advanced lithium-ion batteries.

The patented cathode materials licensed to BASF are part of a large and diverse suite of lithium-ion battery inventions and patents developed at Argonne with funding from DOE's Vehicle Technologies Program.    » read more »

ARGONNE, Ill. (June 2, 2009) – As the summer travel season begins, many vacation and business travelers will beat jet lag with the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

A study published in 2002 in the medical journal Military Medicine found that travelers who use the Argonne Anti-Jet-Lag Diet are seven times less likely to experience jet lag when traveling west and 16 times less likely when traveling east. A copy of the study is online at AntiJetLagDiet.com.    » read more »

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 28, 2009) – The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will be home to two of 46 new multi-million-dollar Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) announced today by the White House in conjunction with a speech by President Barack Obama at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. The EFRCs, which will pursue advanced scientific research on energy, are being established by DOE's Office of Science at universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations and private firms across the nation.

Argonne's EFRCs will focus on catalysts for efficient energy conversion and on electrical-storage technologies for a variety of applications. DOE awarded each center $19 million over five years.    » read more »

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 14, 2009) — Cooling a supercomputer consumes more electricity than is required to run the machine, even machines as powerful as the IBM Blue Gene/P—called Intrepid—at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. Though Intrepid is one of the fastest and most energy-efficient computers in the world, researchers at Argonne's Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) are continually looking for ways to further reduce the power needed to operate the machine.

Argonne operates the ALCF for the DOE Office of Science as part of the larger DOE Leadership Computing Facility strategy. DOE leads the world in providing the most capable civilian supercomputers for science.    » read more »

Advancement has applications in many areas involving remote sensing

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 24, 2009) — Radio frequency identification (RFID) devices have been widely used for tracking for years; recently, scientists from U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed a unique tracking technology that also monitors the environmental and physical conditions of containers of nuclear materials in storage and transportation.    » read more »

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 13, 2009) — Car manufacturers aspire to create hydrogen-powered vehicles that could one day allow energy-efficient, cost-effective travel that emits no greenhouse gases or other pollutants. To further that effort, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have devised new combustion strategies for hydrogen engines.

Researchers in Argonne's Center for Transportation Research have built the Modular Automotive Technology Testbed (MATT), an Erector Set-like platform for automotive powertrains in which engineers can swap in and out different engines, transmissions and other core powertrain components. By using MATT, Argonne researchers gain the ability to test a 4-cylinder hydrogen engine on the standard drive cycles.    » read more »

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 11, 2009) – Eric D. Isaacs, a prominent University of Chicago physicist and senior administrator at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, has been selected to become the next director of Argonne. The appointment will be effective May 1, 2009.

University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer made the announcement in his capacity as Chairman of the Board of Directors of UChicago Argonne, LLC, which operates Argonne for the Department of Energy. The university has managed Argonne for the United States government since 1946. Energy Secretary Steven Chu met yesterday with Isaacs and Zimmer in his office in Washington, D.C., and supported Isaacs' candidacy.    » read more »

March 09, 2009 -- WASHINGTON, DC – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced that the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development (IEED), in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), has launched a website to create a web-based clearinghouse of environmental information that will support American Indian and Alaska Native traditional and renewable energy resource development.    » read more »

ARGONNE, Ill. -- June 9, 2008 -- The Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology (IGSB), a joint venture of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, has acquired two new instruments that provide an enhanced ability to sequence genomes more quickly and broadly.

Argonne's genomics research is primarily funded DOE's Office of Science, which supports research that provides a fundamental scientific understanding of plants and microbes necessary to develop strategies for sequestering carbon gases, producing biofuels and cleaning up waste.    » read more »