News By Location

For the first time, farmers have data that tracks at the county level on-site and off-site energy use and carbon dioxide emissions associated with growing crops in the United States.

The US Department of Energy has given its initial approval to begin plans for a second target station for the Spallation Neutron Source, expanding what is already the world's most powerful pulsed neutron scattering facility located at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

A project to speed and safeguard the shipping of thousands of radioisotopes in the US and afar hits the highway this year, but researchers expect the benefits to extend well beyond. Assistance to Navistar in developing a new lightweight truck bumper that can save gasoline without compromising safety is being performed by a materials process team headed by Gail Ludtka of ORNL. Structural defects introduced into carbon nanotubes could lead the way to carbon nanotube circuits, research led by Vincent Meunier of ORNL shows.

In 2009, ORNL will make nearly 470 million processor hours available on Jaguar, its Cray XT supercomputer. Thirty-eight separate projects will advance breakthrough research in critical areas such as climate studies, energy assurance, materials and other areas of fundamental science.

Stories include: "Data from NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory combines with computational power and tools provided by ORNL researchers;" "CHP technologies account for about nine percent of annual US power generation.;" "Californium-252 and actinium-225 generated half of the $5 million in sales for the DOE's National Isotope Data Center at ORNL in fiscal year 2008;" and "Math and sensors form a powerful tool for combating terrorism and the transport of drugs."

Three houses under construction in East Tennessee carry the story of "The Three Little Pigs" to an entirely new level and will become a model for the nation when it comes to determining energy efficiency.

A team led by Thomas Schulthess of the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory received the prestigious 2008 Association for Computing Machinery Gordon Bell Prize Thursday after attaining the fastest performance ever in a scientific supercomputing application.

The following are story tips Oak Ridge National Laboratory for November 2008.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the US ITER Project Office, which is housed at ORNL, have developed a new cast stainless steel that is 70 percent stronger than comparable steels and is being evaluated for use in the huge shield modules required by the ITER fusion device.