2009 Argonne News Releases and Features

News release archives: 2006 | 2007 | 2008

Argonne researcher wins 2009 U.S. Particle Accelerator School Prize

ARGONNE, Ill. (May 5, 2009) — U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory researcher John W. Lewellen was named a recipient of the U.S. Particle Accelerator School Prize in Accelerator Physics and Technology. More »

Two Argonne mathematicians recognized as SIAM Fellows

ARGONNE, Ill. (May 01, 2009) — Hans G. Kaper and Jorge Moré, both researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, have been named Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. More »

DOE to establish two Energy Frontier Research Centers at Argonne

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 28, 2009) – The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory will be home to two of 46 new multi-million-dollar Energy Frontier Research Centers 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. More »

Argonne's Monica Regalbuto recognized as one of 25 Outstanding Hispanic Women in Business

ARGONNE, Ill. (April, 23, 2009) — HispanicBusiness.com has honored Argonne National Laboratory's Monica Regalbuto as one 25 outstanding Hispanic women in America. More »

Argonne research makes every day Earth Day

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 22, 2009) — Argonne National Laboratory is involved in a wide array of research and development projects aimed at advancing alternative energy sources and other “green” technologies in an effort to reduce greenhouse gases and ameliorate climate change, as well as to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and promote energy independence for the United States. More »

Annual conference encourages young women to pursue technical careers

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 20, 2009) — Marie Curie discovered radioactivity and won two Nobel Prizes. Rosalind Franklin played an instrumental part in determining the structure of DNA. Though research science has for many years attracted the interest of mostly men, a recent event sought to encourage young women to build a strong tradition of female scientists and engineers. More »

Argonne's Leadership Computing Facility working to get more science per watt

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 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 are continually looking for ways to further reduce the power needed to operate the machine. More »

Leading-edge data analytics and visualization enable breakthrough science on Argonne's Blue Gene/P

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 10, 2009) — Most science research programs that run on high-performance computers like the IBM Blue Gene/P Intrepid at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) generate enormous quantities of data that represent the results of their calculations. But scientists can also use the ALCF to visualize, explore and communicate their findings as highly accurate simulations and often beautiful images. More »

Kentucky, Argonne partner to help build domestic battery industry

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 8, 2009) – The Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville are partnering with Argonne National Laboratory to establish a national Battery Manufacturing R&D Center to help develop and deploy a domestic supply of advanced battery technologies for vehicle applications that will aid in securing U.S. energy independence, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help in strengthening the economy. More »

New high-energy cathode material can significantly increase safety, life of lithium batteries

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 7, 2009) – A new high-energy cathode material that can greatly increase the safety and extend the life-span of future lithium batteries has been developed through the close international collaboration of researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Hanyang University in South Korea. More »

DOE awards Argonne $99 million to clean up past, pave way for future research, construction activities

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 3, 2009) – The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory will receive $99 million in additional funding as part of President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The funds will be used to clean up several of Argonne's former nuclear research facilities and pave the way for future construction and research activities at the lab. More »

Nimbus and cloud computing meet STAR production demands

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 2, 2009) — The advantages of cloud computing were dramatically illustrated last week by researchers working on the STAR nuclear physics experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Working with technology developed by the Nimbus team at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, the STAR researchers were able to dynamically provision virtual clusters on commercial cloud computers and run the additional computations just in time. More »

Research could lead to more comprehensive flu vaccines

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 27, 2009) — New findings from research performed on the influenza virus using X-rays generated by the Advanced Photon Source at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory may help pave the way for the development of a new, more effective vaccine that could combat a wide range of strains of the common and frequently deadly illness. More »

Argonne cloud computing helps scientists run high energy physics experiments using AliEn grid services

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 24, 2009) — A novel system is enabling high energy physicists at CERN in Switzerland to make production runs that integrate their existing pool of distributed computers with dynamic resources in "science clouds." The work was presented at the 17th annual conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics, held in Prague, Czech Republic, March 21-27. More »

New RFID technology tracks and monitors nuclear materials

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. More »

Argonne to receive $13 million for infrastructure upgrades

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 23, 2009) – The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory announced today that it will receive $13.1 million in funds from President Obama's American Reinvestment and Recovery Act for improvements to its electrical infrastructure that will permit an eventual upgrade of the laboratory's central campus. More »

New combustion strategy accelerates hydrogen-engine development

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. More »

Argonne scientists discover new platinum catalysts for the dehydrogenation of propane

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 13, 2009) — The process to turn propane into industrially necessary propylene has been expensive and environmentally unfriendly. That was until scientists at U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory devised a greener way to take this important step in chemical catalysis. More »

Argonne scientists reveal interaction between supersonic fuel spray and its shock wave

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 12, 2009) — Shock waves are a well tested phenomenon on a large scale, but scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and their collaborators from Wayne State University and Cornell University have made a breakthrough that reveals the interaction between shock waves created by high-pressure supersonic fuel jets. More »

Eric Isaacs named director of Argonne National Laboratory

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. More »

Early career nuclear engineers invited to 10-day summer school

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 10, 2009) – The Idaho National Laboratory is hosting a 10-day school this summer to provide early-career nuclear engineers with advanced studies in integrated modeling, experimentation and validation to prepare them for some of the key challenges and demands facing the nuclear energy renaissance. More »

Congressional testimony on the role of science and technology in meeting America 's energy, environmental and economic challenges

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 5, 2009) — George Crabtree, Argonne Senior Scientist, Associate Division Director and Distinguished Fellow, Materials Science Division, testified about the role of science and technology in meeting America's energy, environmental and economic challenges before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. More »

X-ray nanoprobe pushes observation to ever smaller frontiers

ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 27, 2009) — The unparalleled access to state-of-the-art tools and high-intensity X-rays gives researchers at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source the capability to see structural details of cells and materials at smaller scales than ever before. More »

Argonne scientists pinpoint mechanism to increase magnetic response of ferromagnetic semiconductor under high pressure

ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 25, 2009) — When squeezed, electrons increase their ability to move around. In compounds such as semiconductors and electrical insulators, such squeezing can dramatically change the electrical and magnetic properties. More »

Argonne named a 'Best Place' to work for postdocs

ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 23, 2009) — The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory was recently ranked as the 13th best place for postdocs to work by The Scientist, a life sciences magazine. The magazine's seventh annual Best Places to Work for Postdocs survey recognizes this year's award winners as trailblazers in bettering postdocs' professional experience among hundreds of labs and institutions. More »

Neural modeling helps expose epilepsy's triggers

ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 13, 2009) — A brain scan of an epileptic seizure reveals fierce electrical storms that pop up seemingly at random, proliferate over large areas of the brain and subside almost as quickly as they arose. Argonne researchers are using high-performance computers to create life-like models of small areas in the brain that cast new light on why seizures occur and propagate. More »

Wilmington High School wins 14th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest

ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 13, 2009) — A team from Wilmington High School, Wilmington, Ill., today won Argonne National Laboratory's 14th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest held at the Chicago Children's Museum on Navy Pier. By winning Argonne's contest, Wilmington advances to the National High School Rube Goldberg Machine Championship to be held Saturday, March 28, at Purdue University. More »

Local high school students to shed some light on the 14th annual Rube Goldberg Contest

ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 9, 2009) — How many local high school students does it take to change a light bulb? Find out at the 14th annual Rube Goldberg contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, as they replace an incandescent light bulb with a more energy-efficient design in at least 20 steps. More »

New control of nanoscale 'magnetic tornadoes' holds promise for data storage

ARGONNE, Ill. (Jan. 30, 2009) — At the human scale, the tightly wrapped spinning columns of air in a tornado contain terrifying destructive power that ravages communities. At the nanoscale, however, closely coiled magnetic vortices hold the promise of a new generation of computers. More »

Photon science opens new frontiers in materials design, healthcare, imaging and basic science

ARGONNE, Ill. (Jan. 16, 2009) — Seen from the air, the storage ring of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) makes up the largest and most distinctive feature of the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. The symbolism of its geographic prominence underscores the importance of the APS and the research permitted by the hard X-rays that it produces. More »

Argonne scientists prove unconventional superconductivity in new iron arsenide compounds

ARGONNE, Ill. (Jan. 9, 2009) — Scientists at U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory used inelastic neutron scattering to show that superconductivity in a new family of iron arsenide superconductors cannot be explained by conventional theories. More »

Argonne National Laboratory hosts 7th annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

ARGONNE, Ill. (Jan. 6, 2009) — Girls in sixth through eighth grade are invited to learn about career opportunities in science and engineering during the annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. More »

Argonne scientist Orlando Auciello named AAAS fellow for contributions in materials science

ARGONNE, Ill. (Jan. 5, 2009) — Orlando Auciello of the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory has been awarded the distinction of Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. More »

Argonne scientists reach milestone in accelerator upgrade project

ARGONNE, Ill. (Jan. 2, 2009) — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have successfully stopped and then reaccelerated a stable ion through a newly constructed charge-breeder, bringing the Californium Rare Isotope Breeder Upgrade project closer to completion. More »