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Display of a multijet event from a CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. (CERN.)

Cosmic questions

March 18th, 2013 Updated: March 18th, 2013

MIT’s Dragos Velicanu is helping sort through data from the Large Hadron Collider for clues to the mysteries surrounding the strong force and the early universe.

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Seeking new angles

March 18th, 2013 Updated: March 18th, 2013

Dragos Velicanu likes to look at just about everything from a fresh perspective. “Outside work, I like to travel, go camping, hiking, skiing – basically see the world from all elevations, seasons and angles,” says the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship recipient at MIT. What’s more, he’s fortunate that his advisor is Gunther [...]

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A sequence of false color images generated from a numerical simulation show a MagLIF liner as it is heated by a laser in preparation for an implosion.

Sun on Earth

January 24th, 2013 Updated: January 24th, 2013

Simulations at Sandia National Laboratories reveal that using magnetism to heat and insulate fusion fuel could recreate solar conditions in the lab.

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Putting Big Squeeze Fusion to the Test

January 22nd, 2013 Updated: January 22nd, 2013

A new Sandia National Laboratories-based approach to fusion that’s shown promise in computational simulations has passed its first bricks-and-mortar experimental test. MagLIF (Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion) envisions using Sandia’s Z machine as a massive magnetic vise to implode, and thus heat, a tiny cylinder full of deuterium to Sun-like temperatures, igniting a fusion reaction. “I [...]

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Filling in the blanks

November 27th, 2012 Updated: November 27th, 2012

To prevent important information from being missed, a Berkeley Lab team is improving how supercomputers divvy up the ponderous tasks surrounding large simulations’ analytics and visualization.

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Going deep

November 27th, 2012 Updated: November 27th, 2012

The discovery of that our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate garnered a 2011 Nobel Prize for Saul Perlmutter of the Supernova Cosmology Project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, but the finding also opened up a plethora of new questions about what is happening in the far reaches of deep space. There, researchers glimpse [...]

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The NDM-1 enzyme's structure revealed a large cavity (dark gray) capable of binding a variety of known antibiotics (shown in different colors). Once bound, the enzyme can cut the carbapenem ring, destroying the compound's antibiotic activity. Modeling the interactions computationally can allow researchers to design compounds that will readily adhere to NDM-1 and prevent it from binding with antibiotics. (Argonne National Laboratory.)

Overcoming resistance

October 18th, 2012 Updated: October 18th, 2012

To find a path around antibiotic resistance, a team working with the Intrepid supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory is simulating molecular binding interactions to rapidly vet new infection-fighting candidates.

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A timely death

October 18th, 2012 Updated: October 18th, 2012

Speed kills, as the slogan says, and in computers what it kills could be disease. Argonne National Laboratory researcher Andrew Binkowski’s calculations of protein structure help find ligands – smaller molecules – that attach to them, to deliver drugs that stop dangerous infections. But without supercomputers it could take months to model a single ligand, [...]

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A spontaneous collaboration

September 6th, 2012 Updated: September 6th, 2012

In 2007, when Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers calculated that adding boron would bend carbon nanotubes, they did little with the information. Boron was one of several elements the computational scientists plugged into their model as they investigated ways to induce useful changes in nanotube structures. There were experiments to compare with the results [...]

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nanosponge boomerang

Kinky nanotubes

September 6th, 2012 Updated: September 6th, 2012

With the help of Oak Ridge computations, scientists are probing the properties of macroscale sponges made of nanoscale carbon-boron tubes. The material could soak up oil spills, help store energy or meet other needs.

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A visualization of a Vlasov-Poisson simulation for a bump-on-tail instability problem, where a non-equilibrium distribution of electrons drives an electrostatic wave. The image shows particle density as a function of space and velocity. (Jeffrey Hittinger, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.)

A passion for pressure

August 15th, 2012 Updated: August 15th, 2012

Plasmas are the purview of Livermore scientist and Computational Science Graduate Fellowship alumnus Jeffrey Hittinger. He works both sides of the fusion street – inertial confinement and magnetic confinement – while simulating aspects of these tremendously hot, fast-moving particle clouds.

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A still from an animation of methane, the blue and silver molecules, escaping from a methane hydrate, the red and silver molecules water molecules that form a cage around methane molecules. (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.)

Twice-stuffed permafrost

July 31st, 2012 Updated: July 31st, 2012

A Pacific Northwest National Laboratory computation suggests that the water-gas compounds found in ocean permafrost can provide energy and store it, too – and then trap carbon dioxide.

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Time evolution of the primary convective activity (white) and lightning (red dots) for Hurricane Rita. (Image: Jon Reisner, Los Alamos National Laboratory.)

Enlightening predictions

June 6th, 2012 Updated: June 7th, 2012

Computer simulations of hurricane lightning could be the key to predicting and avoiding the storms’ real-world punch.

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University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers are using X-ray scans and computational models to learn the secrets of mantis shrimp, crustaceans who fire their appendages with amazing speed and force to ward off enemies and capture prey. On the left is a freeze frame from a high-speed video of an experiment in which a materials-testing machine compresses a mantis shrimp appendage to mimic the way the crustacean would prepare to strike. On the right is a finite element computer model of the appendage under similar loading conditions. Blue, or cold, regions represent areas with low calculated strain energy density. Red, or hot, regions have high calculated strain energy density. The comparisons show the model’s predicted behavior resembles the appendage’s physical behavior. (Images: Michael Rosario, University of Massachusetts Amherst. A video, "An inside look at the mantis shrimp's punching mechanism," is available in the Related Links box at right.)

Prime-time punch

March 26th, 2012 Updated: February 22nd, 2013

The mantis shrimp packs one of the strongest punches on Earth. Computational Science Graduate Fellow Michael Rosario is investigating the physics, design and material properties behind the crustacean’s prey-crunching wallop. His research has landed him on the National Geographic Wild channel.

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Multi-scale model of arterial blood flow.

Inside the skull

February 14th, 2012 Updated: February 14th, 2012

Modeling the elements of blood flow in the brain could help neurosurgeons to predict when and where an aneurysm might rupture – and when to operate.

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(a) Traditional approaches to address volume-change in battery materials use acetylene black as the conductive additive and PVDF polymer as the mechanical binder. (b) Conductive polymer with dual functionality, as a conductor and binder, could keep both the electric and mechanical integrity of the electrode during the battery cycles. (c) PF-type conductive polymers' molecular structure, with two key function groups in PFFOMB (carbonyl and methylbenzoic ester) tailor the conduction band and improve the mechanical binding force. (Click to enlarge schematic, courtesy of Lin-Wang Wang, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)

Power boost

January 19th, 2012 Updated: January 19th, 2012

Berkeley scientists have combined computational modeling and advanced materials synthesis to devise a low-cost anode that bolsters the feasibility of long-life lithium-ion batteries.

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Seeing beyond 3-D

December 28th, 2011 Updated: January 20th, 2012

High-dimensional visualization techniques at Stony Brook and Brookhaven are helping reveal the interactions that drive climate and other complexities.

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Mining for aerosols and other particles

December 28th, 2011 Updated: December 28th, 2011

Klaus Mueller’s latest n-dimensional visualization work capitalizes on a decade-long collaboration with Department of Energy atmospheric chemist Alla Zelenyuk, work aimed at seeing the proverbial forest amidst trees of data. At DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Zelenyuk specializes in using single-particle mass spectrometry to analyze the real-time transformations of nanoparticles. This includes atmospheric particles, such [...]

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A visualization of a lean hydrogen flame simulation shows three computed fields simultaneously. A bowl-shaped turbulent flame floats over the exit flow from a pipe that is swirling as it moves upward. The gray filaments at the bottom depict regions of high turbulence, the transparent red surface highlights the mixing region between the fuel from the pipe and the air outside, and the purple-to-red zone shows the concentration of nitrogen-based emissions from the flame.

Helping hydrogen along

October 5th, 2011 Updated: November 30th, 2011

Researchers have pursued clean hydrogen-based fuels for years. A Berkeley Lab team hopes to spur that quest with help from one of the world’s most powerful computers.

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The tiny white yeast colonies in the right panel interspersed with larger normal colonies are cells that have had a synthetic chromosome inserted and their DNA shuffled by the lab-induced SCRaMbLE system, which introduces changes that slow cell growth. By comparison, all colonies on the left are grown from the standard lab yeast strain and appear uniform. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Designer yeast

September 14th, 2011 Updated: November 30th, 2011

A Johns Hopkins University team has built a yeast chromosome from scratch, they report today in the journal Nature. Sarah Richardson used what she learned as a Computational Science Graduate Fellow to help design and monitor the chromosome’s construction.

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Boosting Berkeley Lab’s bacteria research

September 14th, 2011 Updated: November 30th, 2011

For one summer, Sarah Richardson postponed her work computerizing yeast genome research and probed bacteria instead. As part of her Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, Richardson served a 2009 practicum under Adam Arkin, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Physical Biosciences Division. She made important contributions to Arkin’s research into an RNA-based transcription [...]

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A frame from an animation showing the possible route into the Atlantic Ocean of oil and dispersant from the spot of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A long view of Gulf oil spill

April 19th, 2011 Updated: November 30th, 2011

While others predicted when oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico might reach beaches, ocean modelers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research asked when gushing oil might exit the Gulf, where it would go and how diluted it’d be, up to a year later.

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Tracing CFCs and greenhouse gases

April 19th, 2011 Updated: November 30th, 2011

National Center for Atmospheric Research oceanographer Synte Peacock studies “the distribution of various tracers – something that tags a water mass and is carried around by ocean currents – to learn more about ocean circulation in the past and present.” These tracers include carbon and radiocarbon isotopes, paleotracers (fossils from the sea, in sediments and [...]

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An optimized sequence of parameter values in nuclear simulations. (Image courtesy of Stefan Wild.)

Pounding out atomic nuclei

March 7th, 2011 Updated: November 30th, 2011

Thousands of tiny systems called atomic nuclei – specific combinations of protons and neutrons – prove extremely difficult to study but have big implications for nuclear stockpile stewardship. To describe all of the nuclei and the reactions between them, a nationwide collaboration is devising powerful algorithms that run on high-performance computers.

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Cranking up the speed of DFT

March 7th, 2011 Updated: March 16th, 2011

Density functional theory (DFT) can be used to determine densities of protons and neutrons making up a nucleus. “If we can determine those densities precisely,” says Witold Nazarewicz, professor of physics at the University of Tennessee, “we can determine the binding energy – the energy stored in the nucleus.” The energy density functional (EDF) in [...]

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