Each year, scientists with the Office of Science, at our national laboratories, and supported by the Office of Science at the nation’s colleges and universities, publish thousands of research findings in the scientific literature. About 200 of these are selected annually by their respective program areas in the Office of Science as publication highlights of special note.
For the archive of past publication highlights, click here.
March 22, 2024
Entanglement Entropies of Nuclear Systems Grow as the Volume of those Systems
Quantum entanglement changes in atomic nuclei in ways that differ from other systems.
March 20, 2024
Yeast Uses Plastic Waste Oils to Make High-Value Chemicals
Yarrowia lipolytica reallocates its production of protein toward energy and lipid metabolism to grow on hydrocarbons and produce high-value chemicals.
March 18, 2024
Teasing Strange Matter from Ordinary
New insights reveal details of how strange matter forms.
March 15, 2024
Searching for the Decay of Nature’s Rarest Isotope: Tantalum-180m
The first results from the MAJORANA experiment dramatically improve current limits on this rare isotope’s decay.
March 13, 2024
Measuring the Thickness of the Neutron Skin with Ultra-Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
Researchers determined the neutron skin of lead-208 from experimental data collected in lead-lead collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
March 11, 2024
Inverting Fusion Plasmas Improves Performance
Plasmas with negative triangularity show reduced gradients that develop into instabilities, including under conditions relevant to fusion power plants.
March 8, 2024
Statisticians and Physicists Team Up to Bring a Machine Learning Approach to Mining of Nuclear Data
Bayesian statistical methods help improve the predictability of complex computational models in experimentally unknown research.
March 6, 2024
In Peatland Soil, a Warmer Climate and Elevated Carbon Dioxide Rapidly Alter Soil Organic Matter
Experiments find increased temperatures and carbon dioxide rapidly altered peatland carbon stocks, highlighting peatlands’ vulnerability to climate change.
March 4, 2024
The “Nested Doll” Nucleus Nitrogen-9 Stretches the Definition of a Nucleus to the Limit
Nitrogen-9 has only two neutrons to its seven protons and decays to an alpha particle by emitting five of its protons in stages.
March 1, 2024
Filling in the Cracks: Scientists Improve Predictions for the Dissolution of Minerals in Rock Fractures
A new correction factor for predicting dissolution rates uses measurable geological properties in fractured media.