Students from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, won the high school competition for the 2025 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Science Bowl庐 (NSB) today. In the middle school portion, students from Hopkins Middle School in Fremont, California took home first place.
Some plants produce oils with properties that are particularly good for biofuels, but not all of these plants are suitable for being grown on a large scale. To solve this dilemma, scientists modified the seeds of camelina and pennycress to produce the same type of oil made by the burning bush plant. The result is plants that produce nearly pure, high-quality oil with improved biofuel properties.
Researchers have developed a method to evaluate and optimize the design of multimode quantum computers. Superconducting quantum processors must be operated at extremely low temperatures, achieved using dilution refrigerators. In multimode computers, these refrigerators must be connected via optical links that shuttle fragile quantum information.
The short-lived hadron resonance lambda 1405 was predicted in the late 1950s and early 1960s, then confirmed experimentally later in the 1960s. This resonance has unusual properties that make it an important subject for nuclear physics studies. In this project, researchers used quantum chromodynamics and supercomputing facilities to determine that the lambda 1405 resonance represents two hadrons, not one.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the schedule for an upcoming event associated with the competition for the management and operating contract for the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF).
If qubits lose energy, they can lose coherence and thus their stored information. Determining the key sources of energy loss and adjusting how qubits are made can help researchers design new devices that can retain coherence and thus quantum information for longer amounts of time. In this study, researchers designed a novel way to characterize energy losses in a thin-film resonator. The work found that tantalum construction and annealed sapphire substrates improve device performance.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiated the competition for the management and operating (M&O) contract for the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF). TJNAF is a DOE national laboratory and DOE-sponsored Federally Funded Research and Development Center that has a mission focused on delivering breakthrough science and technology in nuclear physics.
Nuclear physicists recently used photons emitted by an accelerated gold nucleus to probe the inner structure of the protons and neutrons (nucleons) in another gold nucleus to measure the resulting density of gluons. The research found that nucleons bound in a nucleus have lower gluon density than free, unbound nucleons.
Scientists recognized by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow Award are pursuing answers to science鈥檚 biggest questions.
The sigma meson exists only for a fleeting moment before decaying into a pair of pions, making it hard to study. Nuclear physicists recently combined modern supercomputer calculations with more traditional theoretical tools to study the sigma meson, producing the first accurate theoretical view of the sigma as a system of quarks and gluons. This will aid in understanding the role the sigma meson plays in proton-neutron interactions and other phenomena.
Researchers have developed a new type of scintillator using a colloidal quantum shell structure. These scintillators detect ionizing radiation, such as X-rays and electrons, with new levels of speed, efficiency, and durability. The advance could benefit fields ranging from medicine to national security to particle physics.
Researchers demonstrated a new way to reveal the shapes of atomic nuclei. The method analyzes the flow and momentum of particles from high-energy collisions of nuclei. Those flow patterns are linked to the shape of nuclear matter created in these collisions, and the shape of the nuclear matter is in turn determined by the shapes of the colliding nuclei. The researchers compared observed flow patterns with flow models for different sizes and shapes of melted matter to reconstruct the highly deformed shapes of colliding uranium nuclei. STAR Collaboration
Researchers recently created two atoms of livermorium (element 116) using a new approach that offers a path to discovering even heavier elements. This brings scientists closer to creating a new element with 120 protons, which would push the boundaries of the periodic table to a new eighth row and move closer to the 鈥渋sland of stability.鈥�
Terbium-161 (Tb-161) is a radiolanthanide that shows promise for use in theranostic nuclear medicine. To obtain Tb-161 in a form amenable for medical use, the isotope must be separated from gadolinium, generally using DGA (N,N,N鈥�,N鈥�-tetra-n-octyldiglycolamide) and LN (Bis(2-ethylhexyl) phosphate) resins.
Many particle accelerators rely on superconducting radiofrequency components made of niobium. Nuclear physicists found that dissolving oxygen atoms a few micrometers into niobium greatly improves the performance of components made of the metal. Now, the researchers are perfecting a model using different processes for adding oxygen. The model helps to predict and optimize component performance.
The shape of nanoparticles depends on the choice of solvent and temperature during their growth, but the seed particles that form first are too small to measure accurately. Researchers have developed a new approach to successfully model seed particles with 100 to 200 atoms.
Promethium鈥檚 short half-life and lack of stable isotopes makes it difficult to study. In addition, promethium is difficult to separate from other lanthanide elements because of these elements鈥� similarity. In this study, scientists created a pure sample of the isotope promethium-147 and used X-ray absorption spectroscopy to examine the way it chemically bonds.
To make inorganic materials such as catalysts, industry mixes precursor powders and fires them in an oven. This often produces a mix of compositions and structures. In this study, researchers developed a new way to select precursors to increase yield and quickly validated their results using a robotic lab. The new recipe selection process obtained higher purity for 32 of the 35 target materials.
Through the weak nuclear force, one quark flavor can transmute into another. However, current data and theory indicate that the probabilities of quark flavor transmutation do not add up to 100%, as predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. To understand whether this is due to physics beyond the Standard Model or underestimated uncertainties, nuclear theorists laid out a new framework needed to extract the up-down quark flavor mixing with a precision of a few parts in ten thousand from certain nuclear beta decays.
Scientists have long held that electricity is carried by individual electrons with discrete charges moving in a metal, even in the case of electrons clumped into quasiparticles. However, 鈥渟trange metals鈥� fail to obey this paradigm. Researchers have observed a radical quantum blurring of electrons in strange metal into a featureless liquid, potentially pointing toward a new theory of electrical transport.
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