January 28, 2021
A field technician wrestling a large switchgrass plant during fall harvest (photo credit: Jason Bonnette).
A Washington State University researcher is part of a large team that announced the genome sequence for switchgrass, a major bioenergy crop.
Laura Bartley, an associate professor in WSU’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, worked for 15 years on the project, which could lead to larger, easier to process switchgrass plants.
“Making switchgrass cultivars more economically successful and competitive is a key to decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels,” Bartley said.
Gardeners and farmers around the country recognize that crop varieties grow best in certain regions. Most plant species have adapted to their local environments; for example, crop and ornamental seeds sold for the upper Midwest are often very different than those bred for Texas. Identifying and breeding varieties that have high productivity across a range of environments is becoming increas
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IMAGE: Visualization of the Last Journey simulation. Shown is the large-scale structure of the universe as a thin slice through the full simulation (lower left) and zoom-ins at different levels. The. view more
Credit: (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)
A massive simulation of the cosmos and a nod to the next generation of computing
A team of physicists and computer scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory performed one of the five largest cosmological simulations ever. Data from the simulation will inform sky maps to aid leading large-scale cosmological experiments.
The simulation, called the Last Journey, follows the distribution of mass across the universe over time in other words, how gravity causes a mysterious invisible substance called dark matter to clump together to form larger-scale structures called halos, within which galaxies form and evolve.
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IMAGE: Harvesting switchgrass in Texas under field rainout shelters for drought tolerance studies. This image complements a Nature paper announcing the release of a high-quality reference sequence of the complex. view more
Credit: David Lowry
Gardeners and farmers around the country recognize that crop varieties grow best in certain regions. Most plant species have adapted to their local environments; for example, crop and ornamental seeds sold for the upper Midwest are often very different than those bred for Texas. Identifying and breeding varieties that have high productivity across a range of environments is becoming increasingly important for food, fuel and other applications, and breeders aren t interested in waiting decades to develop new crops.
, observed that low-energy neutrinos interact with an argon nucleus through the weak nuclear force in a process called coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, or CEvNS, which is pronounced “sevens.” Like a ping-pong ball bombarding a softball, a neutrino that hits a nucleus transfers only a small amount of energy to the much larger nucleus, which recoils almost imperceptibly in response to the tiny assault.
Laying the groundwork for the discovery made with the argon nucleus was a 2017 studypublished in
Science in which COHERENT collaborators used the world’s smallest neutrino detector to provide the first evidence of the CEvNS process as neutrinos interacted with larger and heavier cesium and iodine nuclei. Their recoils were even tinier, like bowling balls reacting to ping-pong balls.
Written by AZoMJan 21 2021
In a breakthrough achievement that needs cutting-edge technology, perseverance, and a great deal of caution, researchers have effectively utilized powerful X-rays to investigate irradiated nuclear fuel.
3D image reconstruction of a sample of irradiated fuel, showing the three thresholded uranium phases co-existing with pores. Image Credit: Maria Okuniewski/Purdue University.
The imaging, headed by investigators from Purdue University and performed at the Argonne National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has disclosed a three-dimensional (3D) view of the inner structure of fuel, laying the basis for more improved designs and models for nuclear fuels.