Subscribe to APS Recent Publications 
Science Highlights Archives:
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010
February 8, 2013
Research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source and Center for Nanoscale Materials that adds to our understanding of the way light interacts with multiferroics represents an important step toward the development of future electronic devices.
January 22, 2013
Thanks to the efforts of a research team from Eli Lilly and Company, with the help of the Lilly Research Laboratories Collaborative Access Team x-ray beamline at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source, the structure of an important methylation enzyme is now known. The results of this research can be utilized to provide new direction and focus in the race to create drugs to combat disease, especially cancer.
January 21, 2013
Exactly how hot is the center of the Earth? Apparently hotter than we had thought, according to new investigations by researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source.
January 7, 2013
Utilizing high-brightness Advanced Photon Source x-rays, researchers with the Illinois Institute of Technology viewed the actions of an antibody targeted toward the proteoglycan biglycan — one of a group of polysaccharide-protein conjugates present in connective tissue and cartilage — that may help illustrate the underlying pathology of rheumatoid arthritis.
December 10, 2012
Unraveling the complexities of spin-orbital coupling could someday lead to new high-temperature superconductors and workable quantum computers via an elusive phase of matter called a “quantum spin liquid.” Two groups of researchers utilizing x-ray beamlines at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon are delving into the new physics required to develop just such a material.
November 30, 2012
The key to developing a better and more efficient battery technology may lie in designing and building batteries not from the top down, but from the bottom up — beginning at the nanoscale. A team of researchers has taken such an approach by developing titanium dioxide (TiO2) electrodes that can actually improve their own electrochemical performance as they are used.
November 20, 2012
The human enterovirus 71 (or EV71) can, in infants and young children, cause polio-like paralysis and fatal encephalitis. The virus is now considered an emerging threat to public health. By unveiling the crystal structure of EV71, researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source have taken the essential first step in finding ways to prevent the virus from creating fatal disease, providing strong impetus for therapeutics and drug design to prevent and cure EV71 infection.
November 19, 2012
The nucleic acid RNA is an essential part of the critical process by which the cells in our bodies manufacture proteins. Utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source, researchers investigated the unique folding behavior of ribozyme, which is an RNA that acts as a catalyst. Their work provides a path for predicting the structures of newly discovered noncoding RNAs, and will ultimately enhance understanding of how noncoding RNAs take on important biological functions.
November 15, 2012
In many physical processes, substances undergo phase transitions, where they are transformed from one state (solid, liquid, or gas) to another. Utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source, researchers investigated interactions between engineered multivalent substances. Understanding this research will be important in guiding future studies to further evaluate the role of phase transitions in biological systems.
November 12, 2012
Research at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source provides new insights about a material that might form the basis for an alternative to conventional silicon-based semiconductor technology.
November 9, 2012
Research at the Argonne Advanced Photon Source has shown that by using complex oxides with correlated electrons confined to quantum well geometry, a new dimension can be added to the mix, moving us closer to everyday electronics that become smaller and faster than they are today.
October 9, 2012
A method for neutralizing influenza B viruses has been discovered by researchers working at the Argonne Advanced Photon Source and two other U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science synchrotron light sources. Their breakthrough results pave the way for development of a universal vaccine for all influenza A and B viruses.
October 10, 2012
The reliability and longevity of electronics is critical to our world that is dependent upon Internet and telecommunications technology. Research at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon is bringing new information about thermal fatigue in environmentally friendly, lead-free solder joints. These insights bring scientists a step closer to developing useful models for making reliability predictions about solder-joint failure in this important new material.
September 24, 2012
Technologies such as microelectronics and lithography require nanoscale polymer films that sit on other materials. An understanding of the interplay between the dynamics of thin film and underlying substrate is crucial in determining the appropriate materials to be utilized for new and improved applications. Experiments at the Argonne Advanced Photon Source provide important new insights about thin polymer films on various substrates.
September 11, 2012
Drug resistance has become an increasing problem in the treatment of tuberculosis, posing a significant challenge for combating a disease that has been a leading cause of death worldwide for more than 5,000 years. Utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source, researchers unlocked the secrets of a protein that plays an important role in tuberculosis’s multidrug resistance, helping guide future research toward new ways of controlling this disease.
September 7, 2012
Metals such as copper, zinc, and iron are important nutrients and are technologically useful. More than one-third of all proteins are thought to bind metals, so knowing which metals are bound and how that binding changes in response to the environment could have big implications. Researchers working at the Argonne Advanced Photon Source developed a new experimental approach that helps researchers identify which proteins bind metals and what roles they play in life.
August 27, 2012
Researchers working at U.S. Department of Energy facilities at Argonne National Laboratory including the Advanced Photon Source, have synthesized and characterized monodisperse gold-core silver-shell nanoparticles using a bio-template that has potential as a water soluble catalyst for creating fuel from biomass such as dead trees, branches and tree stumps, yard clippings, wood chips, and even municipal solid waste.
August 21, 2012
Researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Nanjing University have demonstrated the principles of a novel and advanced design of x-ray Fabry-Perot resonators, which are shown illustrated to have extremely high finesse, sharp tails, and ultrahigh contrast and can achieve unprecedented high resolution and (temporal) coherence, for use with hard x-rays at large incidence angles.
August 14, 2012
Hydrogen is a clean fuel, but how can we generate hydrogen in large quantities and in a “green” fashion? One way is biological photosynthesis, which includes an efficient reaction step that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen with the help of certain catalysts. Working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, a team of Argonne scientists has determined the structure of one such catalyst, a complex cobalt oxide.
August 9, 2012
New techniques for imaging with unprecedented detail and resolution the complex, tree-like branching nature of neuronal networks have been developed by researchers utilizing by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source, opening the door to three-dimensional tomographic reconstructions, a vital tool for studying the brain and nervous system.
August 2, 2012
Nature makes science fun by never failing to surprise. The bond-valence model has for years been used to relate the number of nearest neighbors of the central atom of a molecule or crystal and the interatomic distances between the atoms to the valence state. Now research at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory shows that gaining valence information requires a lot more work when it comes to mixed-valence systems.
July 6, 2012
The workings of a molecular switch that activates plant hormones, tags them for storage, or marks them for destruction have been revealed by an international collaboration of researchers carrying out experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
June 25, 2012
The field of organofluorine chemistry has been shaken up by the findings of a research team whose experiments at two U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science facilities including the Advanced Photon Source are challenging some long-held theoretical assumptions.
June 18, 2012
Proteins that are found in nature, but do not normally bind the influenza virus, can be engineered to act as broad-spectrum antiviral agents against a variety of flu virus strains, including the H1N1 pandemic influenza, according to research at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
June 14, 2012
In biological systems, membranes are as important as water. They form the barrier between our cells, where we perform the chemical reactions of life, and the outside environment. New research at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory promises to change the way we think about lipid-protein interactions and to open new avenues for the study of important membrane-driven processes.
May 18, 2012
What makes bird feathers so colorful? Research at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source reveals the complex three-dimensional nanostructures responsible for non-iridescent colors in bird feathers. These nanostructures could serve as a source of new photonic devices such as remote controls, optical data recorders, and much more.
May 16, 2012
Multiferroics have attracted increased interest due to their potential use in technologies such as improved electronic memory chips and highly sensitive magnetic field sensors. Researchers utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne have unmasked the exact source of the purported ferroelectric behavior in a multiferroic material of great technological interest, overturning the conventional wisdom.
May 8, 2012
A team of physicists employed high-energy x-rays from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory to penetrate the everyday mystery of a splash, revealing previously hidden structures and dynamics.
April 11, 2012
Researchers utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory used high-resolution x-ray scattering to demonstrate how pressure can be used to dial-in different magnetic states in a two-dimensional magnetic material, offering new insights into a possible path to undiscovered exotic materials with a range of controllable properties.
February 24, 2012
Researchers working at two synchrotron light sources, including the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated unexpected superconductivity in a type of compounds called iron selenium chalcogenides.
February 10, 2012
A better understanding of gene function in model plant and animal systems could be used to develop useful traits in livestock and crop plants, and might someday lead to developments in stem cell research and new treatments for human genetic disorders. Those are the projected outcomes of experiments carried out at two U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science synchrotron x-ray facilities, including the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
January 25, 2012
Understanding the high-pressure behavior of the transition-metal monoxide FeO is important for both solid-state physics and Earth science. Despite considerable study over the past 30 years, the origin of the well-known and important ferroic transition has been not well understood. Now the first imaging of this transition has been reported by researchers utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
January 6, 2012
The development of polymer nanostructures and nanoscale devices for a wide variety of applications could emerge from new information about the interplay between nanoscale interfaces in polymeric materials, thanks to research carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
January 3, 2012
The highest-pressure vibrational spectrum of iron has been obtained by researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, providing important new clues to the behavior of iron in the Earth’s core.
December 15, 2011
A discovery made with the help of x-rays from the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory provides researchers with a greater understanding of the protein Tankyrase, which is linked to the bone development disorder cherubism and involved in a myriad of cellular processes, and may also lead to the development of new designer drugs to treat cancer.
November 22, 2011
Two recent developments at the Advanced Photon Source explore paths to routine use of sub-meV x-rays to probe low-energy excitations in matter. The first is a remarkable experimental demonstration of an x-ray optical scheme that produces x-ray beams with sub-meV linewidths (FWHM) and elimination of the normal Lorentzian tails. The second is a proposal for an alternate optical scheme that may achieve comparable x-ray bandwidths with less demanding optics.
November 17, 2011
Investigating how atoms move and rearrange themselves is fundamental to our understanding of the behavior of materials, in particular efforts aimed at engineering materials with enhanced functionality. Researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have obtained new information about the phenomenon known as microstructural “avalanches” that is revealing important spatial characteristics.
November 11, 2011
Whether creating a catalyst for petroleum-free fuel or designing better drug therapies, scientists must accurately characterize and ions' actions in water in order to control it. A new study by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Pacific Northwest and Argonne national laboratories, aided by the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, answers a fundamental question about the behavior of large, negatively charged ions with multiple atoms, called polyoxyanions.
October 27, 2011
Although materials scientists have theorized for years that a form of super-dense aluminum exists under the extreme pressures found inside a planet’s core, no one had ever actually seen it. Until now, that is. Using a new table-top laser device in Japan and x-rays from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, an international team of researchers has found a novel form of aluminum.
October 26, 2011
An amorphous diamond—one that lacks the crystalline structure that makes diamonds cleavable, but is every bit as hard—has been created by a team of researchers using a High Pressure Collaborative Access Team x-ray beamline at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source. The uniform super-hardness of an amorphous diamond, and its light weight, could open up whole new areas of application.
October 26, 2011
A group of researchers has devised a unique experiment to mimic the natural process of biomineralization in order to create oriented gold nanocrystals and examine their formation at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
October 26, 2011
Surprising details of how a powerful human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody grabs hold of the virus have been uncovered by researchers using two U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science facilities including the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The findings highlight a major vulnerability of HIV and suggest a new target for vaccine development.
October 20, 2011
The radioactive isotope strontium-90 is known to pose serious health risks incuding cancer. Science has known for some time that certain organisms, such as a common form of algae, can selectively sequester strontium. But how this feat was achieved has remained a mystery. Now, researchers have uncovered the secrets of the algae thanks to studies carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
October 18, 2011
Northwestern University scientists, with help from an x-ray beamline at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source, have learned how to top nature by building crystalline materials from nanoparticles and DNA.
September 16, 2011
Multilayer Laue lenses developed at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source focus high-energy x-rays so tightly they can detect objects as small as 16 nanometers in size, and are in principle capable of focusing well below 10 nanometers. Now, studies carried out by researchers at the APS reveal a simple means to reduce stress in MLLs, removing a possible obstacle to maximizing the potential of these lenses.
September 15, 2011
Ferromagnetic materials are key ingredients in vast arrays of technologies, but exposing them to high heat or compressive stress usually destroys their magnetism, limiting their applications. Scientists utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have found superb stability of ferromagnetism against compressive stress in an unconventional magnet.
September 6, 2011
Knowing the structure of a molecule is an important part of understanding it. That’s particularly true of proteins, the enormously complex molecular structures found at the heart of many important life processes. Researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory investigated the iron-based heme molecules at the reactive core of a multitude of proteins, and found new information about the vibrational dynamics of hemes.
August 22, 2011
Researchers utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated that synthetic, nearly defect-free diamond crystals can reflect more than 99% of hard x-ray photons backward in Bragg diffraction, with a remarkably small variation in the magnitude of reflectivity across the sample. This is a quantum leap to the largest reflectivity measured, at the limit of the theoretically possible.
August 9, 2011
Exactly 150 years after the first color photograph was produced, scientists have found a way to employ the full spectrum of colors from synchrotron and free-electron laser x radiation to image nanometer-sized subjects with unprecedented clarity and speed, and in three dimensions. This new research technique, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source, is expected to improve imaging on the nanoscale in the quest for advances in pharmaceuticals and materials for next-generation technologies.
August 9, 2011
The mechanism by which cells respond to stimuli and trigger hormonal responses, as well the senses of sight, smell, and taste, has for the first time been brought into focus with the help of high-brightness x-rays provided by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, paving the way to new research avenues in drug discovery, cell signaling, and cellular regulation.
July 29, 2011
It’s not stretching the truth to say that flexibility is an important and desirable human physiological trait. Researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have identified how a particular set of building-block molecules work together to confer elastic properties in tissues throughout the body.
July 27, 2011
New information about how most of the Earth’s crust formed has been uncovered by investigators who utilized the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne to obtain unprecedented, three-dimensional x-ray images of melted rock. Their results offer a more sophisticated picture of rock porosity and a resolution of the discrepancy between permeability and melt velocity.
July 19, 2011
How to prove that the protein isolated from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone is not a contamination? Researchers using x-rays from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory gathered important evidence supporting the ancient origin of putative dinosaur peptides and the mechanism by which they were preserved. These results could be used in the design of highly stable collagenous scaffolds to promote bone and tissue regeneration in humans.
July 14, 2011
A new biological pathway by which plutonium finds its way into mammalian cells has been revealed by researchers utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
July 7, 2011
Researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have gained new insight into a superconducting-type crystal structure that offers a different perspective on the structural possibilities that can control superconductivity.
June 17, 2011
The atoms in glass lack order and are arranged every which way. But when scientists used the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne to study tiny samples of a metallic glass squeezed under high pressure, they found that the atoms lined up in a regular pattern to form a single crystal. It’s the first glimpse of this hidden property in a glass and offers a new window into the atomic structure and behavior of metallic glasses. The more scientists learn about the structure of these commercially important materials, the more effectively they can design new metallic glasses and tinker with old ones to improve their performance.
June 15, 2011
Early and correct diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is important for reasons that go beyond treatment. New scientific information relevant this pernicious disease has been obtained by researchers utilizing the U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory and National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
May 10, 2011
Colloidal suspensions are an integral part of our everyday life and they also serve as an excellent model system for basic science. Gaining insight into the mechanism governing the structure and the dynamics of colloidal suspensions known as bimodal mixtures would be valuable for fundamental understanding as well as for industrial applications. Scientists using the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have gained a clearer picture of the relationship between the composition and the equilibrium dynamics in highly asymmetric bimodal colloidal suspensions.
April 23, 2011
Using a suite of advanced techniques, including the resources of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, researchers have pieced together both the long-range and local structure of a lithium-rich compound, devising a model that could explain how such materials operate on the electrochemical level — and how to use them to build a better battery.
March 31, 2011
Research at national laboratories including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne has produced an accurate and easy-to-implement technique for measuring aberrations in hard x-ray optics. This allows both optimized positioning of existing optics and quantitative feedback that can guide improved fabrication procedures for future optics.
March 17, 2011
New information that could help in the fight against asthma has been obtained by an international collaboration of scientists utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. Their results show how an important human transmembrane protein functions at a molecular level and have the potential of leading to the development of improved drug therapies.
March 15, 2011
Researchers utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne Advanced Photon Source have added a twist to the high-energy x-ray pair-distribution-function technique by conducting measurements near heavy-element K absorption edges. This approach can be used to gain structural insight into the intrinsic disorder in complex materials, and has been applied to microelectronics applications and to PtPd core-shell nanoparticles relevant to fuel cell catalysis.
February 15, 2011
Precise ordering in two-dimensional and three-dimensional superlattices formed by the self-assembly of individual nanocrystals (NCs) allows for control of the magnetic, optical, and electronic coupling between the individual NCs. This control can lead to useful collective properties that have many potential applications in solar cells, field-effect transistors, light-emitting devices, photodetectors, and photoconductors.
January 28, 2011
Researchers utilizing a high-energy x-ray beamline at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have determined the structure and mechanism of an enzyme that performs the crucial first step in the formation of cholesterol and is a key virulence factor in staph bacteria.
January 13, 2011
Scientists using the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne have shown that under high pressure, lithium “prefers” the liquid state, and that it turns out to be the elemental metal with by far the lowest melting point. At high pressure, lithium also undergoes a series of phase changes into surprisingly complex structures.
December 21, 2010
Insect flight is very metabolically demanding and many insects have found a way to reduce energy costs in their flight muscles by employing a process called “stretch activation,” for which a mechanistic explanation has been elusive. Research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne provides another important step toward a full explanation of stretch activation, which also plays an important role in mammalian cardiac muscle contraction.
December 17, 2010
Is the presence of arsenic in the environment, whether naturally occurring or as a result of human activity, a cause for concern? Detailed studies of the various forms of arsenic present in mine-impacted soils, examined using two U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science synchrotron facilities, including the Argonne Advanced Photon Source, point to new ways of assessing the risk factor associated with arsenic in the environment.
December 17, 2010
Tucked within its double-helix structure, DNA contains the chemical blueprint that guides all the processes that take place within the cell and are essential for life. Researchers utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne have discovered a new way that DNA-repair enzymes detect and fix damage to the chemical bases that form the letters in the genetic code.
December 9, 2010
Because of their potential application in spintronic devices such as next-generation spin-based transistors, the quest for new materials with significant spin-orbit interactions in the electronic ground state is an area of intense research. A novel oxide material containing heavy Iridium atoms displays remarkable properties according to research carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne.
December 8, 2010
The atomic-scale arrangement of proteins in a structure that enables a virus to invade and fuse with host cells, showing precisely how the structure morphs with changing acidity to initiate infection, has been determined by investigators using the U.S. Department Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne.
December 2, 2010
A material’s properties, such as magnetism, are a critical factor in the way that material can be used for practical applications. These properties are normally adjusted (or “tuned”) by changing the “recipe” during preparation. Now scientists utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne have harnessed the power of extreme high pressure and discovered a novel approach to predictably tune the switching of a promising new family of next-generation magnetic materials.
November 24, 2010
Experimenters utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne recently opened a window on a poorly-understood technique for deposition of materials, insights that will encourage the development of better-controlled and more precise chemical synthesis techniques for semiconductor and other nanomaterial applications.
November 17, 2010
DNA can do more than direct how bodies are made. It can also direct the composition of many kinds of materials, according to a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne.
November 17, 2010
With a major assist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, scientists have observed, for the first time, an intermediate stage in the chemical process that repairs DNA methylation damage and regulates many important biological functions that impact health conditions such as obesity, cancer, and diabetes.
November 16, 2010
In today's world of sophisticated organisms, proteins are the stars. But long ago, ribonucleic acid reigned supreme. Now researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne have produced an atomic picture that shows how two of these very old molecules interact with each other. It is a rare glimpse of the transition from an ancient, RNA-based world to our present, protein-catalyst dominated world.
November 9, 2010
The fastest “movies” ever made of electron motion have been captured by researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne and the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois. The movies, which were created by scattering x-rays off of graphene, show that the interaction among graphene’s electrons is surprisingly weak.
November 2, 2010
An experimental team working at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory has discovered that Y2O3 in nanometer-sized particles undergoes a definite phase transition under pressure that results in characteristics quite different from bulk Y2O3, a finding with important implications for the use of yttrium oxide as a nanomaterial.
October 22, 2010
Research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source, Center for Nanoscale Materials, and Electron Microscopy Center at Argonne National Laboratory has provided an unprecedented view of nanoparticles growing from the earliest stages of their formation. Nanoparticles are the foundation of nanotechnology and their performance depends on their structure, composition, and size. Researchers will now be able to develop ways to control conditions under which they are grown, affecting a wide range of applications including solar-cell technology and chemical and biological sensors.
September 30, 2010
The oxide compound europium titanate is pretty boring on its own. But sliced nanometers thin and chemically stretched on a specially designed template, it takes on properties that could revolutionize the electronics industry, according to research carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
September 30, 2010
Environmentally-friendly sprays that help plants survive drought and other stresses in harsh environments could result from findings based on research carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
September 21, 2010
On average, one hundred billion cells in the human body divide over the course of a day. Most of the time the body gets it right but sometimes, problems in cell replication can lead to abnormalities in chromosomes resulting in many types of disorders, from cancer to Down Syndrome. Researchers utilizing two U.S. Department of Energy x-ray light sources have defined the structure of a key molecule that plays a central role in how DNA is duplicated and then used to produce two exact copies of the mother cell. Without this molecule, entire chromosomes could be lost during cell division, so this work is a major advance in understanding the molecules driving human genetic inheritance.
September 14, 2010
After more than a decade of research, scientists using the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have pieced together the structure of a human adenovirus—the largest complex ever determined at atomic resolution. These new findings may lead to more effective gene therapy and to new anti-viral drugs.
August 26, 2010
Entirely new experimental vistas could be opened by a device called a precursor pulsed-magnet system developed by an international team of scientists. The researchers recently completed the first practical work using the system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, where they studied magnetoelastic effects in the rare-earth pyrochlore terbium titanate.
August 26, 2010
With a half-life of nearly 16 million years, the radioisotope Iodine-129 produced by nuclear power plants will be sticking around for a long time. Because iodine plays a role in human metabolism, radioactive 129I is especially dangerous if it escapes into the environment. Researchers utilizing the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have uncovered new information that might lead to improved long-term storage of Iodine-I29.
August 26, 2010
Most materials melt as they get warmer, but some melt as they cool. Researchers utilizing two U.S. Department of Energy x-ray light sources, including the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, have found that silicon (the most widely used material for computer chips and solar cells) can exhibit “retrograde melting” when it contains high concentrations of certain metals. Their findings could be useful in lowering the manufacturing cost of some silicon-based devices.
July 1, 2010
Understanding the changes in materials as they transition from one state to another (for instance, from unstable to stable) is of great interest to both basic and applied science. The Theory and Software Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne and the Department of Physics at Northern Illinois University have developed a theoretical model describing ultrafast transitions between two states of a particular iron-molecular compound. Their work could lead to a greater theoretical understanding of transitions in a broad range of materials.
June 30, 2010
The first published scientific results from the world's most powerful hard x-ray laser, located at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, show its unique ability to control the behaviors of individual electrons within simple atoms and molecules by stripping them away, one by one—in some cases creating hollow atoms.
June 30, 2010
At the very heart of some of the most brilliant colors on the wings of butterflies lie bizarre and intriguing structures, according to studies carried out by researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. These structures could possibly be a design source for biomimetic photonic devices.
May 28, 2010
The chemistry of life happens so fast that molecules change in ways we cannot see. But researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have found a way to reveal both the big-picture shape and smaller-scale details of a molecule in one glance, opening a window on new chemical landscapes.
May 28, 2010
By compressing tiny amounts of material between two diamond anvils, scientists have for more than three decades been able to test theories of solid-state physics and shed light on conditions in planetary interiors. But gaining useful information from highly compressed samples requires probes that resolve fine details of the materials' structure. Researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have resolved on the nanoscale different elements in a mixture of metals and obtained diffraction patterns of similarly-sized single crystals in a powder, making it feasible to perform measurements at even higher pressures.
April 23, 2010
With the help of x-ray light sources at two U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, including the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, researchers from Harvard University and the Harvard Medical School have resolved the molecular structure of one key protein important for sound perception. They have used this structure, together with molecular dynamics simulations to understand the protein’s mechanics and function in hearing and deafness.
May 12, 2010
Portland cement concrete is all around us. This everyday building material is also a hidden and largely ignored global warming culprit. New insights into the nanostructure of concrete are coming to light thanks to studies carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. The work is an important milestone in the push for stronger, more environmentally friendly concrete.
April 7, 2010
Experiments can sometimes lead to the discovery of completely unanticipated phenomena. Such is the case with the remarkable behavior exhibited by peptide nanostructures (in the form of supramolecular filaments) observed during experiments carried out by researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
March 31, 2010
An anti-cancer drug, pazopanib, which is marketed as Votrient™ in the U.S. and Europe by its developer, GlaxoSmithKline, was developed in part by research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.
March 29, 2010
By probing the connection between the density and electronic structure of a cerium-aluminum metallic glass, researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne hope to open new possibilities for developing metallic glasses for specific purposes.
March 17, 2010
The structure of a key protein from the virus that caused last year's "swine flu" influenza epidemic has been solved by researchers using two U.S. Department of Energy synchrotron light sources, including the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne. The information should be useful for scientists and public health officials as they respond to current and future pandemics.
March 23, 2010
When it comes to squeezing hydrogen out of ammonia borane, the packaging matters, according to scientists from three U.S. Department of Energy national labs including Argonne. The researchers demonstrated the power of a relatively new method called "atomic pair distribution function" to study how mesoporous materials influence the molecules they confine, providing far more insight into the nature of nanophase materials than conventional techniques.
March 15, 2010
New World hemorrhagic fevers are emerging infectious diseases found in South America that can cause terrible, Ebola-like symptoms. Current treatments are expensive and only partially effective. Researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory have discovered exactly how one type of New World hemorrhagic fever virus latches onto and infects human cells, offering a much-needed lead toward new treatments.
March 4, 2010
Researchers used the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne to study what happens when beaded metal chains are packed more and more tightly into a container. With this pull-chain model, the behavior of individual “molecules” can be studied in a way that is impossible with real polymers.
February 25, 2010
Researchers using an x-ray beamline at the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Photon Source at Argonne have discovered that synthetic diamond crystals exhibit a very high degree of perfection. This makes them indispensable for the realization of next-generation, fully coherent hard x-ray sources such as x-ray free-electron laser oscillators that have the potential for unprecedented average brightness along with record narrow spectral bandwidths.
