For the first time, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and LCW Supercritical Technologies have created five grams of yellowcake — a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power production — using acrylic fibers to extract it from seawater. “This is a significant milestone,” said Gary Gill, a researcher at PNNL,…

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed and successfully tested a novel process – called Friction Stir Dovetailing – that joins thick plates of aluminum to steel. The new process will be used to make lighter-weight military vehicles that are more agile and fuel efficient. The April 15 issue of Scripta Materialia describes the process in…

Many seashells, minerals, and semiconductor nanomaterials are made up of smaller crystals, which are assembled together like the pieces of a puzzle. Now, researchers have measured the forces that cause the crystals to assemble, revealing an orchestra of competing factors that researchers might be able to control. The work has a variety of implications in…

Man-made pollution in eastern China’s cities worsens when less dust blows in from the Gobi Desert, according to a new study published May 11 in Nature Communications. Yes, you read that correctly: When less natural dust blows in, the air quality for millions of people worsens. That’s because dust plays an important role in determining the…

After their nanorods were accidentally created when an experiment didn’t go as planned, the researchers gave the microscopic, unplanned spawns of science a closer look. Chemist Satish Nune was inspecting the solid, carbon-rich nanorods with a vapor analysis instrument when he noticed the nanorods mysteriously lost weight as humidity increased. Thinking the instrument had malfunctioned,…