Biology and Environmental Sciences at ORNL

Helping the #Hydropower industry: Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are taking a holistic approach to examine both external and internal influencing factors influencing #Waterpower in the United States, from comprehensive reports that provide insights into obstacles and opportunities facing the industry to using #3Dprinting to enhance domestic #Manufacturing for turbines. https://lnkd.in/eWVQwj9p

Dive into the latest?#Biology?and?#EnvironmentalScience?news from?Oak Ridge National Laboratory! This month’s highlights:? ???Plants the world over are absorbing about 31% more carbon dioxide than previously thought ????The world’s first exascale supercomputer could advance long-range weather prediction capabilities ???New bioderived material used to 3D print custom roosting structures for endangered bats ???and learn how how Kristine Moody can tell which fish live in a body of water—based on genetic markers from a water sample!

Forest disturbance tool tracks Helene devastation ?? ForWarn, a satellite-based tool co-developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the U.S. Forest Service, tracked changes to the nation’s forestlands in near real-time to help resource managers pinpoint areas with the most damage from Hurricane Helene. https://lnkd.in/g5baETTK

Research from the Center for Bioenergy Innovation at ORNL supports next-generation biofuels startup ???? A new approach developed by scientists at the Center for Bioenergy Innovation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory harnesses engineered microbes to produce cellulosic ethanol for use in clean fuel blends. Biofuels startup Terragia Biofuel plans to leverage this process to make ethanol and other products at a much lower cost than today’s technology—which could potentially meet the demand for billions of gallons of clean liquid fuels needed to reduce emissions from airplanes, ships and long-haul trucks. https://lnkd.in/eQhRb8MV

?? Congratulations to Oak Ridge National Laboratory's ORBIT team for winning the HPCwire Top Supercomputing Achievement award! ?? ORBIT (Oak Ridge Base AI Foundation Model for Earth System Predictability) is a groundbreaking #AI spatiotemporal transformer model with 113 billion parameters. Powered by 49,152 AMD GPUs on the Frontier #supercomputer, it works to achieve a sustained computing performance of 1.6 exaFLOPs.?? With innovative parallelism techniques, ORBIT is setting new benchmarks in AI-driven weather modeling, enhancing both computing efficiency and prediction accuracy. ? https://bit.ly/3ARdidJ #SC24

A visualization tool that tracks changes to the nation’s forests in near-real time is helping resource managers pinpoint areas with the most damage from Hurricane Helene in the U.S. Southeast.

Tune in for the next session in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series—featuring Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Gerald Tuskan! Distinguished Scientist Fellow Gerald Tuskan will discuss his research accomplishments, career path, and experiences working with DOE national laboratories. Join tomorrow, November 19, from 1:30–3 PM ET. Register to attend virtually: https://lnkd.in/gvtMeTbe

ORNL scientists have identified a key molecule in the formation of a potent neurotoxin—and are one step closer to blocking the dangerous pollutant methylmercury before it can form. Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers working with the University of Michigan confirmed that the molecule S-adenosylmethionineis plays a key role in converting inorganic mercury into methylmercury. The discovery will inform a model of the proteins responsible for the pollutant’s formation and could lead to solutions for preventing it at the source. https://lnkd.in/eTyYzwrc

? A research team led by the University of Maryland has been nominated for the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize for their groundbreaking work on AxoNN, a scalable, distributed framework for training large language models at lightning speed.? By harnessing the immense power of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Frontier #supercomputer, AxoNN achieved record-breaking #AI model training with up to 320 billion parameters. This innovation is pushing the boundaries of what's possible in #AI and high-performance computing.?? The winners will be announced at #SC24 in Atlanta, Nov. 17-22. ??https://bit.ly/3CsmjKM

Congratulations to?Jack Cahill?and?Vilmos Kertész! ? These?Oak Ridge National Laboratory?researchers were recently recognized with the Technology Transfer award from UT-Battelle?for their achievements in droplet capture liquid extraction analysis! Their work led to the development and commercialization of the Open Port Sampling Interface and dropletProbe technologies, which have been recognized with R&D 100 Awards. The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science supported this research and innovation. Congratulations!