Atmospheric Prediction
The clouds above our heads provide some of the biggest uncertainties in weather prediction, but a better understanding of their layers could unlock answers.
Environment
Landscape Evolution
Antarctica is more than five million square miles of vast, frozen ice and rock marked by bone-freezing temperatures, high winds, no running water and few signs of life. But what it lacks in accommodations, it makes up for in something important to the rest of the world: Information.
Glass Transition
One of the grand challenges in materials science is discovering exactly how materials form glasses.
David Simmons, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the University of Akron’s Department of Polymer Engineering is trying to understand at the fundamental level the relationship between the molecular structure and the way a material forms a glass.
Drag Reduction
Bharat Bhushan, Ph.D., was on sabbatical at Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne, Switzerland in 2005 when a transformation began.
After reading an article in a trade magazine on the lotus leaf’s water repellant properties, Bhushan’s industrial research launched down a greener, livelier new path.
Reactor Prototypes
Compared to its centuries-old fossil fuel counterparts, nuclear power is a young player in today’s lineup of energy sources. Still, since the world’s first nuclear power plant became operational in 1954, there have been three marked advancement periods, or generations, of nuclear technology. Each new generation has improved upon the current safety and performance of the previous generation.
Carbon Injection
The Department of Energy supports pilot projects and basic research that evaluate the feasibility of capturing carbon dioxide created by industrial processes and power plants and injecting it into deep geologic formations for permanent storage, known as geo-sequestration. This is part of evaluating strategies for reducing atmospheric emissions and mitigating accumulation of greenhouse gasses.
Disaster Relief
Researchers who normally use high-resolution satellite imagery to study glaciers used their technology to help with disaster relief and longer-term stabilization planning efforts in Nepal.
Mineral Reservoirs
Water, water everywhere, but it’s all locked underground. Wendy Panero, Ph.D., and The Ohio State University Mineral Physics Research Group have found that minerals within the earth’s mantle potentially contain a vast amount of water.
Flavor Physics
The quest to understand the fundamental building blocks of nature and their interactions is one of the longest-running and most ambitious of human endeavors.
Magnetic Control
Phonons — the elemental particles that transmit both heat and sound — have magnetic properties, according to a landmark study conducted by a research group from The Ohio State University and supported by the Ohio Supercomputer Center.
