Story tips from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sept...( MICROSCOPY -- A chorus of signals ....)

Band excitation, a new family of scanning probe microscopy, moves the field towards probing energy transformation at the nanoscale, say the developers. Conventional scanning probe microscopes measure the cantilevers movements over the surface of a material at only one single frequency. Band excitation excites and detects response over a continuous band of frequencies, rapidly measuring the frequency response of the system at every point in an image. The technologys ability to measure energy dissipation means it has potential use in any application for better understanding energy loss processes. The work could lead to energy-efficient nano- and molecular scale devices and materials for electricity generation, transportation or solar power conversion. [Contact: Bill Cabage, (865) 574-4399; cabagewh@ornl.gov]

The Department of Energys Spallation Neutron Source, which recently set a record for beam power for a pulsed neutron source while operating at only a tenth of its eventual 1.4 megawatts of power, has added a fourth instrument to its growing arsenal. The Wide Angular-Range Chopper Spectrometer (ARCS) team sent the first neutrons to the instrument, one of an eventual 24 state of the art neutron scattering instruments the SNS can accommodate on its 18 beam lines. The ARCS joins the Magnetism Reflectometer, the Liquids Reflectometer and the Backscattering Spectrometer as the currently operating instruments at the SNS, which is funded by DOEs Office of Science. [Contact: Bill Cabage, (865)574-4399; cabagewh@ornl.gov]

Oak Ridge National Laboratorys efforts at improving energy efficiency could save NASA more than $820,000. Mike MacDonald and Julia Kelley of ORNLs Commercial Buildings and
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