Six energy technologies that do everything from protect fish to monitor the health of flow batteries are getting a boost at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

DOE is awarding PNNL nearly $1.5 million to bring six technologies closer to commercial use. The projects were announced today by DOE's Office of Technology Transitions, which selected them for funding from its Technology Commercialization Fund. The technologies show great promise, but need further development to improve their potential use in commercial products or services.

The growth of certain aggressive brain tumors can be halted by cutting off their access to a signaling molecule produced by the brain’s nerve cells, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Since Captain James Cook’s discovery in the 1770s that water encompassed the Earth’s southern latitudes, oceanographers have been studying the Southern Ocean, its physics, and how it interacts with global water circulation and the climate.

Influenza viruses mutate rapidly, which is why flu vaccines have to be redesigned every year. A new study from MIT sheds light on just how these viruses evolve so quickly, and offers a potential way to slow them down.

Tropical Depression Pilar weakened to a remnant low pressure area as it continued to crawl north along the west coast of Mexico. Satellite data revealed no circulation center.

NASA's Aqua satellite peered into Hurricane Lee with infrared light to determine if the storm was intensifying. Infrared data showed cloud top temperatures were getting colder, indicating stronger storms.

NASA's Aqua satellite provided an infrared look at Hurricane Maria's cloud top temperatures and found the coldest cloud tops and strongest storms were facing east of the center and away from the U.S. However, Maria is a large hurricane. On Sept. 26, the National Hurricane Center reported that hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 105 miles (165 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 240 miles (390 km).

Other Potential Benefits Include Reliability and Water Savings 

Onita Basu still vividly remembers the exact moment she decided to devote her career to sustainable water solutions and practices.

“I was in a second-year Chemical Engineering lab working with a solution of water that looked relatively clean,” she recalls. “When I passed the water through a treatment process I was shocked to see an incredible amount of dissolved copper emerge from the solution and begin coating onto various surfaces. It was an eye-opening experience to realize that we cannot always tell what is in our water.”

Mayo Clinic researchers have found that a 50 percent reduction in the intensity and dose of radiation therapy for patients with HPV-related throat cancer reduced side effects with no loss in survival and no decrease in cure rates. Results of a phase II study were presented today at the 59th Annual Meetingof the American Society for Radiation Oncology in San Diego by Daniel Ma, M.D. a radiation oncologist at Mayo Clinic.