Interstellar features astronauts who take a wormhole ride to another galaxy to explore planets around a massive black hole. In a conversation last week, Berkeley Lab's David Schlegel discussed the science in the movie and what Hollywood could learn from scientists about fantastic settings in outer space.
Berkeley Lab scientists have learned new details about how an important tumor-suppressing protein, called p53, binds to the human genome. As with many things in life, they found that context makes a big difference.
A new study by Berkeley Lab researchers has shown that proper copper levels are essential to the health of the brain at rest.
SWAPPS - Standing Wave Ambient Pressure Photoelectron Spectroscopy – is a new X-ray technique developed at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source that provides sub-nanometer resolution of every chemical element to be found at heterogeneous interfaces, such as those in batteries, fuel cells and other devices.
Using one of the most powerful lasers in the world, Berkeley Lab researchers have accelerated subatomic particles to the highest energies ever recorded. They used an emerging class of compact particle accelerator that physicists believe can shrink traditional, miles-long accelerators to machines that can fit on a table.
Ever wonder what’s in the black cloud that emits from some semi trucks that you pass on the freeway? Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientist Thomas Kirchstetter knows very precisely what’s in there, having conducted detailed measurements of thousands of heavy-duty trucks over months at a time at two San Francisco Bay Area locations.
A key discovery to understanding Roman architectural concrete that has stood the test of time and the elements for nearly two thousand years has been made by researchers using beams of X-rays at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source.
Berkeley Lab researchers used an electric field to reverse the magnetization direction in a multiferroic spintronic device at room temperature, a demonstration that points a new way towards spintronics and smaller, faster and cheaper methods of storing and processing data.
A door has been opened to low-power off/on switches in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and nanoelectronic devices, as well as ultrasensitive bio-sensors, with the first observation of piezoelectricity in a free standing two-dimensional semiconductor by a team of researchers with Berkeley Lab.
A free app for Android and Apple devices called The Particle Adventure makes checking out the world of quarks, dark matter, and particle accelerators as easy as tapping touchscreen icons.
Berkeley Lab’s quantum dots have not only found their way into tablets, computer screens, and TVs, they are also used in biological and medical imaging tools, and now Paul Alivisatos’ lab is exploring them for solar cell as well as brain imaging applications.
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new precision approach for synthesizing graphene nanoribbons from pre-designed molecular building blocks. Using this process the researchers have built nanoribbons that have enhanced properties—such as position-dependent, tunable bandgaps—that are potentially very useful for next-generation electronic circuitry.
The aim of the 50 Breakthroughs study is to give philanthropies, aid agencies, businesses, and technologists a blueprint for where to invest their resources to achieve the highest impact.
A new model of the impact of California’s existing and proposed policies on its greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals suggests that the state is on track to meet 2020 goals, and could achieve greater emission reductions by 2030, but the state will need to do more to reach its 2050 climate goals.
A novel approach to growing nanowires promises a new means of control over their light-emitting and electronic properties. Berkeley Lab researchers demonstrated a new growth technique that uses specially engineered catalysts. These catalysts have given scientists more options than ever in turning the color of light-emitting nanowires.
Until recently, it was often difficult for private industry to take advantage of Berkeley Lab’s resources. That has changed with CalCharge, a unique public-private partnership uniting the California Bay Area’s emerging and established battery technology companies with critical academic and government resources.
Until recently, it was often difficult for private industry to take advantage of Berkeley Lab’s resources. That has changed with CalCharge, a unique public-private partnership uniting the California Bay Area’s emerging and established battery technology companies with critical academic and government resources.
Scientists have observed an increase in carbon dioxide’s greenhouse effect at the Earth’s surface for the first time. They measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s increasing capacity to absorb thermal radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface over an eleven-year period at two locations in North America. They attributed this upward trend to rising CO2 levels from fossil fuel emissions.
In Nature Genetics, DOE JGI researchers and longtime collaborators at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research and Clark University conducted the first broad, comparative phylogenomic analysis of mycorrhizal fungi to understand the basis for fungal symbiotic relationships with plants.
Scientists have captured the first detailed microscopy images of ultra-small bacteria that are believed to be about as small as life can get. The research was led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. The existence of ultra-small bacteria has been debated for two decades, but there hasn’t been a comprehensive electron microscopy and DNA-based description of the microbes until now.
To better characterize the microbial activities in the thawing permafrost, a team including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) reported on the application of multiple molecular technologies - “omics” - in a paper published online March 4, 2015 in Nature.
Working at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), researchers studied quartz from the San Andreas Fault at the microscopic scale, the scale at which earthquake-triggering stresses originate. The results could one day lead to a better understanding of earthquake events.
Berkeley Lab scientists studied mice and found their risk of mammary cancer from low-dose radiation depends a great deal on their genetic makeup. They also learned key details about how genes and the cells immediately surrounding a tumor (also called the tumor microenvironment) affect cancer risk.
Berkeley Lab researchers have discovered a means by which the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired power plants might one day be done far more efficiently and at far lower costs than today. By appending a diamine molecule to the sponge-like solid materials known as metal-organic-frameworks (MOFs), the researchers were able to more than triple the CO2-scrubbing capacity of the MOFs, while significantly reducing parasitic energy.
There will be a lot more carbon released from thawing permafrost than the amount taken in by more Arctic vegetation, according to new computer simulations conducted by Berkeley Lab scientists.
A collaborative effort linking the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley Lab with supercomputing resources at NERSC and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility via ESnet transform the way researchers use these facilities and improve scientific productivity in the process.
In the first study of its kind, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory quantitatively show that electric vehicles (EVs) will meet the daily travel needs of drivers longer than commonly assumed. They found that batteries that have lost 20 percent of their originally rated energy storage capacity can still meet the daily travel needs of more than 85 percent of U.S. drivers.
In the April 2015 issue of Genome Research, a team including DOE JGI researchers compared two ways of using next generation Illumina sequencing machines to help with a metagenomics challenge where the more commonly used sequencing machines generate data in short lengths, while short-read assemblers may not be able to distinguish among multiple occurrences of the same or similar sequences, making it difficult to identify all the members in a microbial community.
To find a standard 3D neuron reconstruction algorithm, BigNeuron will sponsor a series of international hackathons and workshops where contending algorithms will be ported onto a common software platform to analyze neuronal physical structure using the same core dataset. All ported algorithms will be bench-tested at the Department of Energy's NERSC and ORNL, as well as Human Brain Project supercomputing centers.
A collaboration of Berkeley Lab and UC San Diego researchers has recorded the first direct observations of the micro-scale mechanisms behind the ability of skin to resist tearing. The results could be applied to the improvement of artificial skin, or to the development of thin film polymers for flexible electronics.
Tropical forests play major roles in regulating Earth's climate, but there are large uncertainties over how they'll respond over the next 100 years as the planet's climate warms. An expansive new project led by scientists from Berkeley Lab aims to bring the future of tropical forests and the climate system into much clearer focus. The project is called the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Tropics, or NGEE-Tropics.
Ann Almgren and Esmond Ng of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Computational Research Division (CRD) are among the 2015 class of 31 mathematicians named as Fellows of SIAM, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have published the world’s largest set of data on the complete elastic properties of inorganic compounds, increasing by an order of magnitude the number of compounds for which such data exists.
An international team of nuclear physicists announced the first scientific results from the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) experiment. CUORE is designed to confirm the existence of the Majorana neutrino, which scientists believe could hold the key to why there is an abundance of matter over antimatter.
Berkeley Lab researchers have discovered a new way of manipulating the magnetic domain walls in ultrathin magnets that could one day revolutionize the electronics industry through a technology called “spin-orbitronics.”
A collaboration led by Berkeley Lab scientists has established a method to simulate in the lab the soiling and weathering of roofing materials, reproducing in only a few days the solar reflectance of roofing products naturally aged for three years. Now this protocol has been approved by ASTM International, a widely referenced standards body, as a standard practice for the industry.
A new breakthrough battery—one that has significantly higher energy, lasts longer, and is cheaper and safer—will likely be impossible without a new material discovery. And a new material discovery could take years, if not decades, since trial and error has been the best available approach. But Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Kristin Persson says she can take some of the guesswork out of the discovery process with her Electrolyte Genome.
By combining biocompatible light-capturing nanowire arrays with select bacterial populations, a potentially game-changing new artificial photosynthesis system offers a win/win situation for the environment: solar-powered green chemistry using sequestered carbon dioxide.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center and Cray Inc. announced today that they have finalized a new contract for a Cray XC40 supercomputer that will be the first NERSC system installed in the newly built Computational Research and Theory facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Researchers at Berkeley Lab have conducted the most comprehensive study yet of the full cost of saving electricity by U.S. utility efficiency programs and now have an answer: 4.6 cents. That’s the average total cost of saving a kilowatt-hour in 20 states from 2009 to 2013.
Michael Levi and David Schlegel, physicists at Berkeley Lab, discuss the future of the DESI project and how its forthcoming map will help scientists better understand dark energy.
Researchers from Berkeley Lab and the University of Hawaii at Manoa have shown for the first time that cosmic hot spots, such as those near stars, could be excellent environments for the creation of molecular precursors to DNA.
Berkeley Lab scientists are breaking new ground in the modeling of complex flows in energy and oil and gas applications, thanks to a computational fluid dynamics and transport code dubbed “Chombo-Crunch.”
A study sponsored by ENIGMA, a DOE “Scientific Focus Area Program” based at the Berkeley Lab has found that statistical analysis of DNA from natural microbial communities can be used to accurately identify environmental contaminants and serve as quantitative geochemical biosensors.
Berkeley Lab researchers, working at the Molecular Foundry, have invented a technique called “CLAIRE” that extends the incredible resolution of electron microscopy to the non-invasive nanoscale imaging of soft matter, including biomolecules, liquids, polymers, gels and foams.
A novel X-ray scattering concept by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab) Advanced Light Source (ALS) is receiving support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in the amount of $2.4M.
Using a "roadmap" of theoretical calculations and supercomputer simulations performed by Berkeley Lab's Daniel Kasen, astronomers observed a flash of light caused by a supernova slamming into a nearby star, allowing them to determine the stellar system from which a Type Ia supernova was born. This finding confirms one of two competing theories about Type Ia supernovae birth.
The Solar Energy Research Center (SERC), renamed to Chu Hall, opened today at Berkeley Lab. It will house laboratories and offices devoted to photovoltaic and electro-chemical solar energy systems designed to improve on what plants do and make transportation fuels. The building houses the lab’s programs in the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) and the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute. The three-story, nearly 40,000 square-foot, building cost $59 million will house approximately 100 researchers and was named after former Berkeley Lab Director Steven Chu, who went on to become U.S. Energy Secretary.
A team of scientists from Berkeley Lab, JGI and UC Berkeley, simplified and sped up genome assembly, reducing a months-long process to mere minutes. This was primarily achieved by “parallelizing” the code to harness the processing power of supercomputers.
There’s an urgent demand for new antimicrobial compounds that are effective against constantly emerging drug-resistant bacteria. Two robotic chemical-synthesizing machines at the Molecular Foundry have joined the search.
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