A discovery by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis shows that recycling carbon dioxide into valuable chemicals and fuels can be economical and efficient – all through a single copper catalyst.
The LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter detector, which will soon begin its deep-underground search for particles thought to account for most matter in the universe, now has "eyes."
The LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter detector, which will soon begin its deep-underground search for particles thought to account for most matter in the universe, now has "eyes."
In Nature Biotechnology, as more and more researchers continue to assemble new genome sequences of uncultivated viruses, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) led a community effort to develop guidelines and best practices for defining virus data quality.
A future warmer world will almost certainly feature a decline in fresh water from the Sierra Nevada mountain snowpack. Now a new study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that analyzed the headwater regions of California’s 10 major reservoirs, representing nearly half of the state’s surface storage, found they could see on average a 79 percent drop in peak snowpack water volume by 2100.
An experiment has demonstrated, for the first time, electronic switching in an exotic, ultrathin material that can carry a charge with nearly zero loss at room temperature. Researchers demonstrated this switching when subjecting the material to a low-current electric field.
Key components for the sky-mapping Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, weighing about 12 tons, were hoisted atop the Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, and bolted into place Wednesday, marking a major project milestone.
A Q&A with Ramamoorthy Ramesh on the need for next-generation computer chips
A Berkeley Lab-led team has directly measured the mass numbers of two superheavy elements: moscovium (element 115), and nihonium (element 113).
Four Berkeley Lab scientists – Allen Goldstein, Sung-Hou Kim, Susannah Tringe, and Katherine Yelick – have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.
Viruses can infect the microbes residing in, on and around soils, impacting their ability to regulate these global cycles. In Nature Communications, giant virus genomes have been discovered for the first time in a forest soil ecosystem by researchers from the DOE Joint Genome Institute and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Truffles are thought of as dining delicacies but they play an important role in soil ecosystem services as the fruiting bodies of the ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungal symbionts residing on host plant roots. An international team sought insights into the ECM lifestyle of truffle-forming species through a comparative analysis of eight fungal genomes.
New supercomputer simulations by climate scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that climate change intensified the amount of rainfall in recent hurricanes such as Katrina, Irma, and Maria by 5 to 10 percent. They further found that if those hurricanes were to occur in a future world that is warmer than present, those storms would have even more rainfall and stronger winds.
A Berkeley Lab-led research has adapted a powerful electron-based imaging technique to obtain a first-of-its-kind image of atomic-scale structure in a synthetic polymer. The research could ultimately inform polymer fabrication methods and lead to new designs for materials and devices that incorporate polymers.
A new high-resolution gamma-ray detector system – designed to reveal new details about atomic nuclei – has passed an important project milestone.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists have succeeded in capturing a more detailed picture than ever of the steps in the reaction mechanisms in photosynthesis, the process by which plants use sunlight to split water and produce oxygen while making the carbohydrates that sustain life on Earth.
Moss evolved after algae but before vascular land plants, such as ferns and trees, making them an interesting target for scientists studying photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight to fuel. Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have made a discovery that could shed light on how plants evolved to move from the ocean to land.
To help foster the broad applicability of high-intensity lasers, Berkeley Lab is a partner in a new research network called LaserNetUS. The network will provide U.S. scientists increased access to the unique high-intensity laser facilities at the Lab's BELLA Center and at eight other institutions.
Applying artificial intelligence to self-driving cars to smooth traffic, reduce fuel consumption, and improve air quality predictions may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have launched two research projects to do just that.
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis have developed an artificial photosynthesis device called a “hybrid photoelectrochemical and voltaic cell” that turns sunlight and water into two types of energy – hydrogen fuel and electricity.
Climate scientists have not been properly accounting for what plants do at night, and that, it turns out, is a mistake. A new study from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found that plant nutrient uptake in the absence of photosynthesis affects greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.
How do you create the largest 3D map of the universe? It’s as easy as teaching 5,000 robots how to “dance.” DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, is an experiment that will target millions of distant galaxies by automatically swiveling fiber-optic positioners to point at them and gather their light. In creating this detailed map, scientists hope to learn more about dark energy, which is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.
In recognition of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, cybersecurity expert Sean Peisert of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discusses new methods that have the potential to keep our energy infrastructure safe from a cyberattack.
Aspergillus fungi play roles in fields including bioenergy, health, and biotechnology. In Nature Genetics, a team led by scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, the DOE Joint Genome Institute, and the Joint Bioenergy Institute, present the first large analysis of an Aspergillus fungal subgroup, section Nigri.
Scientists have a new window into the search for dark matter – an acrylic vessel that features a grouping of 12-foot-tall transparent tanks with 1-inch-thick walls. The tanks, which will surround a central detector for a nearly mile-deep experiment under construction in South Dakota called LUX-ZEPLIN, will be filled with liquid that produces tiny flashes of light in some particle interactions.
One in 10 Americans depends on the Colorado River for bathing and drinking. Last fall’s record-high temperatures reduced Colorado snowpack in winter 2018 to 66 percent of normal, sparking concern over water shortages downstream and leaving water managers fearful of a repeat. Berkeley Lab hydrological science expert Bhavna Arora explains how unseasonably warm weather and drought can affect water quality.
Egyptian blue, derived from calcium copper silicate, was routinely used on ancient depictions of gods and royalty. Previous studies have shown that when Egyptian blue absorbs visible light, it then emits light in the near-infrared range. Now a team led by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has confirmed the pigment's fluorescence can be 10 times stronger than previously thought.
Reported October 8, 2018, in Nature Microbiology, a team led by U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute researchers developed a pipeline to generate genomes from single cells of uncultivated fungi. The approach was tested on several uncultivated species representing early diverging fungi.
Experiments at Berkeley Lab helped scientists zero in on a low-temperature chemical mechanism that may help to explain the complex molecular compounds that make up the nitrogen-rich haze layer surrounding Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
A team of computational scientists from Berkeley Lab and Oak Ridge National Laboratory and engineers from NVIDIA has demonstrated an exascale-class deep learning application that exceeded the exaop barrier, using a climate dataset from Berkeley Lab on ORNL's Summit supercomputer.
Solar energy absorption by methane is 10 times stronger over desert regions such as the Sahara Desert and Arabian Peninsula than elsewhere on Earth, and nearly three times more powerful in the presence of clouds. This result advances science beyond the existing “global annual-mean estimate” of methane forcing by providing insights into its remarkable spatial variability. This research enabled the first global spatially-resolved calculations of methane forcing, showing strong regional patterns.
The Advanced Light Source (ALS), a scientific user facility at Berkeley Lab, has received federal approval to proceed with preliminary design, planning and R&D work for a major upgrade project that will boost the brightness of its X-ray beams at least a hundredfold. The upgrade will give the ALS, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary, brighter beams with a more ordered structure – like evenly spaced ripples in a pond – that will better reveal nanoscale details in complex chemical reactions and in new materials, expanding the envelope for scientific exploration.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will receive $30 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Energy to build and operate an Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) allowing researchers to explore superconducting quantum processors to advance scientific research
A collaboration between computational scientists at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center and engineers at Intel and Cray has yielded another first in the quest to apply deep learning to data-intensive science: CosmoFlow, the first large-scale science application to use the TensorFlow framework on a CPU-based high performance computing platform with synchronous training.
A national online energy data management system is transforming how energy retrofit projects implemented by a wide variety of users – including local, state, and federal governments – develop projects and track performance.
Researchers have made a MOF with the highest electron charge mobilities ever observed, along with a technique to improve the conductivity of other MOFs. The work was led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Wind energy pricing remains attractive, according to an annual report released by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). At an average of around 2 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), prices offered by newly built wind projects in the United States are being driven lower by technology advancements and cost reductions.
By shining highly focused infrared light on living cells, scientists at Berkeley Lab hope to unmask individual cell identities, and to diagnose whether the cells are diseased or healthy.
Indoor air researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) recently tested seven consumer-grade air quality monitors to see if they could detect fine particles emitted by common household activities, including cooking, burning candles, and smoking. All of the monitors tested by researchers were found to have either underreported or missed the presence of very small particles that can penetrate deeply into the lungs.
Researchers from Berkeley Lab have developed a new benchmark model that estimates changes in the proportion of the Earth’s surface where plant growth will no longer be limited by cold temperatures over the 21st century.
The latest edition of the Review of Particle Physics, a go-to resource for particle physicists published Aug. 17 in the American Physical Society's Physical Review D journal, marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Berkeley Lab-based Particle Data Group that produces the Review.
A research team has demonstrated how light-emitting nanoparticles, developed at Berkeley Lab, can be used to see deep in living tissue. Researchers hope they can be made to attach to specific components of cells to serve in an advanced imaging system that can pinpoint even single cancer cells.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Savannah River National Laboratory have developed a low-cost method for real-time monitoring of pollutants using commonly available sensors.
A team led by scientists at Berkeley Lab found a way to make a liquid-like state behave more like a solid, and then to reverse the process.
Hollow molecular structures known as COFs suffer from an inherent problem: It’s difficult to keep a network of COFs connected in harsh chemical environments. Now, a team at the Berkeley Lab has used a chemical process discovered decades ago to make the linkages between COFs much more sturdy, and to give the COFs new characteristics that could expand their applications.
William R. “Bill” Baker, who died May 4 at age 103, was a lifelong engineer with an unrelenting mind and boundless ingenuity. He was the first electrical engineer hired by Ernest Orlando Lawrence, the namesake of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Developed by Berkeley Lab researchers, ESS-DIVE is a new digital archive that serves as a repository for hundreds of U.S. Department of Energy-funded research projects under the agency’s Environmental System Science umbrella.
In the quest to realize artificial photosynthesis to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into fuel – just as plants do – researchers need to not only identify materials to efficiently perform photoelectrochemical water splitting, but also to understand why a certain material may or may not work. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have pioneered a technique that uses nanoscale imaging to understand how local, nanoscale properties can affect a material’s macroscopic performance.
A large titanium cryostat designed to keep its contents chilled to minus 148 degrees has completed its journey from Europe to South Dakota, where it will become part of a next-generation dark matter detector for the LUX-ZEPLIN (experiment.
In this Q&A, Berkeley Lab physicist Spencer Klein, who has been a part of the IceCube collaboration since 2004, discusses Berkeley Lab's historic contributions to IceCube, and IceCube's contributions to science.
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