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Like a tiny needle in a sprawling hayfield, a single crystal grain measuring just tens of millionths of a meter – found in a borehole sample drilled in Central Siberia – had an unexpected chemical makeup. And a specialized X-ray technique in use at Berkeley Lab confirmed the sample’s uniqueness and paved the way for its formal recognition as a newly discovered mineral: ognitite.

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From Berkeley Lab: groundbreaking study maps out paths to new nitride materials; new framework for artificial photosynthesis; TMDCs don’t have to be perfect to shine bright.

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Researchers at Berkeley Lab have developed a pulsed electron beam technique that enables high-resolution imaging of magnesium chloride without damage. This approach could apply to a vast range of beam-sensitive materials, and help to create a path toward sustainable plastics.

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Theorized dark matter particles haven’t yet shown up where scientists had expected them. So Berkeley Lab researchers are now designing new and nimble experiments that can look for dark matter in previously unexplored ranges of particle mass and energy, and using previously untested methods.

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For years, routine testing has shown that watersheds of the Mahaulepu Valley and Waikomo Stream in southeast Kauai frequently contain high counts of potentially pathogenic fecal indicator bacteria (FIB). To better understand the cause of the high FIB counts, the DOH commissioned a study by Berkeley Lab microbial ecologists Gary Andersen and Eric Dubinsky. After using a powerful microbial detection tool called the PhyloChip, the scientists concluded that most of the past monitoring results were false positives.

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Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a new chemical separation method that is vastly more efficient than conventional processes, opening the door to faster discovery of new elements, easier nuclear fuel reprocessing, and, most tantalizing, a better way to attain actinium-225, a promising therapeutic isotope for cancer treatment.

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The overpumping of groundwater in California has led to near environmental catastrophe in some areas – land is sinking, seawater is intruding, and groundwater storage capacity has shrunk. But researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory believe machine learning could be part of the solution to restoring groundwater to sustainable levels and quality.

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Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry have predicted fascinating new properties of lithium; a powerful combination of experiment and theory has revealed atomic-level details about how silver helps transform carbon dioxide gas into a reusable form; new study reports the first comprehensive

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Methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps about 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide, is commonly released from rice fields, dairies, landfills, and oil and gas facilities – all of which are plentiful in California. Now Berkeley Lab has been awarded $6 million by the state to find “super emitters” of methane in an effort to quantify and potentially mitigate methane emissions.

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A Berkeley Lab-led research group is using a deep learning method known as generative adversarial networks to enhance the use of gravitational lensing in the study of dark matter.

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An open-source RNA analysis platform has been successfully used on plant cells for the first time – an advance that could herald a new era of fundamental research and bolster efforts to engineer more efficient food and biofuel crop plants. The technology, called Drop-seq, is a method for measuring the RNA present in individual cells, allowing scientists to see what genes are being expressed and how this relates to the specific functions of different cell types.

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A years-long study that involved scientists and experiments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley concluded that an odd assortment of particles found in beach sands in Japan are most likely fallout debris from the 1945 Hiroshima A-bomb blast.

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For more than a decade, a team of international researchers led by Berkeley Lab bioscientists has been studying Photosystem II, a protein complex in green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria that plays a crucial role in photosynthesis. They’re now moving more quickly toward an understanding of this three-billion-year-old biological system, thanks to an integrated superfacility framework established between LCLS, ESnet, and NERSC.

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To address messy measurements of the cosmic web that connects matter in the universe, researchers at Berkeley Lab developed a way to improve the accuracy and clarity of these measurements based on the stretching of the universe’s oldest light.

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A team of researchers at Berkeley Lab has designed a recyclable plastic that, like a Lego playset, can be disassembled into its constituent parts at the molecular level, and then reassembled into a different shape, texture, and color again and again without loss of performance or quality.

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A computer cluster, which switched off April 1, had a storied history in serving high-energy physics and nuclear physics experiments.

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Three science briefs from Berkeley Lab

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Researchers at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have 3D-printed an all-liquid device that, with the click of a button, can be repeatedly reconfigured on demand to serve a wide range of applications – from making battery materials to screening drug candidates.

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A new 3D particle-in-cell simulation tool developed by researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and CEA Saclay is enabling cutting-edge simulations of laser/plasma coupling mechanisms. More detailed understanding of these mechanisms is critical to the development of ultra-compact particle accelerators and light sources.

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A team of researchers led by Berkeley Lab has observed chirality for the first time in polar skyrmions in a material with reversible electrical properties – a combination that could lead to more powerful data storage devices that continue to hold information, even after they’ve been turned off.

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In this video, Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project participants share their insight and excitement about the project and its potential for new and unexpected discoveries.

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The City and County of San Francisco (CCSF) is partnering with experts from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Silvestrum Climate Associates to assess how climate change may influence the intensity of atmospheric rivers and associated precipitation, and how those changes may impact San Francisco and its infrastructure.

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Researchers in Berkeley Lab's Computational Research Division are applying deep learning and analytics to electronic health record (EHR) data to help the Veterans Administration address a host of medical and psychological challenges affecting many of the nation’s 700,000 military veterans.

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On April 1 the dome of the Mayall Telescope near Tucson, Arizona, opened to the night sky, and starlight poured through the assembly of six large lenses that were carefully packaged and aligned for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument project.

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For the first time ever, scientists have imaged the process by which an individual immune system molecule is switched on in response to a signal from the environment. The new work provides an enormous leap forward in our understanding of how T cells detect viruses and may provide unique insights into autoimmune diseases and cancer immunotherapy.

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The BISICLES ice sheet model uses high performance computing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) to systematically examine where the Antarctic Ice Sheet is vulnerable and the resulting potential for large contributions to sea level rise.

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Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a software tool that uses supercomputing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center to accurately simulate traffic flow throughout the San Francisco Bay Area road networks and provide estimates of the associated congestion, energy usage, and productivity loss.

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A team of researchers working at Berkeley Lab has discovered the strongest topological conductor yet, in the form of thin crystal samples that have a spiral-staircase structure. The team’s result is reported in the March 20 edition of the journal Nature.

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With an estimated daily fuel demand of more than 5 million barrels per day, the global aviation sector is incredibly energy-intensive and almost entirely reliant on petroleum-based fuels. However, a new analysis by scientists at Berkeley Lab shows that sustainable plant-based bio-jet fuels could provide a competitive alternative to conventional fuels if current development and scale-up initiatives continue to push ahead successfully.

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A human’s health is shaped both by environmental factors and the body’s interactions with the microbiome, particularly in the gut. Genome sequences are critical for characterizing individual microbes and understanding their functional roles. However, previous studies have estimated that only 50 percent of species in the gut microbiome have a sequenced genome, in part because many species have not yet been cultivated for study.

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Researchers at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a platform that uses living cells as "scaffolds” for self-assembled composite materials. The technology could enable self-healing materials and other advanced applications in bioelectronics, biosensing, and smart materials.

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New research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows how the long-horned passalid beetle has a hardy digestive tract with microbes to thank for turning its woody diet into energy, food for its young, and nutrients for forest growth. These insights into how the beetle and its distinct microbiome have co-evolved provide a roadmap for the production of affordable, nature-derived fuels and bioproducts.

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A team led by scientists at Berkeley Lab has learned how natural nanoscale defects can enhance the properties of tungsten disulfide, a 2D material.

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A team led by DOE’s Berkeley Lab has developed a method that could turn ordinary semiconducting materials into quantum machines – devices marked by extraordinary electronic behavior that could help to revolutionize a number of industries aiming for energy-efficient electronic systems.

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When you hear about the biological processes that influence climate and the environment, such as carbon fixation or nitrogen recycling, it’s easy to think of them as abstract and incomprehensibly large-scale phenomena. Yet parts of these planet-wide processes are actually driven by the tangible actions of organisms at every scale of life, beginning at the smallest: the microorganisms living in the air, soil, and water. And now Berkeley Lab researchers have made it easier than ever to study these microbial communities by creating an optimized DNA analysis technique.

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A research team led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has created a nanoscale “playground” on a chip that simulates the formation of exotic magnetic particles called monopoles. The study could unlock the secrets to ever-smaller, more powerful memory devices.

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Combining a first laser pulse to heat up and “drill” through a plasma, and another to accelerate electrons to incredibly high energies in just tens of centimeters, scientists have nearly doubled the previous record for laser-driven particle acceleration at Berkeley Lab’s BELLA Center.

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A superfast detector installed on an electron microscope at Berkeley Lab will reveal atomic-scale details across a larger sample area than could be seen before, and can produce movies showing chemistry in action and changes in materials.

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Researchers at Berkeley Lab have used one of the most advanced microscopes in the world to reveal the structure of a large protein complex crucial to photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into cellular energy. The finding will allow scientists to explore for the first time how the complex functions and could have implications for the production of a variety of bioproducts, including plastic alternatives and biofuels.

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For several decades, the nuclear science community has been calling for a new type of particle collider to pursue – in the words of one report – “a new experimental quest to study the glue that binds us all.” This glue is responsible for most of the visible universe’s matter and mass. To learn about this glue, scientists are proposing a unique, high-energy collider that smashes accelerated electrons, which carry a negative charge, into charged atomic nuclei or protons, which carry a positive charge.

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A team led by Berkeley Lab scientists has gleaned new and surprising clues about the nuclear structure of an exotic form of magnesium: Mg-40.

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Researchers at Berkeley Lab have turned dark fiber owned by the DOE Energy Sciences Network into a highly sensitive seismic activity sensor that could potentially augment the performance of earthquake early warning systems currently being developed in the western United States.

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is credited with discovering more elements on the periodic table than any other institution. In celebration of its 150th anniversary, we look at how far it’s come and where it’s headed.

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To help solve a big data program for a new telescope that will conduct a major sky survey of the from the high desert of Chile, a scientific collaboration launched a competition to find the best way to train computers to identify the many types of objects it will be imaging. A researcher at Berkeley Lab beat out more than 1,000 participating teams to win the first phase of the competition.

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New simulations led by researchers working at the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have combined decades-old theories to provide new insight about the driving mechanisms in plasma jets that allows them to steal energy from black holes’ powerful gravitational fields and propel it far from their gaping mouths.

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Zahid Hussain, a longtime Berkeley Lab scientist, has received the DOE Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his contributions to synchrotron science.

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Chasing clues about the infant universe in relic light known as the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, Berkeley Lab scientists are devising more elaborate and ultrasensitive detector arrays to measure the properties of this light with increasing precision.

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Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed a dual-purpose material out of a self-assembling MOF (metal-organic framework)-nanocrystal hybrid that could one day be used to store carbon dioxide gas molecules for the manufacture of new chemicals and fuels.

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Researchers from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered that electron spin is key to understanding how cuprate superconductors can conduct electricity without loss at high temperature.