A research team led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed a technique that could lead to new electronic materials that surpass the limitations imposed by Moore’s Law.
Berkeley Lab Science Snapshots July 2020
A team of scientists working at Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron has discovered a new form of the human-made element mendelevium. The newly created isotope, mendelevium-244, is the 17th and lightest form of the element, which was first discovered in 1955 by a Berkeley Lab team.
Humans have drawn technological inspiration from fish scales going back to ancient times: Romans, Egyptians, and other civilizations would dress their warriors in scale armor, providing both protection and mobility. Now, using advanced X-ray imaging techniques, Berkeley Lab scientists have characterized carp scales down to the nanoscale, enabling them to understand how the material is resistant to penetration while retaining flexibility.
Marjorie Shapiro, an experimental particle physicist and faculty senior scientist at Berkeley Lab, has been accustomed to working remotely and observing extreme social distancing from some colleagues for years, given that the scientific experiment she supports is 5,800 miles away.
A new computational approach developed by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory offers a high-tech yet simple method for estimating groundwater: it pairs high-resolution images derived by satellite with advanced computer modeling to estimate aquifer volume change from observed ground deformation.
Using a unique combination of nanoscale imaging and chemical analysis, an international team of researchers has revealed a key step in the molecular mechanism behind the water splitting reaction of photosynthesis, a finding that could help inform the design of renewable energy technology.
Scientists at Berkeley Lab and Stanford have joined forces to aim a gene-targeting, antiviral agent called PAC-MAN against COVID-19.
World’s forests are growing younger, U.S. wind plant performance changes with age, and fungi food choices opens the door to better methods for producing bio-based products
Farmers have enough worries – between bad weather, rising costs, and shifting market demands – without having to stress about the carbon footprint of their operations. But now a new set of projects by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) could make agriculture both more sustainable and more profitable.
Even as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, lies dormant within a telescope dome on a mountaintop in Arizona, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the DESI project has moved forward in reaching the final formal approval milestone prior to startup.
Largely unaffected by the pandemic, the Daya Bay reactor neutrino experiment in Shenzen, China, has continued to pump data to remote supercomputers for analyses.
Laser and biology experts at Berkeley Lab are working together to develop a platform and experiments to study the structure and components of viruses like the one causing COVID-19, and to learn how viruses interact with their surrounding environment. The experiments could provide new insight on how to reduce the infectiousness of viruses.
The Sanford Underground Research Facility, which is home to the LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter search project, earlier this month began a transition back toward increased operations.
Despite a temporary shutdown of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument in Arizona – which was in its final stages of testing in preparation to begin mapping millions of galaxies in 3D when the pandemic struck – a variety of project tasks are still moving forward.
A technology spun from carbon nanotube sensors discovered 20 years ago by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists could one day help healthcare providers test patients for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
One of the many unanswered scientific questions about COVID-19 is whether it is seasonal like the flu – waning in warm summer months then resurging in the fall and winter. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are launching a project to apply machine-learning methods to a plethora of health and environmental datasets, combined with high-resolution climate models and seasonal forecasts, to tease out the answer.
An antibody derived from a SARS survivor in 2003 appears to effectively neutralize the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, opening the door for speedy development of a targeted treatment.
David Richardson’s job is literally to make sure the light stays on. But it’s not just any light – it’s a very special X-ray light that could play a crucial role in an eventual treatment for COVID-19. Richardson is an operator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s synchrotron light source facility, the Advanced Light Source (ALS), and is one of a handful of workers providing essential services to scientists working on COVID-19-related research.
A team of researchers co-led by Berkeley Lab has observed unusually long-lived wavelike electrons called "plasmons" in a new class of electronically conducting material. Plasmons are very important for determining the optical and electronic properties of metals.
As society prepares to reopen indoor spaces and ease back into some sense of normalcy during the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is launching a study of the risk of airborne transmission of viruses within buildings and how to mitigate those risks.
As the COVID-19 outbreak took hold in Italy, researchers working on a nuclear physics experiment called CUORE at an underground laboratory in central Italy scrambled to keep the ultrasensitive experiment running and launch new tools and rules for remote operations.
Berkeley Lab’s Kristin Persson shares her thoughts on what inspired her to launch the Materials Project online database, the future of materials research and machine learning, and how she found her own way into a STEM career.
A new study, led by researchers at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, suggests new paths for catching the signals of dark matter particles that have their energy absorbed by atomic nuclei.
A team of materials scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – scientists who normally spend their time researching things like high-performance materials for thermoelectrics or battery cathodes – have built a text-mining tool in record time to help the global scientific community synthesize the mountain of scientific literature on COVID-19 being generated every day.
In Nature Genetics, a multi-institutional team including DOE Joint Genome Institute researchers sequenced and assembled the genomes of the five major cotton lineages to provide breeders with genetic level insights on crop improvements. The genomes are available on JGI’s plant data portal Phytozome.
A high-sensitivity X-ray technique at Berkeley Lab is attracting a growing group of scientists because it provides a deep, precise dive into battery chemistry.
Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source X-ray facility has been recalled to action to support research related to COVID-19, the coronavirus disease that has already infected about 2 million people around the world.
Researchers at Berkeley Lab have captured 3D images of nanoparticles in liquid with atomic precision, and developed an ultrathin electrical switch that could further miniaturize computing devices and personal electronics without loss of performance.
One strategy to make biofuels more competitive is to make plants do some of the work themselves. Scientists can engineer plants to produce valuable chemical compounds, or bioproducts, as they grow. Then the bioproducts can be extracted from the plant and the remaining plant material can be converted into fuel. But one important part of this strategy has remained unclear — exactly how much of a particular bioproduct would plants need to make in order to make the process economically feasible?
An international team of scientists has published a new study proposing an optimization methodology for designing climate-resilient energy systems and to help ensure that communities will be able to meet future energy needs given weather and climate variability. Their findings were recently published in Nature Energy.
Fiber optic cables, it turns out, can be incredibly useful scientific sensors. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have studied them for use in carbon sequestration, groundwater mapping, earthquake detection, and monitoring of Arctic permafrost thaw. Now they have been awarded new grants to develop fiber optics for two novel uses: monitoring offshore wind operations and underground natural gas storage.
A new study by scientists at Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, and the University of Michigan – published online this week in the journal Science – concludes that a possible dark matter-related explanation for a mysterious light signature in space is largely ruled out.
In this Q&A Satya Gontcho A Gontcho, a lead observer for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), shares her experiences at the DESI site near Tucson, Arizona, including evening observing stints to run through detailed checklists and probe how the instrument’s components are working.
March 2020 Science Snapshots from Berkeley Lab
In a machine learning challenge dubbed the 2020 Large Hadron Collider Olympics, a team of cosmologists from Berkeley Lab developed a code that best identified a mock signal hidden in simulated particle-collision data.
A new design has put the long-sought idea of artificial photosynthesis within reach
Can scientists understand human behavior enough to figure out what drives the choices you make? In fact, it’s called “decision science,” and it’s something that Anna Spurlock, a behavioral economist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), specializes in.
A California-based company called GraphAudio is moving toward commercializing graphene-based audio technology developed by researchers at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley in an effort to stimulate an audio revolution.
Why do some people feel like they need three cups of coffee just to get through the day when others are happy with only one? Why do some people abstain entirely? New research suggests that our intake of coffee – the most popular beverage in America, above bottled water, sodas, tea, and beer – is affected by a positive feedback loop between genetics and the environment.
Berkeley Lab scientists tap into graphene’s hidden talent as an electrically tunable superconductor, insulator, and magnetic device for the advancement of quantum information science
As we look back at a decade of discovery, we highlight 10 achievements by scientists at Berkeley Lab and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis that bring us closer to a solar fuels future.
Berkeley Lab scientists have made a surprising discovery that could help explain our risk for developing chronic diseases or cancers as we get older, and how our food decomposes over time.
Members of the media are invited to attend a mid-April dedication of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is scheduled to begin its five-year mission to construct a 3D map of the universe in the coming months.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's decades of leadership in designing & enhancing energy-efficient data centers is being applied to NERSC supercomputing resources through a collaboration that's using operational data analytics to optimize cooling systems & save electricity.
Dinosaur blood vessels, giant viruses, and antibiotic-building enzymes
Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry have designed a biocompatible polymer that has the potential to advance photothermal therapy, a technique that deploys near-infrared light to combat antibacterial-resistant infections and cancer.
Giant-scale physics experiments are increasingly reliant on big data and complex algorithms fed into powerful computers, and managing this multiplying mass of data presents its own unique challenges. To better prepare for this data deluge posed by next-generation upgrades and new experiments, physicists are turning to the fledgling field of quantum computing.
In Nature, a team led by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) researchers uncovered a broad diversity of large and giant viruses that belong to the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV) supergroup, expanding virus diversity in this group 10-fold from just 205 genomes.
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