Lithium-sulfur batteries have great potential as a low-cost, high-energy, energy source for both vehicle and grid applications. However, they suffer from significant capacity fading. Now scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have made a surprising discovery that could fix this problem.
An X-ray technique, coupled with theoretical work, revealed how oxygen atoms embedded very near the surface of a copper sample had a more dramatic effect on the early stages of the reaction with carbon dioxide (CO2) than earlier theories could account for. This information could prove useful in designing new types of materials to further enhance reactions and make them more efficient in converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuels and other products.
Microbes play important roles in regulating Earth’s biogeochemical cycles and in Nature Biotechnology, U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute scientists report the release of 1,003 phylogenetically diverse bacterial and archaeal reference genomes—the single largest release to date.
Heterogeneous nanostructured materials are widely used in various optoelectronic devices, including solar cells. However, the nano-interfaces contain structural defects that can affect performance. Calculations run at NERSC helped researchers ID the root cause of the defects in two materials and provide design rules to avoid them.
Berkeley Lab's Greg Kurtzer developed Singularity, a solution that allows scientists to use software containers in a high-performance computing (HPC) environment. It has caught on so quickly that Kurtzer has launched SingularityWare LLC, to further develop and support the open-source software.
The knowledge and expertise of a seasoned energy efficiency professional has been packed into a high-tech suitcase. The Sensor Suitcase is a portable case that contains easy-to-use sensors and other equipment that make it possible for anyone to identify energy-saving opportunities in small commercial buildings.
Cost-effectively breaking down bioenergy crops into sugars that can then be converted into fuel is a barrier to commercially producing sustainable biofuels. Enabled by DOE User Facilities, a team reports that early lineages of fungi can form enzyme complexes capable of degrading plant biomass.
California has established ambitious goals to reduce energy consumption in buildings, including a policy goal for all new residential buildings to be zero net energy (ZNE) by 2020. Now the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has launched two projects to help the state meet its ZNE building goals.
Experiments at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source have helped scientists to solve a mystery of why some rocks can float for years in the ocean, traveling thousands of miles before sinking.
A new mathematical “shortcut” developed by Berkeley Lab researchers is speeding up molecular absorption calculations by a factor of five, so simulations that used to take 10 to 15 hours to compute can now be done in approximately 2.5 hours. These algorithms will be incorporated in an upcoming release of the widely used NWChem computational chemistry software suite later this year.
Simulations run at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as part of a unique collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and an industry consortium could help U.S. paper manufacturers significantly reduce production costs and increase energy efficiencies.
Combining speed with incredible precision, a team of researchers has developed a way to print a nanoscale imaging probe onto the tip of a glass fiber as thin as a human hair, accelerating the production of the promising new device from several per month to several per day.
Scientists have created the first-ever polarization gradient in thin-film ferroelectrics, greatly expanding the range of functional temperatures for a key material used in a variety of everyday applications. The discovery could pave the way for developing devices capable of supporting wireless communications in extreme environments.
Changing a single base in an organism’s genetic code impact its traits. Subtler changes can and do happen: in eukaryotes, one such modification involves adding a methyl group to base 6 of adenine (6mA). Researchers have now found prevalent 6mA modifications in the earliest fungal lineages.
A new tool at Berkeley Lab will be taking on some of the periodic table’s latest heavyweight champions to see how their masses measure up to predictions.
The first shipment of powerful magnetic devices for a next-generation laser project arrived at their destination on Wednesday after a nearly 3,000-mile journey. Berkeley Lab is overseeing the development and delivery of these devices, called undulator segments.
Berkeley Lab scientists have found an unexpected magnetic property in a 2-D material. The new atomically thin, flat magnet could have major implications for a wide range of applications, such as nanoscale memory, spintronic devices, and magnetic sensors.
With help from a supernova-hunting pipeline based at NERSC, astronomers captured multiple images of a gravitationally lensed Type 1a supernova. This is currently the only one, but if astronomers can find more they may be able to measure Universal expansion within four percent accuracy. Luckily, Berkeley Lab researchers do have a method for finding more.
Pioneering X-ray experiments at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS) helped bring to life decades-old theories about exotic topological states of matter, and the ALS continues to play an important role in this flourishing field of research.
A new Berkeley Lab project seeks to efficiently capture waste heat and convert it to electricity, potentially saving California up to $385 million per year. With a $2-million grant from the California Energy Commission, Berkeley Lab scientists will work with Alphabet Energy to create a cost-effective thermoelectric waste heat recovery system.
Berkeley Lab researchers collaborated with colleagues from the University of Indiana and Texas A&M University to solve the atomic structure of a Zika virus protein that is key to viral reproduction. The X-ray studies were conducted at the Advanced Light Source in the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology.
Viruses outnumber the microbes on Earth. A handful of giant viruses have been discovered in the past two decades. In Science, DOE Joint Genome Institute scientists report discovering a novel group of giant viruses that they believe significantly increases our understanding of viral evolution.
Berkeley Lab researchers have, for the first time, captured the ephemeral electron movements in a transient state of a chemical reaction using ultrafast, tabletop X-ray spectroscopy. The researchers used femtosecond pulses of X-ray light to catch the unraveling of a ring molecule that is important in biochemical and optoelectronic processes.
Results from a new study involving Berkeley Lab scientists could explain a mismatch between predictions and recent measurements of ghostly particles streaming from nuclear reactors -- the so-called “reactor antineutrino anomaly” that has puzzled physicists since 2011.
Using the flowering mustard plant Boechera stricta, a team including researchers at the DOE Joint Genome Institute and Duke University offers the first direct evidence showing that QTLs, genome regions on chromosomes to which genetic traits can be mapped, are a driving force behind speciation.
To meet skyrocketing demand for electricity, African countries may have to triple their energy output by 2030. While hydropower and fossil fuel power plants are favored approaches in some quarters, a new assessment by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found that wind and solar can be economically and environmentally competitive options and can contribute significantly to the rising demand.
Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM)—which enables the visualization of viruses, proteins, and other biological structures at the molecular level—is a critical tool used to advance biochemical knowledge. Now Berkeley Lab researchers have extended cryo-EM’s impact further by developing a new computational algorithm instrumental in constructing a 3-D atomic-scale model of bacteriophage P22 for the first time.
A new Berkeley Lab-led study provides detailed 3-D views of space dust in the Milky Way, which could help us understand the properties of this dust and how it affects views of distant objects.
Berkeley Lab researchers have successfully added thread-level parallelism on top of MPI-level parallelism in the planewave density functional theory method within the popular software suite NWChem. An important step to ensuring that computational chemists are prepared to compute efficiently on next-generation exascale machines.
Researchers from Ames Laboratory used supercomputers at NERSC to evaluate a novel approach for creating more energy-efficient ultra-thin crystalline silicon solar cells by optimizing nanophotonic light trapping.
X-ray-based experiments at Berkeley Lab will simulate -- in microscopic detail -- spacecraft parachute fabric performance in the extreme conditions of other planets’ atmospheres.
Soils could release much more CO2 than expected into the atmosphere as the climate warms, according to new research by Berkeley Lab scientists. Their findings are based on a field experiment that, for the first time, explored what happens to organic carbon trapped in soil when all soil layers are warmed, which in this case extend to a depth of 100 centimeters.
Data research for a Berkeley Lab-led dark energy experiment benefits citizen science project that seeks the public's help in the hunt for a hypothesized Neptune-like Planet Nine.
Scientists at Berkeley Lab and Caltech have—in just two years—nearly doubled the number of materials known to have potential for use in solar fuels. They did so by developing a process that promises to speed the discovery of commercially viable generation of solar fuels that could replace coal, oil, and other fossil fuels.
Mars may have been a wetter place than previously thought, according to research on simulated Martian meteorites conducted, in part, at Berkeley Lab.
Geothermal energy, a clean, renewable source of energy produced by the heat of the earth, provides about 6 percent of California’s total power. That number could be much higher if associated costs were lower. Now scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have launched two California Energy Commission-funded projects aimed at making geothermal energy more cost-effective to deploy and operate.
NASA is developing a new family of flexible heat-shield systems with a woven carbon-fiber base material, and is using X-rays at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source to test the designs.
NASA and Berkeley Lab researchers have teamed up to explore next-generation spacecraft materials at the microscale using an X-ray technique that produces 3-D images. This work could help ensure future spacecraft survive the rigors of otherworldly atmospheres.
A new Berkeley Lab study shows that high-resolution models captured hurricanes and big waves that low-resolution ones missed. Better extreme wave forecasts are important for coastal cities, the military, the shipping industry, and surfers.
The race is on to build the most sensitive U.S.-based experiment designed to directly detect dark matter particles. Department of Energy officials have formally approved a key construction milestone that will propel the project toward its April 2020 goal for completion.
Berkeley Lab chemists have developed a powerful new method of selectively linking chemicals to proteins, a major advance in the manipulation of biomolecules that could transform the way drugs are developed, proteins are probed, and molecules are tracked and imaged. This technique, called ReACT, is akin to a chemical Swiss army knife for proteins.
For the first time, Berkeley Lab researchers have built and trained machine learning algorithms to predict defect behavior in certain intermetallic compounds with high accuracy. This method will accelerate research of new advanced alloys and lightweight new materials for applications spanning automotive to aerospace and much more.
A new Berkeley Lab-led study found that the sticky residue left behind by tobacco smoke led to changes in weight and blood cell count in mice. These latest findings add to a growing body of evidence that thirdhand smoke exposure may be harmful.
Berkeley Lab is set to receive nearly $4.6 million over four years as part of an ongoing, federally funded project to create a comprehensive catalog for fundamental genomics research. This latest expansion of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, or ENCODE 4, is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute.
To better understand the physical conditions that create superluminious supernova, astrophysicists are running 2D simulations of these events using supercomputers at National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) developed CASTRO code.
Scientists used one of the world’s most powerful electron microscopes to map the precise location and chemical type of 23,000 atoms in an extremely small particle made of iron and platinum. Insights gained from the particle’s structure could lead to new ways to improve its magnetic performance for use in high-density, next-generation hard drives.
Using advanced imaging techniques, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have been able to observe what exactly happens inside a cathode particle as lithium-ion batteries are charged and discharged.
Extending the roots of team science at its birthplace, Berkeley Lab will soon bring together researchers from the DOE Joint Genome Institute with those from the Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) under one roof. The groundbreaking for the Integrative Genomics Building celebrates the future colocation of two partnering scientific user community resources and launches construction of the first building in the long-term vision for a consolidated biosciences presence on Berkeley Lab’s main site.
Art Rosenfeld, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Distinguished Scientist Emeritus who is also known as California’s “godfather” of energy efficiency and who has been credited with being personally responsible for billions of dollars in energy savings, died Friday at his home in Berkeley, California. He was 90.
Berkeley scientists have discovered that electrons in vanadium dioxide can conduct electricity without conducting heat, an exotic property in an unconventional material. The characteristic could lead to applications in thermoelectrics and window coatings.
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