Science Snapshots: COVID-19, power outages, Alzheimer's disease, and optical antennas
Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryMarch Science Snapshots from Berkeley Lab
March Science Snapshots from Berkeley Lab
COSMIC, a multipurpose X-ray instrument at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, has made headway in the scientific community since its launch less than 2 years ago, with groundbreaking contributions in fields ranging from batteries to biominerals.
Physicists have been studying the question of how supernova explosions occur for more than 60 years. Thanks to the increasing power of supercomputing resources such as those at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, they’re moving ever closer to an answer.
Berkeley Lab scientists have captured real-time, high-resolution videos of liquid structures taking shape as nanoparticles form a solid-like layer at the interface between oil and water. Their findings could help advance all-liquid robotics for targeted cancer drug delivery and other applications.
Increasingly, scientists are recognizing that negative emissions technologies (NETs) to remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be an essential component in the strategy to mitigate climate change. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a multidisciplinary Department of Energy research lab, is pursuing a portfolio of negative emissions technologies and related research.
Berkeley Lab researchers participated in a study that used machine learning to scan for new particles in three years of particle-collision data from CERN’s ATLAS detector.
A team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) used a quantum computer to successfully simulate an aspect of particle collisions that is typically neglected in high-energy physics experiments, such as those that occur at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
Finding a way to end the coronavirus pandemic has required a global response from thousands of people across scientific, medical, academic, and political entities. Among them are scientists working at NERSC and SLAC's LCLS, who teamed up to capture images of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and leverage the superfacility model for real-time data analysis.
Since element 99 – einsteinium – was discovered in 1952 at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) from the debris of the first hydrogen bomb, scientists have performed very few experiments with it because it is so hard to create and is exceptionally radioactive. A team of Berkeley Lab chemists has overcome these obstacles to report the first study characterizing some of its properties, opening the door to a better understanding of the remaining transuranic elements of the actinide series.
These news briefs cover topics including gut microbes, tsetse flies in 3D, an energy use framework for heating and cooling, and new gravitational lensing candidates.
In Nature, a multi-institutional team including DOE Joint Genome Institute researchers has produced a high-quality reference sequence of the complex switchgrass genome. Building off this work, bioenergy researchers are exploring targeted genome editing techniques to customize the crop.
Reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from energy and industry by 2050 can be accomplished by rebuilding U.S. energy infrastructure to run primarily on renewable energy, at a net cost of about $1 per person per day, according to new research published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of San Francisco (USF), and the consulting firm Evolved Energy Research.
A new, compact system has been successfully demonstrated at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center to provide simultaneous high-resolution measurements of multiple electron-beam properties.
A test developed by Berkeley Lab scientists can quickly and easily detect whether sperm cells are carrying chromosomal defects, an advance that will help men who have undergone cancer treatment father healthy children.
A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at Berkeley Lab, suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars.
January Snapshots: CO2 removal, water-splitting, battery mystery, thirdhand smoke remediation
Before DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, can begin its 5-year mission from an Arizona mountaintop to produce the largest 3D sky map yet, researchers first needed an even bigger 2D map of the universe.
A team of researchers co-led by Berkeley Lab and Columbia University has developed a new material called avalanching nanoparticles that, when used as a microscopic probe, offers a simpler approach to taking high-resolution, real-time snapshots of a cell’s inner workings at the nanoscale.
The Department of Energy has announced that Susannah Tringe and Dan Kasen, two scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), will receive the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, one of DOE’s highest honors. Additionally, former Berkeley Lab scientist M. Zahid Hasan was also named as one of the eight recipients.
A team of biologists who banded together to support COVID-19 science determined the atomic structure of a coronavirus protein thought to help the pathogen evade and dampen response from human immune cells. The structural map has laid the groundwork for new antiviral treatments and enabled further investigations into how the newly emerged virus ravages the human body.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Barbara have developed a science-based analytic framework to evaluate the complex connections between water and energy, and options for adaptations in response to an evolving climate.
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has named Rachel Slaybaugh, associate professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley, to lead Berkeley Lab’s Cyclotron Road Division.
A new material developed by a team led by Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry will help to make hydrogen a viable energy source for a wide range of applications, including stationary power and portable power applications.
Researchers from Berkeley Lab and Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed new methods for the large-scale production, purification, and use of the radioisotope cerium-134, which could serve as a PET imaging radiotracer for a highly targeted cancer treatment known as alpha-particle therapy.
The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment collaboration – which made a precise measurement of an important neutrino property eight years ago, setting the stage for a new round of experiments and discoveries about these hard-to-study particles – has finished taking data. Though the experiment is formally shutting down, the collaboration will continue to analyze its complete dataset to improve upon the precision of findings based on earlier measurements.
A new approach for studying phage-bacteria interactions will help scientists study the intricate offensive and defensive chemical tactics used by parasite and host. These microscopic battles have implications for medicine, agricultural research, and climate science.
To address PPE shortages during the pandemic, scientists at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley are developing a rechargeable, reusable, anti-COVID N95 mask and a 3D-printable silicon-cast mask mold.
Berkeley Lab has a long history of participating in neutrino experiments and discoveries in locations ranging from a site 1.3 miles deep at a nickel mine in Ontario, Canada, to an underground research site near a nuclear power complex northeast of Hong Kong, and a neutrino observatory buried in ice near the South Pole.
Berkeley Lab-developed machine learning tool can also calculate the optical properties of a known structure; CUORE experiment in Italy is designed to find theorized process called neutrinoless double-beta decay
The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society, today announced that 489 of its members, among them eight scientists at Berkeley Lab, have been named Fellows. This lifetime honor, which follows a nomination and review process, recognizes scientists, engineers, and innovators for their distinguished achievements in research and other disciplines toward the advancement or applications of science.
A research team led by Berkeley Lab has designed a new material – called ZIOS (zinc imidazole salicylaldoxime) – that extracts copper ions from mine wastewater with unprecedented precision and speed.
Advanced X-ray techniques yield insights into a bacterial enzyme that turns methane gas into liquid fuel, and a genome resource expands known diversity of bacteria and archaea by 44%
Removing one charged molecule from a one-dimensional array causes the others to alternately turn ‘on’ or ‘off,’ paving the way for information transfer in tiny circuits
Berkeley Lab researchers have achieved unprecedented success in modifying a microbe to efficiently produce a compound of interest using a computational model and CRISPR-based gene editing. Their approach could dramatically speed up the research and development phase for new biomanufacturing processes, getting advanced bio-based products, such as sustainable fuels and plastic alternatives, on the shelves faster.
Reported in Nature Biotechnology, the known diversity of bacteria and archaea has been expanded by 44% through a publicly available collection of more than 52,000 microbial genomes from environmental samples resulting from a JGI-led collaboration involving more than 200 scientists around the world.
Borrowing a page from high-energy physics and astronomy textbooks, a team of physicists and computer scientists at Berkeley Lab has successfully adapted and applied a common error-reduction technique to the field of quantum computing.
The effort to construct GRETA, a cutting-edge spherical array of high-purity germanium crystals that will measure gamma-ray signals to reveal new details about the structure and inner workings of atomic nuclei, has received key approvals needed to proceed toward full build-out.
In this Q&A, Sinéad Griffin, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and Molecular Foundry, shares her thoughts on her search for light dark matter, the ultimate materials design challenge, and Berkeley Lab’s collaborative “team science” culture.
Crews working on the largest U.S. experiment designed to directly detect dark matter completed a major milestone last month, and are now turning their sights toward startup after experiencing some delays due to global pandemic precautions.
Kevin Lesko, a spokesperson for the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment and senior physicist at Berkeley Lab, shares his insights about the mysteries of dark matter, what we know about it, and what we hope to learn about it from LZ, in this Q&A interview at Sanford Lab.
One hundred and four U.S. companies, schools, governments, and institutions are taking their building energy savings to a new level with the Department of Energy’s Smart Energy Analytics Campaign, a four-year initiative funded through the Building Technologies Office and facilitated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to expand the use of energy management and information systems (EMIS) in commercial buildings.
Berkeley Lab has appointed Noël Bakhtian, previously a senior policy adviser in the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) and currently director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES) at Idaho National Laboratory, as its inaugural director of the Berkeley Lab Energy Storage Center.
A new analysis, featuring important contributions by Berkeley Lab scientists, strongly supports the hypothesis that the Higgs boson interacts with muons, which are heavier siblings of electrons and the lightest particles yet to reveal evidence for these interactions.
In celebration of National Nanotechnology Day, Molecular Foundry Director Kristin Persson explains atomic-scale engineering at four different levels – for a kindergartner, a middle schooler, a high school senior, and a graduate student
The Department of Energy has announced several major investments to take hydrogen fuel cells to the next level, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is set to play a leading role in providing the scientific expertise to help realize DOE’s ambitious goals.
Scientists have shown that an algorithm added to image processing software can improve the resolution and accuracy of cryo-electron microscopes, which are one of the most crucial tools in microbiology and medical research.
The precisely controlled photon source, made from an atomically thin semiconducting material, could aid the development of advanced quantum communication
Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, a professor at UC Berkeley and faculty scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), is co-winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “the development of a method for genome editing.”