Highest Precision Prediction of Muon "Wobble"
Comparing new prediction to measurements of muons' precession could potentially help scientists discover new subatomic particles.
Solar Eruptions May Not Have Slinky-like Shapes After All
Revisiting some older data, University of New Hampshire researchers discovered new information about the shape of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) - large-scale eruptions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun - that could one day help protect satellites in space as well as the electrical grid on Earth.
Mathematics Can Assist Cities in Addressing Unstructured Neighborhoods
New mathematical models developed by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory with collaborators at Sam Houston State University and the University of Chicago can help guide changes to the layout of poor urban neighborhoods to improve access to resources with minimum disruption and cost.
ATLAS Experiment Uncovers Higgs Boson Interactions with Heaviest Quarks
New direct evidence for Higgs interactions with top and bottom quarks confirms its role in generating mass for constituents of matter.
Putting 'Public' Back Into Publication
Six years in the making, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Knowledgebase (KBase) program offers the most updated system for recording experimental methods
Protactinium and Its Periodic Intersection
The element's unusual electron structure and behavior are vital to understanding and exploiting the chemical bonding and reactivity of the heavy elements.
LHC scientists detect most favored Higgs decay
Today at CERN, the Large Hadron Collider collaborations ATLAS and CMS jointly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson transforming into bottom quarks as it decays. This is predicted to be the most common way for Higgs bosons to decay yet was a difficult signal to isolate because background processes closely mimic the subtle signal. This new discovery is a big step forward in the quest to understand how the Higgs enables fundamental particles to acquire mass.
Riding the Wave of Liquid:Liquid Interfaces
Crests of watery waves breaking in oil may be the gatekeepers to transport vital chemicals in industrial separation process.
Q&A: Shining X-ray light on perovskites for better solar cells
Four scientists discuss X-ray experiments at SLAC's synchrotron that reveal new insights into how a promising solar cell material forms.
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A Device to Harvest Energy from Low-frequency Vibrations
A team of researchers from Penn State's Materials Research Institute and the University of Utah has developed a wearable energy harvesting device that could generate energy from the swing of an arm while walking or jogging. The device, about the size of a wristwatch, produces enough power to run a personal health monitoring system.
Generating Energy from Sandy Rivers: An Untapped Renewable Resource Ready for Prime Time?
Findings, detailed in a new paper published in Nature Energy, showed that the model hydrokinetic power plant can generate energy effectively and safely without undermining the stability of the river geomorphic environment.
Getting a Charge Out of MOFs
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.
How SLAC's 'Electronics Artists' Enable Cutting-Edge Science
A team of 12 design engineers develop application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, for X-ray science, particle physics and other research areas at SLAC. Their custom chips are tailored to extract meaningful features from signals collected in the lab's experiments and turn them into digital signals that can be further analyzed.
Report Confirms Wind Technology Advancements Continue to Drive Down Wind Energy Prices
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.
From Great Prairie to Gigabytes: Sequencing the Genomes of a Microbial Ecosystem
The American Midwest's Great Prairie is one of the country's most important ecological systems and its soil microbes are essential to the carbon cycle. The Great Prairie Metagenome Grand Challenge is sequencing the genes of microbial communities to better understand their ecological role.
Novel X-Ray Optics Boost Imaging Capabilities at NSLS-II
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new approach to 3-D x-ray imaging that can visualize bulky materials in great detail--an impossible task with conventional imaging methods. The novel technique could help scientists unlock clues about the structural information of countless materials, from batteries to biological systems.
Mixed Report Card for Low-Cost Indoor Air Quality Home Monitors
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.
Steady as she goes: Scientists tame damaging plasma instabilities and pave the way for efficient fusion on Earth
In a set of recent experiments, scientists have tamed a damaging plasma instability in a way that could lead to the efficient and steady-state operation of ITER, the international tokamak experiment under construction in France to demonstrate the practicality of fusion power.
These Lithium-Ion Batteries Can't Catch Fire Because They Harden on Impact (Video)
Lithium-ion batteries commonly used in consumer electronics are notorious for bursting into flame when damaged or improperly packaged. These incidents occasionally have grave consequences, including burns, house fires and at least one plane crash. Inspired by the weird behavior of some liquids that solidify on impact, researchers have developed a practical and inexpensive way to help prevent these fires.
Ecosystems Are Getting Greener in the Arctic
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.
Nanobot Pumps Destroy Nerve Agents
Once in the territory of science fiction, "nanobots" are closer than ever to becoming a reality, with possible applications in medicine, manufacturing, robotics and fluidics. Today, scientists report progress in developing the tiny machines: They have made nanobot pumps that destroy nerve agents, while simultaneously administering an antidote.
Protecting the Power Grid: Advanced Plasma Switch Can Make the Grid More Efficient for Long-Distance Power Transmission
Article describes PPPL research to help General Electric design a high-voltage power switch for converting DC current to AC current over long-distance power transmission lines.
More Workers Working Might Not Get More Work Done, Ants (and Robots) Show
For ants and robots operating in confined spaces like tunnels, having more workers does not necessarily mean getting more work done. Just as too many cooks in a kitchen get in each other's way, having too many robots in tunnels creates clogs that can bring the work to a grinding halt.
National Ignition Facility Reveals How Hydrogen Becomes Metallic Inside Giant Gas Planets
Swirling dense metallic hydrogen dominates the interiors of Jupiter, Saturn and many extra-solar planets. Building precise models of these giant planets requires an accurate description of the transition of pressurized hydrogen into this metallic substance - a long-standing scientific challenge. In a paper published by Science, a research team led by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory describes optical measurements of the insulator-to-metal transition in fluid hydrogen, resolving discrepancies in previous experiments and establishing new benchmarks for calculations used to construct planetary models. The multi-institution team included researchers from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, University of Edinburgh, University of Rochester, Carnegie Institution of Washington, University of California, Berkeley and The George Washington University.
Light-Emitting Nanoparticles Could Provide a Safer Way to Image Living Cells
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.