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Americans use more efficient and renewable energy technologies

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Americans used less energy in 2011 than in the previous year due mainly to a shift to higher-efficiency energy technologies in the transportation and residential sectors. Meanwhile, less coal was used but more natural gas was consumed according to the most recent energy flow charts released by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Training your robot the PaR-PaR way

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

PaR-PaR, a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language developed by researchers at JBEI and Berkeley Lab, uses an object-oriented approach to make it easier to integrate robotic equipment into biological laboratories. Effective robots can increase research productivity, lower costs and provide more reliable and reproducible experimental data.

Journal: ACS Synthetic Biology
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

State-of-the-art beams from table-top accelerators

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

"Table-top accelerators" – laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) that propel electron pulses to high energies within a few centimeters – promise far less expensive future accelerators with far less environmental impact than today's conventional machines. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have devised novel methods to test the quality of uniquely challenging LPA beams.

Milky Way's black hole getting ready for snack

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Get ready for a fascinating eating experience in the center of our galaxy. The event involves a black hole that may devour much of an approaching cloud of dust and gas known as G2. A supercomputer simulation prepared by two Lab physicists and a former postdoc suggests that some of G2 will survive, although its surviving mass will be torn apart, leaving it with a different shape and questionable fate.

Elevated indoor carbon dioxide impairs decision-making performance

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) can significantly impair people's decision-making performance. The results were unexpected and may have particular implications for schools and other spaces with high occupant density.

Journal: Environmental Health Perspectives
Funder: State University of New York

New military apparel repels chemical and biological agents

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and collaborators are developing a new military uniform material that repels chemical and biological agents using a novel carbon nanotube fabric.

Funder: Defense Threat Reduction Agency

From form to function: 2013 DOE JGI Community Sequencing Program portfolio announced

DOE/Joint Genome Institute
Grant and Award Announcement

For genomics researchers, the term "form to function" could be applied to the ongoing transition from not just studying an organism's genetic code to also understanding the roles those genes play. All the projects selected for the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute's 2013 Community Sequencing Program portfolio combine sequence data generation with large-scale experimental and computational capabilities to enable fuller functional genome annotation.

Funder: US Department of Energy's Office of Science

New insights into how genetic differences influence breast cancer risk from low-dose radiation

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have identified tissue mechanisms that may influence a woman's susceptibility or resistance to breast cancer after exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation, such as the levels used in full-body CT scans and radiotherapy.

Journal: PLOS One

Another advance on the road to spintronics

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Using a new technique called HARPES, for Hard x-ray Angle-Resolved PhotoEmission Spectroscopy, Berkeley Lab researchers have unlocked the ferromagnetic secrets of dilute magnetic semiconductors, materials of great interest for spintronic technology.

Journal: Nature Materials
Funder: US Department of Energy's Office of Science

The best of both catalytic worlds

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab researchers have combined the best properties of heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts by encapsulating metallic nanoclusters within the branched molecular arms of dendrimers. The results are heterogenized homogeneous nanocatalysts that are sustainable and feature high reactivity and selectivity.

Journal: Nature Chemistry
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy