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Metamolecules that switch handedness at light-speed

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A multi-institutional team of researchers that included Berkeley Lab scientists has created the first artificial molecules whose chirality can be rapidly switched from a right-handed to a left-handed orientation with a beam of light. This holds potentially huge possibilities for the application of terahertz technologies across a wide range of fields, including biomedical research, homeland security and ultrahigh-speed communications.

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

Understanding what's up with the Higgs boson

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

On July 4, CERN will release the latest results of the search for the Higgs boson with the Large Hadron Collider. Members of the ATLAS and CMS experiments who are leading the search are still deciding what they will announce. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has a large contingent of physicists in the ATLAS collaboration, some in key posts. They explain what's involved in the Higgs search and what happens after the news breaks.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation

Programmable DNA scissors found for bacterial immune system

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international team of researchers has discovered a programmable RNA complex in the bacterial immune system that guides the cleaving of DNA at targeted sites. This discovery opens a new door to genome editing with implications for the green chemistry microbial-based production of advanced biofuels, therapeutic drugs and other valuable chemical products.

Journal: Science
Funder: Swedish Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Austrian Science Fund

How an ancestral fungus may have influenced coal formation

DOE/Joint Genome Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The fossilized remains of plants that lived from around 360 to 300 million years ago, coal generated nearly half of the roughly four trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed in the United States in 2010. An international team of scientists proposes that the evolution of fungi capable of breaking down the polymer lignin in plants may have played a key role in ending the development of coal deposits, contributing to the end of the Carboniferous period.

Journal: Science
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Lawrence Livermore researcher delve into airborne particulates

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

For the first time, Lawrence Livermore researchers and international collaborators have peered into the makeup of complex airborne particulate matter so small that it can be transported into human lungs -- usually without a trace.

X-ray vision exposes aerosol structures

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have captured the most detailed images to date of airborne soot particles, a key contributor to global warming and a health hazard.

Journal: Nature
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Sifting through a trillion electrons

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Modern research tools like supercomputers, particle colliders, and telescopes are generating so much data, so quickly, many scientists fear that soon they will not be able to keep up with the deluge.

First 3-D nanoscale optical cavities from metamaterials

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab researchers have created the world's smallest three-dimensional optical cavities with the potential to generate the world's most intense nanolaser beams. In addition to nanolasers, these unique optical cavities should be applicable to a broad range of other technologies, including LEDs, optical sensing, nonlinear optics, quantum optics and photonic integrated circuits.

Journal: Nature Photonics
Funder: US Air Force Office of Scientific Research / Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Waves of Berkeley Lab responders deploy omics to track Deepwater Horizon cleanup microbes

DOE/Joint Genome Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago, a team of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers found that marine microbial communities also played a role in the dispersal process. The researchers availed of the expertise and resources at two of the Lab's national user facilities, the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute and the Advanced Light Source.

Journal: The ISME Journal
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Berkeley Lab wins 4 2012 R&D 100 awards

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

Berkeley Lab researchers have won four 2012 R&D 100 awards, also known as the "Oscars of Innovation," which recognize the year's 100 most significant proven technological advances. This year's winners were for technologies that perform chemical analysis across vast distances, shape X-ray beams with submicron accuracy, spray biological molecules onto a mass spectrometer for microchip analysis, and generate reactor-quality neutron beams from a compact source.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy