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Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos wins Wolf Prize in Chemistry

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Grant and Award Announcement

Paul Alivisatos, Berkeley Lab director and UC Berkeley professor, has won the prestigious Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry for 2012. Alivisatos is an internationally recognized authority on nanochemistry and a pioneer in the synthesis of semiconductor quantum dots and multi-shaped artificial nanostructures. He shares this year's Wolf Prize in Chemistry with fellow nanoscience expert Charles Lieber of Harvard University.

Funder: Wolf Foundation

Planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

There are more exoplanets further away from their parent stars than originally thought, according to new astrophysics research.

Journal: Nature

Berkeley Lab seeks to help US assert scientific leadership in critical materials

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Business Announcement

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory aims to change the status quo by reviving the study of rare earths to better understand how to extract them, use them more efficiently, reuse and recycle them and find substitutes for them.

Calculating what's in the universe from the biggest color 3-D map

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists and their colleagues in Sloan Digital Sky Survey III used visual data from nearly a million luminous galaxies for the most accurate calculation yet of how matter clumps together in the universe. By deriving cosmic rulers from an immense volume of sky, from a time when the universe was half its present age until now, the study establishes how much dark matter, dark energy, and even hard-to-detect neutrinos it contains.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, SDSS-III Participating Institutions, National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Meeting: 219th American Astronomical Society Meeting

New information on the waste-disposal units of living cells

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley researchers have provided the most detailed look ever at the "regulatory particle" used by the proteasome - one of the most critical protein machines in living cells - to identify and degrade proteins marked for destruction. This new information holds implications for a broad range of vital biochemical processes, including transcription, DNA repair and the immune defense system.

Journal: Nature
Funder: American Cancer Society, Searle Scholars Program, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, National Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Institutes of Health

Clearing a potential road block to bisabolane

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Joint BioEnergy Institute researchers have determined the three-dimensional crystal structure of a protein that is key to boosting the microbial-based production of bisabolane as a clean, green and renewable biosynthetic alternative to D2 diesel fuel.

Journal: Structure
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, Office of Science

Clearest picture yet of dark matter points the way to better understanding of dark energy

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Two teams at the US Department of Energy's Fermilab and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have independently made the largest direct measurements of the invisible scaffolding of the universe, using the gravitational lensing effect known as "cosmic shear" to build maps of the distribution of dark matter. Their methods show that surveys with ground-based telescopes can measure cosmic shear with enough accuracy to aid in better understanding the mysterious space-stretching effects of dark energy.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation
Meeting: 219th American Astronomical Society Meeting

Foy's fun with science a career highlight

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

During a science experiment, Frances Foy helped a fifth grade student dip a blown-up balloon into a container of liquid nitrogen. As the balloon shriveled amid a cloud of white vapor while classmates 'oohed' and 'aahed' in amazement, Foy asked, "What is happening? Something is changing." For two decades, Foy has been demonstrating the wonders of science like this one that explains the states of matter.

CAD for RNA

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Joint BioEnergy Institute researchers have developed computer assisted design-type tools for engineering RNA components to control genetic expression in microbes. This holds enormous potential for microbial-based production of advanced biofuels, biodegradable plastics, therapeutic drugs and a host of other goods now derived from petrochemicals.

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

A single cell endoscope

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a nanowire endoscope that can provide high-resolution optical images of the interior of a single living cell, or precisely deliver genes, proteins, therapeutic drugs or other cargo without injuring or damaging the cell.

Journal: Nature Nanotechnology
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health