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A how-to guide to slashing California's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study analyzes the infrastructure and technology changes needed to cut California's greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Energy efficiency, decarbonized electricity generation, and the electrification of cars and other end-uses are key.

Journal: Science

Mite-y genomic resources for bioenergy crop protection

DOE/Joint Genome Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The cost of controlling the damage wreaked by the tiny two-spotted spider mite, which can extract the nutrients needed from leaves of more than a thousand different plant species including bioenergy feedstocks and food staples, hovers around $1 billion annually. The Nov. 24 edition of Nature includes a report on how the publicly available genomic data from the spider mite is being used to advance the development of novel pest-control strategies.

Journal: Nature
Funder: Department of Energy/Office of Science

On the road to plasmonics with silver polyhedral nanocrystals

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab researchers may have opened the door to a simpler approach for the fabrication of plasmonic materials -- one of the hottest new fields in high tech -- by inducing polyhedral-shaped silver nanocrystals to self-assemble into three-dimensional millimeter-sized supercrystals of the highest possible density.

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

A corny turn for biofuels from switchgrass

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Introducing a special corn gene into switchgrass was found to significantly boost the viability of the switchgrass biomass as a feedstock crop for advanced biofuels. The gene, a variant of the Corngrass1 gene, holds the switchgrass in a perpetual juvenile state, more than doubling its starch content and making it easier to convert its polysaccharides into fermentable sugars.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, Joint BioEnergy Institute

Separating signal and noise in climate warming

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In order to separate human-caused global warming from the "noise" of purely natural climate fluctuations, temperature records must be at least 17 years long, according to climate scientists. To address criticism of the reliability of thermometer records of surface warming, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists analyzed satellite measurements of the temperature of the lower troposphere and saw a clear signal of human-induced warming of the planet.

SLAC research cracks puzzle of enzyme critical to food supply

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers used the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to identify a key atom inside the part of the nitrogenase enzyme where atmospheric nitrogen is converted into a form that living things can use.

Journal: Science
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Berkeley Lab researchers create first of its kind gene map of sulfate-reducing bacterium

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Critical genetic secrets of a bacterium that holds potential for removing toxic and radioactive waste from the environment have been revealed in a study led by Berkeley Lab researchers. The researchers have created a first-of-its-kind gene map of Desulfovibrio vulgaris, which can be used to identify the genes that determine how these bacteria interact with their surrounding environment.

Journal: Genome Biology
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Americans using more fossil fuels

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

American energy use went back up in 2010 compared to 2009, when consumption was at a 12-year low. The United States used more fossil fuels in 2010 than in 2009, while renewable electricity remained approximately constant, with an increase in wind power offset by a modest decline in hydroelectricity. There also was a significant increase in biomass consumption, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Berkeley Lab researchers ink nanostructures with tiny 'soldering iron'

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab researchers at the Molecular Foundry have shed light on the role of temperature in controlling a fabrication technique for drawing surface chemical patterns as small as 20 nanometers. This technique could provide an inexpensive, fast route to growing and patterning a wide variety of materials on surfaces for the fabrication of electrical circuits and chemical sensors, or for the study of how pharmaceuticals bind to proteins and viruses.

Journal: Applied Physics Letters
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Preparing for a thaw: How Arctic microbes respond to a warming world

DOE/Joint Genome Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The Arctic permafrost keeps an estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon out of the Earth's atmosphere but rising global temperatures lead to concerns about potential carbon cycle impacts when the frozen soils thaw. To answer the question, researchers including those from the DOE Joint Genome Institute, Berkeley Lab and the U.S. Geological Survey studied a collection of genomes isolated and assembled from the permafrost. Their findings appear online Nov. 6, 2011, in Nature.

Journal: Nature
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy