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Salt-loving microbe provides new enzymes for the production of next-gen biofuels

DOE/Joint Genome Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

To realize the full potential of advanced biofuels that are derived from lignocellulosic biomass, new technologies that can efficiently and cost-effectively break down this biomass into simple sugars are required. A new class of solvents, ionic liquids, are more efficient in treating the biomass and enhancing the yield of sugars liberated from it. To identify new enzymes that are tolerant of ionic liquids, researchers are turning to salt-tolerant organisms isolated from the Great Salt Lake.

Journal: Green Chemistry
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research; NSF Long-term Ecological Research Program; NSF FSML

Splitsville for boron nitride nanotubes

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab researchers, working with scientists at Rice University, have developed a technique for mass-producing defect-free boron nitride nanoribbons (BNNRs) of uniform length and thickness. BNNRs are predicted to display magnetic and electronic properties that hold enormous potential for future devices.

Journal: Nano Letters
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Berkeley scientists pioneer nanoscale nuclear materials testing capability

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A technique for testing irradiated materials on the nanoscale that yields results on the macroscale has been developed by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California at Berkeley, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. The technique uses electron microscopy with mechanical testing in situ; it could accelerate new materials for nuclear power applications and improve testing of nuclear power plants already in service.

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

When matter melts

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

For a few millionths of a second after the big bang, quarks could move freely, but soon normal matter "froze out" of this quark-matter soup. For the first time scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Tata Institute in India have compared quantum theory calculations and data from the STAR experiment at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider to map out the energies and temperatures where ordinary matter melts and the quark-gluon plasma freezes.

Journal: Science
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation of China, India's Department of Atomic Energy/Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences, Chinese Ministry of Education, Indian Lattice Gauge Theory Initiative

Taking the 3-D measure of macromolecules:

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab and German researchers have developed the world's first three-dimensional plasmon rulers, capable of measuring nanometer-scale spatial changes in macromolecular systems. These 3-D plasmon rulers could provide unprecedented details on such critical dynamic events in biology as the interaction of DNA with enzymes, the folding of proteins, the motion of peptides or the vibrations of cell membranes.

Journal: Science
Funder: German Ministry of Science, National Institutes of Health

Metallic glass: A crystal at heart

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Glass, by definition, is amorphous. But when scientists squeezed tiny samples of a metallic glass under high pressure, they got a surprise: The atoms lined up in a regular pattern to form a single crystal. The discovery, reported June 17 in Science, offers a new window into the structure and behavior of metallic glasses, which have been used for decades in products such as anti-theft tags and power transformers but are still poorly understood.

Journal: Science
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

LLNL partners with SWAY to launch deep sea offshore wind demonstration

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Business Announcement

The amount of wind blowing off the California coast is teeming with potential. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory atmospheric scientists are working with a Norwegian company to possibly leverage that wind as a valuable energy source.

ALPHA stores antimatter atoms for over a quarter of an hour -- and still counting

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicists are key members of the international ALPHA Collaboration at CERN in Geneva, which has succeeded in storing a total of 309 antihydrogen atoms, some for as long as 1,000 seconds (almost 17 minutes) or even longer -- more than enough time to perform meaningful scientific experiments on confined anti-atoms.

Journal: Nature Physics
Funder: National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy's Office of Science

Nanoscale waveguide for future photonics

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab researchers have demonstrated the first true nanoscale waveguides for next generation on-chip optical communication systems. The waveguides are based on a quasi-particle the researchers conceptualized and created called the "hybrid plasmon polariton."

Journal: Nature Communications
Funder: National Science Foundation

Biological circuits for synthetic biology

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Using the tools of synthetic biology, Berkeley Lab researchers have engineered the first RNA-based regulatory system that can independently control the transcription activities of multiple targets in a single cell. This is a significant advance for the design and construction of programmable genetic networks.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: SynBERC