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Photosensitizers absorb sunlight and pass that energy along to generate electricity or drive chemical reactions. Scientists watched what happened when light hit an inexpensive photosensitizer, iron carbene, and discovered it can respond in two competing ways, only one only one of which allows electrons to flow into the devices or reactions where they're needed. It took this desired path about 60% of the time. The ultimate goal is to design cheap photosensitizers for specific tasks that are close to 100% efficient.

A pilot project between researchers at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute and biology students from Boca Raton Community High School in Palm Beach County, Florida has culminated in a data report which provides the only known reference microbiome data sets for the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, a 226-square mile area of the northern Everglades. The paper was published January 21, 2020 in the journal Environmental Microbiome.

In Nature, a team led by researchers at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) uncovered a broad diversity of large and giant viruses that belong to the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV) supergroup. As a result, virus diversity in this group expanded 10-fold from just 205 genomes, redefining the phylogenetic tree of giant viruses.

Unlike cuprates -- the first known class of unconventional superconductors -- the new nickelates are inherently metallic, sharing electrons with intervening layers of rare earth material to create a 3D metallic state. This is an entirely new type of ground state for transition metal oxides such as cuprates and nickelates, researchers said. It opens new directions for experiments and theoretical studies of how superconductivity arises and how it can be optimized in this system and possibly in other compounds.

Astrophysicists have come a step closer to understanding the origin of a faint glow of gamma rays covering the night sky. They found that this light is brighter in regions that contain a lot of matter and dimmer where matter is sparser -- a correlation that could help them narrow down the properties of exotic astrophysical objects and invisible dark matter.

An upgrade of the Advanced Light Source, a synchrotron at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has passed an important milestone that will help to maintain the ALS' world-leading capabilities. On Dec. 23 the DOE granted approval for a key funding step that will allow the project to start construction on a new inner electron storage ring known as an accumulator ring.

Evaporation ponds, commonly used in many industries to manage wastewater, can occupy a large footprint and often pose risks to birds and other wildlife, yet they're an economical way to deal with contaminated water. Now researchers at Berkeley Lab have demonstrated a way to double the rate of evaporation by using solar energy and taking advantage of water's inherent properties, potentially reducing their environmental impact. The study is reported in the journal Nature Sustainability.