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Scientists make the first molecular movie of one of nature's most widely used light sensors

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Scientists have made the first molecular movie of the instant when light hits a sensor that's widely used in nature for probing the environment and harvesting energy from light. The sensor, a form of vitamin A known as retinal, is central to a number of important light-driven processes in people, animals, microbes and algae, including human vision and some forms of photosynthesis, and the movie shows it changing shape in a trillionth of an eye blink.

Faster, cheaper, better: A new way to synthesize DNA

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) based at Berkeley Lab have pioneered a new way to synthesize DNA sequences through a creative use of enzymes that promises to be faster, cheaper, and more accurate. DNA synthesis is a fundamental tool in the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology, in which organisms can be engineered to do things like decompose plastic and manufacture biofuels and medicines. This discovery could dramatically accelerate the pace of scientific discovery.

Journal: Nature Biotechnology

Scientists create continuously emitting microlasers with nanoparticle-coated beads

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers have found a way to convert nanoparticle-coated microscopic beads into lasers smaller than red blood cells. These microlasers, which convert infrared light into light at higher frequencies, are among the smallest continuously emitting lasers of their kind ever reported and can constantly and stably emit light for hours at a time, even when submerged in biological fluids such as blood serum.

Journal: Nature Nanotechnology

SLAC, Stanford scientists discover how a hardy microbe's crystalline shell helps it reel in food

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

SLAC and Stanford scientists have discovered how some archaea thrive where other organisms would starve: Their crystalline shells not only protect them from the environment, but they also draw in nutrients through nanosized pores. Those nutrients concentrate in the space between the shell and the microbial cell, so what looks like a famine turns into a feast.

Perspectives on 10 years of discovery with fermi

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Ten years ago on this day, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (then called GLAST) was launched into space, beginning its mission to explore the most energetic light in the universe and the powerful cosmic processes that produce it.

Experiments at Berkeley Lab help trace interstellar dust back to solar system's formation

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Experiments conducted at Berkeley Lab helped to confirm that samples of interplanetary particles -- collected from Earth's upper atmosphere and believed to originate from comets -- contain dust leftover from the initial formation of the solar system.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Work begins on new SLAC facility for revolutionary accelerator science

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Business Announcement

The Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has started to assemble a new facility for revolutionary accelerator technologies that could make future accelerators 100 to 1,000 times smaller and boost their capabilities.

Scientists find ordered magnetic patterns in disordered magnetic material

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of scientists working at Berkeley Lab has confirmed a special property known as 'chirality' -- which potentially could be exploited to transmit and store data in a new way -- in nanometers-thick samples of multilayer materials that have a disordered structure.

Journal: Advanced Materials

Theorists love giant formulas (even more than coffee)

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

SLAC theorist Lance Dixon and collaborators have calculated the formula for the energy-energy correlation (EEC) with more precision than ever before.

Steve Kevan named next director of Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

After an international search, Stephen D. "Steve" Kevan has been named the new director of the Advanced Light Source at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Kevan, a condensed matter physicist, had served as ALS director in an interim capacity since January.

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