News By Location

14-Mar-2018

Digging deep: Harnessing the power of soil microbes for more sustainable farming

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

How will the farms of the future feed a projected 9.8 billion people by 2050? Berkeley Lab's 'smart farm' project marries microbiology and machine learning in an effort to reduce the need for chemical fertilizers and enhance soil carbon uptake, thus improving the long-term viability of the land while increasing crop yields.

12-Mar-2018

A game changer: Metagenomic clustering powered by supercomputers

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab and Joint Genome Institute researchers took one of the most popular clustering approaches in modern biology -- Markov Clustering algorithm -- and modified it to run efficiently and at scale on supercomputers. Their algorithm achieved a previously impossible feat: clustering a 70 million node and 68 billion edge biological network in hours.

Journal

Nucleic Acids Research

8-Mar-2018

Thirdhand smoke found to increase lung cancer risk in mice

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at Berkeley Lab identified thirdhand smoke, the toxic residues that linger on indoor surfaces and in dust long after a cigarette has been extinguished, as a health hazard nearly 10 years ago. Now a new study has found that it also increases lung cancer risk in mice.

Journal

Clinical Science

7-Mar-2018

With laser light, scientists create first X-ray holographic images of viruses

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

In a recent study, researchers developed a new holographic method called in-flight holography. With this method, they were able to demonstrate the first X-ray holograms of nano-sized viruses that were not attached to any surface.

7-Mar-2018

Mapping battery materials with atomic precision

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international team led by researchers at Berkeley Lab used advanced techniques in electron microscopy to show how the ratio of materials that make up a lithium-ion battery electrode affects its structure at the atomic level, and how the surface is very different from the rest of the material.

Journal

Energy & Environmental Science

7-Mar-2018

Combination of old and new yields novel power grid cybersecurity tool

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Business Announcement

An innovative R&D project led by Berkeley Lab researchers that combines cybersecurity, machine learning algorithms and commercially available power system sensor technology to better protect the electric power grid has sparked interest from US utilities, power companies and government officials.

6-Mar-2018

Teaching computers to guide science: Machine learning method sees forests and trees

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

While it may be the era of supercomputers and 'big data,' without smart methods to mine all that data, it's only so much digital detritus. Now researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have come up with a novel machine learning method that enables scientists to derive insights from systems of previously intractable complexity in record time.

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

5-Mar-2018

Chemical sleuthing unravels possible path to forming life's building blocks in space

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have used experiments at Berkeley Lab to retrace the chemical steps leading to the creation of complex hydrocarbons in space. They showed pathways to forming 2-D carbon-based nanostructures in a mix of heated gases.

Journal

Nature Astronomy

1-Mar-2018

Can strongly lensed type 1a supernovae resolve cosmology's biggest controversy?

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Astrophysicists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and University of Portsmouth discovered how to control the 'micolensing' effects of strongly lensed Type 1a Supernovae with supercomputers at NERSC. Armed with this knowledge they believe they will be able to find 1,000 strongly lensed Type Ia supernovae in realtime from LSST data -- that's 20 times more than previous expectations.

28-Feb-2018

Scientists confirm century-old speculation on the chemistry of a high-performance battery

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists have discovered a novel chemical state, first proposed about 90 years ago, that enables a high-performance, low-cost sodium-ion battery. The battery could quickly and efficiently store and distribute energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines across the electrical grid.

Journal

Nature Communications