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Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators have uncovered the first experimental evidence for why the transition temperature of high-temperature superconductors cannot simply be elevated by increasing the electrons' binding energy. The research demonstrates how, as electron-pair binding energy increases, the electrons' tendency to get caught in a quantum mechanical "traffic jam" overwhelms the interactions needed for the material to act as a superconductor -- a freely flowing fluid of electron pairs.

Vigabatrin, a medication proposed as a potential treatment for drug addiction by scientists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, also leads to rapid weight loss and reduced food intake according to a new animal study from the same research group. The study will be published online Aug. 20, 2008, by the journal Synapse. Vigabatrin is currently undergoing US Food and Drug Administration-approved Phase II clinical trials against cocaine and methamphetamine addiction across the US.

Melissa Patterson, a W. Burghardt Turner Fellow at Stony Brook University, will give a talk at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in Philadelphia on controlling the size of nanoclusters, research she performed using a new instrument at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. Built by Brookhaven Lab and SBU scientists, the instrument enables researchers to make nanoclusters of 10 to 100 atoms with atomic precision.

In the quest to better understand one of nature's most "ghostly" elementary particles -- the neutrino -- scientists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory are spreading their expertise from the mines of Canada to the mountains of China. Richard L. Hahn, a senior chemist at Brookhaven Lab, will discuss two new neutrino research projects at the 236th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia, Penn.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have developed a new instrument that allows them to control the size of nanoclusters -- groups of 10 to 100 atoms -- with atomic precision. They created a model nanocatalyst of molybdenum sulfide, the first step in developing the next generation of materials to be used in hydrodesulfurization, a process that removes sulfur from natural gas and petroleum products to reduce pollution.

Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have taken the first step toward designing an effective antidote to the most potent form of botulinum neurotoxin. The results of their research are reported in the April 22, 2008, online issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Brain-imaging studies performed in animals at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory provide researchers with clues about why an increasingly popular recreational drug that causes hallucinations and motor-function impairment in humans is abused. Using trace amounts of Salvia divinorum -- also known as "salvia," a Mexican mint plant -- Brookhaven scientists found that the drug's behavior in the brains of primates mimics the extremely fast and brief "high" observed in humans.

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have shown that increasing the brain level of receptors for dopamine, a pleasure-related chemical, can reduce use of cocaine by 75 percent in rats trained to self-administer it. Earlier research by this team had similar findings for alcohol intake. Treatments that increase levels of these chemicals -- dopamine D2 receptors -- may prove useful in treating addiction.

The following scientific talks are among those that will be presented by researchers from the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory at the American Physical Society meeting, March 10-14, 2008, at the Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, La. Topics include DNA-guided nanoparticle assembly, understanding high-temperature superconductors, and modeling electric charge transport for applications in solar energy.

Biologists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, and the University of Wurzburg, Germany, have deciphered the structure of a large protein complex responsible for adding sugar molecules to newly formed proteins -- a process essential to many proteins' functions. The structure offers insight into the molecular "sugar-coating" mechanism, and may help scientists better understand a variety of diseases that result when the process goes awry.