Latest Brookhaven National Laboratory Stories

By Anonymous Students and scientists from around the world gathered at the U.S. Department of Energy Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL; Upton, NY) to participate in the 4th annual National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Space Rathation Summer School. The group worked in BNL's Medical Department and NASA Space Rathation Laboratory (NSRL), a unique facility that simulates the harsh radiation environment of outer space, to study the possible risks astronauts may face during...

UPTON, NY - The speed of nanoparticle assembly can be accelerated with the assistance of the molecule that carries life's genetic instructions, DNA, a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory recently found. Nanoparticles, particles with dimensions on the order of billionths of a meter, could potentially be used for more efficient energy generation and data storage, as well as improved methods for diagnosing and treating disease. Learning how to...

RESTON, Va. -- Smoking appears to reduce a key enzyme in the lungs, possibly contributing to some of smoking's deleterious health effects, according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. The study, which used a radiotracer to track the enzyme, also shows that smokers had a lower concentration of the tracer in the bloodstream than nonsmokers did, leading to speculation that smokers and nonsmokers may respond differently to a variety of substances...

UPTON, NY -- As part of the search for better ways to track and clean up soil contaminants, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have developed a new way to "image" the internal chemistry of bacteria. The technique will allow scientists to "see" at the molecular level how soil-dwelling microbes interact with various pollutants. The method might also help scientists better understand and prevent bacterial...

New results from a particle collider suggest that the universe behaved like a liquid in its earliest moments, not the fiery gas that was thought to have pervaded the first microseconds of existence. By revising physicists' concept of the early universe, the new discovery offers opportunities to better learn how subatomic particles interact at the most fundamental level. It may also reveal intriguing parallels between gravity and the force that holds atomic nuclei together, physicists said...

Washington -- Scientists trying to recreate conditions that existed just a few millionths of a second after the big bang that started the universe have run into a mysterious problem "“ some of the reactions they are getting don't mesh with what they thought they were supposed to see. Now, two University of Washington physicists have dusted off a quantum mechanics technique usually associated with low-energy physics and applied it to results from experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory...