Latest Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Stories

U.S. scientists say they have confirmed the production of the superheavy element 114, 10 years after a Russian group first claimed to have made it. The researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, led by University of California-Berkeley Professor Heino Nitsche and and Berekely Lab senior staff scientist Ken Gregorich, independently confirmed the production of the new element, which was first published by the Dubna Gas Filled Recoil Separator group....

The precise conditions inside a white dwarf star in the hours leading up to its explosive end as a Type Ia supernova are one of the mysteries confronting astrophysicists studying these massive stellar explosions. But now, a team of researchers, composed of three applied mathematicians at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and two astrophysicists, has created the first full-star simulation of the hours preceding the largest thermonuclear explosions in...

 Three researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are among an elite group of young scientists to watch, according to the national magazine Technology Review's just-released 2009 list of Top Young Innovators Under 35.Ali Javey and Dawn Song, both from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and Cyrus Wadia of the Haas School of Business and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), were among 35 researchers selected worldwide as top innovators...

University of California representatives are presenting to state government officials newly revised plans for housing the Helios research initiatives that will explore promising new solar-energy technologies.The previous plan to house the Helios effort called for a single, consolidated facility on UC-owned land at the LBNL site. The new proposal calls for the Helios research endeavors to be housed in two physically separate and independent buildings: one in downtown Berkeley and a smaller...

 Scientists at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have published new findings about a cause of a condition at the root of genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome, pregnancy loss and infertility.Called aneuploidy, the condition is an abnormal number of chromosomes, and the research team found that if a mother's egg cell has a mutation in just one copy of a gene, called Bub1, then she is less likely to have offspring that survive to...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a fast and efficient way to determine the structure of proteins, shortening a process that often takes years into a matter of days.The high-throughput protein pipeline could allow scientists to expedite the development of biofuels, decipher how extremophiles thrive in conditions that kill most organisms, and better understand how proteins carry out life's vital functions.The technique will...

For the fourth consecutive year, the U.S. was home to the fastest-growing wind power market in the world in 2008, according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).  Specifically, U.S. wind power capacity additions increased by 60 percent in 2008, representing a $16 billion investment in new wind projects.  "At this pace, wind is on a path to becoming a significant contributor to the U.S. power mix,"...

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have created bright, stable and bio-friendly nanocrystals that act as individual investigators of activity within a cell. These ideal light emitting probes represent a significant step in scrutinizing the behaviors of proteins and other components in complex systems such as a living cell.Labeling a given cellular component and tracking it through a typical biological environment is fraught with...

Two University of California, Berkeley, faculty members will receive $30 million over the next five years from the U.S. Department of Energy to find better ways to separate carbon dioxide from power plant and natural gas well emissions and stick it permanently underground, according to an announcement on Monday, April 27 from the White House.Berend Smit, a professor of chemical engineering and of chemistry, and Donald DePaolo, a professor of earth and planetary science and head of the Earth...

Hybridized DNA is glue that sticks these cells together to resemble real tissueAs synthetic biologists cram more and more genes into microbes to make genetically engineered organisms produce ever more complex drugs and chemicals, two University of California chemists have gone a step further.They have assembled different types of genetically engineered cells into synthetic microtissues that can perform functions such as secreting and responding to hormones, promising more complex biological...