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Berkeley Lab

visualization of the zero-energy electronic states
Quantum Physics

Scientists discovered “secret sauce” behind exotic properties of new quantum material

Pranjal Malewar

Work will aid the design of other unusual quantum materials with many potential applications.

3D image of melanin in a zebrafish
Science

New technique that images every pigment cell of a whole zebrafish

Pranjal Malewar

New technique visualizes every pigment cell of zebrafish in 3D.

Image resembles a quark–gluon plasma
Science

A closer look inside nature’s perfect fluid

Amit Malewar

Berkeley Lab research brings us closer to understanding how our universe began.

an atomic interferometer
Science

Is gravity truly a quantum force?

Amit Malewar

Exploring quantum gravity—for whom the pendulum swings.

Battery Performance
Technology

New easy and fast way to measure battery performance

Pranjal Malewar

New thermal wave diagnostic technique advances battery performance testing.

The upper left figure shows the spectra
Space

Doubling the accuracy of measuring distances to supernova explosions

Amit Malewar

Supernovae Twins Open Up New Possibilities for Precision Cosmology.

copper-phthalocyanine:fullerene material that turns up to 22% of absorbed infrared photons into separate charges
Technology

A new pathway to harnessing the sun for a clean energy future

Ashwini Sakharkar

A step closer to more efficient photovoltaics and solar fuel systems.

A scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli
Health

Genetic contribution to anxiety is partially mediated by the gut microbiome

Pranjal Malewar

Are gut microbes the key to unlocking anxiety?

Soft X-ray tomography
Technology

World’s first soft X-ray tomography (SXT) microscope for whole-cell visualization

Ashwini Sakharkar

Unique X-Ray microscope reveals dazzling 3D cell images.

Artistic interpretation of how microbial genome sequences from the GEM catalog can help fill in gaps of knowledge about the microbes that play key roles in the Earth’s microbiomes
Science

Scientists uncovered novel genomes from Earth’s microbiomes

Amit Malewar

Genome resource expands known diversity of bacteria and archaea by 44%.

An artistic representation of gene regulating elements, which allow cells with the same genetic code to differentiate into many different tissues and play many varied roles in the body
Science

A comprehensive catalog of the molecular elements that regulate our genes

Amit Malewar

Interpreting the Human Genome’s Instruction Manual.

New insight into bacterial DNA packing
Science

New insight into bacterial DNA packing

Amit Malewar

Gene begins quick adaptation once bacteria are put in different environments, such as one that is more acidic or anaerobic. This happens because the...

Climate change is altering forest structure, making forests less of a carbon sink
Environment

Climate change is altering forest structure, making forests less of a carbon sink

Pranjal Malewar

There are general observations of increasing tree mortality due to changing climate and land use, as well as observations of growth stimulation of younger...

The science behind the love for coffee
Science

The science behind the love for coffee

Pranjal Malewar

The intake of coffee is affected by a positive feedback loop between genetics and the environment. This phenomenon, known as "quantile-specific heritability," is likewise...

Illustration of peptoid combinations. Each of the metal-binding monomers is represented as a red or blue "claw." Credit: Rebecca Abergel/Berkeley Lab
Invention

Artificial proteins that bind to heavy metals

Amit Malewar

These artificial proteins have a firm grasp on metal.

The team’s electrochemical cell for observing solar fuel-generating catalysts (yellow device), set up at an x-ray beamline at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. (Credit: Walter Drisdell/Berkeley Lab)
Invention

New technology gives a glimpse of solar fuel generation in action

Pranjal Malewar

A chemical reaction close-up.

This composite image shows an illustration of a carbon-rich red giant star (middle) warming an exoplanet (bottom left) and an overlay of a newly found chemical pathway that could enable complex carbons to form near these stars. (Credits: ESO/L. Calçada; Berkeley Lab, Florida International University, and University of Hawaii at Manoa)
Science

A new pathway for carbon chemistry to evolve in space

Amit Malewar

Study reveals radical wrinkle in forming complex carbon molecules in space.

View from the top of a measurement tower, where researchers monitor critical forest canopy processes such as photosynthesis, plant water fluxes, leaf characteristics, and growth. (Credit: Joao M. Rosa, AmazonFACE)
Environment

Amazon rainforest absorbing less carbon than expected

Pranjal Malewar

A new study finds that insufficient nutrient supply has not been properly accounted for in ecosystem models.

Drones will fly for days with this new technology
Technology

Drones will fly for days with this new technology

Amit Malewar

Thermophotovoltaic power conversion utilizes thermal radiation from a local heat source to generate electricity in a photovoltaic cell. On a solar cell, the addition...

Transparent Plastic in granules. Polymer pellets. Isolated on a black background.
Science

Pulsed electron beams shed light on plastics production

Amit Malewar

The proliferation of plastic products in the last several decades has been extraordinary. Quite simply, humans are addicted to this nearly indestructible material. Over...

Berkeley researchers collected and studied beach sands from locations near Hiroshima, including Japan’s Miyajima Island, home to this torii gate, which at high tide is surrounded by water. The torii and associated Itsukushima Shinto Shrine, near the city of Hiroshima, are popular tourist attractions. (Photo courtesy of Ajay Suresh/Wikimedia Commons)
Science

Beaches near Hiroshima littered with glassy beads from atomic bomb blast

Amit Malewar

Fallout debris from nuclear explosions consists of spherules and aerodynamically-shaped glasses, created aerially by high-velocity quenching processes involving materials melted and vaporized at temperatures...

Just as a wine glass distorts an image showing temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background in this photo illustration, large objects like galaxy clusters and galaxies can similarly distort this light to produce lensing effects. (Credit: Emmanuel Schaan and Simone Ferraro/Berkeley Lab)
Space

New method to provide a clearer window into dark universe

Amit Malewar

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is thought to be leftover radiation from the Big Bang or the time when the universe began. Also known...

The Making of the Largest 3D Map of the Universe
Space

The Making of the Largest 3D Map of the Universe

Editorial Team

DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, will mobilize 5,000 swiveling robots – each one pointing a thin strand of fiber-optic cable – to gather...

DESI “first light” image of the Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51. This image was obtained the first night of observing with the DESI Commissioning Instrument on the Mayall Telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona; an r-band filter was used to capture the red light from the galaxy. (Credit: DESI Collaboration)
Space

Dark Energy Instrument’s Lenses See the Night Sky for the First Time

Editorial Team

On April 1, the dome of the Mayall Telescope near Tucson, Arizona, opened to the night sky, and starlight poured through the assembly of...

A method developed by a Berkeley Lab-led research team may one day turn ordinary semiconducting materials into quantum electronic devices. (Credit: iStock.com/NiPlot)
Science

When semiconductors stick together, materials go quantum

Amit Malewar

Two-dimensional (2D) materials, which are only one atom thick, resemble nanosized building blocks that can be stacked arbitrarily to frame little gadgets. At the...

A mysterious process called oxygen oxidation strips electrons from oxygen atoms in lithium-rich battery cathodes and degrades their performance. Better understanding this property and controlling its effects could lead to better performing electric vehicles. (Credit: Gregory Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Science

First complete picture of lithium-ion battery performance

Pranjal Malewar

The problem with today's commercial batteries is they release about half of the lithium ions they contain. One solution on this is to cram cathodes with...

Heather Crawford and her team of researchers are developing a prototype for an ultrahigh-rate high-purity germanium detector that can count 2 to 5 million gamma rays per second while maintaining high resolution. (Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab)
Science

New detector to count 2 to 5 million gamma rays per second

Amit Malewar

A prototype for an ultrahigh-rate high-purity germanium (HPGe) detector.

At left, a tiny bead struck by a laser (at the yellowish spot shown at the top of the image) produces optical modes that circulate around the interior of the bead (pinkish ring). At right, a simulation of how the optical field inside a 5-micron (5 millionths of a meter) bead is distributed. (Credit: Angel Fernandez-Bravo/Berkeley Lab, Kaiyuan Yao)
Technology

Continuously emitting microlasers with nanoparticle-coated beads

Pranjal Malewar

Now it is possible to convert nanoparticle-coated microscopic beads into lasers, thanks to the new technique demonstrated by Berkeley scientists. The technique opens up...

Valleytronics utilizes different local energy extrema (valleys) with selection rules to store 0s and 1s. In SnS, these extrema have different shapes and responses to different polarizations of light, allowing the 0s and 1s to be directly recognized. This schematic illustrates the variation of electron energy in different states, represented by curved surfaces in space. The two valleys of the curved surface are shown.
Science

Valleytronics discovery could help extend limits of Moore’s law

Amit Malewar

A new study by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Shuren Lin of UC Berkeley’s Department of Materials Science and...

A molecular model of a peptoid nanosheet shows loop structures in sugars (orange) that bind to the Shiga toxin (shown as a five-color bound structure at upper right). (Credit: Berkeley Lab)
3D Printing

New sugar-coated nanosheets to selectively target pathogens

Editorial Team

A team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a process for creating ultrathin,...

Recent Stories

Life-like 3D synthetic materials move by themselves like worms

Science

A new fabrication technique for high-performance photon detectors

Physics

The existence of a nuclear-spin dark state proved

Quantum Computing

Measuring the electric fields of light trapped between two mirrors

Physics

Witnessing the birth of planets: Webb provides unprecedented window

Space