Mario Wannier, a career geologist with expertise in studying tiny marine life, was methodically sorting through particles in samples of beach sand from Japan’s Motoujina Peninsula when he spotted something unexpected: a number of tiny, glassy spheres and other unusual objects. Wannier, who is now retired, had been comparing biological debris in beach sands from…
Bridge over Coupled Waters: Scientists 3D-Print All-Liquid ‘Lab on a Chip’
Researchers at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have 3D-printed an all-liquid device that, with the click of a button, can be repeatedly reconfigured on demand to serve a wide range of applications – from making battery materials to screening drug candidates. “What we demonstrated is remarkable. Our 3D-printed device can be programmed to…
Scientists Print All-Liquid 3-D Structures
Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to print 3-D structures composed entirely of liquids. Using a modified 3-D printer, they injected threads of water into silicone oil — sculpting tubes made of one liquid within another liquid. They envision their all-liquid material could be used…
Teaching Computers to Guide Science: Machine Learning Method Sees Forests and Trees
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…
Scientists Harness CO2 to Consolidate Biofuel Production Process
Carbon dioxide has emerged as a secret ingredient in the recipe for making ethanol, and that addition represents a major step forward in streamlining the biofuel production process. The innovation comes from researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) working at the Joint BioEnergy Institute…
Dark Energy Measured with Record-breaking Map of 1.2 Million Galaxies
A team of hundreds of physicists and astronomers have announced results from the largest-ever, three-dimensional map of distant galaxies. The team constructed this map to make one of the most precise measurements yet of the dark energy currently driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe. “We have spent five years collecting measurements of 1.2 million…
Is Black Phosphorous the Next Big Thing in Materials?
A new experimental revelation about black phosphorus nanoribbons should facilitate the future application of this highly promising material to electronic, optoelectronic and thermoelectric devices. A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has experimentally confirmed strong in-plane anisotropy in thermal conductivity, up to a factor of…
A Most Singular Nano-Imaging Technique
Just as proteins are one of the basic building blocks of biology, nanoparticles can serve as the basic building blocks for next generation materials. In keeping with this parallel between biology and nanotechnology, a proven technique for determining the three dimensional structures of individual proteins has been adapted to determine the 3D structures of individual…
A New Look at Surface Chemistry
For the first time in the long and vaunted history of scanning electron microscopy, the unique atomic structure at the surface of a material has been resolved. This landmark in scientific imaging was made possible by a new analytic technique developed by a multi-institutional team of researchers, including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy…
Photon Speedway Puts Big Data in the Fast Lane
Scientists from Berkeley Lab and SLAC are using NERSC and ESnet to achieve breakthroughs in photosynthesis research A series of experiments conducted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) researchers is shedding new light on the photosynthetic process. The work also illustrates how light sources and supercomputing facilities can…