Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Lab researchers present on medicine, energy, the environment and more at Boston ACS meeting

Berkeley Lab scientists delivered nearly 100 presentations at the American Chemical Society’s Fall 2010 national meeting in Boston, August 22-26, 2010. This post features reports on two unique approaches to environmental studies. »

Study shows deepwater oil plume in Gulf degraded by microbes

A study by Berkeley Lab researchers of a deepwater dispersed oil plume formed in the aftermath of the damaged BP wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico shows that microbial activity, spearheaded by a new and unclassified species, degrades oil much faster than anticipated. »

Ozone and Nicotine a Bad Combination for Asthma

Using ozone to remove the smell of tobacco smoke from indoor environments is probably a bad idea. A recent Berkeley Lab study has shown that ozone can react with the nicotine in secondhand smoke to form ultrafine particles that may become a bigger threat to asthma sufferers than nicotine itself. »

Dancing in the dark: how proteins and salts interact

Scientists are getting a new look at how proteins interact with simple salts in water, and what impacts these interactions may have on protein structures at the atomic level. »

Ashok Gadgil named Director of Environmental Energy Technologies Division

Ashok Gadgil, widely recognized for his work as a researcher, inventor and humanitarian, has been named the new Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD). »

Berkeley Lab In The News

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Berkeley Lab Open House October 2, Register Now

Ever wonder how biofuels are produced, cool roofs and smart windows reduce energy use, the Internet was created, or supernovas are discovered? Families, community members, and others who want to learn the answers to these and other scientific questions are invited to attend Berkeley Lab's Open House on Saturday, Oct. 2, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Go here for more information or to register.

Schoolteachers Hone New Science Skills at Lab

At Berkeley Lab, 59 teachers have participated in the "Academies Creating Teacher Scientists" program since it launched in 2004. Berkeley Lab researcher Ashok Gadgil is sharing one of his projects with teachers this summer. "The teachers who participate here as interns get exposed to how real science is done, which is sometimes different than the clean, nice sanitized version that appears in textbooks," said Gadgil. »

Studying Specks of Stardust at the ALS

Three specks of matter captured by the comet-cruising Stardust spacecraft may indeed be stardust that recently entered our solar system. The specks were found by the Stardust@Home project at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory and are being examined by several researchers using the Advanced Light Source (ALS) beamlines. The most intriguing of the three is the carbon-rich speck that appears in this scanning transmission x-ray microscope image made at ALS beamline 11.0.2. »

Taking the 'Large' out of Large Hadron Collider

LHC image Particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN are the big rock stars of high-energy physics—really big. The LHC cost nearly USD$10 billion to build and its largest particle racetrack (27 km in circumference) stretches across a national border. Now, a recent breakthrough in computer modeling may help hasten the day when accelerators thousands of times more powerful can be built in a fraction of the space—and for significantly less money. More »

On the hunt for neutrino-less double decay--an internship to remember

FaST Under the mentorship of a Lab nuclear scientist, a teacher and his physics students from Southern Arkansas University are helping in the hunt for the neutrino-less double decay, one of the rarest decays in nature, and the quest of many top scientific groups around the world. This team is part of the Faculty and Student Teams (FaST) program, one of more than a dozen educational and internship programs offered by Berkeley Lab’s Center for Science and Engineering Education. »

E.O. Lawrence Fellowship winner wrangles data and field work

A few weeks ago, Gina Lamendella was standing on the deck of the 165-foot Brooks McCall research vessel at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico when she learned that she received an Ernest Orlando Lawrence Fellowship. Her shipboard celebration was short-lived, however. She was soon back to work, helping to collect the smallest of organisms in an effort to track one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history. »

Glenn Seaborg Fund Aids Purchase of California Ridge

David Seaborg and his father, Glenn Seaborg, Berkeley Lab's Nobel Prize-winning chemist and the first living scientist to have an element named after him, found a common bond hiking in the East Bay hills of California. Now his son and allies have found a way to honor the late Seaborg for his work promoting hiking and land preservation. »