Tracking Down the Menace in Mexico City Smog

[9/5/08] Berkeley Lab chemical scientists working at the Advanced Light Source are part of the multinational MILAGRO team who have showed that, bad as the traffic is, the most harmful air pollution in Mexico City may not come from fossil fuels. Instead the culprit may be garbage incineration. More>

The Brightest, Sharpest, Fastest X-Ray Holograms Yet

[8/1/08] Scientists at the Advanced Light Source and Germany's FLASH, using the ancient optical method of the pinhole camera, have made two of the brightest, sharpest x-ray holograms of microscopic objects ever — thousands of times faster than previous x-ray-holographic methods. More>

A Phonon Floodgate in Monolayer Carbon

[7/21/08] Materials Sciences Division and UC Berkeley researchers have performed the first scanning tunneling spectroscopy of graphene flakes equipped with a gate electrode. An unexpected gap-like feature results when the tunneling electrons interact with phonons in the 2-D graphene crystal. More>

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The Toughness of Bone

In the crossways direction, human bones are even tougher than scientists believed. Materials Sciences Division researchers measured cracking at the submillimeter scale and discovered the mechanisms that make bone so tough, and why they are easier to split lengthwise than to break. More>

Building 3-D Neural Networks with Beads

How do connections form between neurons? How does an Alzheimer’s drug affect the way neurons communicate? To help answer these questions, Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley scientists developed the next best thing to peering inside the brain. And they did it using something so simple, even a child can relate: tiny beads. More>

The First Integrated Nanowire Circuit

Berkeley Lab scientists have created the world’s first all-integrated sensor circuit based on nanowire arrays, combining light sensors and electronics made of different crystalline materials. Their method can be used to reproduce numerous such devices with high uniformity. More>

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