Tag Archives: berkeley lab

BOSS Quasars Unveil a New Era in the Expansion History of the Universe

By Guest PostNovember 21, 2012Scienceacceleration, analytic techniques, ancient universe, andreu font ribera, apache point observatory, bao, baryon, baryon acoustic oscillations, berkeley lab, bigboss, bill carithers, BOSS, clouds, cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, data sets, david schlegel, deceleration, density variation, digital sky survey, early universe, evolution, expanse of sky, expansion, gas clouds, gas density, gravity, hydrogen absorption lines, intergalactic gas, lyman alpha forest, mocks, new mexico, nicholas ross, oscillation, patrick mcdonald, quasars, riemann linux cluster, sdss, sloan, Space, spectra, spectroscopic, survey, universe, volume

Berkeley Lab scientists and their Sloan Digital Sky Survey colleagues use quasars to probe dark energy over 10 billion years in the past

BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, is mapping a huge volume of space to measure the role of dark energy in the evolution of the universe. BOSS is the largest program of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) and has just announced the first major result of a new mapping technique, based on the spectra of over 48,000 quasars with redshifts up to 3.5, meaning that light left these active galaxies up to 11.5 billion years in the past.

“No technique for dark energy research has been able to probe this ancient era before, a time when matter was still dense enough for gravity to slow the expansion of the universe, and the influence of dark energy hadn’t yet been felt,” says BOSS principal investigator David Schlegel, an astrophysicist in the Physics Division of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “In our own time, expansion is accelerating because the universe is dominated by dark energy. How dark energy effected the transition from deceleration to acceleration is one of the most challenging questions in cosmology.” (more…)

More Bang for the Biofuel Buck

By Guest PostNovember 18, 2012Environmentabe products, acetone, artillery shells, bacterium, berkeley lab, biofuels, british, bullets, butanol, chaim weizmann, clostridium acetobutylicum, dean toste, diesel, douglas clark, elad gross, ethanol, fermentation technique, fuel molecules, gasoline, gunpowder, harvey blanch, hydrocarbons, jet fuel, joseph binder, lignocellulosic biomass, low carbon, metal catalyst, palladium, palladium catalyst, pazhamalai anbarasan, petrochemical processes, propellant, sanil sreekumar, weizmann organism, world war, zachary baer

Berkeley Lab Researchers Combine Old Fermentation Process For Making Explosives with New Chemical Catalysis to Boost Biofuel Production

A fermentation technique once used to make cordite, the explosive propellant that replaced gunpowder in bullets and artillery shells, may find an important new use in the production of advanced biofuels. With the addition of a metal catalyst, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the production of acetone, butanol and ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass could be selectively upgraded to the high volume production of gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

Using the bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum, the Berkeley Lab researchers fermented the sugars found in biomass into the solvent acetone and the alcohols butanol and ethanol, collectively known as “ABE” products. They then catalyzed these low carbon number products with the transition metal palladium into higher-molecular-mass hydrocarbons that are possible precursors to the three major transportation fuel molecules. The specific type of fuel molecule produced – whether a precursor to gasoline, diesel or jet – was determined by the amount of time the ABE products resided with the palladium catalyst. (more…)

Berkeley Lab Scientists Help Develop Promising Therapy for Huntington’s Disease

By Guest PostNovember 11, 2012Healthalzheimers, antidepressants, bacterial membrane, berkeley lab, cells, cerebral cortex, chemist, coenzyme q, cognitive decline, compound, cynthia mcmurray, DNA, genetic disorder, genetic mutation, huntingtons disease, loss, mice, mitochondria, mitochondrial function, molecules, motor coordination, motor skills, muscle coordination, neurodegenerative diseases, neuron, organelle, oxidative damage, parkinson's, peter wipf, pittsburgh, power plant, reactive oxygen species, striatum, suppress, survival, symptoms, synthetic antioxidant, university, untreated neuronal cultures, vitamin e, xjb 5 131, xjb treated mice, zhiyin xun

Initial results in mice could lead to new way to fight neurodegenerative diseases

There’s new hope in the fight against Huntington’s disease. A group of researchers that includes scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed a compound that suppresses symptoms of the devastating disease in mice.

The compound is a synthetic antioxidant that targets mitochondria, an organelle within cells that serves as a cell’s power plant. Oxidative damage to mitochondria is implicated in many neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s. (more…)

Training Your Robot the PaR-PaR Way

By Guest PostOctober 31, 2012Scienceautomation, berkeley lab, biological design, challenge, changhao bi, cloning, compiler, database, dna molecules, dynamic, experimental data, experimental error, gregory linshiz, j5, jay keasling, language, nathan hillson, new trick, nina stawski, non repetitive, par par, program, programming, programming tool, rate, research environment, robot, robot platform, robot programming, robotic protocol, sean poust, software program, syntax, virtual object

Berkeley Lab and JBEI Researchers Develop a Biology-Friendly Robot Programming Language

Teaching a robot a new trick is a challenge. You can’t reward it with treats and it doesn’t respond to approval or disappointment in your voice. For researchers in the biological sciences, however, the future training of robots has been made much easier thanks to a new program called “PaR-PaR.”

Nathan Hillson, a biochemist at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), led the development of PaR-PaR, which stands for Programming a Robot. PaR-PaR is a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language that allows researchers to make better use of liquid-handling robots and thereby make possible experiments that otherwise might not have been considered. (more…)

Another Advance on the Road to Spintronics

By Guest PostOctober 21, 2012Sciencealbert einstein, alexander gray, analyzer, basis, berkeley lab, charles fadley, computing industry, contamination, data, dilute, electron, electronic structure, energy conversion, energy-efficient, exchange model, facility, ferromagnetic, gallium arsenide, gallium atom, gamnas, harpes, hyogo, jan minar, Japan, jun fujii, kelvin, magnetic atom, magnetic semiconductor, memory architecture, nanoscale device, new technique, p d, peter stone, photoelectric effect, photoemission, photovoltaic cell, processing, room temperature, shigenori ueda, spin, spintronic application, spintronic technology, spring8, storage, surface reaction, synchrotron radiation, xray angle, yoshiyuki yamashita

Berkeley Lab Researchers Unlock Ferromagnetic Secrets of Promising Materials

Spintronic technology, in which data is processed on the basis of electron “spin” rather than charge, promises to revolutionize the computing industry with smaller, faster and more energy efficient data storage and processing. Materials drawing a lot of attention for spintronic applications are dilute magnetic semiconductors – normal semiconductors to which a small amount of magnetic atoms is added to make them ferromagnetic. Understanding the source of ferromagnetism in dilute magnetic semiconductors has been a major road-block impeding their further development and use in spintronics. Now a significant step to removing this road-block has been taken.

A multi-institutional collaboration of researchers led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), using a new technique called HARPES, for Hard x-ray Angle-Resolved PhotoEmission Spectroscopy, has investigated the bulk electronic structure of the prototypical dilute magnetic semiconductor gallium manganese arsenide. Their findings show that the material’s ferromagnetism arises from both of the two different mechanisms that have been proposed to explain it. (more…)

New Insights into How Genetic Differences among Individuals Influence Breast Cancer Risk from Low-Dose Radiation

By Guest PostOctober 17, 2012Health, Scienceandy wyrobek, antoine snijders, berkeley lab, breast cancer, cancer risk, cellular, cellular proliferation, chemical therapy, ct scan, department, dna repair, energy, gene, genetic makeup, gland cancer, immune response, ionizing radiation, joe gray, low dose, mammary tissue, mechanism, mice, non radiation, radiotherapy, resistance, risk, scientist, strain, survival outcome, therapy, tissue mechanism, tissue stress, woman

Berkeley Lab research could lead to new ways to ID women who have higher risk of breast cancer from low-dose radiation

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have identified tissue mechanisms that may influence a woman’s susceptibility or resistance to breast cancer after exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation, such as the levels used in full-body CT scans and radiotherapy.

The research could lead to new ways to identify women who have higher or lower risks of breast cancer from low-dose radiation. Such a predictive tool could help guide the treatment of cancer patients who may be better served by non-radiation therapies. (more…)

The Best of Both Catalytic Worlds

By Guest PostOctober 13, 2012ScienceBerkeley, berkeley lab, biochemistry, biomolecule, california, cancer, catalysis program, catalyst, catalytic reactivity, chemical reaction, cholesterol medicine, complex reaction, cyclopropanation reaction, cyclopropane, dean toste, dendrimers, elad gross, enzyme, gabor somorjai, gold nanocluster, heterogeneous, homogeneous, industrial catalyst, metal catalysts, metal nanocluster, molecule, palladium, pamam, platinum, product selectivity, property, protein, recyclability, rhodium, substance, university

Berkeley Lab Researchers Develop New Technique for Heterogenizing Homogenous Nano Catalysts

Catalysts are substances that speed up the rates of chemical reactions without themselves being chemically changed. Industrial catalysts come in two main types – heterogeneous, in which the catalyst is in a different phase from the reactants; and homogeneous, in which catalyst and the reactants are in the same phase. Heterogeneous catalysts are valued for their sustainability because they can be recycled. Homogeneous catalysts are valued for their product selectivity as their properties can be easily tuned through relatively simple chemistry.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have combined the best properties of both types of industrial catalysts by encapsulating nanoclusters of a metallic heterogeneous catalyst within the branched arms of the molecules known as dendrimers. (more…)

Latest JBEI Startup to Speed Up Biotech Industry

By Guest PostOctober 3, 2012Scienceautocad, berkeley lab, biofuels, biology, chemicals, cutting edge, design, DNA, dna manipulation, eduardo abeliuk, electrical engineering, expressing, inertia, iso27001, j5 software, jbei, majed abolfazli, medicine, metabolic pathway, mike fero, modern cloning, molecular biology, nathan hillson, organism, pharmchem, protocol, qb3, san francisco, Science, sequencing, splicing, stanford university, teselagen

TeselaGen’s DNA construction technology makes genetic engineering cheaper and faster.

Sequencing, splicing and expressing DNA may seem to be the quintessence of cutting-edge science—indeed DNA manipulation has revolutionized fields such as biofuels, chemicals and medicine. But in fact, the actual process can still be tedious and labor-intensive, something Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientist Nathan Hillson learned the hard way.

After struggling for two days to design a protocol to put together a genetic circuit with 10 pieces of DNA—using a spreadsheet as his primary tool—he was dismayed to discover that an outside company could have done the whole thing, including parts and labor, for lower cost than him ordering the oligonucleotides himself. “I learned two things: one, I never wanted to go through that process again, and two, it’s extremely important to do the cost-effectiveness calculation,” said Hillson, a biochemist who also directs the synthetic biology program at the Berkeley Lab-led Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). “So that was the genesis of the j5 software. This is the perfect thing to teach a computer to do.” (more…)