Tag Archives: berkeley lab

Climate Change Study Strengthens Link to Human Activities

By Guest PostDecember 5, 2012EnvironmentAntarctica, Arctic, atmospheric temperature, benjamin santer, berkeley lab, carbon dioxide, cfcs, chlorofluorocarbons, climate change, climate models, coolants, el niño, evidence, greenhouse gases, higgs boson, human factors, human influence, llnl, michael wehner, pacific decadal oscillation, phenomena, propellants, satellite data, simulations, southern oscillation, stratospheric temperature, tropospheric, tropospheric warming

Computer Models, Satellite Data Reveal Clearest Evidence Yet of Human Influence on Changing Temperatures

New research shows some of the clearest evidence yet of a discernible human influence on atmospheric temperature.

Published online in the Nov. 29 early edition of the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the study compared 20 of the latest climate models against 33 years of satellite data. When human factors were included in the models, they followed the pattern of temperature changes observed by satellite. When the same simulations were run without considering human influences, the results were quite different.

“We can only match the satellite record when we add in human influences on the atmosphere,” said Michael Wehner, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) Computational Research Division and a coauthor of the article, which involved colleagues from 16 other organizations and was led by Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). (more…)

The Installed Price of Solar Photovoltaic Systems in the U.S. Continues to Decline at a Rapid Pace

By Guest PostNovember 27, 2012Environmentberkeley lab, business process, commercial, customer site, galen barbose, module cost, power system, price, pv, pv module, pv systems, ryan wiser, solar photovoltaic, tracking the sun, united states

Berkeley, CA — The installed price of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the United States fell substantially in 2011 and through the first half of 2012, according to the latest edition of Tracking the Sun, an annual PV cost-tracking report produced by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The median installed price of residential and commercial PV systems completed in 2011 fell by roughly 11 to 14 percent from the year before, depending on system size, and, in California, prices fell by an additional 3 to 7 percent within the first six months of 2012. These recent installed price reductions are attributable, in large part, to dramatic reductions in PV module prices, which have been falling precipitously since 2008. (more…)

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…)

Measuring Table-Top Accelerators’ State-of-the-Art Beams

By Guest PostNovember 4, 2012Scienceaccelerator, berkeley lab, boundary, chen lin, coherent, cotr, density modulation, electron, electron beam, electron laser, fusion research, high density, high energy, hydrogen gas, initial momentum, jeroen van tilborg, laser plasma acceleration, light regime, light source, loasis, longitudinal slice, lpa, modulation, momentum, mylar foil, optical, particle count, photon pattern, plasma, pulse, radiation, transition, ultrathin, vacuum, wim leemans, xray window

Studies by Berkeley Lab scientists of electron beam quality in laser plasma accelerators include novel tests for slice-energy spread

Part Two: Slicing through the electron beam

Wim Leemans of Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator and Fusion Research Division heads LOASIS, the Laser and Optical Accelerator Systems Integrated Studies, an oasis indeed for students pursuing graduate studies in laser plasma acceleration (LPA). Among the most promising applications of future table-top accelerators are new kinds of light sources, in which their electron beams power free electron lasers.

“If our LPA electron bunches had good enough quality for free electron lasers – and were really only femtoseconds long – we should see a particular kind of radiation called coherent optical transition radiation, or COTR,” Leemans says. “So I assigned my doctoral student Chen Lin, a graduate of Peking University and now a postdoc there, to find it.” (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…)

Elevated Indoor Carbon Dioxide Impairs Decision-Making Performance

By Guest PostOctober 28, 2012Environmentberkeley lab, brain injury, building, carbon dioxide, CO2, cognitive function, concentration, decline, dimension, dysfunctional, economic consequence, economic impact, energy consumption, energy-efficient, human, indoor, mark mendell, new york, pharmaceutical, pollutant, ppm, primary source, rate, reduction, scenarios, sms, state university, suny, upstate medical university, usha satish, ventilation, william fisk

Berkeley Lab scientists surprised to find significant adverse effects of CO2 on human decision-making performance.

Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) can significantly impair people’s decision-making performance. The results were unexpected and may have particular implications for schools and other spaces with high occupant density.

“In our field we have always had a dogma that CO₂ itself, at the levels we find in buildings, is just not important and doesn’t have any direct impacts on people,” said Berkeley Lab scientist William Fisk, a co-author of the study, which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives online last month. “So these results, which were quite unambiguous, were surprising.” The study was conducted with researchers from State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University. (more…)