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Glass you can build with

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Bulk metallic glass has no crystalline structure, and many kinds of metallic glasses are stronger than their crystalline cousins. But until now they have exhibited poor fatigue resistance -- in other words, they wear out much too fast. Materials scientists at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology have solved the problem with a new way of making metallic glass.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, Office of Naval Research

Deep-sea corals may be oldest living marine organism

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Deep-sea corals from about 400 meters off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands are much older than once believed and some may be the oldest living marine organisms known to man. Researchers from Lawrence Livermore, Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Cruz have determined that two groups of Hawaiian deep-sea corals are far older than previously recorded.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Water acts as catalyst in explosives

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have shown that water, in hot dense environments, plays an unexpected role in catalyzing complex explosive reactions. A catalyst is a compound that speeds chemical reactions without being consumed. Platinum and enzymes are common catalysts. But water rarely, if ever, acts as a catalyst under ordinary conditions.

Journal: Nature Chemistry

Shifting sound to light may lead to better computer chips

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

By reversing a process that converts electrical signals into sounds heard out of a cell phone, researchers may have a new tool to enhance the way computer chips, LEDs and transistors are built.

Journal: Nature Physics

Turning sunlight into liquid fuels

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Through photosynthesis, plants use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars they use for fuel. Berkeley Lab scientists want to create an artificial version of photosynthesis to produce liquid fuels for transportation. Chemists Heinz Frei and Feng Jiao have taken an important step towards this goal with the discovery that cobalt oxide nanocrystals can effectively carry out the critical photosynthetic reaction of splitting water molecules.

Journal: Angewandte Chemie
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Synthetic biology can help extend anti-malaria drug effectiveness

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Synthetic biology can not only provide a simple and much less expensive means of making artemisinin, the most powerful anti-malaria drug in use today, but can also help extend the drug's effectiveness. Bundling microbial-based artemisinin as part of an anti-malarial drug "cocktail" rather than selling it as a monotherapy should delay or even prevent malaria parasites from developing resistance.

Funder: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, DOE/US Department of Energy
Meeting: 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting

A new way to assemble cells into 3-D microtissues

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

By programming cells with short lengths of synthetic DNA on their surfaces, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory can control how different cell types bind together to form complex artificial microtissues for potential uses in medicine, and in medical and biological research.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Researchers discover a potential on-off switch for nanoelectronics

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Berkeley Lab researchers have shown that electrical resistance through a molecular junction -- a nanometer scale circuit element that contacts gold atoms with a single molecule -- can be turned "on" and "off" simply by pushing and pulling the junction. This feature has potential for being used as a switch in future nanoscale electronic devices.

Journal: Nature Nanotechnology
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation

Cell microenvironments hold key to future stem cell therapies

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers led by Berkeley Lab's Mark LaBarge and Mina Bissell have shown that the ultimate fate of a stem or progenitor cell in a woman's breast -- whether the cell develops normally or whether it turns cancerous -- may depend upon signals from multiple microenvironments. Their results suggest that modulations of microenvironmental signals are a promising pathway for future cancer and regenerative medicine therapies

Journal: Integrative Biology
Funder: American Cancer Society, DOE/US Department of Energy, US Department of Defense

How 10 trillion bits per square inch assemble themselves perfectly

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Two chemically different polymers linked together to form self-assembling block copolymers can have the potential to vastly improve the properties and manufacturing processes of nanostructured materials. Using crystal structures as a template, researchers at Berkeley Lab and the University of Massachusetts Amherst have created perfect arrays of nanoscopic block-copolymer domains, packing 10 trillion bits to the square inch and extending over several square centimeters.