Berkeley Lab researchers have created the first fully integrated artificial photosynthesis nanosystem. While “artificial leaf” is the popular term for such a system, the key to this success was an “artificial forest.”

By extending the coherence time of electron states to over half a second, a team of scientists from Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, and Harvard University has vastly improved the performance of one of the most potent possible sensors of magnetic fields on the nanoscale – a diamond defect no bigger than a pair of atoms, called a nitrogen vacancy (NV) center. The achievement is an important advance for nanoscale sensors and quantum computing.

Bubble baths and soapy dishwater, the refreshing head on a beer and the luscious froth on a cappuccino. All are foams, beautiful yet ephemeral as the bubbles pop one by one. Now, two researchers from Berkeley Lab and the University of California, Berkeley have described mathematically the successive stages in the complex evolution and disappearance of foamy bubbles, a feat that could help in modeling industrial processes in which liquids mix or in the formation of solid foams such as those used to cushion bicycle helmets.

JBEI researchers have developed an enzyme-free ionic liquid pretreatment of cellulosic biomass that makes it easier to recover fermentable sugars for biofuels and to recycle the ionic liquid.

Seven Berkeley Lab researchers were on a list of 61 winners announced this week as recipients of the fourth Early Career Research Program managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. They include Aydin Buluç, Felix Fischer, Daniel Haxton, Alexander Hexemer, Dominique Loque, Gabriel Orebi Gann, and George Pau.

New Berkeley Lab research maps how Earth’s myriad climates—and the ecosystems that depend on them—will move from one area to another as global temperatures rise. The approach foresees big changes for one of the planet’s great carbon sponges. Boreal forests will likely shift north at a steady clip this century. Along the way, the vegetation will relinquish more trapped carbon than most current climate models predict.

The National Academy of Sciences announced the election of two Berkeley Lab researchers to this year’s class of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates from 14 countries. They were elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Representing Berkeley Lab this year are James Berger from the Physical Biosciences Division and James Sethian from the Computational Research Division.

Theory and observations support the view that antimatter experiences gravity just as ordinary matter does, but the evidence so far has been indirect. Indeed, some theorists speculate that antimatter is antigravitational, that it may fall “up” instead of “down.” Led by Berkeley Lab physicists, the ALPHA Collaboration at CERN has made direct measurements of the gravitational mass of atoms of antihydrogen, testing how they fall and in what direction.