Using a state-of-the-art protein crystallography beamline at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, researchers have captured a critical action shapshot of an enzyme that is vital to the survival of all biological cells.

India may rank only a distant fourth in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, behind China, the United States and Russia, but its rapid economic growth rate coupled with aging and inefficient energy infrastructure suggest dire environmental consequences if “business as usual” continues. That’s why experts from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been working to expand collaborations with India on energy efficiency.

Scientists from the U.S. and China will jointly tackle carbon capture and storage research, thanks to a memorandum of understanding that was entered into between the University of California, which manages Berkeley Lab, and Peking University on Nov. 12.

For 39 years, it stood as the workhorse for high-energy and heavy-ion physics, a service record of accomplishment that is unrivaled. On November 6, 2009, nearly 200 Laboratory and retired Laboratory staff and well-wishers braved the rain and fog to pay final tribute and farewell to the Bevatron.

Berkeley Lab researchers at the Molecular Foundry have created bowtie-shaped antennae that function as the first tunable nano colorsorters, able to capture, filter and steer light at the nanoscale.

Over the past two decades, the pioneering research of Mina Bissell at Berkeley Lab has broadened the conversation about breast cancer beyond genetics to include the microenvironment and other factors. This expanded focus has had profound implications for breast cancer awareness and therapies.

Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens, K.C. Cole’s newly published biography of the “uncle of the atom bomb,” as Frank Oppenheimer called himself, recounts the touching and sometimes tortuous relationship between Frank, Ernest Lawrence, and other physicists as they struggled to find a way to survive a nuclear age. Oppenheimer’s solution was to found an extraordinary science museum, the Exploratorium.

Berkeley Lab’s Oct. 26 Science at the Theater event, “Dark Secrets: What Science Tells Us About the Hidden Universe,” was a smash hit: more than 600 people packed the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Host John Fowler, health and science editor for KTVU Channel 2, moderated a panel of astrophysicists and cosmologists that included Saul Perlmutter, David Schlegel, and Alexie Leauthaud.

Scientists have pieced together a mechanism that causes a type of human adult stem cell to permanently stop dividing after being exposed to ionizing radiation. Their work sheds light on cellular senescence, a process in which cells stop dividing that is linked to cancer and aging.

Three-quarters of the Universe is dark energy, but nobody knows what it is. Is it an unknown form of energy that fills space, or an illusion caused by extra dimensions of space? Or is it just a flaw in Einstein’s theory of gravity? Proven techniques for investigating these questions are being refined, while new techniques are beginning to be applied to one of the most pressing problems in 21st-century physics. Part 1 discusses supernovae as standard candles.