Chemists hope to understand precisely how electrical charges flow and different forms of energy move within molecules and across molecular boundaries. The most demanding experiments would identify specific atoms and track their correlated electronic states, but the facilities don’t exist yet. Berkeley Lab scientists are using powerful lasers to devise future light sources that can do the job.

A demonstration project in Australia has helped to verify that depleted natural gas reservoirs can be used for geologic carbon sequestration, a climate change mitigation strategy that involves pumping CO2 deep underground for permanent storage. The project also demonstrated that depleted gas fields have enough storage capacity to make a significant contribution to reducing global emissions.

Scholars from three institutions—the National Museum of American History, the Library of Congress, and Berkeley Lab—came together in a newly designed preservation laboratory at the Library of Congress to recover sound recordings made by Alexander Graham Bell more than 100 years ago.

Clyde Taylor, pioneering scientist and engineer of superconducting magnet technology at Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, died November 16, 2011.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a promising new inexpensive technique for fabricating large-scale flexible and stretchable backplanes using semiconductor-enriched carbon nanotube solutions. To demonstrate the utility of their carbon nanotube backplanes, the researchers constructed an artificial electronic skin device capable of detecting and responding to touch.

Berkeley Lab researchers at the Molecular Foundry have discovered a universal technique for stripping nanocrystals of tether-like molecules that pose as obstacles for their integration into devices. These findings could provide scientists with a clean slate for developing new nanocrystal-based technologies for energy storage, photovoltaics, smart windows, solar fuels and light-emitting diodes.

A team of researchers that includes Berkeley Lab scientists are using state-of-the-art methods in data mining and high-performance computing to quantify extreme weather phenomena in the very large datasets generated by today’s climate models. Their work will help scientists predict how climate change impact the frequency of extreme weather events.

While the worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s grips Oklahoma and Texas, scientists are warning that what we consider severe drought conditions in North America today may be normal for the continent by the mid-21st century, due to a warming planet. A team of scientists from Berkeley Lab and elsewhere came to this conclusion after analyzing 19 different state-of-the-art climate models.

Through the Center for X-Ray Optics, Berkeley Lab and leading semiconductor manufacturers have mutually invested in major new facilities at the Advanced Light Source for advanced extreme-ultraviolet lithography, including clean rooms, wafer processing facilities, and microlithography test tools too costly for individual manufacturers.

A researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has come up with some intriguing new data and a provocative hypothesis: that obesity itself makes people much more susceptible to risk factors that promote weight gain in the first place.