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

At Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, scientists seeking ways to use cement more efficiently and reduce the carbon emissions associated with its manufacture have revealed new properties of the mineral tobermorite. Using x-ray-diffraction to probe the crystalline structure of Portland cement’s most important component, they squeezed the mineral in a diamond anvil cell to pressures equivalent to 100 miles deep in the Earth.

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.

Scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source and Center for X-Ray Optics are working with colleagues at leading semiconductor manufacturers to build SHARP, the world’s most advanced extreme-ultraviolet-light microscope, to study and design the photolithography masks, materials, patterns, and mask architectures essential to producing the next generation of integrated circuits.

Lithium-ion batteries power everything from smart phones to electric cars, but especially when it comes to lowering the cost and extending the range of all-electric vehicles, they need to store a lot more energy. The critical component for energy storage is the anode, and Berkeley Lab scientists have developed a new anode material that can absorb eight times the lithium and has far greater energy capacity than today’s designs.

Invisible terahertz light can detect explosives, image drug structures, and pinpoint skin cancer, but practical tools for using it are scarce. Now Berkeley Lab scientists have demonstrated a device made of graphene microribbons that strongly responds to terahertz light by exciting the collective electron oscillations known as plasmons. The device can be tuned with exquisite precision by varying the width of the graphene ribbons and controlling electron density.

A Berkeley Lab study shows that at microscopic dimensions, the age-related loss of bone quality can be every bit as important as the loss of quantity in the susceptibility of bone to fracturing. While medical treatments to date have focused on age-related loss of bone mass, the age-related loss of bone quality is an independent factor.

Berkeley Lab scientists have used the Advanced Light Source’s beamline 12.0.1 to investigate theories about the electronic structure of graphene never before tested by experiment. They found that graphene’s semimetallic behavior includes very long-range interactions among electrons, plus other unusual properties, confirming that graphene is every bit as strange as expected – perhaps even more so.

Manganites that exhibit colossal magnetoresistance and well-known high-temperature superconductors are among the materials that show their stripes – regions where electrical charges concentrate. Until now, only static stripes have been seen. At the Advanced Light Source’s beamline 12.0.1, scientists have discovered a manganite whose stripes form or fall apart depending on the temperature, simultaneously giving rise to colossal changes in electrical conductivity.

Paris may have the Eiffel Tower and London has its Big Ben, but Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has the iconic domed roof of the Advanced Light Source. Now the ALS is getting a new roof—and not just any roof but a cool roof that will reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere, thus playing a small part in mitigating global warming.