The first-ever glimpse of nanoscale catalysts in action could lead to improved pollution control and fuel cell technologies. Berkeley Lab scientists have observed catalysts restructuring themselves in response to various gases swirling around them, like a chameleon changing its color to match its surroundings.

DNA repair is critical for avoiding cancer and other diseases. A molecular machine called the MRN complex finds and signals double-strand breaks and initiates their repair. Researchers have solved the structure of MRN’s core protein, called Mre11, and learned how it does its job.

Some meteorites and other objects from the early solar system have quite different ratios of oxygen isotopes than those found on Earth. Isotope self-shielding, however, a popular explanation for this difference, failed to explain isotope ratios in recent work at the Advanced Light Source.

Berkeley Lab chemical scientists working at the Advanced Light Source are part of a multinational team who have showed that, bad as the traffic is, the most harmful air pollution in Mexico City may not come from fossil fuels. Instead the culprit may be garbage incineration.

In the crossways direction, human bones are even tougher than scientists believed. Materials Sciences Division researchers measured cracking at the submillimeter scale and discovered the mechanisms that make bone so tough, and why bones are easier to split lengthwise than to break.

Scientists at the Advanced Light Source and Germany’s FLASH, using the ancient optical method of the pinhole camera, have made two of the brightest, sharpest x-ray holograms of microscopic objects ever.

Using x-ray diffraction imaging at the Advanced Light Source, scientists have produced the first 3-D images of the interior of an aerogel at the nanometer scale, which could lead to improved strength through better fabrication processes.

Researchers at the Advanced Light Source and the University of California at San Diego have measured the extraordinary properties of graphene with an accuracy never before achieved. The researchers report their findings in the June issue of the journal Nature Physics.