Page 126 - Berkeley Lab News Today

DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory With a powerful enough light, you can see things that people once thought would be impossible. Large-scale light source facilities generate that powerful light, and scientists use it to create more durable materials, build more efficient batteries and computers, and learn more about the natural world. When it comes to building these massive facilities, space is money. If you can get higher-energy beams of light out of smaller devices, you can save milli...

January 28, 2021 A field technician wrestling a large switchgrass plant during fall harvest (photo credit: Jason Bonnette). A Washington State University researcher is part of a large team that announced the genome sequence for switchgrass, a major bioenergy crop. Laura Bartley, an associate professor in WSU’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, worked for 15 years on the project, which could lead to larger, easier to process switchgrass plants. “Making switchgrass cultivars more economicall...

 E-Mail IMAGE: This half-meter-long prototype of a niobium-tin superconducting undulator magnet was designed and built by a team from three U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories. The next step will be to... view more  Credit: Photo: Ibrahim Kesgin, Argonne National Laboratory With a powerful enough light, you can see things that people once thought would be impossible. Large-scale light source facilities generate that powerful light, and scientists use it to create more dura...

 E-Mail IMAGE: Regardless of the pathway we take to become carbon neutral by 2050, the actions needed in the next 10 years are the same. view more  Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab) Reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from energy and industry by 2050 can be accomplished by rebuilding U.S. energy infrastructure to run primarily on renewable energy, at a net cost of about $1 per person per day, according to new research published by the Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley N...

Getting to Net Zero – and Even Net Negative – is Surprisingly Feasible, and Affordable New analysis provides detailed blueprint for the U.S. to become carbon neutral by 2050 January 27, 2021 43.2K Shares Regardless of the pathway we take to become carbon neutral by 2050, the actions needed in the next 10 years are the same. (Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab) Reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from energy and industry by 2050 can be accomplished by rebuilding U.S. energy infrastruc...

Getting to Net Zero – and Even Net Negative – is Surprisingly Feasible, and Affordable Details 27 January 2021 Share This Reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from energy and industry by 2050 can be accomplished by rebuilding U.S. energy infrastructure to run primarily on renewable energy, at a net cost of about $1 per person per day, according to new research published by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory...

 E-Mail IMAGE: Harvesting switchgrass in Texas under field rainout shelters for drought tolerance studies. This image complements a Nature paper announcing the release of a high-quality reference sequence of the complex... view more  Credit: David Lowry Gardeners and farmers around the country recognize that crop varieties grow best in certain regions. Most plant species have adapted to their local environments; for example, crop and ornamental seeds sold for the upper Midwest are of...

A New Way to Measure Record-Setting Electron Beams Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are figuring out new ways to accelerate electrons to record-high energies over record-short distances with a technique that uses laser pulses and exotic matter known as a plasma. But measuring the properties of the high-energy electron beams produced in laser-plasma acceleration experiments has proven challenging, as the high-intensity laser m...

Better understanding plastics underlying chemistry may revolutionize how we use these ubiquitous materials DOE/US Department of Energy Too much natural gas. A small adjustment to an experiment. These ingredients came together to produce one of the most influential materials ever invented. Researchers at Berkeley Labs Molecular Foundry user facility developed a polymer that they can break down and recreate. It could lead to cyclical plastics that can be recycled over and over again. Image court...

As the planet continues to warm, the twin challenges of diminishing water supply and growing energy demand will intensify. But water and energy are inextricably linked. For instance, nearly a fifth of California’s energy goes toward water-related activities, while more than a tenth of the state’s electricity comes from hydropower. As society tries to adapt to one challenge, it needs to ensure it doesn’t worsen the other. To this end, researchers from UC Santa Barbara, Lawrence Berkeley Na...