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January 26, 2012

Microbes are microscopic organisms that live in every nook and cranny of our planet. Without them, plants wouldn’t grow, garbage wouldn’t decay, humans wouldn’t digest food, and there would literally be no life on Earth, or at least as we know it. By examining the genetic makeup of these “bugs,” scientists hope to understand how they work, and how they can be used to solve a variety of important problems like identifying new sources of clean energy. Read More »

The Great Gas Hydrate Escape

January 25, 2012

For some time, researchers have explored flammable ice for low-carbon or alternative fuel or as a place to store carbon dioxide. Now, a computer analysis of the ice and gas compound, known as a gas hydrate, reveals key details of its structure. The results show that hydrates can hold hydrogen at an optimal capacity of 5 weight-percent, a value that meets the goal of a Department of Energy standard and makes gas hydrates practical and affordable. Read More »

Bubbles Help Break Energy Storage Record for Lithium Air-Batteries

January 25, 2012

One of the biggest weaknesses of today’s electric vehicles (EV) is battery life—most cars can only go about 100-200 miles between charges. But researchers hope that a new type of battery, called the lithium-air battery, will one day lead to a cost-effective, long-range EV that could travel up to 300 miles or more between charges. Read More »

Computing steps up to capture, keep carbon dioxide underground

January 25, 2012

Producing electricity to power our homes and businesses while also reducing carbon dioxide emissions remains difficult. Fossil fuels provide most electricity in the United States. Coal-burning plants produce nearly three quarters of the nation’s power, simultaneously spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. - See more at: http://ascr-discovery.science.doe.gov/feature/carbon1.shtml#sthash.TWMdavSb.dpuf Read More »

Inspiring Careers in Science Research

January 21, 2012

In an effort to expose high school students to careers in research, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab) Computing Sciences Diversity Outreach Program partnered with San Francisco’s Lowell High School Science Research Program, an after school program that aims to give highly motivated juniors and seniors a chance to develop research projects with professional guidance with the intent to have the students enter the Intel Science Talent Search, a competition sponsored by Intel that offers college scholarships for outstanding scientific work. Read More »

Calculating What’s in the Universe from the Biggest Color 3-D Map

January 11, 2012

Since 2000, the three Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS I, II, III) have surveyed well over a quarter of the night sky and produced the biggest color map of the universe in three dimensions ever. Read More »

Closest Type la Supernova in Decades Solves a Cosmic Mystery

December 14, 2011

Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia’s) are the extraordinarily bright and remarkably similar “standard candles” astronomers use to measure cosmic growth, a technique that in 1998 led to the discovery of dark energy – and 13 years later to a Nobel Prize, “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe.” The light from thousands of SN Ia’s has been studied, but until now their physics – how they detonate and what the star systems that produce them actually look like before they explode – has been educated guesswork. Read More »

A Better Way to ID Extreme Weather Events in Climate Models

December 7, 2011

You’d think that spotting a category 5 hurricane would never be difficult. But when the hurricane is in a global climate model that spans several decades, it becomes a fleeting wisp among mountains of data. Read More »

Today’s Severe Drought, Tomorrow’s Normal

December 5, 2011

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. Read More »

Supercomputers Take a Cue from Microwave Ovens

November 30, 2011

As sophisticated as modern climate models are, one critical component continues to elude their precision—clouds. Simulating these fluffy puffs of water vapor is so computationally complex that even today’s most powerful supercomputers, working at quadrillions of calculations per second, cannot accurately model them. Read More »