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Performance Tuning of Scientific Applications

March 11, 2011

David Bailey and Samuel Williams of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Computational Research Division (CRD) recently published a book called, Performance Tuning of Scientific Applications, which presents current research in performance analysis from some of the most notable experts in the field. Read More »

Modeling the Bonds of Iron and Water

February 28, 2011

Using supercomputers at the Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), scientists have successfully modeled the atomic interactions between a high spin ferric iron ion and 64 water molecules for the first time. Read More »

X-ray Image Bank Open for Business

February 22, 2011

Filipe Maia is building a data bank where scientists from around the world can deposit and share images generated by coherent x-ray light sources. Read More »

A Goldilocks Catalyst

February 21, 2011

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion are major contributors to global warming. Since CO2 comes from fuel, why can't we recycle it back into fuel rather than releasing it into the atmosphere? An economical way to synthesize liquid fuel from CO2 would help mitigate global warming while reducing our need to burn fossil fuels. Catalysts that induce chemical reactions could be the key to recycling carbon dioxide, but they need to have just the right activity level—too much, and the wrong chemicals are produced; too little, and they don't do their job at all. Read More »

Two Berkeley Lab Researchers Named 2011 Sloan Fellows

February 17, 2011

Two researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Computational Research Division have been awarded the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship, given annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to scientists, mathematicians and economists who are at an early stage of their research careers. The awardees will receive a $50,000 grant over the next two years to pursue any line of research they choose. Read More »

A Clearer Picture of Carbon Sequestration

January 31, 2011

Despite progress in clean energy, Americans will continue to rely on fossil fuels for years to come. In fact, coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired power plants will generate 69 percent of U.S. electricity as late as 2035, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Read More »

Science Magazine's "Insights of the Decade"

January 31, 2011

In the first decade of this millennium, rapid scientific progress—resulting from new sensing, imaging, computing, and networking tools—has transformed whole areas of research. The December 17, 2010 special issue of Science magazine highlights ten “Insights of the Decade” that have fundamentally changed our thinking about our bodies and our universe. Four of those ten insights were enabled in part by facilities and research in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and Computational Research Division (CRD). Read More »

The 20th Century Reanalysis Project: A Climate Time-Machine

January 25, 2011

From the hurricane that smashed into New York in 1938 to the impact of the Krakatoa eruption of 1883, the late 19th and 20th centuries are rich with examples of extreme weather. Now an international team of climatologists have created a comprehensive reanalysis of all global weather events from 1871 to the present day, and from the earth's surface to the jet stream level. Read More »

NERSC Users Unlock the Secret of a Rechargeable Heat Battery

January 11, 2011

Broadly speaking, there have been two approaches to capturing the sun's energy: photovoltaics, which turn the sunlight into electricity, or solar-thermal systems, which concentrate the sun's heat and use it to boil water to turn a turbine, or use the heat directly for hot water or home heating. Read More »

Planck Mission Peels Back Layers of Universe

January 11, 2011

The Planck mission released today a new catalog of data from its initial maps of the entire sky. The catalogue includes everything from thousands of never-before-seen dusty cocoons where stars are forming, to some of the most massive clusters of galaxies. Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant contributions from NASA. Read More »