Back
Physical and Life Sciences
Simulations capture life and death of a neutron
Lawrence Livermore (LLNL) and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratory scientists, as well as scientists from UC Berkeley and other institutions, have simulated a "smidgen" of the universe to delve into determining the life and death of a neutron. Experiments that measure the lifetime of neutrons reveal a perplexing and unresolved discrepancy. While this lifetime has been…
LLNL joins effort to 3D print parts for U.S. Navy
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are lending their expertise in metal additive manufacturing to a new collaboration aimed at 3D printing critical replacement parts for the U.S. Navy. The Office of Naval Research recently announced an award of $9 million to fund a collaboration led by GE Global Research and aimed at developing a rapid process for…
LLNL part of team studying protein filaments
To learn more about diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, scientists have zeroed in on invisibly small protein filaments that bunch up to form fibrous clusters called amyloids in the brain: How do these fibrils form and how do they lead to disease? Until now, the best tools for studying them have generated limited views, largely because the fibrils strands are so…
LLNL researchers use X-ray imaging experiments to probe metal 3D printing process
Metal 3D printing undoubtedly has enormous potential to revolutionize manufacturing, but many industries have been slow to adopt the technology due to concerns over part quality and certification, which is essential to building confidence in the critical parts used in automotive and aerospace applications. Through carefully designed experiments that replicate the…
Ancient meteorite tells tales of Mars topography
By looking at an ancient Martian meteorite that landed in the Sahara Desert, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators have determined how and when the red planet’s crustal topographic and geophysical divide formed. Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 is the oldest Martian meteorite discovered to date, at approximately 4.4 billion years old. The…
LLNL-led team expands forensic method to identify people using proteins from bones
When a team of researchers led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) developed a new biological identification method that exploits information encoded in proteins, they thought it could have multiple applications. Nearly two years later, they’ve turned out to be right. In September 2016, LLNL scientists announced they had developed a science-based,…
Using nanoSIMS to study virus structure
Because of their size, lack of symmetry, structural heterogeneity, and high molecular weight, most large animal and human viruses are not amenable to typical analytical techniques, such as x-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance analyses, or fine-scale reconstruction by cryo-electron microscopy. In a recently published paper in Analytical Chemistry, NACS and BBTD…
PROSPECTing for antineutrinos
The Precision Reactor Oscillation and Spectrum Experiment (PROSPECT) has completed installation of a novel antineutrino detector that will probe the possible existence of a new form of matter -- sterile neutrinos. PROSPECT, located at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has begun taking data to study…
Studying population dynamics in diverse microbial communities
Ecological research focuses on understanding how population-level dynamics—such as the growth rate of a particular population of microbes—contribute to ecosystem-level processes. Ecosystem scientists researching climate change often study the role of microbes in the carbon cycle, for example, so knowing how quickly they grow is a fundamental metric to reaching that…
Cohen honored with computational plasma physics award
Retiree Bruce Cohen (PHYS) has been selected as the recipient of the 2018 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society’s Charles K. Birdsall Award for “contributions to the numerical simulation of plasmas, particularly multiple time-scale methods, and to their application to diverse plasma physics problems, from laser–plasma interactions to tokamaks.” The Birdsall Award…
Optimizing nanoparticles for in vivo applications
For several years, Lawrence Livermore has been developing a novel class of nanoparticles for biomedical applications that are highly biocompatible and offer advantages that other nanoparticle types do not. These nanoparticles, termed nanolipoprotein particles (NLPs), consist of a phospholipid bilayer stabilized by an apolipoprotein scaffold protein and are lab-made…
A warm look at water's structure
Boiling water traditionally involves adding energy to molecules by conduction, convection or thermal radiation. But Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators have figured out a way using an X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) to heat water to temperatures above 100,000 K (179,540 degrees Fahrenheit) and pressures above 1Mbar (1 million times…
Lab research in fuels, engines in the spotlight
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Co-Optimization of Fuels & Engines (Co-Optima) initiative recently highlighted the work that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have performed on models of high-performance fuels to see how they would perform in advanced internal combustion engines. The Co-Optima initiative aims to simultaneously transform…
Antimicrobial resistance on the International Space Station
In an effort to minimize antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threat to astronauts, who may be immunocompromised and thus at a greater risk of infection from pathogens, a comprehensive study of the International Space Station “resistome” was conducted by a team of scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, LLNL, the Naval Medical Research Center, and AlloSource. Using a…
Prototype cavity ring-down spectroscopy instrument for 14C measurements
A commercial cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) instrument for the measurement of 14C in biological studies has been developed through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between Picarro, Inc. and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—where much of the initial research and development was performed. CRDS is a highly sensitive optical spectroscopic technique…
Surprising grain boundary structures found in refractory metals
Grain boundaries govern many of the properties of engineering materials, but until recently, computational techniques were not sufficiently powerful to predict grain boundary properties at elevated temperature, where they can undergo transitions from one structure to another. The study of grain boundary phase transitions is in its infancy, largely dominated by experiments…
Additive manufacturing advances K-9 training
Additive manufacturing (AM) has gone to the dogs, thanks to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) new approach to K-9 training materials. The process prints 3D objects that contain trace amounts of nonreactive explosives, resulting in several advantages for K-9s and their handlers. Chemist John Reynolds leads a team of LLNL scientists and engineers who recently…
Record experiments probe exoplanetary cores
Using high-powered laser beams, iron-silicon alloys have been compressed to unprecedented pressures corresponding to the center of a three-Earth-mass extrasolar planet. The resulting measurements of crystal structure and density provide new insights into the nature of the deep interiors of the large, Earth-like planets that have been discovered throughout our galaxy. The…
Americans ramp up use of solar, wind energy
Americans used more solar and wind energy in 2017 compared to the previous year, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Overall, energy consumption by the residential and commercial sectors dropped a bit. Each year, the Laboratory releases energy flow charts that illustrate the nation's consumption and use…
LLNL maps out deployment of carbon capture and sequestration for ethanol production
To better understand the near-term commercial potential for capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have mapped out how CO2 might be captured from existing U.S. ethanol biorefineries and permanently stored (or sequestered) underground. The research appears in the April 23 edition of the…
