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Physical and Life Sciences
“Kill switch” design strategies for genetically modified organisms
Synthetic biology promises to sustainably produce commodity chemicals, treat human disease, steward the environment, and sustain agriculture. Each of these tasks exploit genetically modified organisms (GMO), but the unintended release (referred to as “escape”) of GMOs or their recombinant (non-native) DNA could disturb native ecosystems in unpredictable ways…
Investigating uranium’s high-temperature thermodynamic properties
Uranium metal is a recognized nuclear fuel for sodium fast reactors due to its significant thermal conductivity and high burnup capability, among other beneficial properties. However, metallic uranium-based nuclear fuels undergo physical phenomena that are poorly understood on a fundamental level. These phenomena include gaseous swelling, redistribution of constituents, or…
Characterizing the thermal expansion of ultra-high temperature ceramics
There is a growing interest in understanding the performance and properties that make ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) promising for extreme environment applications, such as hypersonic platforms, nuclear reactors, and atmospheric re-entry. UHTCs are inorganic materials that exhibit metallic conductivity with melting temperatures above 3000 °C. One such material,…
Four Lab postdocs selected to attend the 72nd annual Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting
Four Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) postdoctoral appointees have been selected to attend the 72nd annual Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting in Germany this summer thanks to the University of California President’s 2023 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Fellows Program. The four selected to attend are Wonjin Choi, Sean Leonard, Sijia Huang and Sarah Sandholtz. The…
Fueling up hydrogen production
Through machine learning, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist has a better grasp of understanding materials used to produce hydrogen fuel. Water is everywhere in the environment and its interaction with metal oxide surfaces has a key role in processes that range from wetting, dissolution and corrosion to photocatalytic reactions. The relative…
NIF’s optics meet the demands of increased laser energy
Part 5 in a series of articles describing the elements of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's fusion breakthrough. If Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) were a race car, it would run at the redline most of the time. “NIF is the only laser system that intentionally operates above the laser damage growth threshold,” said…
LLNL scientists develop model for more efficient simulations of protein interactions linked to cancer
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have developed a theoretical model for more efficient molecular-level simulations of cell membranes and their lipid-protein interactions, part of a multi-institutional effort to better understand the behavior of cancer-causing membrane proteins. Developed under an ongoing collaboration by the Department of Energy (DOE) and…
National Academies release report on high energy density science with LLNL contributions
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report, Fundamental Research in High Energy Density Science, which identifies key challenges and science questions for the field of High Energy Density (HED) science for the coming decade and proposes ways to address them. The report follows a year-and-a-half-long consensus study by a committee of 13…
LLNL’s William Evans to serve on Fannie and John Hertz Foundation board of directors
Lab physicist William Evans has been selected to serve on the board of directors for the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the most promising innovators in science and technology. Evans is the physics division leader in the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which works…
Prototype telescope designed by LLNL researchers launched to the International Space Station
A prototype telescope designed and built by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers has been launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to the International Space Station (ISS). Known as the Stellar Occultation Hypertemporal Imaging Payload (SOHIP), the telescope uses LLNL patented-monolithic optics technology on a gimbal to observe and measure atmospheric…
Breaking it down, carbon nanotube style
When it comes to studying particles in motion, experimentalists have followed a 100-year-old theory that claims the microscopic motion of a particle is determined by random collisions with molecules of the surrounding medium, regardless of the macroscopic forces that drive that motion. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Massachusetts…
Demonstrating energy-efficient conversion of nitrate pollutants into ammonia
The nitrate runoff problem, a source of carcinogens and a cause of suffocating algal blooms in U.S. waterways, may not be a harbinger of doom. A new study led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) demonstrates an approach for the integrated capture and conversion of nitrate-contaminated waters into…
High-fidelity simulation offers insight into 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor
On the morning of Feb. 15, 2013, a small asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, sending a loud shockwave and sonic boom across the region, damaging buildings and leaving around 1,200 people injured. The resulting meteor, with a diameter of approximate 20 meters (roughly the size of a six-story building), was one of the largest to be detected breaking up in the Earth’s…
Novel experimental platform enables first measurements of ion-acoustic wave bursts during magnetic reconnection
A series of experiments conducted at the Omega Laser, part of the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, provide new insights into magnetic reconnection, a process that could help explain stellar flares and other astrophysical phenomena. The research confirmed that unstable ion-acoustic waves (IAWs) could be important to further understanding of the…
LLNL researchers develop method for real-time defect detection in metal 3D-printed parts
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) engineers and scientists have developed a method for detecting and predicting strut defects in 3D-printed metal lattice structures during a print through a combination of monitoring, imaging techniques and multi-physics simulations. The high-strength and low-density properties of metallic lattices have found applications in…
Illuminating the science of black holes and gamma-ray bursts using high-power lasers
High-power lasers now create record-high numbers of electron-positron pairs, opening exciting opportunities to study extreme astrophysical processes, such as black holes and gamma-ray bursts. Positrons, or "anti-electrons," are anti-particles with the same mass as an electron but with opposite charge. The generation of energetic electron-positron pairs is common in extreme…
Early COVID-19 mutations associated with later variants
The emergence, spread, and evolution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been chronicled by the scientific community with greater speed and depth than any other human pathogen due to the advent of widespread genomic sequencing. To facilitate this, numerous websites and dashboards have been created to enable the visualization and…
Evaluating co-circulating pathogens in COVID-19 samples
During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, beyond singular infection with SARS-CoV-2, reports of co-infection (or secondary infection) with other respiratory pathogens emerged. Co-infections with SARS-CoV-2 have the potential to affect disease severity and morbidity, however, the potential influence of the nasal microbiome on COVID-19 illness is not well understood…
Predicting wind-driven spatial patterns of atmospheric pollutants
For centuries, scientists have observed nature to understand the laws that govern the physical world. Despite the slow, traditional process associated with turning observations into physical understanding, powerful new algorithms can enable computers to learn physics by observing images and videos. LLNL researchers are working to leverage this concept to predict spatial…
Nanofluidic computing makes a splash
Neuromorphic computing aims to mimic the energy-efficient information processing of the human brain. To enable brain like processing, a new device architecture that forgoes the rigid computing language of zeros and ones is needed. This brings the question, what if devices used ions moving in fluids to carry and store information? MSD’s Alex Noy co-authored a perspective…
