A new paper reviewing the impact of the loss of large predators and herbivores high in the food chain confirms that their decline has had cascading effects in marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems throughout the world. The study, co-authored by UC Berkeley researchers, highlights the impact “apex consumers” have on the dynamics of fire, disease, vegetation growth, and soil and water quality.

Scientists looking for unusual cellulose-digesting enzymes, called cellulases, have found one that works at a higher temperature, 109 degrees Celsius, than any others found to date. The cellulase comes from an Archaea found in a Nevada hot spring.

Berkeley Lab researchers created tetrapod molecules of semiconductor nanocrystals and watched them break a fundamental principle of photoluminescence known as “Kasha’s rule.” The discovery holds promise for multi-color light emission technologies, including LEDs.

Information theory dictates that a logical operation in a computer must consume a minimum amount of energy. Today’s computers consume a million times more energy per operation than this limit, but magnetic computers with no moving electrons could theoretically operate at the minimum energy, called the Landauer limit, according to UC Berkeley electrical engineers.

UC researchers are optimistic that improved driving techniques can cut fuel use by 10 to 20 percent. And the time may be right to sell the public on these methods, they say.

Officials from DOE’s National Nuclear Nonproliferation Agency joined UC Berkeley nuclear experts to kick off a multiuniversity effort to fill the need for nuclear science and security experts at the national laboratories.

Extensive climate change research being conducted at California universities and research centers is now openly available through a public website, Cal-Adapt.org, developed at UC Berkeley and sponsored by the California Energy Commission and the California Natural Resources Agency.

Cal EPA chief takes ESPM audience behind the scenes of the state's historic emissions bill.

A team of Berkeley students is burning lots of midnight oil to build a car powered completely by the sun. Their sleek solar vehicle, named Impulse, is on track to compete this October in the world’s premier solar car competition: an 1,800-mile road race across Australia.

Experts from around the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and beyond will come together to tackle some of the Big Questions facing scientists in areas relating to energy and climate, Tuesday, May 3, at 3 p.m.

A fungal pathogen may be the culprit behind the rapid decline of amphibians in recent decades, according to a new study by researchers at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. By swabbing the skin of amphibians preserved in UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, scientists confirmed through DNA the presence of the deadly Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, fungus. They also determined that salamanders in parts of Mexico and Guatemala, and frogs and salamanders in Costa Rica’s Monteverde cloud forests began to disappear at the same time the fungus first appeared in these areas.

The Haas School of Business’s Center for Responsible Business made an Earth Day announcement today (Friday, April 22) that several MBA students and Haas School faculty have won research grants to work on innovative sustainability projects dealing with reinforcing friends’ healthy habits to green supply chains and clean water.

Agilent Technologies Inc. has signed up to support the newly launched Synthetic Biology Institute (SBI), which will help advance efforts to engineer cells and biological systems in ways that could transform health and medicine, energy, the environment and new materials.

Bioenergy Connection, a magazine published by the Energy Biosciences Institute, debuted in April to inform the public and stimulate discussion about the future of renewable transportation fuels around the world.

A UC Berkeley analysis of the carbon footprints of households around the country shows that consumers need different strategies in different cities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. An online “carbon calculator” helps consumers decide how to change their lifestyles for the maximum reduction in their footprints.

The effort to make sun power more affordable has gotten a big boost with a $25 million, five-year Department of Energy grant announced this week. The award launches the Bay Area Photovoltaics Consortium (BAPVC), led jointly by the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.

The Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry hosts its first national conference March 24, where experts from a broad range of disciplines will discuss the center’s unique, multidisciplinary approach to creating more sustainable and safer chemicals.

Berkeley Lab researchers have enhanced the spontaneous magnetization in a special form of the popular multiferroic bismuth ferrite. What’s more, they can turn this magnetization “on/off” through the application of an external electric field, a critical ability for the advancement of spintronic technology.

To achieve the state’s energy efficiency goals and provide better career opportunities for Californians, the state should modify its clean energy programs and its extensive but fragmented training and education programs, according to a report led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, released today (Thursday, March 17).

Berkeley researchers have designed a new composite material for hydrogen storage consisting of magnesium metal nanoparticles embedded in a Plexiglas-type polymer that rapidly absorbs and releases hydrogen at modest temperatures without oxidizing the metal after cycling. This achievement is a major breakthrough in materials design for hydrogen storage, batteries and fuel cells.

UC Berkeley biologists and graduate students delved into the fossil record to compare past animal extinctions — in particular the five “mass extinctions” that occurred within the past 540 million years — with today’s extinctions. They find that, while the rate of extinctions today is higher than during past mass extinctions, conservation efforts could help us avoid a sixth.

While ethanol is today’s major biofuel, researchers aim to produce fuels more like gasoline. Butanol is the primary candidate, now produced primarily by Clostridium bacteria. UC Berkeley chemist Michelle Chang has transplanted the enzyme pathway from Clostridium into E. coli and gotten the bacteria to churn out 10 times more n-butanol than competing microbes, close to the level needed for industrial scale production.

While more than half of California’s water comes from snow in the Sierra Nevada, it is difficult for water managers to measure and track through the year. Now, scientists at UC Berkeley and UC Merced — supported by the multi-campus Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) — are using networks of wireless sensors to measure snow depth and other environmental factors.

Forestry scientists are working to understand how wildfire and other “disturbances” affect the health of some of the oldest trees on the plant — the giant sequoias of the Sierra Nevada.

The debate over the veracity of global warming may be judged not by pure science but rather, perception. Being in a warm room can make the idea of global warming seem more likely, according to Clayton Critcher, assistant professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business.

Inspired by the 50th anniversary this year of the Peace Corps, UC Berkeley is launching a 21st century version called Cal Energy Corps that focuses on sustainable energy and climate change.

Producing cheap liquid biofuels is not the only challenge in weaning the U.S. off fossil fuels. A team supported by the Energy Biosciences Institute identified social, economic and environmental issues that need to be addressed, including the impacts on farmers and on public health.

In a demonstration of “reverse-ecology,” UC Berkeley biologists have shown that one can determine an organism’s adaptive traits by looking first at its genome and checking for variations across a population. The study offers a powerful new tool in evolutionary genetics research, one that could be used to help monitor the effects of climate change and habitat destruction.

Sequencing of microbes in the rumen of the cow has turned up a treasure trove of new enzymes that degrade tough plant material, providing new avenues for research to boost biofuel production from plants. The research, funded by the Energy Biosciences Institute, involves UC Berkeley chemical engineer Doug Clark and colleagues at LBNL and the Joint Genome Institue.

A study by the Haas School’s Yuan Sun and colleagues at UC Davis and the University of Otago, New Zealand, found that the stock value of a company typically drops when it increases carbon emissions. The finding supports arguments that firms should be required to disclose to investors any action that impacts climate change.

The secrets behind the mysterious nano-sized electromagnetic “hotspots” that appear on metal surfaces under a light are being revealed with the help of a BEAST. The results hold promise for solar energy and chemical sensing among other technologies.

Hundreds of visitors flocked to a new, 420-square-foot cottage in West Berkeley to examine the tiny, sustainably designed “accessory home” as a possible wave of the future.

Jay Keasling, a leading authority on metabolic engineering, envisions a future in which microorganisms are tailor-made to produce specific chemical products, such as biofuels and pharmaceuticals, from inexpensive and renewable starting materials. He has written a paper on the subject for the journal Science.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature this year singled out the University of California's system of 36 natural reserves — a haven for the state's diverse ecosystems and species for nearly half a century — as one of the "20 best biodiversity success stories." Read more about the efforts by the reserves to reintroduce and foster the survival of endangered and threatened species.

In a first-of-its-kind study, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists tracked the amount of lead transported across the Pacific over time. About a third of the airborne lead particles recently collected at two sites in the Bay Area came from Asia. The finding underscores the far-flung impacts of air pollution.

A clean-energy initiative in rural Nicaragua shows that developing nations can take cost-effective steps to reduce carbon emissions while helping the rural poor to reduce their energy expenses, according to researchers at UC Berkeley. Their report inScience analyzes simple steps taken by Nicaraguan government and the nonprofit blueEnergy on that country's Mosquito Coast.

Dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, according to new research from UC Berkeley.

UC Berkeley researchers have created unique dual-diameter nanopillars – narrow at the top, broad at the bottom – that absorb light as well or even better than commercial thin-film solar cells, using far less semiconductor material and without the need for anti-reflective coating.

Biofuels hold great promise as an alternative to greenhouse-gas-generating gasoline, if a cost-effective means of commercial production can be found. Professor Harvey Blanch and other researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute have designed an online wiki that allows experts to collectively analyze and discuss biorefinery data and production costs.

Pinhead-size marine organisms called foraminifera have been used to monitor pollutants in marshes and oceans, and could help to assess recovery in the Gulf of Mexico following the three-month long Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Yeast cells don't normally eat complex sugars or carbohydrates, only simple sugars like glucose and sucrose. UC Berkeley's Jamie Cate and colleagues have now added genes to yeast that allow it to eat more complex sugars, called cellodextrins. These yeast could find use in the biofuels industry, which hopes to use cellulosic plant fibers to make alcohol.

An independent analysis of Proposition 23 says the initiative would create legal uncertainty, reduce California state revenue, and jeopardize new and existing clean energy jobs. The white paper, released today by UC Berkeley School of Law's Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, reports Prop. 23 would also slow California's efforts to reduce climate change and could have a domino effect on other states.

Energy-policy expert Dan Kammen has been appointed to a new position at the World Bank, where he will help distribute billions of dollars to developing countries to improve energy efficiency and foster low-carbon, renewable sources of energy.

Plant biologists Markus Pauly and Sarah Hake have been awarded a three-year, $793,000 grant from the Department of Energy for research on the genetic diversity of corn. They hope to identify and develop strains of corn with higher yields of fermentable sugars, allowing the plant's stems and leaves to be used for fuel production.

A UC Berkeley team has been awarded a $2 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for research on biologically-inspired technologies for grey water reuse and thermal energy management that may propel sustainable building into a new era.The grant comes from the NSF’s Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation’s 2010 Science in Energy and Environmental Design program for engineering sustainable buildings. Leading UC Berkeley’s award-winning research team as principal investigator is Maria Paz-Gutierrez, assistant professor of architecture in the College of Environmental Design, and the only architect serving as principal investigator for any of the NSF’s eight EFRI-SEED grants this year.

Scientists at UC Berkeley and Cal State University-Humboldt are conducting a three-year research project on redwood trees. Their goal: to determine what conservation efforts are needed to ensure the trees' preservation for generations to come.

On the UC Berkeley campus, which has an annual energy bill of about $35 million, new energy monitoring systems have been installed in 10 buildings, and annual savings of $650,000 have been recorded.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman announced a new award of up to $122 million to establish an Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight.