NEWS RELEASES

Polyethylene plastics — single-use bags and general-purpose bottles — are indestructable forever plastics. That also makes them hard to recycle. UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab chemists have found a way to break down the polymer — a chain of about a thousand ethylene molecules — into three-carbon molecules, propylene, which are in high demand for making another plastic, polypropylene. The process could turn waste plastic into high-value feedstocks and reduce the need for fossil fuels to make propylene.

A new testbed facility capable of testing superconducting qubit fidelity in a controlled environment free of stray background radiation will benefit quantum information sciences and the development of quantum computing.

Turning plastic waste into useful products through chemical recycling is one strategy for addressing Earth's growing plastic pollution problem. A new study may improve the ability of one method, called pyrolysis, to process hard-to-recycle mixed plastics — like multilayer food packaging — and generate fuel as a byproduct, the scientists said.

In a study published online this week, robotics researchers, engineers and materials scientists from Rice University and Harvard University showed it is possible to make programmable, nonelectronic circuits that control the actions of soft robots by processing information encoded in bursts of compressed air.

Through a highly competitive process, the Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $12.6 million in renewed funding for Quantum Materials for Energy Efficient Neuromorphic Computing (Q-MEEN-C) — led by the University of California San Diego.

Fifty years ago, in 1972, the Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer (BLIP) began operation. It was the world’s first facility to use high-energy particle beams to produce radioisotopes that are rare, new, or commercially unavailable. Since then, BLIP’s isotopes have been used for a variety of purposes—chief among them, the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

A new, simple, and efficient flow-based method allows researchers to pull a useful magnesium salt from natural seawater using easily available chemicals.