Contents

Collaborating for a "Perfect" Scan of Nuclear Matter
As the finishing touches are put on the world’s most powerful particle accelerator in Switzerland, Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider continues to exploit its unique ability to explore the surprising features of matter bound by the strongest of Nature’s forces.

Basic Research For Energy Security
Our nation faces a grand challenge: finding alternatives to fossil fuels and improving energy efficiency to meet our exponentially growing energy needs over the next century and beyond.

New Method Offers Insight Into Radiation Damage to DNA
A new study assessing cells’ ability to repair DNA damage suggests a mechanism for why some types of radiation are more harmful than others. The findings may help clarify the risks faced by future astronauts on long-term missions to the moon or Mars.

Capturing the Light: Advanced NSLS Detectors Boost Precision, Speed of Data Collection
As the capabilities of synchrotron facilities around the world continue to rapidly grow in number and complexity, a group of researchers at Brookhaven’s National Synchrotron Light Source and the Instrumentation Division are helping experimenters on site and world-wide implement new and more efficient ways to “see” their results.

New Radiation Detector Technology Will Help Secure U.S. Cities
You won’t see any Geiger counters trained on trucks entering the Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan. But Brookhaven scientists are pioneering research to detect radiological threats at transportation choke-points in many urban areas.

Cover image: With just millimeters of room for error, engineers merge together two of the three major pieces of the ATLAS inner detector. ATLAS is one of four experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.  Image credit: CERN.