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The past year has been a richly rewarding period of progress
and discovery here at Berkeley Lab. Our scientific endeavors
have advanced the frontiers of knowledge across a broad spectrum
of disciplines.
In our Physics Division, members of the Supernova Cosmology
Project gathered enough data to put an emphatic stamp of validation
on their 1998 discovery that the universe is expanding at
an accelerating rate, driven by the mysterious and heretofore
unknown force of dark energy. They were helped in no small
measure by the computational contributions of the National
Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), which
Berkeley Lab hosts and which continues to play a vital role
in the applications of supercomputing to our nation's nonclassified
scientific research effort.
Scientists in our Life Sciences Division, working with our
partners at the Joint Genome Institute, broke new ground in
the search for human genes and a better understanding of how
they impact our health. Our researchers also uncovered a new
risk factor in heart disease, revealed how viral infections
take place at the cellular level, and gained valuable new
insight into a basic but essential biological process, the
means by which water passes in and out of a living cell.
As befits a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory,
Berkeley Lab researchers contributed to this country's mandate
for energy conservation with the invention of a table lamp
that saves energy and provides better lighting as well. Our
researchers also braved the stormy waters off the Antarctic
to contribute to an experiment that offers an intriguing possibility
for reducing global warming.
Perhaps no other areas of scientific and engineering research
today hold more promise for the technologies that will serve
us all tomorrow than those which plumb the mysterious depths
of the nanoscale world. At this level-where materials can
be assembled atom by atom, and an electronic device can consist
of a single molecule,
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where movements can be restricted to two or even one dimension,
and the speed of information processing is limited only by
the speed of light-Berkeley Lab researchers have been opening
doors into a future of seemingly boundless possibilities.
In these highlights you will find descriptions of nano-sized
solar cells and multipurpose wires that are precursors to
this future, and you will learn about new developments at
the Advanced Light Source that will help bring this vision
to fruition.
Even as we look to the future, however, we cannot afford
to forget the past. In the aftermath of the terrible events
of September 11, 2001, we have all been made sadly aware of
the need to secure our nation's borders against terrorist
threats. Berkeley Lab researchers have already taken steps
that can help in this cause. One team has helped develop a
hand-held radiation detector so sensitive it can locate and
distinguish between harmless radioactive isotopes, intended
for medical purposes, and the type of radiation that could
be used to make a "dirty bomb." Another has developed
a portable device that uses neutrons to identify explosives
as well as radioactive materials.
But the role that science and engineering here at our Laboratory
plays in securing our homeland from outside threats extends
far beyond the development of devices and techniques for detecting
threats from radioactive, chemical, or biological sources.
By adding to the collective knowledge and understanding of
our society, the staff at this Laboratory is not only helping
to bolster our technological safeguards and ability to respond
to a crisis, but is also providing the intellectual enlightenment
that is the hallmark of a free and open society. At Berkeley
Lab we can say with pride that we do science that makes a
positive difference for all of us.
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