A fundamental part of Berkeley Lab’s safety and health program are evaluations of exposure to hazardous agents, which are conducted by EH&S’s Industrial Hygiene Group. Preliminary determination of possible exposures are known as Hazard Assessments, while more comprehensive surveys, called Exposure Assessments, may be necessary. Those with questions about potential exposure to chemicals can contact their Division Safety Coordinator or assigned Industrial Hygienist. More>
Go to OurSafety for more on the Lab's safety efforts.
Berkeley Lab physicist and popular campus professor Richard Muller is the focus of a six-minute UC Berkeley video. In the feature, Muller explains his efforts to bring physics to a general audience, not just to science students. Muller says he wants to teach physics like history and English are taught, as part of a core education for all students. More>
In The News: Japan Launches Orbiter to Probe Greenhouse Gases[Washington Post] Japan on Friday launched the first satellite to monitor greenhouse gases worldwide, a tool to help scientists better judge where global warming emissions are coming from, and how much is being absorbed by the oceans and forests. "I'm saying Christmas is here," said an enthusiastic Inez Fung, an earth scientist at Berkeley Lab. "Now we get about 100 observations every two weeks. With the satellite we'll get a million." More>
People: Materials Scientist Somorjai Named a Miller Senior FellowVeteran Berkeley Lab materials scientist and UC Berkeley chemistry professor Gabor Somorjai has been selected as a senior fellow of the campus’s Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science. The fellowship, which provides access to substantial discretionary research funding, is for a five-year period beginning July 1. More>
In The News: Simon Comments on Energy Efficient Computing at Conference[Chronicle of Higher Education] A recent conference held at UC San Diego featured some of the leading voices in green technology from vendors, universities, and government. At the conference, Associate Lab Director for Computing Sciences Horst Simon said when buying and managing servers and other infrastructure, universities and others are just starting to factor environmental considerations into their core decisions. “Everybody does green. We’re halfway there because people have recognized we have a problem,” Simon said. “But if we look at vendors and how everybody builds technology, we’re not even beginning to make a difference.” More>
Training: Course for Supervisors and Work LeadsThe Berkeley Lab Learning Institute is hosting a two-day session of the course “Fundamentals of Leading and Motivating People” on Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 18 and 19. The course is designed to help supervisors and work leads achieve project goals, manage time, and improve communication within the team. Go here for more information, and here to register.
The University of California libraries and Springer Science+Business Media have concluded a groundbreaking experimental agreement to support open access publishing by UC authors. The arrangement is part of the journals license negotiated by the California Digital Library on behalf of the 10 campuses of the University of California, and is the first large-scale open access experiment of its type undertaken with a major commercial publisher in North America. More>
