The Lab's Environment, Health and Safety Division has established a new website to help employees, especially those in safety oversight roles, to prepare for a successful Department of Energy Health, Safety and Security (HSS) Review, scheduled to take place Jan. 25 through Feb. 5. of next year. The site provides important information about the review schedule, Integrated Safety Management (ISM) guidelines, division contacts, and division ISM plans, among other topics.
Go to OurSafety for more on the Lab's safety efforts.
Policy: Lab’s Holiday ScheduleWith the holiday season fast approaching, staff are encouraged to check out the Lab’s holiday calendar (scroll down to view 2008), which includes shutdown dates for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Go here to review the complete text of the Lab’s policy on holidays in the Regulations and Procedures Manual.
In The News: California, Other States Aim To Lower Solar Rebates[Alibaba.com] Homeowners hoping to collect state rebates for having solar panels installed on their houses next year could well be disappointed. Large solar-supportive states, including California, New Jersey and New York, are taking steps to decrease rebate levels for residential installations in response to the larger incentives from the federal government starting in 2009. A new report that analyzes the issue and makes recommendations to states, authored by Berkeley Lab in cooperation with the Clean Energy States Alliance, came out last Thursday. More>
In The News: Roadrunner Holds Onto ‘Fastest Computer’ Title[Information Week] The Roadrunner supercomputer at Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico barely held on to its ranking as the world's fastest computer, as Cray challenger Jaguar (Oakridge Lab) came close to snatching the crown from the defending champion. The biannual Top500 list, released late Friday at the SC08 conference, showed Roadrunner reaching a speed of 1.105 petaflops per second, compared with Jaguar's 1.059 petaflops per second. The Top500 list is compiled at the University of Mannheim, Germany, Berkeley Lab, and the University of Tennessee. Berkeley Lab's Franklin Cray XT4 is ranked seventh on the list. More>
People: NERSC’s Kramer Takes Post With Supercomputing Center in Illinois After 12 years at NERSC, Bill Kramer will be leaving his post as general manager to undertake a new position as Deputy Project Director for Blue Waters Project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), in Urbana, Ill. During his tenure at Berkeley Lab, Kramer saw NERSC through many major transitions, including a move from Livermore Lab to Berkeley, a migration of the entire user community from vector supercomputers to highly parallel computing, and the design and implementation of both the NERSC system architecture and the NERSC service architecture.
Publications: Latest ESnet News and CRD Report AvailableThe latest issue of the ESnet newsletter is now available. It includes a feature on the critical link ESnet4 is providing for U.S. researchers accessing LHC data, and an introduction to new ESnet head Steve Cotter. The Computational Research Division’s CRD Report has also been published, with stories on Berkeley Lab contributions to SC08, and profiles of the 2008 Alvarez and Seaborg fellows.