Today at Berkeley Lab: April 3, 2003

Thursday, April 3, 2003

Today

10:30 a.m.
SEMINAR
Center for Beam Physics
Synchronized Chaos: Stability and Pattern Formation
Prof. Govindan ("Raj") Rangarajan, Indian Institute of Science
Building 71-264

Tomorrow

1 p.m.
SEMINAR
Scientific Computing
Towards a Sparse SVD: Joint work with Gene Golub, Iain Duff, and Christof Voemel
Tim Davis
Building 50D-3416

Origins: Lasagna
Adobe Cafe: Salmon Salad
Fresh Grille: Beef Quesadillas


B'fast:	6:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.
Lunch:	11 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Full Menu

Partly cloudy

Extended Forecast

SECON level 2

More Information

Today at Berkeley Lab is online at
http://www.lbl.gov/today/

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Fleming

Fleming Chosen To Give
Prestigious Oxford Talks

Physical Biosciences Division Director Graham Fleming will give the Hinshelwood Lectures at Oxford, England, following in the footsteps of such distinguished Lab scientists as Alex Pines, Gabor Somorjai, David Chandler, and several Nobel laureates. Fleming will give a number of celebrated lectures over the next year, including the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar lectures at eight undergraduate institutions, the E.U. Condon Lecture at the University of Colorado, and the American Chemical Society Distinguished Chemist lectures at the University of Nevada.

Abraham Tours Symyx,
Start-Up From Lab Work

Abraham

Symyx, a start-up company established in 1995 based on combinatorial chemistry technology licensed from Berkeley Lab, received a visit from DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham Tuesday. Abraham toured Symyx' fuel cell research laboratory in Santa Clara and saw technologies Symyx has developed for the high-throughput synthesis and screening of fuel cell electrocatalysts. The Secretary also viewed four fuel cell-powered vehicles (photo by Berkeley Lab's Roy Kaltschmidt for the DOE). Using a novel approach developed at Berkeley Lab, Symyx can generate a library with thousands of different chemical combinations and process each in parallel to test for specific properties. This methodology can be used to produce a vast array of industrial materials, including chemical catalysts, genomic probes, fuel cells, and battery electrodes. Full story.

UC Retirement Funds
Focus of Lawsuit

The San Jose Mercury News and a union of 18,000 employees of the University of California filed suit today to make the UC regents turn over information about how the university's investments for retirees are doing. The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, argues that the California Public Records Act obligates the university to disclose the individual performance results of venture capital funds it has invested in. Full story.

Einstein’s Formula
Challenged In New Book

Berkeley Lab scientists have shown Einstein was right about the cosmological constant. Has a young Portuguese physicist shown him to be wrong about the speed of light? João Magueijo, a theoretical physicist at London’s Imperial College, challenges Einstein in a provocative new book entitled Faster than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation. A review by Berkeley Lab science writer Lynn Yarris in the San Jose Mercury News can be read here.