A Berkeley Lab proposal for a new gamma ray detector 10 to 100 times more sensitive than Gammasphere has passed its first hurdle. Approval has been received from DOE to prepare a conceptual design for Gretina, which stands for Gamma-Ray Energy-Tracking In-beam Nuclear Array. "This is very good news for us," said I-Yang Lee, of the Nuclear Science Division, one of the project's leaders. Gretina would be a one-fourth module of GRETA, a proposed detector 1,000 times more sensitive than Gammasphere. Info on Gretina and GRETA can be viewed here.

Researchers fired ions inside the first portion of a newly-installed accelerator tube atop Oak Ridge National Lab’s Chestnut Ridge on Thursday, taking the nation's largest science project another step toward completion. With six weeks left of around-the-clock initial testing on the Los Alamos Lab drift two linac tube, it's a bit early for a high confidence level in results. Testing of the Berkeley Lab front end system, which produces the ions, was the first major milestone inside the tunnel. Full story.

Astrophysics Postdoc
Featured in ‘Hot Papers’

	Madgwick

Darren Madgwick,a postdoc in Berkeley Lab’s Astrophysics Department, was recognized by ThomsonISI — a popular website for scientific information exchange — for a recent paper on his galaxy redshift survey. Madgwick, also a Hubble Fellow, answers questions on what the website considers this month’s “hot paper,” which for the first time not only defines a new way of specifying the "type" of a galaxy, but has also quantified very precisely the exact numbers and brightnesses of different types of galaxies in the present Universe. Read the interview here.

Congress Returns
to 13 Funding Bills

House and Senate members returning to Washington from a month-long recess this week face the daunting task of passing 13 appropriations bills before the new fiscal year begins in October. Most R&D agencies, except for defense, homeland security and the National Institutes of Health, are looking at largely flat budgets. The Department of Energy is expecting a modest boost. Read a six-page analysis of the current status of bills, prepared by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, here.

The inaugural issue of Berkeley Lab View, successor to the biweekly laboratory newspaper Currents, will be distributed to employees today. Its name is not only a tribute to Berkeley Lab’s breathtaking geographic location, but is also an indication of the visual and written perspectives that will be this publication’s hallmark in the coming years. The View will provide a broader spectrum of information about the lab community, with more coverage of employees, science highlights, and Operations activities. Get a copy through Division and Department offices.

There will be scheduled power outages for switchgear modifications at Building 62 and the 90 Complex tomorrow from approximately 6 a.m. until 4 p.m. This outage will also turn off all cooling water systems to Building 66 and the 72 Complex. Be sure to take all necessary precautions. A hill-wide public address announcement will be made prior to switching. For additional information contact Bill Mattson at x4127 or Jim Murphy at x4175.