Good News for Anticancer
Drug Designers in Study

Downing

Pharmaceutical companies seeking to design more effective cancer chemotherapy agents may have an easier road ahead than was previously believed. A team of researchers, led by Life Scientist Ken Downing of Berkeley Lab, has shown that two of the most promising anticancer drug families, the taxanes, which include Taxol™, and the epothilones, have their own unique and independent mechanisms for combating the spread of tumors. This revelation provides drug designers with a great deal more flexibility in synthesizing new and improved forms of each. "What our findings have done is to give drug designers more options," says biophysicist Downing. Full story.

Undergrad Poster Show
At Cafeteria Tomorrow

The Center for Science and Engineering Education will hold its annual Undergraduate Student Poster Session from 3 to 5 p.m. tomorrow in the Cafeteria. This annual event is one of the rare opportunities to bring together, at one time, examples of the breadth of research conducted at the Laboratory—and it does so through the experience of the students. All Laboratory employees and guests are invited. Refreshments will be served.

Staff can enjoy the food, fun and colorful atmosphere of the Solano Stroll in Albany Sunday, Sept. 12, starting at 8 a.m, while sharing information about the work of Berkeley Lab by volunteering at the Lab’s booth. Volunteers will hand out brochures and souvenirs and can work for as little as one hour. Afterwards, employees and their families can listen to music, admire arts and crafts, and taste gourmet foods from around the world. To volunteer, call Community Relations at x7292.

Is it or isn’t it?

What's in a name?
Is It QGP or Not?

Physicists agree that experiments at the Brookhaven atom collider have created a new form of matter. But theorists and experimentalists are still arguing about what to call it. Since June 2000, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has smashed atoms together in a bid to make an extremely hot state of matter called quark–gluon plasma (QGP). A full-fledged feud has erupted between experimentalists and theorists over whether RHIC has indeed created QGP. "Within our current models, there is no other state that can exist," adds Xin-Nian Wang, who heads the nuclear theory program at Berkeley Lab. Full story.

Former Lab researcher Eric Page explains new center’s work

Ex-Lab Experts Lead
Davis Lighting Center

With the cut of a blue and gold ribbon, the University of California, Davis celebrated its newest addition, the California Lighting Technology Center, on July 21. The center, established as a collaborative effort between UC Davis and the California Energy Commission, is directed by former Berkeley Lab researchers Michael Siminovitch and Konstantinos Papamichael. The purpose of the center is to push the use of energy-efficient lighting in the homes and businesses. A report on the ribbon-cutting ceremony can be read here; the UC Davis news release on the center is here.

Abelson Dies; Worked
With Laboratory Nobelists

Abelson

In a respectful tribute to one of his predecessors as Science journal editor, Donald Kennedy writes in the current issue of Philip Hauge Abelson, who died on Aug. 1. Abelson, who edited the publication for 23 years, had also been a young colleague of Ernest Lawrence and Luis Alvarez, and he worked with ex-Lab Director Edwin McMillan when he discovered Neptunium at the Berkeley cyclotron. Kennedy’s editorial can be read here.