Condensate Research
Heats Up at Lab, UC

Chemla

Physicists have moved a step closer to making a Bose-Einstein condensate in a semiconductor for the first time. Researchers at Berkeley Lab — including ALS Division Director Daniel Chemla — UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara have demonstrated the existence of distinct regions of confined degenerate excitons in a semiconducting material. In 2002, Chemla and co-workers made a semiconductor structure that was designed to confine electrons and holes in the excitons in different quantum wells. Full story.

Lab Health Chief
Testifies in IBM Trial
by Benjamin Pimentel

Lichty

IBM began its counteroffensive in the 2-month-old toxics trial last Thursday with the testimony of a former staff doctor who denied allegations that the company had a policy to turn a blind eye to workplace health problems. Dr. Peter Lichty, who worked at IBM's former San Jose disk drive plant in the mid-1980s (and is currently Group Leader for Health and Safety at Berkeley Lab), said he and his staff did their best to monitor the health of then-employee Alida Hernandez when she was found to have liver problems. Full story.

The Senate passed the $820 billion omnibus appropriations bill last week, and sent it on to President Bush for his signature. With this action the FY 2004 budget cycle that began almost one year ago was completed. The results include the following for the Department of Energy (compared to FY03): Biological and Environmental Research: Up 16.9%; Fusion Energy Sciences: Up 6.3%; Office of Science: Up 5.2%; Nuclear Physics: Up 2.7%; High Energy Physics: Up 0.5%; Basic Energy Sciences: Flat. Full story.

CXRO Wins Optical
Society Award

The Lab’s MSD Center for X-Ray Optics recently won the Optical Society of America’s “Optics in 2003” award. The honor cited the group’s “significant advancement in microscopy achieved by the clear resolution of 20 nm lines and spaces, obtained with the soft x-ray microscope XM-1 at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), beamline 6.1.2. The measured resolution is the highest achieved with photon-based imaging optics.” Go here to read more about this prize-winning research.

Tomorrow’s New Employee Orientation will take place at 8 a.m. in Building 2-100B, not the Building 50 Auditorium, as previously scheduled.

Nikon Product Show
Scheduled for Jan. 28

Representative Kate Hendricks and colleagues from the Nikon Corporation will visit Berkeley Lab on Wednesday to display their research product line. At the invitation of Life Sciences Deputy Director Damir Sudar, Nikon has agreed to demonstrate their products from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Building 84-318 for Life Sciences and other interested lab and campus employees.

Nuclear Scientist Erwin Friedlander Has Died

Friedlander

Physicist Erwin M. Friedlander, an expert in high energy nuclear physics and statistics and a longtime member of Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Sciences Division, died on Jan. 22 at Summit Hospital in Oakland, two weeks after suffering a heart attack. He was 78. The funeral will be held today at 1 p.m. at Oakmont Cemetery in Lafayette. Go here to read the full obituary. A personal remembrance of Friedlander will appear in the Feb. 6 issue of The View.