Lithgow Begins As New
Lab Patent Manager

Lithgow

Timothy Lithgow, whose experience includes both private-sector businesses and prominent California law firms, began July 1 as Berkeley Lab’s new Patent Manager. A patent attorney, Lithgow graduated from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School in 1991. He previously earned an M.D. degree from the USC School of Medicine, and a B.A. in biology from Point Loma College in San Diego. Lithgow said he looks forward to working closely with Lab inventors.

Angela Garcia of Concord High, left, and Samantha McHale of Las Lomas High School get lesson from JGI researcher Damon Tighe.

Lab Experiment Works;
Young Techs Thrive at JGI
By Jackie Burrell

Impossibly young, white-lab- coated scientists hunch over pipettes, filling gleaming trays with gel and DNA fragments. It's not so impossible. These technicians at Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek are just 18 years old. The Bay Area is reshaping vocational education on both sides of the Caldecott Tunnel, as clusters of biotechnology industry insiders and educators collaborate on teen internships, in-class labs and a brand-new summer science camp for high school students. Joint Genome's David Gilbert calls programs such as Berkeley Biotechnology Education Inc.'s internships for at-risk teens "magical" and "life-transforming." Full story.

Basic Energy Sciences Director Pat Dehmer, Berkeley Lab Deputy Director Pier Oddone compare notes at NanoSummit.

Report on Department
Of Energy NanoSummit

"Nanoscience will make the physical sciences as sexy as the life sciences were in the last 10 years," Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) predicted at a Department of Energy NanoSummit held on June 23-24. Wamp was one of the senior-level speakers at this meeting in Washington, D.C. that included Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger. Several members of Berkeley Lab’s nanotechnology and Molecular Foundry programs attended. For a summary by the American Institute of Physics, go here.

Beagle.AG Worm
Hits Lab Computers

Berkeley Lab’s e-mail system was infiltrated yesterday by messages with subjects such as "foto3 and MP3," "fotogalary and Music," "fotoinfo," "Lovely animals," "Predators," or "The Snake." The Computer Protection Program warns employees NOT to open the attachments, which will have a .com, .cpl, .exe, .scr or .zip extension, because they contain Beagle.AG, a Windows worm that is infecting systems at an alarming rate. An opened Beagle.AG sets up a back door to allow attackers to remotely access the system. “Never open any attachment that you are not expecting, even if it appears to come from someone you know, and be sure to update your system's anti-virus software every day,” the CPP advises. People who opened the attachment should call x4357 for help.

Filter May Have Deleted
Valid E-mail Attachments

When the Lab was attacked by a new e-mail virus yesterday (see above story), a mail filter was implemented in an attempt to protect the Lab by blocking infected mail. An unexpected side effect was that some valid email attachments (.doc, .rtf, .xls) were deleted between 10:30 and 4:30. If you sent an attachment during this time, check with the recipient. If you expected to receive an attachment, ask the sender to re-send it. The Information Technology and Services Division is sorry for the inconvenience.

Brown Bag Will Cover
Internet Explorer Security

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser is by far the most used browser, but it has so many security vulnerabilities (some of which cannot be fixed at this time), security experts are starting to recommend that users avoid using it. Are they correct? Find out at the upcoming Computer Protection Brown Bag at noon on Wednesday, July 28 in the Bldg. 50 auditorium. Gene Schultz of the Computer Protection Program will be the speaker.

Remember to Take Out
The (Email) Trash

Note to users of the Lab’s central email service: getting rid of unwanted email is really a two-step process. When you delete a message, it is sent to the Trash folder, kind of like putting a piece of trash in a wastebasket. The next step is to empty the Trash folder (like emptying the wastebasket into the trash barrel). Until the messages are removed from the Trash folder, they accumulate and continue to take up storage space in the Lab’s email system. In fact, about 47 gigabytes of trashed email is currently being stored – about 13 percent of the total stored mail.