Worm Could Cause
$50 Billion in Damages

Paxson

A worst-case worm attack on the United States could easily cost the country $50 billion in direct damages, a pair of security experts said last week. Nicholas Weaver and Vern Paxson, two security researchers who work with the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), a nonprofit research group associated with UC Berkeley, modeled a worst-case scenario in which state-sponsored attackers construct a worm exploiting an unpublished vulnerability, then launch it over the internet. Paxson is also a staff scientist at Berkeley Lab. Full story.

Cutting The Cost
Of Energy Use

If you feel that you're paying more for energy, you are. Today, according to the Alliance to Save Energy, the average American household spends about $1,400 each year on energy bills. But cutting back on energy use is not just a matter of turning devices off. Idle electronics — such as the computer printer that isn't "on," but is plugged in — use energy to keep the display lit. Those devices cost Americans more than $3 billion annually, and use up about 5 percent of our domestic energy, according to Berkeley Lab. Full story.

ASD Writing Course
This Thursday

The ASD Academy is offering a FranklinCovey Writing Advantage course on Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Building 2-100B. The class provides students with tools to improve written communication. Go here to register (course #ASD0214). For more information, contact Sue Bowen

A conference in Sacramento this Wednesday and Thursday will focus on “Reducing Impacts Of Catastrophic Climate Change in California.” Among the featured speakers are Berkeley Lab scientists Lynn Price and Alan Sanstad (Environmental Energy Technologies) and Norm Miller (Earth Sciences). The conference will explore documented reports of warmer temperatures, declining spring snowpack, and earlier snowmelt in California, which have raised concerns about the state's ability to satisfy future water demands and generate sufficient low-cost electricity from its hydroelectric power plants to meet ever-increasing summer demand. Go here for more information.

Oncology Technologies
Featured at BIO 2004

Pam Siedenman, with the Lab’s Technology Transfer Department, will be presenting a talk on six oncology technologies that were developed here at the BIO 2004 conference in San Francisco this week. They include: DNA-PKcs Phosphorylation Sites and Antibodies for Cancer Research; Breast Cancer Therapy and Potential Method for Enhancing Radiation Sensitivity via Inhibition of ß1 Integrin; Identification of a Common Binding Site on Tubulin for Paclitaxel, Epothilone, and Eleutherobin; Gene Therapy Target and Marker for Invasive Human Breast Cancer; Quantum Dot Based Cell Motility, Invasion, and Metastasis Assays; and Biomarker for Cell Senescence. Details on these technologies are available here.