Former ASD Deputy
Assumes New Role

Ramorino

Karen Ramorino, former deputy of the now-dissolved Administrative Services Department, has taken a new assignment within the Lab's Human Resources Department. She is now the Senior Manager for Development and Training. Her responsibilities include developing core training for managers and supervisors, offering management and leadership development via general courses or tailored to division-specific needs, and continuing the administrative staff training that had been developed through the ASD Academy over the past two years. In May, Ramorino received her doctorate in education in organization and leadership development from the University of San Francisco.

Staff Input Sought
At Aug. 2 Forum

Employees are invited to attend a forum to discuss topics of mutual interest (excluding collective bargaining issues) and engage in dialogue with senior management. Director Chu will be on hand to kick-off the event, which runs from noon to 1 p.m. in the Building 50 Auditorium on Tuesday, Aug. 2. The event is sponsored by the Lab’s current delegates to the Council of UC Staff Assemblies (CUCSA). The council is comprised of two delegates from each UC campus and UC-managed labs, who provide a staff prospective to UC policymakers. Contact Lab delegates Bill Johansen or Carla Garbis for more information.

Talk on Holographic
Universe Today

The next installment of the Lab's Summer Lecture Series takes place today at noon in the Building 50 Auditorium. The guest speaker is theoretical physicist Raphael Bousso, who in a talk titled "The World as a Hologram" will discuss ideas derived from the study of black holes that may help unify gravity and quantum mechanics. Next Wednesday, theoretician Hitoshi Murayama will tackle Einstein's famous equation, "E=Mc2" in the last lecture of the series, which was developed in conjunction with the international "World Year of Physics" event.

Homestake Makes
NSF Phase II Cut

Lesko

"This is good news, but we are not at the point of claiming victory," South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds said when the latest news about Homestake was announced by the National Science Foundation last Thursday afternoon. The foundation has selected the Homestake Gold Mine as one of two sites (out of eight proposals) under consideration for a deep underground science and engineering laboratory. A $500,000 grant will be awarded to produce a conceptual design. Berkeley Lab nuclear scientist Kevin Lesko is the principal investigator of the Homestake proposal. Full story. Go here to read a Lab press release on this development.

PC Models Pollution,
Climate Relationship

McKone
Riley

For the first time, a personal computer-based model has evaluated global-scale relationships between atmospheric concentrations of persistent organic pollutants and climatic patterns. The research, published in Environmental Science & Technology, was conducted by Thomas Mckone of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energies Technology Division, Bill Riley of the Earth Sciences Division, and Mathew McLeod (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). They demonstrated how a new model they developed, Berkeley-Trent (BETR)-Global, can analyze supercomputer data, such as the relationship between the concentrations of the polychlorinated biphenyls in the atmosphere and a global-scale climatic pattern known as the North Atlantic Oscillation. Full story.