Report Highlights JGI
3-Year Achievements

The U.S. Department of Energy investment in large-scale genome sequencing is paying dividends with powerful implications for the nation’s energy and environmental clean-up needs, according to a report just released by the DOE Joint Genome Institute. As the leading national user facility targeting microbes and microbial communities, plants, and aquatic organisms, JGI is serving to close a critical gap of knowledge while unlocking the potential of this largely unexplored cache of the planet’s living matter. Highlights from the scores of significant projects tackled by JGI between 2002 and 2005 can be read here.

‘Wild 2’ comet

Chasing Comets:
Stardust Mission Sunday
By Glennda Chui

If all goes well Sunday, a 100-pound space capsule called Stardust will come screaming into the atmosphere at nearly 29,000 mph, faster than any human-made object to date. For a little more than a minute it will blaze as bright as Venus, an artificial fireball whose sonic boom shakes the ground. Then, deploying a series of parachutes, it will drift to a gentle landing in the Utah desert, cradling millions of pieces of dust that, if lumped together, would weigh less than a grain of salt. It will be the first solid stuff brought back from space since the Apollo moon missions, and the first to come from beyond the moon. And if the mission succeeds, the impact could be huge. Full story.

Berkeley Lab Partner
In Ethernet Alliance

The Ethernet Alliance, an industry group dedicated to the continued success and expansion of Ethernet technology, yesterday announced its formation. With a scope that includes all IEEE 802 Ethernet standards, the Ethernet Alliance will serve as an industry resource and will help member companies increase acceptance and reduce time-to-market of Ethernet products by supporting the advancement of existing and emerging Ethernet technologies. Berkeley Lab is among the 18 founding members. Full story.

Nano World: Hybrid Structures Fuse Traits
By Charles Q. Choi

A menagerie of complex new structures that assemble themselves from combinations of semiconducting, metallic or magnetic particles only nanometers or billionths of a meter wide promise to have either the combined valuable traits of their ingredients or possess entirely new useful properties, experts told UPI's Nano World. For example, structures that pair two different semiconductors "can be employed for new generation of solar cells and thermoelectric devices," explained researcher Dmitri Talapin, a materials scientist formerly with IBM and now at Berkeley Lab, while combinations of magnetic and semiconducting nanoparticles "are promising for magneto-optic data storage and spintronic devices." Full story.

DOE Launches New Energy.gov Website

Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman has unveiled an updated version of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) website: http://www.energy.gov/. The DOE website features a new, more modern look and feel, as well as enhanced user-centered navigational tools and search capabilities. "Energy.gov is a key resource for millions of Americans each year," Bodman said. “Our redesigned Energy.gov site allows for quicker and easier access to information about the Department of Energy’s programs and initiatives, including easy to use ways families and businesses can save money and energy." Read about it here.