Davies, left, with mentor Gary Andersen of the Earth Sciences Division.

A Union City teacher completing his second summer internship at Berkeley Lab has created a web tutorial for greengenes, an application developed at the Lab that allows users to analyze gene sequences. Through this experience, Jonathon Davies, a CSEE Summer Fellow, has also developed a class assignment: Students pretend to be professional microbiologists hired by a city to test water samples. After submitting their findings to the county health department, the scientists attend a City Council meeting where the elected officials must decide whether to shut down the area's beach. Full story.

McKone Featured
On California Report

McKone

Tom McKone, a risk assessment specialist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, was featured on KQED’s California Report last week discussing household hazardous waste such as car batteries, old irons, and rusty circuit boards. These items are considered household hazardous waste because chemicals in them are dangerous to human health and the environment. When these items are thrown out, they become the problem of the county government. The program checks in with Santa Clara County to see how they manage their toxic trash. Full story.