Helios Video Featured
In Dynes Newsletter

The latest issue of Our University, a regular online newsletter from UC President Robert Dynes, includes a feature on Berkeley Lab's Helios Project. The article discusses Governor Schwarzenegger's recent commitment of $30 million in lease revenue bonds to fund the project, and includes a video and a slide show that further describes the reach of Helios. The letter also includes systemwide news, fun facts about the university, and a faculty profile. Go here to view Our University. 

The 3-D Language
Of Our Body's Cells
By Kathleen Wong

Groves

Beneath your skin, your cells are locked in heated conversation. Like teens glued to a telephone, they have much to say to one another. Though blind, deaf, and mute, cells face no communication quandary. They send out signaling molecules, tiny versions of a castaway's message in a bottle. They stud themselves with receptors, to snag other signaling molecules floating by. Each also plasters itself with molecular identity tags proclaiming citizenship in the body. Now Jay Groves, a UC Berkeley chemistry professor and Berkeley Lab physical bioscientist, is deciphering yet another mode of cellular discourse: spatial patterning. Full story.

Faster, More Efficient
Chip Coming, Says Intel
By John Markoff

Intel's 45 nanometer chip

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, has overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for a new generation of faster and more energy-efficient processors. Company researchers said the advance represented the most significant change in the materials used to manufacture silicon chips since Intel pioneered the modern integrated- circuit transistor more than four decades ago. “This is evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary, but it will generate a big sigh of relief,” said Berkeley Lab materials scientist Vivek Subramanian. Full story.