Partnership to Aid China Efficiency Efforts

Alivisatos, Helios to Be
Keynote at Cleantech ‘07

Alivisatos

Associate Lab Director for Physical Sciences Paul Alivisatos will be one of the keynote speakers in this year’s “Cleantech” international conference on global sustainability in Santa Clara, May 20-24. Alivisatos will discuss “Helios Project: Cleantech” on May 24 at 8:30 a.m. Also on the program is former Berkeley Lab materials sciences staffer Ilan Gur, who speaks on May 24 at 3 p.m. about “Air-Stable Inorganic Nanocrystal Solar Cells.” Cleantech is being combined with the annual Nanotech conference this year. Go here for information on the program.

Patent Requirements
For Outside Consulting

When a consulting or employment agreement containing a claim for invention and patent rights is offered to an employee, the text of the proposed consulting or employment agreement must be reviewed and approved by the Technology Transfer Department before execution of the agreement by the employee.  Under the terms of the University/Department of Energy Contract, the agreement must include specific language concerning University of California property and patent rights in order to obtain Laboratory approval. That language can be found here. Questions on inventions and patent articles in a proposed consulting agreement should be directed to the Technology Transfer Department.

Nanotube Needles Deliver
Quantum Dots in Cells

Quantum dots

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes can be used as nanoinjectors to deliver quantum dots inside cells, a technique that could enhance studies of cellular processes. Berkeley Lab Molecular Foundry Director Carolyn Bertozzi and Lab materials scientist Alex Zettl, along with graduate students, created the devices by first connecting a single nanotube to an atomic force microscope tip. Full story.

Metabolic Reconstruction
Of Metagenomic Data

The field of metagenomics — studying communities of microbial genomes — is much like of the early days of the California Gold Rush, with labs vying to stake their claim. Amidst the prospecting, the call has been issued for methods to separate fool's gold from the real nuggets. Such a gold standard has now been provided through work led by the Joint Genome Institute and colleagues from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center. Their results are published in the May edition of Nature Methods. "We are now exploring ways to analyze metagenomic data to enable accurate classification of sequence fragments into their corresponding species populations," says JGI researcher and Berkeley Lab genomicist Konstantinos Mavrommatis. Full story.