Guest House Construction
To Start on Wednesday

Construction activities for the Berkeley Lab Guest House are scheduled to begin Wednesday. The project site is located below Building 2 and above Lawrence Road. The Guest House will provide 57 guest rooms for Berkeley Lab visitors and is scheduled for completion spring 2009.  The construction will cause some inconveniences for employees. The Z parking lot will be closed and pedestrian routes around the site will be altered. Signs designating directions and detours have been posted, and those traveling in this area are urged to use caution. Updates on the project will appear periodically in Today at Berkeley Lab. For more information, contact Kirk Haley (x4171).

Renewable Portfolio
Standards Examined

Renewable electricity is being supported by a growing number of states through the creation of renewables portfolio standards (RPS). A report released by the Berkeley Lab provides a comprehensive overview of the early experiences with these state-level RPS policies. Collectively, the RPS policies that are in place today in 25 states and Washington D.C., apply to nearly 50-percent of total U.S. electricity load. In addition, four new states joined the RPS roster in 2007. Full story.

Cal Student ‘Interviews’
Protein About its Job

Kuchment

Olga Kuchment, a UC Berkeley student, Advanced Light Source guest and Ph.D. student working with Lab physical bioscientist John Kuriyan, conducts imaginary interviews with the proteins she studies. She recently sat down with the Sos1 protein, which participates in several eukaryotic cell-signaling pathways, which lead to cell growth and survival, cytoskeletal organization, or changes in transcription. Go here to read her interview of his vital protein.

Breast Cancer Topic
Of Next ‘Friends’ Talk

Berkeley Lab life scientists Joe Gray, Mina Bissell and Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff will participate in a discussion moderated by Susan Love at the next “Science at the Theater” talk next Monday (April 21). The group will look at “The Two Faces of Breast Cancer: Genes and the Microenvironment” at 5:30 p.m. in the Berkeley Repertory Theater (2025 Addison St.). The talk, sponsored by Friends of Science, is free. Go here for more information.

ESnet's Head Discusses Retirement, Career

Johnston

In a few months, Berkeley Lab’s Bill Johnston will step down as head of ESnet, the Department of Energy's international network that provides high bandwidth networking to tens of thousands of researchers around the world. In a career that began in the 1970s and has included seminal work in networking, distributed computing, and the Grid, Johnston has had a hand in many of the high performance computing and networking resources that are today taken for granted. In this Q&A, he talks about his career, his accomplishments and his future plans. Full story.

Chen, center, with her teacher Karen Kelly, left, and Wright

JGI-Mentored Student Big Winner at Science Fair

Cici Chen, a junior at Clayton Valley High School, took home one of four grand prizes last week at the Contra Costa County Intel-Affiliated Science Fair. This earned her a trip to the May international competition in Atlanta for her project “From Biomass to Ethanol: Using Transformed Yeast Sacharomyces Cerevisiae for Cellulosic Degradation and Ethanol Fermentation.” Chen was mentored by Berkeley Lab Genomics Division and JGI researcher Crystal Wright.