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Biotech Leader, Keasling
Colleague at Stanford
By Bernadette Tansey
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Endy |
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Drew Endy, a pioneering synthetic biologist who will soon move from MIT to Stanford, says it was the rich mix of people at the university and the Bay Area at large that persuaded him to relocate. “The set of things yet to be done is so exciting and formidable," he said. "You need a place like the Bay Area to really imagine being able to execute on it all." The Bay Area and Boston are the two largest U.S. centers of synthetic biology activity, and the distant clusters are bound in a tight-knit academic community. One major network is the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center, a consortium funded by the National Science Foundation and led by Berkeley Lab’s Jay Keasling. Keasling and Endy co-founded Codon Devices, which offers quick syntesis of DNA sequences to the specifications of individual labs. Keasling is also a founder of Amyris Biotechnologies, which is exploring synthetic biology techniques to manufacture biofuels and cheaper drugs to treat malaria. Full story.
South Dakotans Find Lab
‘Bullish’ on Mine Plans
Members of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority board came away from a meeting at Berkeley Lab feeling very confident in the level of support for developing a national laboratory at the former Homestake Gold Mine. Berkeley Lab is leading the proposal for the underground lab, to be funded by the National Science Foundation. During their visit, the team also learned more about how a national lab operates. "I have a better vision of what we're trying to do," said board member Pat Lebrun. "But the most important thing was meeting with the people. They couldn't have been nicer." Full story.
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Reminder: New Café
Service Starts Today
Starting today, Cal Dining will provide the Lab with cafeteria and coffee bar service. Among the new features of this service are longer hours: 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. for food service and 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. for the coffee bar. Because of the transition, this week's menu listing is not yet available. Cal Dining offers a 100 percent organic salad bar and employs sustainable business practices, including composting of all pre- and post-consumer waste, washable serviceware, and biomass/compostable paper products. Go here for more information on Cal Dining.
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Charge Increased 10-Fold
With Nanowire Battery
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Liu |
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Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices. The new version produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers. Among the contributors to the study was Gao Liu of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. Full story.
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ALS Top-off Project
Nearing Completion
The close of 2007 saw a big step taken towards completion of the Top-Off project at the Advanced Light Source, which calls for electrons to be injected into the storage ring every 30 seconds or so. Under the original operating mode, the storage ring is filled only once every eight hours. The new “quasi-continuous” current will significantly increase the brightness and stability of ALS beams. Although the injector and lattice upgrades for Top-Off were completed a year ago, there had been problems with the power supply. A collaborative effort between the vendor and ALS engineers during the Thanksgiving shutdown in November resolved the problem. Go here for more information.
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