Materials scientist Mark Alper with delegation

European Parliament
Members Visit Lab

Members of the European Parliament's Energy Forum visited the Lab for discussions on advanced energy research and a tour of the Advanced Light Source, the Molecular Foundry and National Center for Electron Microscopy yesterday. The group is on a tour of California and will later visit Washington D.C. to learn more about federal and state support of energy research funding and progressive energy policies. They visited Google before coming to the Lab yesterday, and today are scheduled to meet with officials in Sacramento, including Governor Schwarzenegger.

Wetsuit Inventor,
Lab Physicist Dies

Bradner

Hugh Bradner, a physicist who revolutionized diving by inventing the neoprene wetsuit, died on May 5 at the age of 92. After World War II, Bradner joined the faculty of UC Berkeley and taught physics. He also worked at Berkeley Lab on high-energy physics, and in his spare time he started noodling around with ideas on how to improve the lot of divers, who spent much of their time in a cold and clammy clime. Full story.

Cafeteria Offers
Produce Market

The cafeteria has launched a produce market, which will be set up next to the Peet's Coffee Bar every Tuesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Fruits, vegetables and fresh Semifreddi's Bread will be offered. Also, staff should be aware that the incorrect menu is listed for tomorrow. Monday's menu is what is being served on Wednesday.

Clues on How Proteins Dissolve and Crystallize

A team led by Richard Saykally, with the Chemical Sciences Division, has used the Advanced Light Source to study how biologically important, positively charged ions (cations) interact with negatively charged groups found in proteins (anions) to form salts. The team's results, which appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lend strong support to a new explanation of the century-old Hofmeister series, biochemically important but never properly understood. Full story.

Lab Custodian Honored
For Turning Life Around

Bell with his award

Meet Greg Bell, a custodian working in the cafeteria. Bell says it’s quite a privilege to work among so many fascinating and brilliant people. But his environment was quite different some 10 years ago, when he was homeless, pushing a shopping cart around the streets of Richmond. “I’d lost my job of 24 years, then my marriage broke up shortly after that,” explains Bell. “Those events, combined with some destructive personal habits, caused me to lose my house.”

But help came in the form of Rubicon Programs, a non-profit organization to assist the homeless. “After two years on the street, I wanted to get a roof over my head, so participated in their substance abuse and job training program, receiving my janitorial services certificate.” This eventually brought him to the Lab, where’s he’s been for the last eight years.

Bell was recently honored by Rubicon for his successful turn-around, giving a speech at their 35th anniversary ceremony in April, attended by 200 Bay Area hot shots, including the mayors of Berkeley, Richmond and San Francisco. “I got a standing ovation when I said that I had gone from shaking hands with hustlers and drug dealers on street corners to shaking hands with Nobel Laureates.”