"Pride of place" literally means the forefront, the lead, the position of prominence, which certainly describes the winners of each year's Nobel Prizes. And the people in the places those winners call home share their pride.
Targeting Brain Tumors
The fatal brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme strikes 18,000 victims yearly in the United States. Surgery and radiation therapy only slow its spread, and anticancer drugs can't cross the blood-brain barrier. But researchers have found a promising alternative for getting anticancer drugs into the brain, using nanosized particles of synthetic cholesterol.
Trapping Mercury
A cheap and efficient new way of removing mercury from coal-fired power-plant emissions could help prevent the toxic element from poisoning the environment and entering the food chain. By injecting halogen gas into a power plant's stacks, elemental mercury in the waste stream can be oxidized and then readily trapped.
Hard Probes
The shorter the wavelength, the finer the resolution, which is why x‑rays can see much smaller objects than visible light. Scientists need the hardest probes of all to study the hot, dense state of matter created when heavy nuclei like gold collide with enough energy to momentarily free the quarks and gluons in their constituent protons and neutrons.
A S@BL Special
Sure, it's great to win the Nobel Prize, but it's the kind of honor that can exhaust you. The special report follows co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, George Smoot, through his first day — one that began at 2:45 in the morning with a phone call from Stockholm and didn't end until more than 24 hours later.
The Material World
Maybe it won't compete with Titanic, but there's a new movie that can't be beat for originality: it's the first ever based on recorded observations of light moving through matter at the molecular level, with implications for using light to alter material properties.
Unlike silicon, carbon-based nanomaterials can act as superconductors and can emit light. New studies point the way to bilayer graphene as a switching device in nanoscale electronics.
S@BL Selections
Do you need a Science@Berkeley Lab article in a condensed version, ready to print as a single-sheet handout in classrooms or other venues where only hard copy will do? Check out the pdfs on file in S@BL Selections. If you don't see the article you need, ask us to make it for you.
October, 2006 
