Advanced building simulation software combined with the power of interactive web pages can save homeowners hundreds of dollars per year on their energy bills. Developed by researchers at Berkeley Lab, the Home Energy Saver site (http://HomeEnergySaver.lbl.gov) helps consumers identify technologies that will save them the most energy and money. For instance, the site can help you determine how much money you would save by installing insulation in your attic, or where to find the best products to do the job.
"Our new `Home Energy Saver' web site showcases how a click of the mouse can mean dollars in the pocket of American consumers," Secretary Richardson said. "It is also the first of many ways our Consumer Information Office can make energy-saving information quickly and readily available to taxpayers across the country."
The site is divided into two main sections: "Energy Advisor" and "Making it Happen." Energy Advisor computes a home's total energy use based on information entered by the user. Once you supply your zip code, Energy Advisor will show you the energy use, bills, or energy-related carbon dioxide emissions for a typical house in your area. You can then answer a set of basic questions about your own house, including its floor area, the number of occupants, type of heating and air conditioning equipment, and fuel prices to get a custom-tailored energy bill breakdown. The more information entered, the more these recommendations become tailored to the house.
Energy Advisor also provides a customized set of suggested energy-saving improvements covering major energy-using systems such as space heating and cooling, water heating, lighting, major appliances, and a host of miscellaneous appliances.
Making It Happen provides time-saving links to hundreds of Internet sites with practical, detailed information about energy-efficient homes, products, service providers, utility programs, and on-line reading materials. An "Answer Desk" feature provides answers to frequently asked questions about home energy use in terms that the average homeowner can understand. This module also provides context-sensitive help and e-mail access to energy experts.
"The Home Energy Saver represents a fundamental departure from previous energy calculators because it is web-based," says Evan Mills, Home Energy Saver project leader in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD). "The site brings together in one user-friendly package the analytical capabilities of many sophisticated calculation methods.
"It would take a user months to learn how to use each program separately," continues Mills. "The site overcomes the limitations of traditional disk-based software tools, since the power of the web allows us to implement frequent software and interface upgrades, provide a hospitable environment for both PC and Mac users, and offer a rich array of consumer decision-support information through links to useful related web sites. And since it is web-based, there is no software to install. Until now, tools like this have been beyond the reach of ordinary consumers. This is a big step forward from the static, generic information normally provided to consumers."
Adds Rich Brown, EETD researcher and Home Energy Saver's production manager, "HES performs heating and cooling calculations using DOE-2, a building energy simulation program developed at Berkeley Lab. Although it's considered the most accurate and powerful program among professional engineers and architects for building energy simulation, until now DOE-2 required extensive training and fast computers. The other energy calculations in HES are also based on models and data from years of research at Berkeley Lab on how people use energy in their homes. Because HES tailors its results to each house, it helps consumers understand how energy is used in their own home compared to local averages and the best ways to reduce that usage."
Consumers are advised that high traffic volume on the HES site may occasionally cause delays or make the site temporarily unavailable. In this event, they should wait a few minutes before trying again. The Berkeley Lab development team is improving the site and adding computing power to handle the growing load of HES users.
Lab researchers developed the HES site for the ENERGY STAR Program, an initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the DOE.
Photo: The Home Energy Saver, developed by researchers at Berkeley Lab, can help consumers save hundreds of dollars a year with customized calculations and suggestions.
Photo: Sample calculations using the Home Energy Saver site.
By Monica Friedlander
The late astrophysicist Marcel Schein of the University of Chicago once lectured in the Ukraine, addressing his audience in Russian. He pointed to an x-ray tube and said "look at this little window." He could not understand the ensuing commotion. Little did he know that due to a slight mispronunciation he had actually told the puzzled gathering to look for a cat.
Okay, so Michael Martin does not guarantee that merely by surfing the web you will deliver flawless lectures and always find the perfect word in every situation. But if you have access to his award-winning Travlang website (http://www.travlang.com), chances are you will avoid the most basic linguistic faux pas and at least know how to ask for directions wherever you may find yourself in the world.
With its "Foreign Language for Travelers" in more than 70 languages, 56 foreign language dictionaries, sound files, customized maps, flight and hotel booking systems, currency conversion program, weather information, and even international traffic codes, Travlang is every tourist's one-stop site for most travel needs.
The project is the brainchild of Berkeley Lab scientist Michael Martin of the Advanced Light Source. Martin started Travlang as a hobby in 1994 while a graduate student at New York State University at Stony Brook. Less than five years later the site gets five million hits a week. It has also won scores of awards, was featured in major papers around the world, and is now helping Martin and his wife finance a new home.
"But the nicest thing about it," Martin says, "is getting notes from people from all over the world, telling me their stories." Such as that of a tourist lost in Rome and saved by Travlang. Or of a woman who adopted a child in Vietnam and turned to Martin's website to help her communicate with the boy.
"Vietnamese is not just another language to me," she wrote him. "It's a link to my son."
In addition to its main language and tourism features, Travlang also includes a travel chat, message boards, tourism and cultural tips, international calendars, news, ski conditions, a search engine and links to a gazillion other related websites. Especially interesting are the links to dozens of language resources (e.g., Which Languages Are Spoken in Which Countries, The Human Languages, Ethnologue Database, The Languages of the World by Computers and the Internet), which make Travlang a true jewel for anyone with linguistic interests.
The core of Travlang, however, is still Foreign Language for Travelers. All you do to use the program is click on the language you want, pick a word or phrase, and the computer will even pronounce it for you in the tongue of your choice.
Martin started all this back in 1994 when he was planning a trip to Budapest and asked a friend for a few Hungarian words and sentences to help him get by. He then put together a web page with useful phrases in half a dozen languages spoken by his colleagues. "Right away I was overwhelmed by the response," he says. One year later Martin started his own small company and kept adding languages to the site.
Later came the online dictionaries, each with a minimum of 2,000 words. The translating program Martin employed, called Ergane and developed in collaboration with Gerard van Wilgen from the Netherlands, is based on a unique concept. Instead of translating from and into every language, which would involve an enormous number of language combinations, Ergane uses the artificial language Esperanto as an intermediary.
Then Martin added his own program to convert currencies and contracted with other agencies to use their hotel and airline booking databases, thus empowering Travlang with most of the resources available to a travel agent.
The website is now used by language buffs, tourists, teachers, students, and just about anyone in search of the right word. As Travlang's popularity skyrocketed, Michael Martin saw his name in the likes of the New York Times, TWA Magazine and The London Times. The site has won numerous awards, such as best travel site of the year in 1995 from Best of the Net, and was nominated for a Webby Award -- sort of the Oscar of the web.
All along Martin worked on the site during his spare time, supporting it with advertiser dollars. "One nice thing about it," he says, "is that I never advertised or did anything to drive up traffic." It was the advertisers who sought him out at first, not vice versa. Only during the past year, when business really took off, did he hire an agency to help him with advertising.
It was also around that time that Martin was hired at Berkeley Lab and eventually decided Travlang had become too big for him to continue running as a hobby. He recently sold the company to GourmetMarket.com and now continues his involvement as a consultant. With his wife expecting twins soon, he says, his priorities shifted to accommodate more important things in his life.
"For now," Martin says, "I am happy being a physicist and becoming a dad."
Photo: Michael Martin of the ALS developed the award-winning Travlang website, which helps travelers with everything from translations to hotel bookings. Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt (XBD9903-00410)
By Ron Kolb
Berkeley Lab's creative scientific staff and the stimulating environment in which it pursues its work were the focus of Lab Director Charles Shank's presentation last week before the University of California's Board of Regents.
Offering brief portraits of three Berkeley Lab scientists and their distinctive contributions, Shank told the University's leadership on Thursday, March 18, that this Laboratory's special nature -- a place where researchers can address complex questions through the use of interdisciplinary teams and unique facilities -- gives the University unusual breadth in its scientific resources.
"Berkeley Lab is an environment that encourages complex investigations with long time scales -- projects bigger than what can be accomplished by a single person," he told them. "Ours is a place that truly helps people like Saul, Mina and Phil to fulfill their scientific dreams."
Saul is astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter, whose study of the expanding universe earned Science magazine's "Breakthrough of the Year" designation. Mina is cell biologist Mina Bissell, who has been honored for her research into the extracellular matrix and its impact on the cancer process. And Phil is Phil Colella, a mathematician with the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), whose contributions to high-performance computing applications have received national recognition.
Shank illustrated his profiles on the auditorium screen at UC San Francisco with a childhood photo of each scientist, videotapes reflecting their work, and journal covers highlighting the research.
"These three stories have common threads which are representative of our Laboratory scientific staff," he told the Regents. "They apply a team approach to their research, a concept first developed by Ernest Lawrence that brings scientists and engineers together to solve complex problems. They all have an abiding curiosity about their world, which leads them to ask fundamental questions that underlie some of our most important problems.
"And," he added, "their diverse intellectual training has prepared them to find creative solutions to crucial scientific challenges."
The three national laboratories managed by the University rotate annual presentations to the Regents. The last time Shank spoke about Berkeley Lab, in 1996, he focused on the many partnerships and collaborations that exist between the Laboratory and the UC campuses, especially Berkeley. This time, he said he wanted to emphasize the scientific staff, noting that in most cases the work involves undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs from Berkeley and other campuses.
Regent Vilma Montoya asked Shank about the Laboratory's energy efficiency programs and urged that this capability be promoted. The Director reminded her that scientific applications of efficiency research are widely recognized. UC Vice President Wayne Kennedy reported that Berkeley Lab experts are assisting with energy systems incorporated in the new UC office building in Washington, D.C.
In response to another question from Regent Sue Johnson, Shank reported on the progress of NERSC and the plan "to develop new tera-scale systems to solve problems of extraordinary importance in climate and combustion modeling and in new areas of science. Computers are becoming a major tool of scientific discovery."
"I want this agency to reconnect with the public--something it doesn't do well except on things you don't want it to connect on, as you've been reading this week," Richardson said last week when he announced the new office at a press conference held in Washington D.C.'s main public library. He was referring to allegations of spying at Los Alamos National Laboratory which had been prominent in the news.
At the press conference, Secretary Richardson said he has been concerned since his arrival at DOE in August that the department did not pay enough attention to consumer concerns. To correct this, he set up the Consumer Information Office and appointed Kathleen McShea, a former media director for Consumers Union, to head it.
McShea called her new job "a rare opportunity to put a consumer advocate smack dab in the middle of one of the largest agencies in the government." While Consumers Union, the nation's largest consumer interest organization, offers numerous services, including Consumer Reports magazine, it does not provide the type of "customized" assistance on home energy needs that the new DOE program does, according to McShea.
The Consumer Information Office will also help alert the public to scientific breakthroughs at DOE's labs which could serve the public well, such as one recent technology that detects unsafe cracks in bridges. "These sorts of things happen every day at the department, but scientists often are not the best advocates," McShea said.
While most of us lament our ever-sagging features in the mirror, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle -- the largest database software corporation in the US -- has done something dramatic about the inevitable progression toward old age. In 1996 he set up the Ellison Medical Foundation to support biomedical research on aging, including basic biology, epidemiology, and clinical investigation using a variety of mechanisms, including a New Scholar Program and a Senior Scholar Program.
Judith Campisi, Life Sciences Division's head of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, is a recent beneficiary of the latter program, to the tune of $964,000 over four years to support her basic investigations into the causes of aging.
The Foundation openly solicited new imaginative ideas on how to identify and understand fundamental aging processes and mechanisms. Out of 300 proposals, they chose 14, including Campisi's.
Said Life Sciences Division Director Mina Bissell, "Larry Ellison and his Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board should be congratulated for recognizing not only the significance of funding research into the basic mechanisms of aging, but also Dr. Campisi's important contribution to the field."
"Although," said Campisi, "it is clear that age is the number one risk factor for developing cancer, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative disease and a host of other disorders, I believe that fundamental studies on aging will have a far greater impact on human health than focusing on any single age-related disease. This grant will allow us to pursue speculative experiments, well outside of mainstream thinking, to determine whether and how the ends of human chromosomes, or telomeres, govern cell function and regulate cellular aging." --by David Gilbert
Photo: Judith Campisi, Life Sciences Division's head of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology.
Acting Assistant Secretary for DOE Policy, Calvin Humphrey, went to Bangladesh last month to dedicate the UV Waterworks filtration device developed by Berkeley Lab's Ashok J. Gadgil of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division.
"What we have here today is a technology that brings the people of Bangladesh not only the life-giving clean water every human is entitled to, but also brings jobs and contributes to the development of the local economy," Humphrey said. "We believe that this is the perfect example of the types of cooperation that will evolve from this mission."
Faced with arsenic-contaminated water from tube wells and contaminated surface water, Bangladesh is in need of a means to rid the water of disease-carrying viruses and bacteria. The solution: UV Waterworks. The small unit produces 1,000 liters of clean water per hour, enough to serve a population of 1,000-2,000 people. The cost is extremely low (about three to four cents per thousand liters).
The system works by delivering ultraviolet light (80,000 micro-watt-seconds per centimeter squared) to disable all water-born bacteria and viruses, such as E-coli, salmonella, cholera, and streptococcus. The device has already been used in Central American countries devastated by Hurricane Mitch, as well as in Nepal, India, South Africa, the Philippines, and Mexico.
In addition to providing clean water, the technology may create job and manufacturing opportunities for local people, since many of the components can be manufactured locally.
Photo: DOE's Calvin Humphrey (far left) visited Bangladesh last month to dedicate UV Waterworks, the water filtration device developed by Lab researcher Ashok Gadgil.
EDITOR: Monica Friedlander, (510) 495-2248, msfriedlander@lbl.gov
STAFF WRITERS: Jeffery Kahn, 486-4019; Paul Preuss, 486-6249; Lynn Yarris, 486-5375
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Jon Bashor, 486-5849; Allan Chen, 486-4210
FLEA MARKET / CALENDAR: Jacqueline Noble, 486-5771
fleamarket@lbl.gov /
currents_calendar@lbl.gov
Public Information Department, Berkeley Lab, MS 65A
One Cyclotron Road,
Berkeley CA 94720
Tel: 510/486-5771 Fax: 510/486-6641
Berkeley Lab is managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
By Paul Preuss
Only about a millionth of a billionth of a meter across and spinning a billion trillion times a second, atomic nuclei have been described as "among the giddiest systems in nature."
When Gammasphere, the premier instrument in the world for studying spinning nuclei, left the 88-Inch Cyclotron for Argonne National Laboratory in the fall of 1997, the 8-pi Detector was installed in its place. Funded by Canada's National Science and Engineering Research Council and Atomic Energy of Canada, and built by a consortium including scientists from Chalk River, McMaster University, the University of Toronto, and the Université de Montréal, the 8-pi, like Gammasphere, is designed to record the position, energy and timing of gamma rays emitted as a spinning nucleus slows down.
Paul Fallon of the Nuclear Science Division notes that "the study of nuclei at high angular momentum started with pioneering experiments done at Berkeley Lab's HILAC accelerator in the 1960s."
Adds Fallon's colleague, David Ward, "Today this is a wide, active field of nuclear science, with lots of room for many labs and many instruments, with active research programs on every continent, including more than half a dozen U.S. universities and national laboratories. Students around the world have been attracted to this line of research."
Even before the discovery of nuclear fission, theorists began thinking of nuclei as more complicated than bags of hard particles. The liquid-droplet model of the late 1930s pictured the nucleus as a quivering blob of fluid; inherent was the possibility that it could rotate and deform.
Decades of study have resulted in models which incorporate particle-like, fluid-like, and even gas-like components. Depending on factors such as mass, temperature, ratio of neutrons to protons, and angular momentum, the nucleus can exhibit a range of intricate and often puzzling behaviors -- including deformation into strange shapes.
An important influence on shape are the so-called "magic numbers." In the shell model of the nucleus, protons and neutrons fill shells from lower to higher energies. Nuclei with full shells of protons, neutrons or both are said to have magic numbers; if unexcited they are usually spherical.
But nuclei lying between the magic numbers are typically deformed even when at rest and are usually prolate, or football-shaped. At very high angular momenta nuclei may adopt even odder shapes resembling peanuts, bananas, jumping jacks, and sea urchins, among others.
Not all the states proposed by theorists have been observed by experimenters. When they are seen, usually it is because of radiation in the form of gamma rays, emitted by deformed nuclei as they revert to their normal shapes and lowest energy ground states.
A high-spin nucleus, created in the 88-Inch Cyclotron by colliding an accelerated beam of ions with a thin foil target, sheds its excess rotational energy by emitting as many as 30 gamma rays in various directions, until -- about a billionth of second after the collision of beam and target -- it reaches the ground state.
In the 8-pi Detector, 72 dense bismuth germanate crystals surround a grapefruit-sized vacuum chamber where collisions of the beam with the target occur, their faces forming what would be a closed spherical shell -- except for 20 small openings at the vertices of some of these faces through which detectors of high-purity germanium can peer. The bismuth germanate shell functions as what physicists call a calorimeter, measuring the total energy of the deposited gamma rays. The pure germanium components look at the gamma rays with high energy resolution, determining in detail the path of nuclear decay.
Because it completely surrounds the interaction region, the whole detector can measure the position, number and timing of individual gamma ray hits, giving clues to the spin state of the nucleus before and after gamma rays were emitted.
"Our overriding goal is to determine the nucleus's rotational degrees of freedom," Fallon says, "to boil it down to basic symmetries and simple concepts." This is possible because the pattern of gamma-ray energies is related to particular arrangements of neutrons and protons and associated with specific nuclear shapes.
"The 88-Inch Cyclotron can accelerate almost anything," Fallon adds, "ions as light as hydrogen or as heavy as uranium, in ample amounts." Thus the 88-Inch is uniquely qualified to create a variety of nuclei of different masses and spin states.
"Three or four nuclei with different excitation energies may be created by the beam-target interaction," says Ward. "The detector functions as a kind of channel selector to tell us which nucleus we've made."
Ward and Fallon say that experiments on the 8-pi Detector are not limited to the shapes of rapidly spinning nuclei; many other questions of nuclear physics may be addressed as well. Teams from all over the world have lined up to use the 8-pi Detector at the 88-Inch Cyclotron. Experiments started in the spring of 1998, and are now running as often as one every week.
For more information on the study of nuclear structure and reactions in Berkeley Lab's Nuclear Science Division, visit http://www-library.lbl.gov/docs/LBNL/397/64/Overviews/NSR.html.
Photo: David Ward and Paul Fallon of the Nuclear Science Division use the 8-pi Detector to study spinning nuclei. Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt (XBD9903-00380)
Photo: A spinning compound nucleus is formed when a beam nucleus collides with a target nucleus. After shedding neutrons and protons, the new nucleus quickly drops to its ground energy state by emitting gamma rays. Their direction, number and timing allow the nature and behavior of the rapidly spinning nucleus to be reconstructed.
In a paper presented at the American Physical Society meeting in Atlanta this week, I-Yang Lee and his colleagues in the Nuclear Science Division announced a novel technique for the study of unstable atomic nuclei, developed using the 8-pi Detector.
"It's a new way of studying this kind of nuclei," says Lee, "and we've had some interesting surprises."
Neutron-rich nuclei below atomic number 20 exist only fleetingly in nature and are typically created by bombarding a target with an accelerated beam of ions. Fragments in the cyclotron beam, however, travel at such high velocity relative to the detector that the gamma-ray spectrum is smeared by the Doppler effect. Lee and his team decided to look at fragments that remained in the target and decayed in place instead.
"Because the fragments have little velocity, we get sharp gamma-ray lines," he says, adding that there are more fragments of interest, thus more gamma rays emitted.
"We're looking forward to doing experiments with Gammasphere in the year 2000, which will allow us to observe nuclei even richer in neutrons and farther from stability."
The full text and photographs of each edition of Currents are published online at http://www. lbl.gov/Publications/Currents/. You may find a link to Currents on the Lab's home page under the heading "Publications." The site allows users to do searches of past articles going back to 1994.
To set up your computer to access the web, call the Mac and PC Support Group at X4357.
Microsoft is withdrawing the 12-month Office Pro Upgrade Advantage program offer from the GC Micro portfolio, but Lab employees will be able to subscribe to the program for a lower cost than that offered to the general public.
For Lab users of the Office Pro software suite (Word, Power Point and Excel), this is a good time to consider a subscription to this one-year support service. It will provide you with the next upgrade -- Office Pro 2000, scheduled to be released in the next few months -- and subscribing now will give you a license for it when it is released. GC Micro, the recommended vendor for Office Pro, is honoring its contracts, so those who have already subscribed will receive a license for Office Pro 2000.
If you already have Office Pro 98 (for the Macintosh) or Office Pro 97 (for the PC), consider subscribing now to get the 2000 package. However, no orders will be accepted after March 31.
Because of the deadline, Berkeley Lab employees who are interested in taking advantage of the program should review their current licensing and decide if it will be financially advantageous to subscribe. The cost is $126.75 per user, whether for the Mac or PC version. (The standard upgrade costs about twice as much.)
The package can be ordered through your organization's procurement field buyer. In order to have a field buyer purchase the new version, you will need to provide a valid project ID and submit the name of each user, or be ready to assign an administrator to oversee the distribution.
On the day your order is placed you are legally licensed to use the software, whether you have received the paper license or not. At that point, you may install Office on your machine. CDs can be borrowed from the Computer Support Help Desk (X4357) for immediate installation.
You may install it yourself, get help over the phone, or request a full installation from the Help Desk. (Note: if you want your own Office Pro CD, you'll need to order it separately.)
The user does not have to pay every year to maintain this license, but may continue to use it at the last level of upgrade at the expiration of the one-year term. The license is permanent and constitutes your sole proof of ownership, so make sure to save it. --Jon Bashor
In the spirit of protecting the environment, there is a new recycling option available labwide.
According to waste minimalization specialist Shelley Worsham, employees can now recycle Tyvek and Federal express envelopes.
"As part of the Appendix F measures, the Lab is required to reduce its waste by ten percent every year," says Worsham, who first proposed the waste minimization plan to EH&S.
To take advantage of this recycling option, put your empty Tyvek and Federal Express envelopes in the collection bag located at your mailstop. Each bag holds 200 used envelopes. When the bag is full, tie it at the top, address it to Shelley Worsham, Bldg. 85B and place it in the mail. The bags will be picked up by the mailroom staff when they make their regular run. Tyvek envelopes sent for recycling are remanufactured into new envelopes.
Worsham says she has a limited number of collection bags, so all buildings will not get them. If you are located in a trailer and you do not get a collection bag, just send your used Tyvek envelopes and Federal Express envelopes to Worsham. She will forward them for recycling.
If you have any questions, contact Worsham at ext. 6123 or by e-mail at SAWorsham@lbl.gov. --Jacqueline Noble
The Green Team has invited Berkeley Worms to the Eco-Fair on April 13, 11:30 to 1:30 at the cafeteria. Worms for composting may be preordered at a discount, $14/lb (1 lb. is a starter amount). The worms will be available for pickup at the fair. Contact Ken Woolfe at KDWoolfe@lbl.gov to order, or for more information.
AIM (Application Integration Methods) provides regular onsite computer training for Laboratory employees using Windows `95. Classes offered over the next month are:
To register for class or for more information visit AIM's website at http://www.lbl.gov/Workplace/EDT/computers/PC_Classes.html.
Lab employees attend the 1999 Behavioral Science Technology Annual Users Conference held in Dallas, Texas, March 3-5 to learn about the behavior-based accident prevention program, (BBAP). The conference was designed to increase awareness of how BBAP works and to find better ways to enhance the Lab program, Workers Observing Workers, (WOW). WOW was implemented by Facilties more than a year ago, resulting in a 50 percent reduction in workers compensation claims. Look for more divisions to adopt WOW in the future. --Jacqueline Noble
The Regional Science Bowl was held on Saturday February 20 at Lowell High School in San Francisco. Taking top honors was Albany High School, which will now go on to represent the region at the national competition held in Washington, DC, April 30 through May 3.
The event was hosted by Berkeley Lab in conjunction with the Department of Energy and Sandia Labs. A number of Lab volunteers gave generously of their time to help make the event a success, including Mary-Helen Barcellos-Hoff of Life Sciences and her son Alex Hoff, Joseph Perez of Engineering and his son Bryson Perez, Dennis
DiBartolomeo of EETD, Martin Stoufer of NERSC, Don Hubbard of ISPP, and Marva Wilkins of CSEE.
Kck off Earth Month by exploring commuting alternatives at Berkeley Lab's Transportation Fair, to be held on Thursday, April 1 from 11:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the cafeteria parking lot.
You may try an electric bike, look into transit options or simply collect fun giveaways. Pledge to use a commute alternative this spring and you stand to win $1,000.
Participants will include Berkeley Trip Store, RIDES, Caltrans, Enterprise Vanpool, the Bicycle Coalition, the Pedaler, Missing Link, and Start to Finish. The Lab Music Club will be on hand with entertainment.
The Fiscal Year 2000 review schedule for the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program has been extended by two weeks. Principal investigators may now submit proposals to their division offices until Friday April 16. After an internal review and evaluation, division directors will forward the proposals to the Director's office.
More information on LDRDs is available online at http://www.lbl.gov/Publications/LDRD/CFP.
The Commuter Tax Incentive program, offering pre-tax deductions to Lab employees who use public transit, goes into effect on Thursday, April 1. New applicants must submit their applications to MS65 or the Site Access Office by the 15th of the month prior to the month in which they wish to begin collecting the BART or AC Transit tickets or passes.
Effective April 1, reimbursement for official use of a private car will be 31 cents per mile. This is based on the IRS allowance for mileage reimbursement and is a decrease from the 32.5 cents per mile implemented last year. Revised travel expense report forms with tips for calculating the new rate can be downloaded from the Lab's travel website at ttp://www.lbl.gov/Workplace/CFO-Travel/Forms.
Computer Currents, the popular Bay Area publication about computing, will soon be available at the cafeteria. Look for a new issue every two weeks beginning April 12.
The Berkeley Lab Calendar is published biweekly here on the World Wide Web and in Currents by the Public Information Department. Employees can list a meeting, class, or event in the Calendar by using this submission form. The deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. on Monday in the week that Currents is published.In addition to the events listed below, Berkeley Lab's Washington, D.C. Projects office is hosting a Science and Technology Seminars series.
Scientific Conferences
March 26 - April 9, 1999
PUBLIC MEMORIAL FOR GLENN SEABORG, UC BERKELEY
2 p.m., Zellerbach
Hall
GREEN TEAM BEACH CLEANUP
11:30 a.m. Bldg. 65
BIOSCIENCES SEMINAR
"The Transcriptional Program of Sporulation in
Budding Yeast" will be presented by
Ira Herskowitz of UC San Francisco.
4 p.m., Bldg. 66 auditorium
NATIONAL CENTER ELECTRON MICROSCOPY SEMINAR
"Numerical Micromagnetics
of Hard Magnets and Thin Film Elements" will be presented by Thomas Schrefl of
the Vienna University of Technology.
11 a.m., Bldg. 72-2nd floor conference
room
CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL BIOTECHNOLOGY
"Isotopic Techniques for Monitoring Microbial Activity" will be
presented by Mark Conrad.
Noon, 50A-5132
"Size-Dependent Properties of Metal Clusters" will be presented by
Guenter Schmid of the University of Essen, Germany.
1:30 p.m., Bldg. 66
auditorium
EARTH SCIENCES DIVISION
"Thermodynamic Models of Natural Systems: Theory and Application" will be
presented by John Weare of UC San Diego.
11 a.m., Bldg. 90-2063
Items for the calendars may be sent via e-mail to currents_calendar@ lbl.gov, faxed to X6641 or mailed to Bldg. 65B. The deadline for the April 9 issue is 5 p.m. Monday, April 5.
To enroll contact Susan Aberg at X7366 or enroll via the web (http://www-ehs.lbl.gov/training/registration/). Pre-registration is required for all courses.
The Facilities Department is providing the Lab with rush courier service with pick-up and delivery both on- and off-site. Transportation can deliver up to 2,000 pounds anywhere in the Bay Area or in central or northern California. On-site materials will be delivered within one hour. For off-site service, a driver is available during normal business hours for same-day pick up and delivery, with rush service depending on destination. To request a pick up, call Peggy Patterson at X5404.
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MOTORCYCLE, Honda CX-500, 1980, 500cc, shaft drive, water cooled, plexi fairing, backrest/ luggage rack, good commute bike/parking alternative, $600/ b.o., Bob, (925) 376-2211
SAILBOAT, 14 ft Lido, w/ trailer (garaged), incl 3 sets of sails, 3 centerboards, 2 rudders, life jackets, $2,500, Willie, 337-9405
NO. BERKELEY, sunny, many-windowed, big room w/ bright alcove in big, comfortable house, safe neighborhood nr library, parks, recreation, stores, cafes, bus, friendly, non-smoking household, $600/mo. incl util, Dick, 528-8155.
NO. BERKELEY, furn rm, quiet, large, comfortable, brn shingle (Julia Morgan, 1909), ltd kitchen privileges, walk to campus, Lab, shuttle, BART, ideal for visiting scholar (one person only), non-smoking, avail 4/1, $450/mo, Rob, 843-5987
NO. BERKELEY hills, flat w/ view, totally furn, lg bdrm, office or second bedroom, lots of storage, fully equipped, kitchen, cable and util pd, deck w/ view, hot tub, very private, $1,800/mo, Bob, 527-2715
NO. OAKLAND, Alcatraz betw Telegraph and Shattuck, 3 blks south of Ashby, 1 bdrm, 1 bth, living rm, kitchen, lots of closet space, landlord pays water, garbage, gas (kitchen has gas stove), tenant pays electricity and telephone, 3rd flr of apt bldg, great view of SF bay from all rms, close to shops, transportation, UCB campus and LBNL, $850/mo, avail 6/1-9/30 w/ option of staying longer, Michael or Saira, 652-6772
OAKLAND (Rockridge), charming, bright 2 bdrm, 1 bth, bungalow, available 6/1, huge kitchen, formal dining, built-ins, inlays, hardwoods, basement w/ storage, laundry, work space, garage, 2 blks to Rockridge BART (free bus to LBNL), pets negotiable, $2100/mo. incl water and garbage, could be furn, Barbara, X6898 (am), X4589 (pm), 652-7044
DISCOVERY TOYS, educational toys/books/software for all ages, ask me about earning free product, Tracy, (925) 313-8920
DRYER, Whirpool, supreme, heavy duty, extra lg capacity, electric w/ 220v pwr supply, great cond, $200/b.o., Amarili, X5607
FLYING, are you interested in flying in a Cessna 172 to leave Las Vegas and San Diego on a cost-sharing basis? Andre X6745
FUTON, queen size, foldable, $60; bike, MTB MT 505, 26", 15 spd, $70, Klaus, 642-3634, 540-4115
LIFT TICKETS, Sugar Bowl, `98-'99 ski season, 2 adults, b.o., normally $45/person, Janice, X4943
MONITOR, 21" Gateway (19.7" view) $800; Epson, Stylus 800 color printer 1440 dpi, $225, both are new in boxes, Laura, 848-3662
MOVING SALE: wood bunk, $100; futon, $100; camping table w/ 4chairs, $60; vacuum cleaner, $30; dresser, $30; everything 1 yr old; TV+VCR+table, $125; bookcase $25; coffee table, $25; desk table, $20; 2 night tables and lamps $20; floor lamp, $10, Tomás, X2446, 526-1695
OSTER BREAD MACHINE, used once, $50, Barbara, X6898 (am), X4589 (pm), 652-7044
POWER MACINTOSH 6100/60, 15" Apple multi-sync color monitor, Mac OS system 7.5.5, 2 GB hard drive, 24 MB ram, 100 MB zip drive, Apple B&W ink jet printer, built-in pc compatibility card (66MHz 486 w/ Windows 3.1 installed), Apple Geoport 33.3K fax modem, mouse, Apple ergonomic keyboard, printer cartridge refill kits, some software, original boxes, manuals, used about 1600 hours over 4 years, well cared for, $700/b.o., for everything, Jon, X5974
POWERED AQUARIUM FILTER, Fluval 3 Internal Cannister, w/ 9 spare filter cartridges and 2 foam inserts ($75 value), $30; Marine-land 660 pwr sponge filter, 170 gph, great as standard or reverse flow powerhead, $20; all used less than 3 months, Dave, X4506
RECEIVER, Pioneer SX-636, 2 Sharp speakers, 2 no name speakers, $60; SONY CD-radio-taperecorder, $40, Klaus, 642-3634, 540-4115
REFRIGERATOR, Sears Cold-spot, frostfree, not pretty but works fine, perfect for a garage or shop, 32"W8"Dx60"H, $50; kitchen stove, gas, 4 burners, griddle and full size oven, electric ignition, clock and timer, good cond, dark brn, 36"Wx 27"D, $200, Lawrence, X5770, 524-5988
TICKETS, Southwest, 2 round-trip, dates open, no names, anywhere Southwest flies, expires 4/15/99; 1 Rapid Rewards round trip, expires 2/4/00, under my name, but can transfer, all 3 for $450, Peter, X6328
TV STAND, black, for 31/32" TV, smoke glass door, two shelves for VCR or stereo equipment, $50, Marie, X6855
TV STAND up to 27", w/ swivel top, med dark wood, $45; dining table + 4 chairs, French country design, med walnut table top w/ green wash legs, $250; Singer Quantam LE sewing machine w/ `99 computer programmed stitches incl auto button holer, $450 ($800 new), photos avail, Janice, X6412
VINTAGE WINE, `83, `85, `86, `89, Cabernet Sauvignon from various wineries, $25-35; golf bag, $40; Nikon AF28-85mm zoom lens, F3.5-4.5, $180, Nobu, X4585
HOST FAMILY for Johannes in Berkeley, a wonderful 16 yr old German student to attend Berkeley High next year; Johannes will visit in April if you would like to meet him, Lynn X6519, 524-2966
HOUSING, visiting postdoc in physics, from Portugal, wishes to rent 2 bdrm for under $1500/ month, prefer North Berkeley, Elmwood or Rockridge, beginning 8/1/, Ricardo, ricardo@ ctp.mit.edu.
HOUSING, Tunisian prof seeks accommodation, 1 or 2 bdrm apt nr public transportation, May-August, email Nadia, ghrab.amara@ planet.tn, Alyssa, X5958
LANTERN, Coleman, model 200A or 242, any cond, Nobu, X4585
VAN CAMPER, 19'-21', not older than `89, Jens, X6174
DRESSER, 5 drawer, exc wood, damaged railings; lg foldout table; fishtanks, 10 gal and 29 gal; complete dinette set and silverware; aquarium filter pumps and heater, Edmund, X6594, 526-4119
Ads must be submitted in writing (fleamarket@lbl. gov, Fax X6641), or delivered/ mailed to Bldg. 65B. No ads will be taken by phone. Ads will run one issue only unless resubmitted in writing. They will be repeated only as space permits.
The deadline for the April 9 issue is 5 p.m. Friday, April 2.
Published once a month by the Communications Department for the employees and retirees of Berkeley Lab.
Reid Edwards, Public Affairs Department head
Ron Kolb, Communications Department headEDITOR
Pamela Patterson, 486-4045, pjpatterson@lbl.gov
Associate editor
Lyn Hunter, 486-4698, lhunter@lbl.govSTAFF WRITERS
Dan Krotz, 486-4019
Paul Preuss, 486-6249
Lynn Yarris, 486-5375CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Ucilia Wang, 495-2402
Allan Chen, 486-4210
David Gilbert, (925) 296-5643DESIGN
Caitlin Youngquist, 486-4020
Creative Services OfficeBerkeley Lab
Communications Department
MS 65, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley CA 94720
(510) 486-5771
Fax: (510) 486-6641Berkeley Lab is managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Flea Market is now online at www.lbl.gov/fleamarket
