Tuesday, March 24, 2009

California Luv!

If California was essentially ignored under the Bush Administration, it is fair to say that President Obama is making up for lost time with some serious "stimulus love"!

The preliminary number are in and energy labs at UC Berkeley and Stanford are set to receive $184 million in stimulus cash for research and construction.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Officials at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said a large part of its $115.8 million share will be used to speed completion of a building for scientists working with the lab's Advanced Light Source, one of the world's most powerful sources of x-ray and ultraviolet light.

The Advanced Light Source facility yields intense beams of electromagnetic radiation for many crucial experiments, including those involving the study of viruses and other living tissues, efforts to fabricate nanotechnology mechanical devices and computer chips, and to study the basic physics of solid materials.

The new money for Berkeley will also go toward building a laser-based accelerator facility to boost the speed of electrically charged particles for experiments exploring the nature of atomic nuclei."

(I suppose it is worth noting that before Energy Secretary Chu took his Beltway job, he was the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory!)