Lamont Weekly Report, May 20, 2011

Better late than never:

Paraphrasing a memo dated 20 October, 2009, from the USGS Geographic Names Information System, which appeared mysteriously in my in-box: As a result of a science cruise on the R/V Gould in January 2009, an island 900 m long and 224 m high off the Antarctic Peninsula at 68 deg 36' 16" S and 71 deg 58' 38" W is named Martinson Island by the "US
Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names after Douglas G. Martinson, the expedition leader and project co-Principal Investigator."

Martinson Island joins Diebold Knoll, Bell Buttress, and, of course, the Pitman Fracture Zone, all features named after Lamont scientists. To this we can add the Ewing and the Langseth, the Press-Ewing seismometer, the Worzel Room, and probably many more that I'm forgetting at the moment. All of this suggests we should be keeping a running tally of
eponymous geographic features, instruments, techniques, findings, curves, and buildings named after our colleagues. What do you think? Send me anything you think qualifies and let's see where this goes.

Diebold for the (young) ages:

One thing I remember from grade school science books is the short stories or biographies starring famous scientists that appeared in boxes alongside the text - they made science real. Now John Diebold will appear in a new version of the Grade 4 "Science Fusion" textbook published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. John's picture appears in a "Meet the Inventors" box crediting him with ocean exploration and improving the design of the airgun in order to "make 3D pictures of the ocean floor." The proofs place it on page 43; look for it during your "back-to-school" nights. Thanks to Mike Purdy for forwarding this info. John would be pleased.

Out standing in the field:

Via Mark Cane and Steve Goldstein, David Wang has been selected to receive an Outstanding Student Paper Award for his presentation at the Fall 2010 AGU meeting in San Francisco. David presented a poster on "Tropical Pacific present-day and future sea level changes in a linear, wind-driven model." David defended his PhD at Lamont last
September and is now at MIT. Congratulations, David!
Accelerated discussion:

Jerry Paros, President of Paroscientific and a loyal friend of Lamont, dropped by for a few hours on Tuesday to talk to folks in the OBS and LCSN labs. It turns out that one of Jerry's quartz-crystal accelerometers, when hot-rodded by our OBS engineers, turns into a great strong-motion seismometer. Spahr Webb, Andrew Barclay, Scott Nooner, David Gassier and Won-Young Kim put on a great demo. Chris Zappa joined us for lunch to talk about oceanographic applications. Bytes and bites.

Meetings, perhaps:

OMG and Excom are meeting next week, so get agenda items and announcements to your AD or Excom rep early in the week. Up for discussion so far will be the Lamont FY12 budget, a Lamont-wide communications plan, the final draft of the by-laws, and some personnel actions.

I saw one of those Family Radio RVs pulling an end-of-days billboard trailer on 8th avenue last weekend, and ran into it again during the 9th avenue street fair the next day. I'll cancel next week's OMG and Excom if the world ends tomorrow. However, you still have to get your purchase orders in before the end of the month; Columbia must close out its fiscal year even if Judgment Day is May 21st.

Have a good weekend, maybe...

Art