Lamont Weekly Report – September 19, 2003

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
P.O. Box 1000, 61 Route 9W Palisades, New York 10964

<> REPORT SUMMARY <>

– Letter from the Director –
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<> LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

Most of us are aware that the Observatory needs to tackle the issue of storage - storage of equipment and of research data and samples - in a much more organized way. I am anticipating receipt of a report from Paul Ljunggren's committee on the warehouse problem in the next few weeks, and I hope that will allow us to make some progress with getting that sorted out. Intimately related to this is the status of many of our research samples - there are isolated areas of excellence in this regard e.g. the marine sediment cores, but in general we are not doing a good job of storage and archiving. We have initiated a series of meetings to try to tackle this problem, under the leadership of Gerard Bond, Steve Goldstein, and with the participation of Ed Mathez from the American Museum of Natural History.

Hurricane Isabel infringed significantly upon my planned meetings in DC this week. Despite the fact that NSF (and the rest of the Federal Government) was officially closed yesterday, the UNOLS Council Meeting was successfully completed. Most importantly for us, it was reported that the UNOLS Fleet Improvement Committee formally endorses our plan to replace EWING with a much more capable pre-owned industry vessel.
This was a significant step towards gaining support from NSF for this major project - it constitutes a formal statement of broad community support for our ambitious plans. Nevertheless, we still have a long way to go.

Given that somehow activities proceeded as planned on Thursday in DC I made the incorrect judgment call that in the end Friday would play out similarly - it did not! Federal Government closed all day again!
So I fear I have wasted some time down here.

Some good news: Significant congratulations are due to Dee Breger - her SEM image "Mongolian Frost Rings" won first prize in the NSF/AAAS Science and Engineering Challenge (photography category), an international contest to promote the aesthetic and communication value of scientific images. Dee's winning image highlights a tree ring sequence depicting catastrophic climate change in the years 536-537 AD and is derived from the work of Gordon Jacoby. Another of Dee's images, "Black Sea Pyrite", won second prize in the same category from the work of Walter Pitman, Bill Ryan and Candace Major. Well done Dee!

Given I survive the still troublesome power outages down here in DC I will be back up in NY over the weekend.

Have a good weekend,

– Mike
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