Lamont Weekly Report – December 5, 2003

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

<> REPORT SUMMARY <>

– Recent Grant Awards –
– Recent Publications –
– New Hires –
– Letter from the Director –
____________________________________

<> RECENT GRANTS AWARDS
For the period 10/1/2003 – 10/31/2003

Cane, M. 2002 Star Fellowship for Graduate Study, EPA.

Fairbanks, R. Carbon 14 calibration, production and reservoir changes over the past 50,000 years, NSF.

Gordon, A. Collaborative research: Gravity current entrainment climate process team, NSF.

Ishikawa, T. An experimental study of the underlying mental processes by which students learn to visualize geologic structures from outcrop observations, NSF.

Kaplan, A. Collaborative research: Hydrology of Central and Southwestern Asia: Connections between regional atmospheric circulation and large-scale climate variability, NSF.

Levy, M. CIESIN: Travel support for developing country and young scholar’s attendance at the 2003 open meeting of the human dimensions of global environmental change research community, NSF.

Menke, W. Yale support for summer research undergraduate program 2003, Yale University.

Richards, P. Explosion phenomena using Soviet test-era waveform data, DOE.

Seeber, L. Earthquakes triggered by normal or shear stress chance and the poroelastic response of faults, University of Southern California.

Someshwar, S. Managing climate variability to improve livelihoods in Asia: Methods, tools and policies, Rockefeller Foundation.

Steckler, M. Collaborative research – basin evolution along continental transforms: Nested hi-resolution multichannel survey in the Marmara Sea, Turkey, NSF.

Stute, M. Copper tube samples, USGS.

Thompson, M. Request for Subcontract: Malaria Stratification in Eritrea, Camp Dresser & McKee.

Visbeck, M. Collaborative Research: Interaction of eddies with mixed layers, NSF

Worrest, R. CIESIN: US Global change research information office (GCRIO): FY 2003, Scripps.

Xie, J. Collaborative research: high-resolution tomographic mapping of regional phase Q in the Middle East, DOE.

Zebiak, S. IRI participation in the MOAA/CDEP applied research centers.

<> RECENT PUBLICATIONS
(The following list is derived from the Lamont Publications Database, which identifies all publications that hold a Lamont contribution number, thereby qualifying the publications as a Lamont paper).

Abbott D.H., A.E. Isley. Reply to Comment on 'extraterrestrial influences on mantle plume activity' by Andrew Glikson; Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 215, no. 3-4. Pp. 429-432, October 30, 2003.

Aldrian, E. and R.D. Susanto. Identification of three dominant rainfall regions within Indonesia and their relationship to sea surface temperature; International Journal of Climatology; vol. 23, no. 12, pp. 1435-1452, October, 2003.

Broecker, W.S. and E. Clark. Role of sonification in shell weight measurements; Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, vol. 4: Art. No. 1093, November 7, 2003.

Jiang, G.Q, N. Christie-Blick, A.J. Kaufman, D.M. Banerjee, and V. Rai. Carbonate platform growth and cyclicity at a terminal Proterozoic passive margin, Infra Krol Formation and Krol Group, Lesser Himalaya, India; Sedimentology, vol. 50, no. 5, pp. 921-952, October, 2003.

Kim W.Y. The 18 June 2002 Caborn, Indiana, earthquake: Reactivation of ancient rift in the Wabash Valley seismic zone? Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol. 93, no. 5, pp. 2201-2211, October, 2003.

Krahmann, G., M. Visbeck, W. Smethie, E.A. D'Asaro, P.B. Rhines, R.A. Clarke, J. Lazier, R.E. Davis, P.P. Niiler, P.S. Guest, J. Meinckek, G.W.K. Moore, R.S. Pickart, and W.B. Owens. The Labrador Sea Deep Convection Experiment data collection; Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, vol. 4, Art. No. 1091, October 31, 2003.

Muttoni, G., D.V. Kent, E. Garzanti, P. Brack, N. Abrahamsen, and M. Gaetani. Early Permian Pangea 'B' to Late Permian Pangea 'A'; Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 215, no. 3-4, pp. 379-394, October 30, 2003.

Seager, R., R. Murtugudde, A. Clement, and C. Herweijer. Why is there an evaporation minimum at the equator? Journal of Climate, vol. 16, no. 22, pp. 3793-3802, November, 2003.

Stammerjohn, S.E., M.R. Drinkwater, R.C. Smith, and X. Liu; Ice-atmosphere interactions during sea-ice advance and retreat in the western Antarctic Peninsula region; Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, vol. 108, no. C10, Art. No. 3329, October 21, 2003.

Takahashi, T., S.C. Sutherland, R.A. Feely, and C.E. Cosca. Decadal variation of the surface water PCO2 in the western and central equatorial Pacific; Science, vol. 302, no. 5646, pp. 852-856, October 31, 2003.

<> NEW HIRES
For the period 11/1/2003 – 11/31/2003

Botcheva, Andonova, Liliana
11/17/03
Casual
IRI

Haedge, Robert
11/08/03
Casual
OMA

Li, Anyi
11/07/03
Casual
Seismology

Robinson, William C.
11/08/03
Casual
OMA

<> LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

I am sure that everyone’s best wishes are with Wally who is going to spend the weekend in Columbia Presbyterian – I am assured that he is in good spirits (e.g. getting his daughter to provide him with hamburgers – a sure sign of positive recovery), and we look forward to his full recovery.

As the snow falls outside I remember with nostalgia my trip to sunny 75 degree Houston on Monday for meetings at Rice University with Al Levander and Dale Sawyer. I saw Manik Talwani while I was there and congratulated him on his important new job as the founding President of IMI Inc the new international corporation that will run the more than $100M per year Integrated Ocean Drilling program.

I hope everyone has admired Hezi Gildor’s great photo of a beaming Yochanan Kushnir on the front page of the latest Record – accompanying the article describing the establishment of our new NOAA cooperative institute. The only other person photographed on the front page was Koffi Annan – I though Yochanan looked a lot happier!

I spend all next week in San Francisco at the AGU meeting – I fear all the scheduled business meetings leave little time to enjoy the real science – but there ARE some fun events. Most notably the award ceremony will honor Taro Takahashi and Gerard Bond (for an AGU Fellowship and the EWING Medal respectively) – so if you are in SF too, please come along on Wednesday night and lend your support to these two great Lamonters. The Lamont Party is on Thursday night in the Crowne Plaza – it promises to be another great event.

Unquestionably my most enjoyable day this week was Wednesday, spent down at the American Museum of Natural History, being hosted by Ed Mathez, and given royal treatment – getting a unique insight into the breadth and diversity of the Museum’s operations. This is a very impressive group of researchers – I promised Ed that I would work hard to help identify areas in which we could build further valuable collaborations. And I traveled directly from AMNH to Mark Cane’s Earth Institute science lecture, which was, as expected a tour-de-force.

I received my baptism today with my first formal presentation to a group of the CU Trustees – the Education Policy Committee. I was talking about our plans for the EWING replacement, and because of the strong support that I received from President Bollinger, I think it well quite well. NSF has our modest proposal to fund this exciting opportunity ‘under review’ – there will a Town Meeting to inform the community about plans in San Francisco on Monday evening.

One last important piece of news:
Our whole profession depends upon the quality and integrity of the peer review process – especially when applied to the publication of research results in prestigious journals. Therefore it is worthy of particular note when one of our own is recognized for quality and excellence in this voluntary and often thankless task. I am proud to congratulate Bob Houghton for receiving, from the American Geophysical Union, the Editors Citation for Excellence in refereeing for JGR-Oceans. Well done Bob – please congratulate him when next you see him.

Now I will go out to the parking lot and ask myself why I took the snow brush out of my trunk last March, and find out whether this new car with its magnificent 18 inch wheels will actually drive in the snow.

I will report from San Francisco next Friday,
Have a great weekend,

–Mike
____________________________________

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