Wednesday, Dec. 10, 1997
New CIC Division director named
Charles Slocomb is the new director of the Computing, Information and Communications (CIC) Division. He succeeds Hassan Dayem, who left the Laboratory earlier this year to take a position with Merck Research Laboratories in New Jersey. Slocomb's appointment was effective Monday.
"After a comprehensive national search and intense competition, we found we had the right person here at the Lab," said Warren "Pete" Miller, acting deputy director for Science and Technology, who chaired the CIC Division Director Search Committee.
"Rapid technological innovation is changing the way we approach Laboratory scientific and business functions," said Slocomb, "and responding to these challenges makes CIC Division an exciting and challenging place to work. I feel privileged to be given the opportunity to lead CIC Division, as we enter a new era of dependence on computing solutions."
Slocomb, who has served as acting CIC Division director since May, joined the Laboratory in 1972. His management career at the Lab began in 1984 when he became group leader for Computer Systems. He later served as deputy division director for the former Computing (C) Division. In this position, Slocomb led the development of a collaborative research and development agreement with Cray Research Inc., Thinking Machines Corp., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and 15 industrial partners to move industrial applications to massively parallel computer systems.
When CIC Division was formed in 1994, Slocomb was named deputy division director, taking on management of one of the largest divisions in the Laboratory. CIC has 947 employees and a budget of about $188 million. It includes numerous resources and services, such as the Central Computing Facility; Advanced Computing Laboratory; technical and administrative software support; data and telecommunications support; local area network administration services; visualization and video laboratory; Research Library and Library without Walls; document and records management; writing, editing, and photocomposition; illustration and design; printing, photocopying, and binding; and photography and video production.
"I am pleased with the committee's selection," said Laboratory Director John Browne. "CIC, with its diverse resources, plays a crucial role in the Lab's central mission of reducing the nuclear danger. Charlie's breadth of experience and his commitment to the Lab's role in national security will serve the division and the nation well."
A graduate of Regis College in Denver, Slocomb holds a master's degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree in computer science from the University of New Mexico.
Lab researchers document swarm of 'quakettes'
They might not have noticed them had they not had a seismograph handy, but a pair of Laboratory geologists were able to document a swarm of small, shallow earthquakes during the spring of 1997 in north-central New Mexico near the state's dominant geologic feature, the Rio Grande rift.
Leigh House of Geoengineering (EES-4) and Jamie Gardner of Geology and Geochemistry (EES-1) Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco presented data about the swarm of microquakes during a poster session.
"I'm still trying to make sense about what this is trying to tell us," House said of the series of nine tiny quakes that occurred near Santa Fe last spring. "But the data may give us information about what could be going on in the Rio Grande rift or what could be occurring in the settling processes of the basins of the rift."
The Rio Grande rift, says Gardner, runs from the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado all the way to northern Mexico, essentially splitting New Mexico in half.
"The rift is where the North American continent is quite literally being torn apart," he said. "Earth's crust is being extended laterally in an east-west direction and big blocks of the crust break and drop off along the rift, forming a convenient channel for the Rio Grande."
This same continental stretching has helped form the Basin and Range -- essentially the area east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and east of the Colorado Plateau -- and started some 20 to 30 million years ago and continues today.
Earth's crust is relatively thin along the Rio Grande rift, Gardner said, extending some 30 kilometers (18 miles) below the surface. In contrast, the crust at the nearby Colorado Plateau is almost twice as deep. Earthquakes normally originate somewhere around 15 kilometers (nine miles) below the surface.
However, the nine "microearthquakes" that House observed -- tiny temblors ranging from magnitude 0.7 to 1.5, mere blips on the seismograph that recorded them -- occurred at relatively shallow depths, just five kilometers (three miles) beneath the surface.
House was able to pinpoint the epicenters of seven of the nine quakes to within a one-kilometer radius of one another. The other two quakes originated from the same general vicinity -- near the front range of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, in a zone of mapped deformation within the Rio Grande rift.
"This swarm of quakes is significant because of the unusual lack of depth of each event," said House. "If I hadn't really taken a close look, I might have missed them. They kind of snuck up on me, and I didn't really become aware of their relationship until I began looking at the similarity of their seismic waveforms."
He said this series of quakes is only the second significant earthquake sequence that has occurred in north-central New Mexico since the late 1980s. The first series occurred in 1991 and consisted of two magnitude-two microearthquakes in the Los Alamos area. Despite their small magnitudes, hundreds of people reported feeling the quakes -- because they took place at a very shallow depth, probably less than five kilometers.
Gardner and House checked to see whether New Mexico residents reported feeling the spring 1997 quakes, but to date nobody has reported them.
House said the series of quakes provides researchers with more data about what might be happening along the Rio Grande rift and in the Basin and Range.
"This series of microearthquakes, along with the 1991 series, demonstrates that brittle deformation of Earth's crust can occur at very shallow depths in this portion of the Rio Grande Rift," House said.
--James E. Rickman
Tribute to Robert Porton scheduled Friday
A memorial-tribute service for Robert Porton, who headed the Laboratory's Public Relations Group, set up its public science museum and helped start the local radio station, is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday at Fuller Lodge.
The family said people attending the tribute are welcome to share a memory or a story about Porton, who lived in Los Alamos from 1944 until his death last week at the age of 85.
Porton was born in Washington, D.C., on April 13, 1912, and grew up in Florida.
He arrived in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project as an Army sergeant and founded radio station KRS, which is now KRSN. He left the military in 1946 and continued to run the station until it was sold to the Burns family in 1956.
Porton joined the Lab in 1956 and headed the community relations and public relations functions. While directing community relations in 1963, he persuaded then Laboratory Director Norris Bradbury to add unclassified exhibits to the museum in an area open to the public. In its first year, 14,000 visitors toured the new museum.
Porton retired from the Laboratory in 1982, then served for many years as the hearing officer for people appealing parking tickets they received at the Lab.
Survivors include two children, William Porton of Los Alamos and Susan Mildren of Albuquerque; seven grandchildren; and five great grandchildren. Porton's wife, Betty Jo, died in 1980.
The family has asked that instead of flowers, donations be made to the Los Alamos Historical Society, the Bradbury Science Museum or the Mesa Public Library.
--John A. Webster
New scientific research buildings to be dedicated tomorrow
Students from 14 schools in Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Española and Pojoaque will join Laboratory officials Thursday in dedicating two new scientific research buildings.
The new Biotechnology Laboratory at Technical Area 35 and the Integrated Spectroscopy Laboratory at TA-46 are part of the Lab's Chemical Science and Technology (CST) Division, said Bev Wallwork of the CST Division Office.
The dedication of the two renovated buildings begins at noon at TA-35. Pete Miller, the Laboratory's acting deputy director for science and technology, and other Lab officials will cut a ribbon after speaking briefly about the two new facilities.
Al Sattelberger, director of the Lab's Science and Technology Base (STB) Program Office, is the master of ceremonies for the ribbon cutting and dedication ceremony and will give the keynote address.
Students from area schools will tour the buildings and also meet scientists and researchers who work in the buildings, said Jill Trewhella of Bioscience/Biotechnology (CST-4). "Our primary goal is to excite the imagination of students about careers in science, particularly at the Laboratory. We intend to make the outreach a regular event and have the students come again next year," said Trewhella.
The new facilities house equipment and Lab scientists and researchers previously located at Technical Area 21 off DP Road.
The laboratories are an integral part of a proposed center for the study of molecular structure and dynamics. The two new labs will provide a unique and powerful way of elucidating molecular structure and dynamics and, therefore, molecular function.
Scientific research in the two labs ranges from aging of polymeric weapons components to enzyme functional dynamics.
The Biotechnology Laboratory at TA-35 has 7,500 square feet dedicated to biochemistry and organic chemistry. It has 19 chemical fume hoods, fermentation facilities, equipment for organic synthesis, facilities for large-scale protein purification, centrifuges, and facilities for protein modification and expression.
The Biotechnology Laboratory also is the home of the National Stable Isotope Resource, which provides the biomedical research community with labeled compounds for biomolecular structure analysis.
The Integrated Spectroscopy Laboratory at TA-46 is 6,500 square feet and contains a preparative chemistry laboratory, a laser and spectroscopy laboratory with conventional and time-resolved (ultrafast) vibrational and electronic spectroscopies, imaging spectro-microscopy, electron paramagnetic spectroscopy, small angle x-ray scattering, photoacoustic spectroscopy and a controlled-access actinide wet chemistry laboratory.
The new facility offers integrated, state-of-the-art spectroscopic resources to numerous users, inside and outside the laboratory.
Scientists working in the new labs will conduct fundamental research on the structure and function of biological molecules and the utilization of microorganisms or biological molecules for applications in health, the environment, energy and industry.
--Steve Sandoval
MST Division forms new group
The Materials Science and Technology Division has a new group, Structure/Property Relations (MST-8). Drawing personnel from the Center for Materials Science, the Ceramics Science and Technology Group and the Materials Research and Processing Science Group, MST Division created the new group of approximately fifty members who have a broad base of expertise in the synthesis, characterization, processing and modeling of materials.
Michael Stevens is acting MST-8 group leader. The group office, located at Technical Area 3, Building 1698, can be reached at 5-4735, fax 7-8021. The mail stop is G755.
Teachers prepare for Critical Issues Forum
Ray Quintana, left, of Albuquerque Sandia High School joins fellow teachers, Van Herrington, wearing ball cap, of Career Prep School in Shiprock, Bruce Bell, also of Sandia High, and Susan Quintana, right, of Pojoaque High School in a discussion during a teacher's workshop at the Canyon Complex. The teachers spent two days at the Laboratory recently to prepare the spring curriculum for this year's Critical Issues Forum conducted by Science Education (STB/SE). This year's topic is "Terrorism in a Nuclear Age." The program helps participating students and teachers think critically about world issues. More information about this year's Critical Issues Forum can be found at http://education.lanl.gov/resources/cif/CIF98/CIF98educ.html. Photo is by Fred Rick
Past Daily Newsbulletins | Last week's headlines
Other Laboratory news sources
Reflections
| News Releases
| Dateline: Los Alamos
LANL | Phone Book | Search | Help
L O S A L A M O S
N A T I O N A L L A B O R A T O R Y
Operated by the University of California for the US Department of Energy