Scientists continue to feel aftershocks from the surprise shutdown in April of ETA Systems Inc., the Minneapolis-based supercomputer manufacturer (The Scientist, May 15, 1989, page 1). The latest victim is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory, the world's leading atmospheric modeling facility. The Princeton, N.J., lab had hoped that an upgrade of its current pair of aging CYBER 205 supercomputers would meet its increasing need for global warming simulations. An ETA-10 offered the most bang for the buck, says lab director Jerry Mahiman, and was a natural step up from the CYBER machines, which, like the ETAs, are manufactured by a Control Data Corp. branch. But Mahlman wasn't counting on two problems that have arisen. First, White House officials reviewing the agency's proposed 1990 budget took out $1.4 million from his request for $6.6 million over two years for the upgrade. Then, ETA's sudden demise made any upgrade much more costly. "Effectively, we suffered a 15% to 40% degradation in buying power when ETA went out of business," complains Mahiman. Even the existing CYBERs have an uncertain future, he says, especially if users abandon the line. "We're afraid about continuing support," he says. Last month Mahlman appealed directly to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee at a hearing on global warming before science subcommittee chairman Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.). Without the funds, Mahlman says, "there's an entire class of problems we can't attempt," including some critical long-range climate forecasting.
Livermore Investigation Turns Ugly
The controversy surrounding Edward Teller, the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and the X-ray laser program refuses to die. Congressional staffers investigating allegations that former lab director Teller oversold the troubled SDI program to White House officials are complaining that the University of California, which runs the lab, is trying to hinder the investigation. The charges stem from a March visit to the lab by the staff of Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee. The staffers allege that university attorneys harassed laboratory staff during and before interviews, threatened investigators, and interfered with their work. In an angry letter to the Department of Energy (DOE), which funds the lab, Dingell complained that "both the DOE and the university have attempted to thwart our inquiries into matters that not only did I direct the staff to review, but which have national security implications as well." University lawyers responded earlier this month with a 36-page emphatic denial of any wrongdoing. "It's rather incredible [Dingell] would write such a memo. We believe [the charges] are totally unwarranted," says lead UC attorney Alan Wagner. Whatever the outcome, the fracas is unlikely to improve strained relations between Livermore and UC (The Scientist, Jan 23, 1989, page 3) or with Dingell's committee, which is also looking into allegations that the congressional General Accounting Office "whitewashed" an earlier investigation of the Teller affair (The Scientist, March 20, 1989, page 1).
