Notebook

Holiday Memories of Shakhashiri Global Warming Generates A Heat At Los Alamos Going The Extra Mile For Science Who Needs Supercomputers, Anyway? It's been more than a year since University of Wisconsin chemist Bassam Shakhashiri was removed as head of the National Science Foundation's science education directorate, but the memory of his five-year campaign for a $600 million budget for the program--as well as his clashes with former NSF director Erich Bloch--have lingered on, even at Yuletide. His most recent Christmas card to friends shows him as a Santa Claus leaving a present that features a bar graph of NSF science education funding. The figure on it for 1993 matches his long- sought goal, despite the fact that the foundation's budget request for the program this week was expected to fall well short of that amount. Likewise, a politically savvy Santa Claus who attended his popular holiday chemistry show at the National Academy of Sciences greeted Shakhashiri and noted his absence last year, suggesting that he hadn't been invited because of pressure from the Washington science establishment. Shakhashiri has performed the show for more than 20 years at Wisconsin and other locations, including several appearances at the academy. Eight Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists concerned about protecting the global environment have decided that conservation begins at home. The group, called Our Common Ground, has drawn up a set of principles they hope the lab will follow, including communicating "openly and honestly" with the public and weighing the true environmental cost of research conducted at the lab. The group also made a successful plea to Los Alamos director Sig Hecker to hold a colloquium to rebut comments made in July by Dixy Lee Ray, one-time head of the Atomic Energy Commission and former governor of Washington. In her talk, Ray dismissed as myths the concepts that humanity is contributing to global warming, that chlorofluorocarbons have caused an ozone hole over the Antarctic, and that the world is losing valuable forests and wetlands. In November, Chick Keller, director of the lab's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and a cofounder of the new group, argued for a policy of "no regrets"--actions that will conserve energy and protect the environment, whether Ray is right or wrong about specific issues. Hecker has endorsed the group's goals and approved the distribution of leaflets describing its purposes. Scientists have been known to go to great lengths to raise money for their research. For Georgia Tech bioengineer Philip Kennedy, the distance is exactly 26.2 miles. That's what Kennedy ran recently to uphold his promise to 45 contributors who are supporting his work on neural prosthetics. Kennedy took 4 hours and 16 minutes to complete the Atlanta Track Club's Thanksgiving Day Marathon, which allowed him to collect $600 in pledges and a matching contribution from the nonprofit Georgia Tech Research Corp. His research is aimed at helping quadriplegics regain limited control of their limbs through the use of a computer. "Defense is still the tail that wags the dog" at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, says computational physicist Charlie Westbrook, who heads the lab's nonclassified Open Computing Facility. But when military scientists decided they wanted to reclaim a Cray X-MP supercomputer that civilian-side scientists had rescued from the scrap yard three years ago, Westbrook was able to cut a doggone good deal for the 100 or so lab physicists and their university collaborators who had been working with the Cray. Spending what he calls a $1 million "dowry" from the defense side of the lab, Westbrook bought some 14 high-powered IBM workstations (RS/6000 model 550) that, together, perform every bit as well as what he gave up, at a fraction of the cost. What's more, says Westbrook, his new network will allow him to take advantage of the next upgrade "without having to trade in a $20 million machine." Westbrook predicts that his approach will be widely copied by institutions on limited budgets, adding that "I expect the classified people to follow this model as well" when it's time for them to take the next step in supercomputing.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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