October 10, 1997
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contact the public information officer at the end of each item at (703)
292-8070. Editor: Bill Noxon
Contents of this News Tip:
In several science and engineering (S&E;) fields, recent Ph.D. recipients
have faced unemployment rates unusually high among these highly skilled
groups, according to a new National Science Foundation (NSF) Issue Brief.
The issue brief notes that the unemployment rate in 1995 for recent
Ph.D.s (one to three years since graduation), was 4.3 percent in chemical
engineering; 4.0 percent for mathematical sciences; 3.2 percent for sociology/anthropology;
and 2.9 percent for physics.
Overall, however, only 1.9 percent of recent Ph.D.s were unemployed
as of April 1995 -- low compared to the 5.7 percent unemployment rate
for all U.S. workers, and only a little above the 1.5 percent rate for
all S&E; Ph.D.s.
Another labor market indicator shows that the percent of recent Ph.D.s
working involuntarily outside of their fields because a full-time job
in their field was not available was only 4.3 percent. Tracking recent
Ph.D.s between 1993 and 1995, about half of those individuals who were
unemployed or involuntarily working outside their field in 1993 found
jobs in their field by 1995.
See the issue brief at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/pubdata.htm [George
Chartier]
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A team of scientists funded in part by the National Science Foundation
(NSF) has begun to deploy instruments in a five-year study of a massive
plume of muddy water, some 12 miles wide and 200 miles long. The plume
appears each year along the southern end of Lake Michigan, from Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, to Grand Haven, Michigan.
Although the plume only lasts for about one month, it's suspected to
have a profound impact on the ecology of Lake Michigan, and may be the
major mechanism for resuspending and transporting both nutrients and contaminants
in the lake. Clearly visible in satellite imagery, the plume is believed
to consist of more than a million tons of very fine clay particles and
sediments eroded from the western shore of Lake Michigan in late winter
and early spring. Scientists think the eroded bluff material is first
deposited temporarily along the coastline, then resuspended in the water
column during winter storms.
To begin the Episodic Events-Great Lakes Experiment (EEGLE), scientists
have begun deploying equipment that will sample and measure sediments
in waters at strategic locations up to 12 miles out from Muskegon and
St. Joseph, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 45 scientists involved
in EEGLE expect to develop the most sophisticated research models ever
created for the Great Lakes, models that should provide a realistic assessment
of how nutrients and contaminants in the sediments continue to recycle
within the lake, and control its ecosystem.
EEGLE is also funded in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). [Cheryl Dybas]
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"Here lies the true horror of the Himalayas," wrote John Keay in The
Gilgit Game. Keay was referring to Nanga Parbat, Urdu for Naked Mountain,
a 26,000-foot-high peak on the northernmost edge of the western Himalayas.
The mountain, named for a southern face so steep it holds no snow, exhibits
the world's greatest continental relief -- it's a long fall down.
Nanga Parbat is an anomalous north-south extension into Asia of a part
of earth's crust that predominantly lies in India. Recently scientists
Peter Zeitler and Anne Meltzer of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania braved
an Indian Jones-like obstacle course of landslides, rockfalls, high waters,
low-elevation snows and active mud flows, to conduct seismic studies on
Naked Mountain. Zeitler's and Meltzer's work is funded by NSF's continental
dynamics program.
The scientists' principal goal was to characterize the crustal structure
at Nanga Parbat. They ultimately hope to infer the thermal structure of
the earth beneath this massif, or mountainous mass.
The scientists deployed seismic instruments up and down the glacial
valleys of Nanga Parbat by any means they could find: airplane, truck,
jeep, porter's back and donkey. They sometimes left local shepherds to
keep watch over flocks of geologic instruments, as well as sheep.
Although their study is still a work-in-progress, Zeitler and Meltzer
say that this project led to one of the densest deployments of seismometers
in an active mountain belt. Their data set has the potential, they believe,
to allow them to look in detail at fault-slip behavior along a major crustal
fault as well as to identify the presence of partial melt zones in the
crust beneath Nanga Parbat. [Cheryl Dybas]
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