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Old Department News Items
by Susan Delap


Past issues of department newsletters:

Spring 2008 |
Spring 2007 | Summer 2007 | Fall 2007
Spring 2006 | Summer 2006 | Fall 2006
Spring 2005 | Summer 2005 | Fall 2005
Spring 2004
| Summer 2004 | Fall 2004
Spring 2003 | Summer 2003 | Fall 2003
Spring 2002 | Summer 2002 | Fall 2002
Fall 2001

Old news items prior to Fall 2001 newsletter:

November 8, 2001: SEG Mineral Symposium Raffle, Nov 10-11, 2001
November 7, 2001: Snow Hydrology course at U of Arizona

October 26, 2001: Wilson and Aster Candidates for AGU Offices
October 24, 2001: Halloween Geophysics Seminar
October 23, 2001: 6th Annual National Hispanic Sustainable Energy & Environmental Conference Dec 1-4, 2001

August 21, 2001: Rick Aster in Discover magazine, Grad Student Recruitment "Block Grant" Program

July 21, 2001: Johnson Voted Favorite Professor in El Defensor Chieftain
July 12, 2001: Marijuana Worm, Windows XP
July 7, 2001: Aster Blasts Oklahoma Bombing Conspiracy Theory
July 2, 2001: Lab Safety Course TOMORROW!!!

June 27, 2001: FACULTY: Purchase library books by June 29!
June 25, 2001: New Printer Logging, Alyssa Joy Olson MS Thesis Defense
June 22, 2001: Changes in MSEC 345 printing, Tobin et al. speak at conference in Scotland
June 19, 2001: Conference on Regional Haze and Global Radiation Balance (Oct 2-5)
June 15, 2001: Phillips Receives O.E. Meinzer Award - Party Tonight!
June 11, 2001: New Worms
June 1, 2001: UPDATE on 2-Day Short Course

May 31, 2001: Virus Hoax Worse than the Real Thing
May 30, 2001: New Computer Lab Tech
May 29, 2001: 2-Day Short Course for Scientists
May 14, 2001: Homepage Worm
May 11, 2001: Outstanding Teaching Awards: Goodwin & Mozley
May 8, 2001:  MSEC 345 Printing Update
May 1, 2001: 15-passenger van warning

April 17, 2001: Math 586 offered Fall 2001

March 7, 2001: Multimedia at NMT, Vladimir Ispolatov places in Boston Marathon, Hydrology applicant tour


November 8, 2001

SEG Mineral Symposium Raffle, November 10-11, 2001
The Society of Economic Geologists Student Chapter (SEG) is holding a raffle with the drawing at this weekend's Mineral Symposium. Tickets are only $1 each, and prizes include a variety of very nice mineral specimens. Proceeds will help fund a trip to New Zealand. See the one of the following SEG members to purchase a ticket: Reyna Abeyta, Lynne Kurilovitch, Amanda Rowe, or Kristie McLin.

November 7, 2001

Snow Hydrology Course at U of Arizona
University of Arizona is offering a new, 1 credit field-oriented course on snow hydrology next spring. The course, entitled Snow Hydrology: An introduction to physical, chemical, and biogechemical processes in seasonally snow-covered systems, includes a week of physically intensive, but FUN, field work in the San Juans, CO during spring break. (Incidentally, U of A's spring break coincides with NMT's). The instructor, Dr. Paul Brooks, solicits participants from schools in the southwest. Let Michelle Walvoord know if you may be interested in taking the course. She doesn't have details on the logisitics (credit transfers, costs, etc...) at this point, so you are encouraged to contact Paul Brooks directly (brooks@hwr.arizona.edu) for more information.


October 26, 2001

Wilson and Aster Running for AGU Offices
by George Zamora

Two New Mexico Tech faculty members are on the slate of 64 candidates seeking offices on the governing body of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), an international scientific organization whose membership currently exceeds 35,000. New Mexico Tech hydrology professor John L. Wilson II and geophysics professor Richard C. Aster are both listed on the ballot for the organization's upcoming elections, which start on November 2 and end on December 21. Wilson is vying for the president-elect position of the Hydrology Section of AGU; while Aster is running for secretary of
the Seismology Section of AGU.

Wilson, an AGU member since 1974 and an AGU Fellow since 1994, currently serves as chairman of New Mexico Tech's Earth and environmental science department. His research interests include groundwater hydrology, especially fluid flow and transport in porous, fractured, and faulted media, and geologic characterization. He has been a Tech faculty member since 1984.

Aster, an AGU member since 1987, lists earthquake and volcanic seismology and Earth structure as his major research
areas of interest. He has been a geophysics professor at New Mexico Tech since 1991, and is also principal investigator for the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Program for Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere (PASSCAL), an international research center located on the Tech campus.

AGU was established in 1919 by the National Research Council as an organizational framework within which geophysicists from throughout the world can create programs and products needed to advance their interdisciplinary science, which is encompassed by the organization's 11 scientific sections.


October 24, 2001

Halloween Geophysics Seminar
Mario Ruiz will be giving a geophysics lunchtime seminar next Wednesday at 12:00 in the EES conference room (MSEC 202). Mario will be sharing first-hand experience with active volcanoes in Ecuador as a staff member at the Instituto Geofisico. Pizza will be provided c/o the Geophysics Program. RSVP to Rick Aster so he will have an idea on how many pizzas to order! Thanks.
___________________________________
Two Volcanic Crises in Ecuador
Mario Ruiz, NMT Geophysics Program
_________________________________
A) 1999 - 2000 Tungurahua (Ecuador) eruption.
After several months of increasing seismicity, Tungurahua volcano began a period of strombolian-to-vulcanian eruptions that lasted from October 1999 to October 2000. This activity forced the evacuation of 25,000 inhabitants of tourist city of Banios for three months. I will present photographic sequences of this eruptive period and the surveillance activities of Instituto Geofisico of the Escuela Politecnica Nacional.

B) 1999 Guagua Pichincha eruption.
Guagua Pichincha volcano is located just 9 km from Quito (capital city of Ecuador). In 1660 a moderate-size eruption covered the city with a 20 cm-thick layer of ash.  The Instituto Geofisico began to monitor this volcano in 1981 in response to an increase in fumarolic activity.  In Sept. 1998 phreatic activity increased dramatically forcing us to issue a yellow-alert. Between Sept. 1999 and Dec. 1999, eight dome-collapse eruptions, and 5 minor ash falls over Quito, occurring one week after an orange alert was issued. I will present the national management of this crisis.


October 23, 2001

6th Annual National Hispanic Sustainable Energy & Environmental Conference
In the aftermath of the tragic events of Sept. 11, the National HispanicEnvironmental Council (NHEC), like many organizations with conferences in Sept. or October, decided to postpone its 6th Annual Conference, originally scheduled for Sept. 29 - Oct. 2, 2001, in San Antonio, TX. Since our decision to postpone, NHEC has been working hard to re-schedule the Conference.

NHEC is pleased to announce that our 6th Annual "National Hispanic Sustainable Energy & Environmental Conference" will be held Dec. 1 - 4, 2001, at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel, in San Antonio. Please see the "Preliminary Program" on the NHEC webpage at www.nheec.org  for a detailed summary of conference events.

A major part of the Conference are the "travel scholarships" we provide to Hispanic/minority college students in a wide variety of environmental disciplines. Students apply, and if accepted, NHEC will pay airfare, 4 nights hotel, meals, and incidentals. NHEC expects to fund at least 230 students to this year's conference.

NHEC is still accepting applications from students for travel scholarships. If you are interested, go to the NHEC webpage at www.nheec.org for information on how to apply. Students are urged to send their applications as soon as possible, as scholarships are going fast.

As announced some time ago, if you were notified you had received a travel scholarship prior to our postponement announcement, then your scholarship is still valid and we will be contacting you soon. You do not have to do anything else at this time.

If you had applied for a scholarship prior to our postponement and had not yet been notified, we will be sending e-mails to students within a week as to whether or not you have been accepted.  You do not have to do anything else at this time.

We thank you for your patience, and trust you understand. We look forward to welcoming our conference attendees, and to once again having a productive and exciting conference. See you in San Antonio in early December!

Roger Rivera, President, NHEC and Manuel Hernandez, Chairman, NHEC
NOTE: The conference is open to all students regardless of National origin. The conference is beneficial for both undergraduates and graduates. There is also a job fair to assist students in finding jobs within the environmental industry


August 21, 2001

Rick Aster in Discover magazine
In the Sept. 2001 issue of Discover magazine, Geophysics Professor Rick Aster's Carlsbad gas explosion detection is mentioned in a sidebar to an article on Terry Wallace, a Tech alum and seismologist at the University of Arizona. The article is on how seismologists can detect man-made events that governments often want kept secret, specifically the loss of the Russian submarine Kursk.

Graduate Student Recruitment "Block Grant" Program
Get your proposals in by September 20, 2001. Click here for details.


July 21, 2001

Johnson Voted Favorite Professor in El Defensor Chieftain
Dave Johnson, Associate Professor of Geology, was voted Favorite Professor by the readers of Socorro's newspaper, El Defensor Chieftain. He shares the honor with Scott Zeman, Assistant Professor of History. Local readers also chose NMT as their favorite place to walk, run, ride a bike, take kids (duck pond), walk dogs, lift weights, attend class, and see live entertainment (Macey Center).

July 12, 2001

Marijuana Worm
You'll turn your computer into a pothead if you open this Outlook attachment. Read about it here.

Windows XP
Wondering what Microsoft is up to with their new OS? Click here for an assortment of news items to bring you up to speed.


July 7, 2001

Aster Blasts Oklahoma Bombing Conspiracy Theory
Rick Aster, Professor of Geophysics, was quick to point out the fallacy in a local reader's recent Viewpoint published in the Socorro newspaper, El Defensor Chieftain. (Unfortunately, the link to this letter is no longer working, so I will summarize from memory.) Basically, Luther Broaddus of Magdalena earlier wrote to the paper claiming that the seismic record of the Oklahoma City Murrah building explosion had two peaks, therefore he concluded that there were two blasts. This was the basis of Broaddus' fantastic theory of government sabotage and other sorts of paranoia. Aster's letter explained the science of P and S waves and pointed out Broaddus's interpretation error, totally disproving Broaddus' sabotage theory. Broaddus soon wrote in another letter saying that scientists were all bought by the government and Aster was part of the coverup. Sigh. (NOTE: this is my best recollection of these letters, two years after the fact. My interpretations of these letters are my own beliefs and do not necessarily reflect New Mexico Tech's position on the matter. Although NMT does believe in P and S waves.--S. Delap)

July 2, 2001

Lab Safety Course TOMORROW!!!
The Laboratory Safety Short Course will be offered for new or first-time laboratory employees on Wednesday, JULY 3rd, from 1-2 PM in Workman 208. NOTE: this is the State Mining Inspectors training room in the North wing of Workman near the Mineral Museum. Please encourage your new staff or student workers or those who have not previously attended to do so. The course will be offered at least once more this semester in the same location on an alternate date, but probably the same time frame to avoid conflict with afternoon labs. Contact Curtis Verploegh (x5842) to attend or if you have any questions.

June 27, 2001

FACULTY: Purchase Library Books by June 29!
Deadline to purchase books for this fiscal year is FRIDAY! Contact Joy Thompson direct.

June 25, 2001

New Printer Logging Now In Effect
Effective today, ALL copies made on the 3 printers in MSEC 345 will be logged in ONE notebook which is by the B&W laser printer. Log copies by account number, similar to the department copier notebook.

Alyssa Joy Olson MS Hydrology Thesis Defense
Carbon-13 in hydrologically-closed systems: experimentation and modeling, on Monday, July 2, 2001, at 2pm in the E&ES Conference Room, MSEC 202. Abstract posted outside MSEC 208 and MSEC 239


June 22, 2001

Changes in MSEC 345 Printer Accounting System
The printer accounting system that was installed on April 1, 2001, to monitor usage of the printers in MSEC 345 is changing. Harold Tobin is managing the changes and will oversee cost management of the printers. Changes made so far only affect Mac users. Printing from Suns and Windows machines has not changed, and Susan has verified for Windows machines that you can still print to both laser printers via Dutchman, and the plotter from HP_Network_Printers. There are still problems printing to the plotter from the Suns, and Harold will address this later.

Mac users, do the following to access the printers: Use the Chooser to set up a new printer via laserwriter 8: just choose "HP LaserJet 5Si" or "HP Color LaserJet 4500."  DO NOT choose "MSEC 345 Color LaserJet" or "MSEC 345 BW LaserJet". That is the dutchman port. Continue to record your usage on the logs for the color printers. Please keep track of your usage on the B&W printer, as the accounting system is no longer tracking this for you. (You'll only have to do this until the end of June.)

Tobin et al. speak at conference in Scotland
Click here to read all about it.


June 19, 2001

Conference on Regional Haze and Global Radiation Balance - Aerosol Measurements and Models: Closure, Reconciliation and Evaluation, October 2-5 (Exhibition October 2-4), 2001 in Bend, Oregon.
Exhibitors wll spend three days interfacing with attendees interested in learning more about sources, chemical and physical characteristics of aerosols, measurement methodologies, predictive modeling techniques, and air quality management implications. (Exhibitor Prospectus posted outside MSEC 208.)
Contact for more information:
Rebekah A. Mayernik, Marketing Coordinator, Air & Waste Management Association
One Gateway Center, Third Floor, Pittsburgh, PA  15222
(412) 232-3444, ext. 3138, (412) 232-3450 fax, visit us at www.awma.org

June 15, 2001

Fred Phillips was just named the 2001 recipient of the O.E. Meinzer Award by the Hydrogeology Division of  GSA. The award is in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of hydrogeology. He joins a list of previous winners that have been the leaders in the field of hydrogeology over the past several decades. There will be a gathering at the brew pub this Friday, June 15 at 6 to help Fred celebrate his accomplishment. Stop by and congratulate him!

June 11, 2001

New Worms
Look out for two new worms: DoS, affecting Microsoft servers, (click here for more info) and Miss World (click here for more info) that could potentially erase your hard drive.

June 1, 2001

UPDATE on 2-Day Short Course
Mike Fort will teach the short course on June 15 and 16. Eight people have expressed interest for these dates.  Eric Small encourages anyone else that is interested to send him an email and let him know you want to participate.

May 31, 2001

Virus Hoax as Bad as the Real Thing
Not clever enough to write your own virus? Pretend you have and trick gullible humans into carrying out your evil plans of destruction! An email is circulating claiming that your computer may be infected with a virus that none of the antivirus programs can detect until it's "too late." The "virus" is supposed to strike on June 1st. The message instructs you to delete a file that is on every PC that runs Windows: sulfnbk.exe. Then the message tells you to warn all your friends and business associates. So you end up deleting a file your computer needs to operate, and you unwittingly propogate the "virus" by emailing everyone you know. Click here for the whole story.

May 30, 2001

New Computer Lab Tech
Glen Holcomb, new EES Computer Lab TechWelcome Glen Holcomb, new E & ES Computer Lab Tech. Glen will manage the computer lab in MSEC 239 as well as provide limited support in MSEC 345 during Matt Richmond's absence this summer. Glen is also available for limited faculty and staff computer support. Please contact Pat Mills for scheduling.

Glen's tentative schedule for the summer is


May 29, 2001

Two-day Short Course on Electrical Wiring for Scientists, Grad Students, and Others
Mike Fort is an engineer at PASSCAL. He has offered to teach a 2-day short course covering the basics of electrical wiring and measurement in a way that is useful to scientists. He will also cover some basic plumbing. The topics to be covered are listed below.  There will be hands on "lab" exercises in addition to lectures. I know many of you are working on research projects where this sort of information would be useful, so I encourage you to participate.

The course is contingent upon enough people being interested. If you would like to participate on any of the following dates (in each case, the second day is a Saturday), please let me know (esmall@nmt.edu). We will choose the dates that have the highest participation: June 8 & 9, June 15 & 16, June 22 & 23.

Here are the topics Mike is planning on covering: Basic Circuits, Ohms Law, Voltage and current measurement, Schematics, Switches and relays, Potentiometers, etc., Measurement, Signal types. Pressure, Flow, Temperature, Specialized Plumbing (maybe), Pressure loss, Valve types and selection, Pipe/tube sizing, Actuated valves.


May 14, 2001

New PC Worm Infecting Outlook Users
New "homepage" worm is annoying and changes your default browser opening window to a randomly selected porn page. If you're still opening email attachments without verifying with the sender that they really sent it, you deserve to get this one! The worm comes in the attachment to an email with the following particulars: Major antivirus vendors should already have fixes for this one. Be sure you update your virus definitions AT LEAST once a month. See Susan Delap if you own Norton AntiVirus and your LiveUpdate subscription has expired. The renewal is only $3.95 for another year.

This worm was created from an on-line hacker's kit. So expect more.


May 11, 2001

Goodwin and Mozley Win Outstanding Teaching Award
We are happy to anounce the winners of this year's E&ES outstanding teaching award, Dr. Laurel Goodwin and Dr. Peter Mozley. Please join us at the fall picnic for the presentation of this award. Thank you to all of you who turned in your ballots! Congratulations Laurel and Peter! --SGE

May 8, 2001

MSEC 345 Printing Update
Matt Richmond believes that he has solved the problem with the print queue mysteriously stalling and refusing to process any more jobs. Something about the printers wanting to renew their DHCP leases every 100 minutes, and if they did this during a print job, the job stalled. So Matt set the lease expiration time to something a bit longer, a little over 3 years! If you encounter any more problems with the printers, email Matt with a detailed explanation of the problem along with the offending file(s).

Susan Delap has started billing for usage of the black & white HP 5Si MX LaserJet printer. Since this printer is now networked and available to users outside MSEC 345, a more equitable method to determine whose turn it was to buy supplies was needed. A fund has been set up to collect monies from the usage of the printer, and consumables will be purchased from this fund. Instead of log sheets, the printer accounting system will generate a monthly report of usage for individual users. You will be billed at the rate of 2 cents per copy. Students: see your advisor to determine what account your charges should be billed to.


May 1, 2001

NHTSA ISSUES WARNING AGAINST 15-PASSENGER VANS
In an advisory released April 9, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) cautioned users of 15-passenger vans of an increased rollover risk when carrying ten or more persons. According to the NHTSA, 15-passenger vans with 10 or more occupants had a rollover rate in single vehicle crashes that is nearly three times the rate of those that were lightly loaded. When fully loaded, the vehicle's center of gravity shifts rearward and upward, increasing both the risk of rollover and the potential for loss of control in panic maneuvers. The NHTSA urges that users of these vans require the use of seatbelts at all times, and ensure that drivers are experienced in handling these vehicles. More details are available at www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/ncsa/reports.html#2001

April 17, 2001

Math 586 Spatial Variability and Geostatistics will be offered this fall. Geostatistician Sean McKenna of Sandia National Laboratories will be the instructor.

Congratulations to Geochemistry grad student Vladimir Ispolatov, who placed 567 out of about 15,000 in the Boston Marathon. He finished in 2:55:37 and his pace was 6:42 minutes/mile.


March 7, 2001

For those who missed the Multi Media Production Open House at New Mexico Tech today, Susan dropped in for a few minutes to see what they had . . .

They stress that the equipment they have now is nothing like the WERC-funded ITV in the past. They have several consumer-grade camcorders mounted in a studio/classroom suitable for filming classes. They can build custom sets, use digital backgrounds, add special effects, and do non-linear editing. Distance-Ed classes can either be tape based, live feed, or web broadcast (coming soon). They also have a JVC GY-DV500 "professional quality" camcorder they take into the field for shoots. B.O.B. Boston, the ITV Coordinator, uses his own Canon XL-1 camcorder if he films in the field for you. Besides filming classes, they can film promotional films or any type of film you can think of. If they don't have the graphics you want, they can get them. They also have music soundtracks.

There is one full-time person with a TV background and 2 students. So you probably can't get them to start filming without at least a week's notice. But apparently usage is not high yet...so you never know.

Click here to see current price list in PDF format. Also see their website: www.nmt.edu/~uc/personnel/itv.html. (This is the correct address as of Oct 3, 2002. It may change in the future, so I am not creating a live link.) Contact B.O.B. Boston to set up a demo or consultation: bboston@nmt.edu  or 835-5035
 

Prospective Hydrology Program students tour New Mexico Tech
Prospective Hydrology Students

Drs. Eric Small and John Wilson are on the right.


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