In Brief

Trustees

Trustee Richard Meserve, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was elected to the American Philosophical Society in Apr.

Administration

The Apr. newsletter of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology featured an article by Carnegie president, Maxine Singer, entitled “Scientific and Medical Aspects of Human Reproductive Cloning,” about the National Academy recommendation to ban human cloning. On Apr. 15 Singer gave a talk, “Scientists and Schools,” at U. Maryland, Baltimore County.

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Greg Taylor, CASE and First Light coordinator, was an invited speaker at the Potomac Regional Education Partnership (PREP) meetings June 12. His talk focused on his experiences with technology in the classroom.

Embryology

Don Brown presented a talk at Rockefeller U., “Centennial Symposium on Cell Biology.”

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Joanne Hama (Ph.D. 2001, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NYU) has begun her postdoctoral work in the Brown lab, studying limb development in amphibian metamorphosis.

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Joe Gall was appointed to the editorial board of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In Mar. he presented the Second Billingham Lecture in the Cell Biology Department at U. Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. In Apr., he received an honorary doctorate in medical sciences from Charles U. in Prague.

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Marnie Halpern joined the Marine Biological Laboratories Alumni Relations Advisory Board. In Jan., she became a managing editor for the journal Mechanisms of Development. Halpern and Sally Moody (George Washington U.) organized the Mid-Atlantic Regional Developmental Biology Meeting, held at Carnegie’s P Street building Apr. 19-20. Several Embryology researchers, including Erika Matunis, Rachel Brewster, Christian Broesamle, Daniela Drummond-Barbosa, Josh Gamse, Alex Schreiber, and Judy Yanowitz, presented their work.

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Anne Lynn Langloh joined Terence Murphy’s lab as a special investigator to study how centrosome duplication is regulated in Drosophila.

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Jim Wilhelm spoke at the 43rd Annual Drosophila Research Conference in San Diego on the localization and translational control of oskar mRNA.

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Vince Klink (Ph.D. 2001, U. Maryland) started his postdoctoral work in the Zheng lab studying mitotic spindle assembly.

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Sudeep George (Ph.D. 2002, Division of Biochemical Sciences, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India) has begun his postdoctoral work in the Zheng lab looking at the regulation of microtubule assembly.

Observatories

The Observatories welcome Nancy Davis, regional director for external affairs. Silvia Hutchison joined the administration in May.

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Miguel Roth gave a talk at the National Science Teachers Association meeting in San Diego Mar. 27-30 on the accelerated expansion of the universe and the new generation of giant telescopes. More than 400 teachers attended the presentation.

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In Mar. George Preston addressed three senior classes at John Muir High School in Pasadena during Futures Day. He talked about the rewarding careers offered by the search for origins of the chemical elements, stars, planets, and life in the universe.

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Alan Dressler gave an invited talk, “The Landscape of U.S. Astronomy in 2015,” at an Apr. 2-5 meeting, “Hubble Space Telescope’s Science Legacy,” at U. Chicago.

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1•Wendy Freedman gave colloquia at the Institute for Astronomy in Princeton, at Stanford U., and at SLAC in Feb., and at DTM in Mar. She also gave an invited talk at the Moriond cosmology workshop in France in Mar.

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Instrument scientist Bruce Bigelow and Alan Dressler were interviewed this spring for Search for Solutions, a National Science Teachers Association video that will be made available free of charge to middle and high school science teachers.

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John Mulchaey served as an editor for the recently published conference proceedings Extragalactic Gas at Low Redshift, based on a workshop held at the Observatories Apr. 4-6, 2001, in celebration of Ray Weymann’s contributions to astronomy.

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Andy McWilliam gave an invited talk at the “Stellar Abundances and Nucleosynthesis” conference in Seattle Mar. 27-29. He also attended the Pasadena meeting of the U.S. Gemini Scientific Advisory Committee, of which he is a member, on Mar. 22 and 23. McWilliam was appointed a U.S. representative to the Gemini Science Committee and attended its meeting in Vancouver Apr. 7-9.

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Luis Ho visited the Academia Sinica to serve on the Ten-Year Planning Committee for the development of astronomy in Taiwan.

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Donald Lynden-Bell (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge) arrived in Jan. for three months as a Scientific Visitor. During his residence, he presented two talks, “Why Disks Collimate Jets” and “What Newton Knew and We Don’t”; visited the Mt. Wilson Observatory; and celebrated his 67th birthday with friends from the Observatories and Caltech. He also gave an invited talk, “Why Disks Make Jets,” at the Rubin Symposium at Carnegie’s P Street building in Washington, DC, on Jan. 11; at the Observatories on Jan. 22; and at UC-Santa Cruz on Jan. 30. On Apr. 4 he presented a talk on exact optics at UCLA.

IMACS Sees First Light!

The main structure of the Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS) arrived at the Observatories on Santa Barbara Street on March 13. The instrument, which will be installed on the Walter Baade telescope, is named after Trustee Emeritus Kazuo Inamori. It is a high-resolution spectrograph with a very large field of view, allowing astronomers to study hundreds of faint objects simultaneously. Alan Dressler, Principal Investigator for the project, Bruce Bigelow, and Greg Burley reported first light for the instrument on May 15 at 9:30 p.m. PDT. A slit mask with 0.5-arc-second hole was imaged through the field lens, collimator, imaging mirror, and long camera. IMACS will become the backbone of major survey programs. In the left image, Bruce Bigelow (right) and Christoph Birk are ready to install the long camera barrel. Right, Bigelow and Tyson Hare handle the field lens before installation.