Wes Huntress, James Scott, Andrew Steele, Jan Toporski, and Hazen attended the Second Astrobiology Science Conference at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, Apr. 7-11.

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Ronald Cohen was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. The honor will be conferred at the fall meeting. Cohen ran the workshop on fundamental physics of ferroelectrics Feb. 3-6 in DC. He has organized all of these workshops since 1990. This year there were about 90 participants. Cohen also attended the invitation-only ONR Workshop on Ferroelectric Semiconductor Interfaces in Kona, Hawaii. The small, diverse group met to discuss the next generation of semiconductor devices, which will use ferroelectrics as gates, optical and X-ray sensors, capacitors, memory elements, and potentially as key elements in “quantum computers.” These quantum machines will be able to perform some computations within a second, which with today’s technology would take billions of years using all the computers on Earth. Ferroelectrics used as nonlinear optics devices will also eventually replace many of the electronic components in optical fiber communications. A key element in the growth of this field is the ability to design materials at the atomic level, laying down one layer of atoms at a time in commercially viable processes.

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In Mar. Bjørn Mysen presented the keynote lecture, “Physics and Chemistry of Melts and Glasses,” at EMPG IX in Zurich. Also in Mar., Mysen gave an invited lecture at Saint-Gobain Recherche, Paris, titled “Physical Chemical Properties and Structure of Silicate Glass and Melts at 1 Atm.”

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Ho-Kwang (Dave) Mao gave an invited talk, “High Pressure—A New Dimension in Physical Science,” at the James Franck Institute Colloquium, U. Chicago, on Jan. 8. He also presented an invited talk, “Absolute Pressure-Temperature-Density Determinations of Mantle Minerals,” at the Superplume Workshop, Tokyo 2002, Jan. 28-31, Tokyo Institute of Technology. On Feb. 22 he presented a seminar, “Understanding the Earth Core,” at the Dept. of Geophysical Sciences, U. Chicago; from Apr. 27 to Apr. 30 he attended the National Academy of Sciences annual meeting in Washington, DC; on May 8 he presented a seminar, “High Pressure—A New Dimension in Physical Sciences,” at Daresbury Laboratory, UK; and on May 22 he presented an invited talk, “High Pressure Science in the New Century,” at World-Famous Scientists Forum of Nanjing University, Nankang, China.

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Aaron J. Celestian, a graduate student at SUNY-Stony Brook who, with Prof. John Parise, has been studying how zeolite structures change as a function of pressure, has been appointed a Visiting Investigator. He is working with Charlie Prewitt and Przemek Dera. Celestian will perform high-pressure diffraction experiments using diamond-anvil cells on selected zeolite crystals.

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Yang Ding (Johns Hopkins) has been appointed a postdoctoral associate and will begin his fellowship June 1. Ding has successfully carried out excellent in-depth studies in crystallography and petrography using state-of-the-art TEM and ELINE equipment.

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Sung Keun Lee (Ph.D. candidate, Stanford) has been appointed a Carnegie postdoctoral fellow beginning July 1. He will use GL’s arsenal of spectroscopic techniques with quantum mechanical calculations to address the complete structure complexities of amorphous and crystalline silicate materials to characterize the structures of these materials; to describe physico-chemical properties; and to apply that knowledge to equilibrium processes in inorganic and organic materials relevant to rock-forming materials and those of materials science.

Jung-Fu Lin (Ph.D. candidate, U. Chicago) has been appointed a postdoctoral fellow beginning July 1. Lin’s main area of research is minerals physics. He has an excellent background in diamond-anvil research including high-pressure devices (laser-heated diamond-anvil cell, externally heated diamond-anvil cell, and large-volume press) to study the pressure-temperature-composition phase diagrams and thermodynamic properties of Fe-Si and Fe-Ni alloys relevant to the Earth’s core.

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Giles “Jake” Maule (Ph.D. Imperial College, London), has been appointed a postdoctoral associate and is working with Andrew Steele on developing microarrays for spaceflight. This is a collaborative effort between Carnegie, the Johnson Space Center, and Montana State.

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Shuhei Ono (Ph.D. in Geochemistry, Penn State) has been appointed a research associate and will be working with Doug Rumble on the sulfur isotope geochemistry of Earth’s atmosphere.

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Marcelo Sepliarsky (Ph.D., U. Rosario, Argentina), has been appointed a postdoctoral associate and is working with Ron Cohen on ferroelectric solid solutions PMN-PT and PZN-PT, using a potential model Sepliarsky has developed.

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Heather Watson, Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences, RPI, has been appointed a predoctoral fellow beginning July 1. She will be working with Yingwei Fei studying the siderophile element diffusion in the Fe-Ni system at high pressure and temperature, using the multianvil high-pressure apparatus.

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Chih-Shiue Yan (U. Alabama, Birmingham) has been appointed a postdoctoral associate beginning in Apr. Yan has been working on the CVD large anvil project. A proposal to develop this technology, titled “Development of the Next Generation Megabar High-Pressure Cells: A COMPRES Grand Challenge,” has been funded by the NSF Instrumentation and Facilities Program.

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Yukihiro Yoshimura (Ph.D., U. Ritsumeikan, Kusatsu, Japan) has been appointed a Visiting Investigator and will be working with Dave Mao, Rus Hemley, and others in the high-pressure group when he arrives in Aug. He will work on aqueous systems and ices using GL’s spectroscopic and synchrotron diffraction techniques, in collaboration with the National Defense Academy of Japan.

Terrestrial Magnetism

Paul Butler, with Geoff Marcy (UC-Berkeley) and Steve Vogt (UC-Santa Cruz), are the recipients of the 2002 Beatrice M. Tinsley Award from the American Astronomical Society for their “pioneering work in characterizing planetary systems orbiting distant stars.” In Apr. Butler participated in the physics and astronomy colloquia at U. Calgary and delivered the American Astronomical Society Centennial lecture at the Calgary Science Centre. Both Butler and Alan Boss were featured in U.S. News and World Report’s “Mysteries of Science” edition.

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Alan Linde was named a fellow of the American Geophysical Union at a ceremony at the Spring AGU Meeting in May. Linde visited Hokkaido U. in Apr. to give a seminar and to work with former DTM postdoctoral fellow Tetsuo Takanami on data from borehole strain-meters installed in Hokkaido. He also took a field trip to the volcano Showa-Shinzan with Hiromu Okada, a DTM predoctoral fellow from 1972 to 1973, and he delivered a seminar at Tohoku U. during a two-day visit hosted by former DTM postdoctoral fellow Akira Hasegawa.

The Latest on HP-CAT

The HP-CAT team made successful radiation tests on beamline enclosures ID-A and ID-B in early April, and started installing instrumentation shortly after that. The experiment setup installation for enclosure ID-B is scheduled for June. Various commissioning experiments within the sector will continue through November, after which time large mirrors will be installed. The BM beamline should be fully commissioned by April 2003. This picture shows the Advanced Photon Source floor coordinators, radiation crew, and HP-CAT staff members after the successful radiation testing of enclosures ID-A and ID-B. Carnegie members include Daniel Errandonea (standing left), Eric Rod (standing right) and Daniel Haüsermann (sitting in front of Rod). The formal dedication for the project is scheduled for July 26, 2002.

See http://www.hpcat.aps.anl.gov for the latest.