Community Briefs

Monday, November 16, 1998

Community Briefs

Atkinson chosen by governor for task force

University of California President Richard Atkinson has been
named to Gov.-elect Gray Davis’s "education transition group" to
advise him on educational issues. The group will develop proposals
the governor-elect will offer for consideration at a special
session of the state Legislature that Davis intends to call in
early January, shortly after taking office.

Atkinson’s specific assignment is to advise Davis on higher
education. Atkinson became president of the nine-campus university
on Oct. 1, 1995, replacing outgoing UC President Jack Peltason, who
served for only one year. Atkinson had previously served as
chancellor of UC San Diego.

Earlier, he was director of the National Science Foundation and
was a long-term member of the faculty at Stanford. He is an
internationally respected scholar in cognitive science and
psychology.

Scientists win poster contest

Three Los Alamos National Laboratory geologists recently
received the X-ray Fluorescence Poster Award for best poster during
the 1998 Denver X-ray Conference held in Colorado Springs,
Colo.

Dave Bish, Steve Chipera and Dave Vaniman, all of Los Alamos’
Geology and Geochemistry Group, received certificates for their
poster titled "CHEMIN: A Miniaturized CCD-based Instrument for
Simultaneous X-ray Diffraction and X-ray Fluorescence Analysis."
CHEMIN is an acronym for chemistry/mineralogy. The geologists’
poster beat out about 30 other posters presented during the
five-day conference, sponsored by the University of Denver and the
International Centre for Diffraction Data.

The poster details the collaborative efforts of researchers at
Los Alamos, the NASA Ames Research Center in California and NASA’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a miniature space instrument
that uses a charge-coupled device and an X-ray source to determine
the crystal structures and chemical compositions of soils, ice,
rock powders and other samples.

UC releases study on gasoline additive

The University of California delivered a multi-volume report on
the gasoline additive MTBE to Gov. Pete Wilson. The report results
from passage of SB 521, (Mountjoy) which appropriated $500,000 to
the university 10 months ago to perform an unbiased and
authoritative study of the human health and environmental impacts
of MTBE, and to recommend to the governor whether MTBE should
continue to be used as a gasoline additive in California.

The report presents the results of new research and of a
thorough literature review to address each of 11 topics stipulated
in the legislation. The authors of the report, each selected by a
rigorous peer-review process, are a consortium of University of
California faculty from four of the UC campuses.

The overall effort was administered by the university’s
Systemwide Toxic Substances Research and Teaching Program, a
multicampus research effort directed from the UC Davis campus,
which also sponsored or cosponsored several public workshops to
keep interested parties informed about progress on this report
through the year.

The report recommends a gradual phase-out of MTBE from gasoline
in California, with a series of suggested options for doing so in a
manner that will allow for a thorough study of the environmental
impacts of any chosen strategy.

The report also concludes that technical advances in new
automobile emission controls and combustion systems, and in new
gasoline formulations, have dramatically decreased the air quality
benefits associated with adding oxygenates to gasoline, making the
potential for water contamination by MTBE a cost that is not offset
by a corresponding benefit.

Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.

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