THIS WEEK AT UCAR is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.ucar.edu/ucargen/UCARnewstext.html#This Week at UCAR ************************************************************************ THIS WEEK AT UCAR -- 17 April 1997 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research ------------------------------------------------- National Center for Atmospheric Research UCAR Office of Programs ************************************************************************ ANNOUNCEMENTS In brief: Reminder: annual spring locker cleanout Introductory course on NCL by Ethan Alpert Student art showcase Summer camp Be a good earthling: pitch in on Earth Day! UCAR Policies and Procedures Manual is on the Web! New books for the upcoming week +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | SUBMITTING ANNOUNCEMENTS TO THIS WEEK AT UCAR | | | | Send announcements by email to thisweek@ucar.edu, by 5:00 p.m. | | Monday of the week you want them to appear. Be sure to include the | | date, time, and location of any events being announced, and a name, | | phone number, and email address for someone to contact for more | | information. Write your announcement just as you want it to appear. | | Please send announcements in electronic form only. Paste the text | | of your announcement into the body of your email message, rather | | than appended as an attachment or enclosure. | |_____________________________________________________________________| ************************************************************************ REMINDER: ANNUAL SPRING LOCKER CLEANOUT The annual spring locker cleanout will occur in early May. If you use a locker in UCAR fitness areas at ML, FL or UN, this WILL effect you. For sites, dates, times, and other information visit the WAC web site at: http://www.ucar.edu//ucargen/groups/wellness/wellness.html If you have any questions, contact Lena Miller (ext. 1123), John Pereira (ext. 1128) or Jim Menghi (ext. 8558, menghi@ucar.edu). ************************************************************************ INTRODUCTORY COURSE ON NCL BY ETHAN ALPERT 3:00pm April 17th in the ML Main Seminar Room. The NCAR Graphics Group is pleased to announce the first in a series of courses for NCAR employees on the use of the NCAR Command Language (NCL). NCL is an interpreted language for reading, writing, manipulating and analyzing data in a variety of formats including ASCII, binary, netCDF, HDF, GRIB and the CCM history file format. NCL is coupled with the NCAR Graphics High Level Utilities which gives NCL users the capability of generating high quality visualizations of data. For more information on NCL please see the NCAR Graphics web pages: http://ngwww.ucar.edu/ngdoc/ng4.0.1/ This course is being given in the context of the SCD/CGD CSM processor collaboration. For more information on this project see the CSM project web page at: http://ngwww.ucar.edu/projects/csmproc/index.html Several courses covering the complete functionality of NCL and the NCAR Graphics High Level Utilities will be offered in the coming weeks. A one hour class will be followed by a period for extended questions. The first course will cover NCL basics. An introduction to NCL and NCAR Graphics 4.1 will be given as well as a discussion of NCL's data model. A tour of the on-line documentation will be given. NCL scripts will be provided to attendees which demonstrate reading and writing ASCII and binary data and creating simple visualizations. The second course will focus on reading, writing and converting popular file formats. Examples of reading netCDF, GRIB, HDF, and CCM history files, and writing netCDF and HDF files will be shown. Examples of converting GRIB, and CCM history files to netCDF files will be included. Further sessions will cover NCL's computational capabilities and NCL's interface to the NCAR Graphics High Level Utilities for creating publication quality graphics. An additional advanced topic will be user creation of NCL functions including writing wrappers to turn Fortran codes into NCL functions. All courses will include web pages where course notes can be reviewed and example scripts can be down-loaded. For more information contact Bob Lackman, x1224, rll@ncar.ucar.edu. ************************************************************************ STUDENT ART SHOWCASE Student art from schools throughout Boulder County will be showcased in NCAR's Gallery I and Gallery II from 2 to 30 April. The juried show includes 80 works in various media that touch on this year's National Science Foundation theme "Webs Wires Waves --The Science & Technology of Communication." The April Student Art Showcase is part of NCAR's Earth Day and NSF's National Science and Technology celebrations. The following students received special awards (Gallery I) from the jury for their works: Cordelia Brown (Boulder) Ben Bunch (Columbine) Chelsey Flaherty (Heatherwood) David Goodheim (Centennial) Kevin Hailey (Fairview) Kevin Katz (Birch) Becka Lord (Fairview) Ryan Martin (Fairview) Alison May (Base Line) Rachel Montour (Aurora 7) Jay Peteranetz (Centaurus) Blake Saffell (Bear Creek) Francisca Stern (Casey) Sunshine Vue (Columbine) For further information please call Nita Razo, ext. 8606, razo@ucar.edu, or Linda Carbone, ext. 8612, lcarbone@ucar.edu. ************************************************************************ SUMMER CAMP Have you started thinking about what your children will do over summer vacation? The Care Connection offers a free child care resource and referral service to help you find the perfect summer program for your child. A referral specialist will conduct a search on your behalf, confirm information and vacancies and provide you with personalized referrals. Now is the time to begin your search for summer care. Call the Care Connection at (303) 604-0030. This program is brought to you by UCAR and the BBDCA. ************************************************************************ BE A GOOD EARTHLING: PITCH IN ON EARTH DAY! Next Tuesday, April 22, is the day that we have chosen to celebrate our home planet. We on the Environmental Stewardship Council thought that a whole planet deserved more than just one day. So we decided to turn next week in to Earth Week with celebrations every day! Please join the Environmental Stewardship Council in honoring earth by participating in some of the activities. It should be fun, informative, and good for you and your planet. Monday, April 21, our compost question-and-answer man, Eron Brennan, will be giving a seminar for your (and your garden's) enrichment. FL2, room 1001 from 12:30-1:00. Tuesday, April 22 (EARTH DAY), we will be hosting a repeat of last year's fabulously successful Open Space clean up. Bring gloves and a rake if you have one and be prepared for immediate gratification! Check in by the bike path across from FL anytime between 11:00 and 2:00. When you've finished your trash thing, learn about xeriscaping from a pro. Rich Johnson will be in front of the Foothills Lab at noon to show and tell about his handiwork with water-wise landscaping. Won't it be fun to spend a few minutes outdoors and learn a little about our beautiful surroundings? Wednesday, April 23, there will be an NCAR citizen's litter clean up - location to be determined. Maybe you discovered how much you enjoy litter clean up on Tuesday, or maybe you missed it, either way, come on out and help tidy up the world. This cleanup will begin at 11:00, the meeting place will be announced. Thursday, April 24, our friends from Eco-Cycle will be here with some good news about the impact that NCAR's recycling efforts have had on our environment. We'll also hear how we can move to the next plateau, close the loop, and compound the impact we're having by "buying recycled." Bring your lunch to the Mesa Lab classroom (across from cafeteria tray return) at 12:00 and learn more! Friday, April 25, Jeffco takes a stand against litter! Grab a bunch of co-workers and car pool on out to Jeffco for the first annual Jeffco litter cleanup. Starting at 11:00 and going till the litter runs out. And here's something EVERYONE can do right from their desks! Make this Friday "Waste-free Friday." Before you throw anything in a trash can, try and find a better way of dealing with it. Reuse it? Recycle it? Or maybe you can avoid using it in the first place. (Take a coffee mug to the cafeteria instead of using a disposable cup, for instance.) We'll all be glad we did. For more information, contact Gaylynn Potemkin, ext. 1618, potemkin@ucar.edu. ************************************************************************ UCAR POLICIES AND PROCEDURES MANUAL IS ON THE WEB! You can now find the UCAR Policies and Procedures Manual on the World Wide Web! The URL is: http://www.ucar.edu/internal/polpro/manual It is also accessible through the UCAR home page (http://www.ucar.edu) by clicking on "index" or "in-house-only" and through the Human Resources home page at: http://www.fin.ucar.edu/hr/index.html. Access is restricted to UCAR employees only. Please note that you will not be able to use the search feature yet. It will be installed soon, and you will be notified as soon as it is working. In conjunction with installation of the web version of the manual, only limited distributions of hard-copy versions of new and revised policies will be made in the future in order to save time, money, and trees. Hard-copy versions of the manual will be kept in division and program offices, in the ML, FL, and Jeffco libraries, and in a few other locations being identified by divisions and programs in order to facilitate staff access. Once all locations have been designated, an announcement will be made of all the places you can find the hard-copy versions. Unused policy manual binders may be recycled by mailing them to Valerie Friesen in Suite 390 at UN. Please recycle the entire contents of the manuals before sending them. Comments and suggestions are welcome; please forward them to Valerie Friesen, X8626, or vfriesen@ucar.edu. ************************************************************************ NEW BOOKS FOR THE UPCOMING WEEK This is a sampling of the new books available at the NCAR library. These books and others will be on display at the Foothills library for the upcoming week. For a complete list of new titles at both the Foothills and Mesa locations please check the Information Desk on the library's on-line catalog (NOLA). GEOname, database of geographic names in the Latin alphabet form of the native language / GDE Systems, Inc. G103.5 .G46 1995 / location: ML-REF Just Java / P. Vander Linden QA76.73 .J38 V36 1996 / location: FL Byte guide to optimizing Windows 95 / L. Bailes QA76.76 .O63 B344 1996 / location: FL Computer simulations with Mathematica / R. J. Gaylord QA76.9 .C65 G39 1995 / location: ML Smoothing methods in statistics / J. S. Simonoff QA278 .S526 1996 / location: ML Tools for statistical inference / M. A. Tanner QA279.5 .T36 1996 / location: ML Total solar eclipse of 1998 February 26 / F. Espenak QB544.94 .E8634 1996 / location: FL Research trends in fluid dynamics / J. L. Lumley QC145.2 .R48 1996 / location: FL Global change and Mediterranean-type ecosystems / J. M. Moreno QH541.5 .M44 G58 1995 / location: ML The Internet graphics toolkit / S. Rimmer T385 .R5525 1996 / location: FL Greenhouse gas emission inventories / B. V. Braatz TD885.5 .G73 G74 1996 / location: ML Understanding GPS and GPS receivers / Navtech Seminars, Inc. TL798 .N3 U52 1993 / location: ML ************************************************************************ Information on contacting THIS WEEK AT UCAR or UCARLINE is available by accessing: http://www.ucar.edu/thisweek/subscribe.html To find out how to change your subscription options for either of these newsletters, access: http://www.ucar.edu/thisweek/subscribe.html#Using majordomo