Title:  New Ph.D.s See Labor Market Ups and Downs
Date:   October 10, 1997




                                                October 10, 1997

For more information on these science news and feature story
tips, please contact the public information officer at the end of
each item at (703) 306-1070.  Editor: Bill Noxon

            NEW PH.D.s SEE LABOR MARKET UPS AND DOWNS

   In several science and engineering (S&E) fields, recent Ph.D.
recipients have faced unemployment rates unusually high among
these highly skilled groups, according to a new National Science
Foundation (NSF) Issue Brief.
   The issue brief notes that the unemployment rate in 1995 for
recent Ph.D.s (one to three years since graduation), was 4.3
percent in chemical engineering; 4.0 percent for mathematical
sciences; 3.2 percent for sociology/anthropology; and 2.9 percent
for physics.
   Overall, however, only 1.9 percent of recent Ph.D.s were
unemployed as of April 1995 - low compared to the 5.7 percent
unemployment rate for all U.S. workers, and only a little above
the 1.5 percent rate for all S&E Ph.D.s.
   Another labor market indicator shows that the percent of
recent Ph.D.s working involuntarily outside of their fields
because a full-time job in their field was not available was only
4.3 percent.  Tracking recent Ph.D.s between 1993 and 1995, about
half of those individuals who were unemployed or involuntarily
working outside their field in 1993 found jobs in their field by
1995.
   See the issue brief at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/pubdata.htm
[George Chartier]

             STUDY OF LAKE MICHIGAN MUD PLUME BEGINS

   A team of scientists funded in part by the National Science
Foundation (NSF) has begun to deploy instruments in a five-year
study of a massive plume of muddy water, some 12 miles wide and
200 miles long.  The plume appears each year along the southern
end of Lake Michigan, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Grand Haven,
Michigan.
   Although the plume only lasts for about one month, it's
suspected to have a profound impact on the ecology of Lake
Michigan, and may be the major mechanism for resuspending and
transporting both nutrients and contaminants in the lake.
Clearly visible in satellite imagery, the plume is believed to
consist of more than a million tons of very fine clay particles
and sediments eroded from the western shore of Lake Michigan in
late winter and early spring.  Scientists think the eroded bluff
material is first deposited temporarily along the coastline, then
resuspended in the water column during winter storms.
  To begin the Episodic Events-Great Lakes Experiment (EEGLE),
scientists have begun deploying equipment that will sample and
measure sediments in waters at strategic locations up to 12 miles
out from Muskegon and St. Joseph, Michigan, and Milwaukee,
Wisconsin.  The 45 scientists involved in EEGLE expect to develop
the most sophisticated research models ever created for the Great
Lakes, models that should provide a realistic assessment of how
nutrients and contaminants in the sediments continue to recycle
within the lake, and control its ecosystem.
   EEGLE is also funded in part by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  [Cheryl Dybas]

               THE "TRUE HORROR" OF THE HIMALAYAS

   "Here lies the true horror of the Himalayas," wrote John Keay
in The Gilgit Game.  Keay was referring to Nanga Parbat, Urdu for
Naked Mountain, a 26,000-foot-high peak on the northernmost edge
of the western Himalayas.  The mountain, named for a southern
face so steep it holds no snow, exhibits the world's greatest
continental relief -- it's a long fall down.
   Nanga Parbat is an anomalous north-south extension into Asia
of a part of earth's crust that predominantly lies in India.
Recently scientists Peter Zeitler and Anne Meltzer of Lehigh
University in Pennsylvania braved an Indian Jones-like obstacle
course of landslides, rockfalls, high waters, low-elevation snows
and active mud flows, to conduct seismic studies on Naked
Mountain.  Zeitler's and Meltzer's work is funded by NSF's
continental dynamics program.
   The scientists' principal goal was to characterize the crustal
structure at Nanga Parbat.  They ultimately hope to infer the
thermal structure of the earth beneath this massif, or
mountainous mass.
   The scientists deployed seismic instruments up and down the
glacial valleys of Nanga Parbat by any means they could find:
airplane, truck, jeep, porter's back and donkey.  They sometimes
left local shepherds to keep watch over flocks of geologic
instruments, as well as sheep.
   Although their study is still a work-in-progress, Zeitler and
Meltzer say that this project led to one of the densest
deployments of seismometers in an active mountain belt.  Their
data set has the potential, they believe, to allow them to look
in detail at fault-slip behavior along a major crustal fault as
well as to identify the presence of partial melt zones in the
crust beneath Nanga Parbat.  [Cheryl Dybas]

                              -NSF-