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-