News Briefs: April 25, 2008
Lab participates in local Earth Day event
Lab employees took part last week in the Earth Day Fair, sponsored by the City of Livermore Beautification Committee & Water Resources Division and the Livermore Area Recreation & Park District at the Robert Livermore Community Center.
Jennifer Doman, team leader of the Environmental Protection Department’s (EPD) Pollution Prevention team, and Lab volunteers were on hand to greet some 500 visitors to the fair, providing information, pamphlets, brochures and giveaways relating to recycling and environmental programs at LLNL.
"It was a wonderful opportunity for the Lab to participate in this community outreach event and let people know what LLNL is doing in environmental stewardship," Doman said.
In addition to Doman, volunteers from EPD included: Jennifer Nelson-Childs, Craig Fish, Gene Kumamoto, Henry Jones and Bruce Campbell. Karen Folks, Thom Kato and Brett Clark also helped support the event by providing posters and other resources.
To see how the Lab celebrated Earth Day in the 1980s, see Way Back When.
USCAR tours the Lab
The United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR) toured the Laboratory Wednesday and received briefings on energy-related issues.
Visitors included representatives from Chrysler, LLC, Ford Motor Company, General Motors and the Department of Energy.
The group heard briefings on global security, hydrogen production via underground coal gasification, water in hydrogen production, carbon tracing, internal combustion engines, combustion chemistry models of conventional and alternative fuels, NOx sensor development for monitoring diesel emissions, the DOE’s effort to reduce truck aerodynamic drag, high fidelity modeling of engine, combustion and cryogenic pressure vessels.
The group also toured the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS), the aberration-corrected Transmission Electron Microscope facility, the Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (NanoSIMS) facility, the Terascale Simulation Facility and got to ride in the Lab’s hydrogen-powered Toyota Prius.
USCAR is an umbrella organization for collaborative research among Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation and was founded in 1992. Its goal is to further strengthen the technology base of the U.S. auto industry through cooperative research and development.
Its main focus is to: create, support and direct U.S. cooperative research and development to advance automotive technologies; be responsive to the needs of our environment and society and include the appropriate public and private stakeholders.
These goals are often accomplished through partnerships with various stakeholders, including the federal government, educational institutions and suppliers.
The Canada geese are back and nesting at the Livermore Site. If you're lucky, you may see the fuzzy little goslings (please keep a respectable distance) trailing their parents. However, male geese may become aggressive in protecting their nest and goslings, from the nest building stage until the goslings grow their flight feathers (March until about June or July).
Aggressive geese can be intimidating and a potential safety issue for LLNL staff. However, a human-goose conflict can usually be easily resolved by:
- Not approaching the geese, goslings or their nest, especially if the geese appear aggressive. Keep at a safe distance from geese, goslings and known nesting areas.
- If you encounter an aggressive goose, maintain direct eye contact, do not show fear or hostility, and slowly back away. If the goose flies toward you, then duck or move away at a 90-degree angle to the direction of flight, while still facing the goose.
- Please do not feed the geese. Feeding the geese could lead to an increase in aggressive behavior as well as potentially causing poor nutrition, unnatural behavior, overcrowding and spread of disease.
- Call 4-WILD if you have any concerns or questions.
This interesting species is protected (including adults, nests and eggs) from harm under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Take time to learn about the Canada geese by picking up a copy of an educational brochure about their natural history and occurrence at LLNL; for a brochure(s), contact coty1 [at] llnl.gov ( Jessie Coty ) . Also, during the nesting season, signs and informational brochures may be posted near known nesting areas alerting LLNL personnel of the presence of the geese.
