5/23/2003

Congratulations to Kristy Alexander who is graduating this year with the first M.S. in Operations Research - Physics

Kristy's name was accidentally omitted from the last newsletter.

Congratulations to Richard Mowat, elected President Elect of Sigma Xi. The gavel was passed at the annual banquet on Monday, May 5th, 2003.

Congratulations to physics students nominated to Phi Beta Kappa:

Congratulations to John Hubisz on the birth of his 5th grand-child (and first grand-daughter!), Nicole Hope Morris.

John Hubisz, "Middle-School Texts Don't Make the Grade" Physics Today, May (2003) pp 50-54.

Jennifer Huening (2003 McCormick Award Recipient) will be a summer intern with Intel in Portland Oregon during this summer. She will be applying her expertise in micro-Raman spectroscopy to help analyze strain in microstructures. In the Fall she will continue her graduate studies at NC State.

Overpayment of Salaries and Benefits on Sponsored Projects: The University has a serious problem with overpayments incurred due to a delay in forwarding employee termination information to the departmental payroll coordinator or personnel representative. When timely notification is not provided, a terminated individual continues to be paid because no action has been entered into the HR system to stop payment. A full-time position in the Payroll department is dedicated solely to the collection and reduction of overpayments. However, in spite of our continuing efforts, the occurrences continue to increase. Overpayments are incurred for a variety of reasons, but by far the largest percentage is caused by late actions. Therefore, we urge you to pass changes in employment status to your departmental payroll coordinator or personnel representative as soon as you are notified.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Phyllis Jennette at 513-3548 or Nancy Crumpler at 515-4369.

What does this mean?

Beginning July 1 the NC State Network Operations Center will block network traffic from the internet (off campus) to the ports on your computer that handle Microsoft File and Printer sharing (IP and UDP ports 135-139). This is good news because most of the hacker attempts are on the Microsoft File and Printer Sharing ports. Blocking the ports from the outside world will eliminate unwanted network traffic and increase our network security.

The Bad News: Some people may have enjoyed the ability to remotely share files between office and home computers. To get around the problem of blocking our legitimate use of Microsoft File and Print Sharing, the Network Operations Center is setting up Virtual Private Network (VPN)access. VPN will allow you to access the blocked campus network ports after installing software on your home computer and logging into the VPN with your Unity Username and Password.

The software and more information on NC State VPN service can be found at: www.ncstate.net/vpn

The software is available for Microsoft Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Macintosh, Linux, and Solaris. Steve Jenkins is currently testing the VPN on different platforms and can be reached at 515-8707 for tips and tricks on how to install the software and make it work.

The Good News: On campus Microsoft File and Printer Sharing will not be affected. Currently shared hard drives and printers will work in buildings, between buildings, and between main campus and centennial campus. Microsoft File and print sharing initiated from on campus computers should still be able to connect to computers off campus.

Please let Steve Jenkins (A href="mailto:Steve_Jenkins@ncsu.edu">Steve_Jenkins@ncsu.edu) know if your computers will need any special attention to make sure that our network is not adversely affected by the change.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are tracking reports of outbreaks of an emerging newly identified syndrome called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). University officials have been monitoring the situation and will stay in contact with public health organizations and report back to the University community as necessary.

You can learn more about SARS at the web sites of both the CDC ( www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars ) and WHO ( www.who.int .) These web sites are updated daily as new information is developed about SARS and affected areas.

NC State Student Health Services also is maintaining information about SARS at: www.fis.ncsu.edu/health/SARS.html .

The website for the US Department of State ( travel.state.gov ) contains current and important news related to travel warnings for US citizens traveling abroad as well as embassy information for non-immigrants from affected countries.

Spring 2003 Student Evaluation of Teaching summary has been distributed to all teaching faculty, and is available on-line at: www.physics.ncsu.edu/department/evalSpring2003.gif

The NC STATE Physics Newsletter will be published on the following dates during the summer: