"Werkie" would have loved it--an exquisitely serene, gothic-style room dedicated in his honor to the life of the mind, a life he knew more than most. In February, the university opened the doors to the Humanities Reading Room in Dodd Hall as a tribute to the late William Werkmeister, professor emeritus of philosophy.

The 2,450-square-foot room, built in 1923 as the main library of Florida State College for Women, now is the preeminent setting for study and presentations in humanities scholarship on campus. Most recently, the room housed the Pepper Library, but during the 1970s, the space was headquarters for WFSU-TV.

The catalyst for the renovation was a $100,000 gift by Lucyle Werkmeister, wife of the late philosopher. The donation is in addition to Mrs. Werkmeister's 1994 bequest of an endowed chair in humanities. With matching state funds, the total value of the bequest is $2.7 million.

Known to friends, students and scholars worldwide as "Werkie," Prof. Werkmeister joined FSU's philosophy department in 1966 at age 65 after a distinguished career at the universities of Nebraska and Southern California. A prolific scholar, Werkmeister was particularly noted for his writings on the work of Immanuel Kant.

Lucyle Werkmeister, herself a scholar specializing in the works of Samuel Coleridge, shared her husband's devotion to ethics and social and political theory. Her endowment creates the Chair in Value Theory within the philosophy department.

"My husband and I agreed with Coleridge who said that...when value standards from the arts, churches and academia are lacking, society decays," she said. "It seemed to us that this is what has happened today, not only to the United States, but to the whole civilized and uncivilized world. We thought we could perhaps do something at the universities where the humanities can hardly exist without considering values."

Link-Up In Weather Science

The forecast for FSU's meteorology department is calling for a major expansion by 1999. That's when a new partnership between the federal National Weather Service and FSU is predicted to be signed in bricks-and-mortar, says Dr. Peter Ray, chair of meteorology.

If all goes as scheduled, in June of next year the university will break ground on a new addition to FSU's aging Love Building, headquarters for the university's meteorology program since 1961. The new quarters, to be finished within two years, will signal a closer link between theory and applications of advanced meteorological training and research at Florida State, Ray said.

As proposed, the facility will be a four-floor complex that will house the Tallahassee regional office for the NWS as well as the Institute for Atmospheric Studies, an FSU research center. The tab for this $4.5 million venture is being split between between FSU and the weather service, Ray said. Two of the four floors will be used to provide parking for weather service employees and to replace university parking lost to the construction. One floor will be devoted to weather service offices, which will transfer from their current space at the Tallahassee Regional Airport, while the remaining floor will be used for IAS offices, research labs, and classrooms, says Ray. An optional fifth floor for specific educational programs could be added if funding can be found for it.

The major impetus for this project started with a nationwide modernization program currently being implemented by the NWS, says Paul Duval, director of the Tallahassee NWS office. As part of the plan, the weather service has set up a number of regional offices at universities around the nation in hopes of bridging the gap between the discovery and application of new knowledge. Although his office already has a close relationship with FSU's meteorology department, Duval (an FSU alum) is looking forward to developing it further.

"We hope to work closely with faculty and graduate students," he said. "We'll use undergraduate students at times as volunteers to do certain jobs, and we'll employ them in temporary summer jobs, for example."

One benefit is that students will get to know the weather service and decide if that's a career path they'd like to pursue, said Ray. Students will be able to work directly with the service on research projects and will have direct access to the agency's data.

Ray said the IAS is dedicated to a comprehensive, multidisciplinary study of all weather and weather-related issues affecting the state of Florida as well as weather worldwide. It will emphasize not only the science but also the very human aspects of weather that need to be studied, such as the economic implications of less-than-reliable forecasts.

Ultimately, Ray sees the FSU/NWS collaboration as an excellent way ". . . to serve the people who pay our bills -- the public, and serve the interests of the students. All of our research is geared towards that end."

Scintillating News

Plastics are finding more uses thanks to FSU chemist Dr. Joseph Schlenoff, who is celebrating his second patent for a new type of scintillating plastic that can be used to detect radiation. Scintillators are substances that give off light, or fluoresce, when exposed to radiation and are used in radiation detectors for biochemistry and physics experiments. While biochemists generally use scintillators in liquid form, many high-energy physicists use plastic scintillators.

Schlenoff was awarded his first patent in 1993 for inventing a new type of polymer, or plastic molecule, which he developed as a result of a collaboration with high-energy physicists on campus. This latest patent was awarded last fall.

Traditionally, most scintillating polymers are produced by mixing the fluorescing dye into the liquid polymer. When the liquid mixture hardens into a solid, the dye molecules are imbedded in the plastic. Unfortunately, putting too much dye in the mixture in an attempt to increase its sensitivity to radiation, makes the material brittle or ends up coating the surface because the dye molecules migrate to the surface.

To produce a plastic scintillator that would be more sensitive, without the drawbacks, Schlenoff and his group developed a polymer in which the dye molecule is part of the plastic molecule--a poly-dye. The process delivers a 10- to 20 percent improvement in sensitivity over other materials. Alas, since funding and interest for the poly-dye came from the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) project, the primary application for it died when Congress cut funding for the SSC in 1994.

Schlenoff's second patent was for creating a plastic scintillator with a charged surface. This type of scintillator will attract molecules with the opposite charge, which then attach to the surface. If the molecules are radioactive, they will cause the dye imbedded in the plastic to fluoresce.

This would allow scientists to test radioactive solutions directly rather than having to remove a sample for testing. In its most basic use, it could prove to be a scintillating plastic that could be useful to biochemists. Schlenoff said it would also be safer and easier to dispose of than the liquids they use since the plastics won't corrode and leach out of containers.

Schlenoff says he's discussing potential applications with a major manufacturer of scintillators. One possibility they're exploring is using this technology for biological testing. A plastic surface imbedded with antibodies or antigens, rather than just a positive or negative charge, would attract the complementary molecules. If those molecules are labeled with radioactive isotopes, as is common in bioassays, then the plastic would scintillate, which could eventually provide fast, easy, and accurate laboratory testing for a variety of diseases and medical conditions, he says.

Sound Investment

Florida State's film school (long title: The School of Motion Picture, Television & Recording Arts) now has the means to make the "recording arts" part of its mission a resounding reality. Last December, the school acquired a 14,400-square-foot recording studio that, by all accounts, rivals any in the country.

Located in Gadsden County, nine miles west of Tallahassee, the facility was built in 1989 as a state-of-the-art commercial recording center under the name Pegasus Studios. Butch Trucks, former drummer of the rock band The Allman Brothers, was a principle investor in the project which sought contracts for recording commercial music. Not enough professional work was contracted to keep the facility operational, said Film School Dean Ray Fielding, so FSU negotiated with the building's owners for extensive use of the facility.

Designed by the architectural firm of Clemons and Rutherford, the accoustically isolated main recording stage, together with attached smaller stages used for percussion, soloists and choral groups, occupies more than 3,000 square feet, larger than many professional recording stages in Los Angeles, Nashville and New York, Fielding said.

Since most of the film school's thesis films, shot by graduating seniors each year, use music scores composed and performed by graduate students from FSU's School of Music, the new facility will now be used for such scoring, he said. The music school also plans to use the studios for recording performances of students and faculty, and radio drama productions by the School of Theatre also are expected to take advantage of the services available there as well.

Fielding said the facility will complement the film school's brand new film production studios housed within the University Center that now surrounds Doak Campbell Stadium. The school also has plans for the facility's climate-controlled film vault. The space will soon be home to more than one million feet of 35mm feature film donated to the film school by Los Angeles benefactor Frank Howard of Paramount Studios.

Sitting on two-and-a-half acres itself, the facility adjoins a 20-acre parcel of land which FSU also hopes to acquire for use as the film school's back lot, a staging area for film production, and further expansion, Fielding said.

This spring, the first FSU recordings at the site were made under the direction of Richard Portman, Hollywood's Academy Award-winning sound director, now serving a one-year teaching appointment at the film school. Portman won an Oscar for his sound work on The Deer Hunter in 1978 and has been nominated 11 other times.

Handicapping Hurricanes

As most Floridians have learn-ed, once they swirl into life, hurricanes can behave quite predictably, thanks to advances in severe-storm meteorology. But predicting whether they happen at all is a much trickier game, which scientists can't resist playing.

One weather researcher who has gained extraordinary attention over his annual hurricane predictions is Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, who has been making such forecasts since 1984. Last year Gray accurately predicted an above average number of Atlantic storms for the 1995 season which saw a near record number of 11 hurricanes and five intense hurricanes.

Since Colorado has never even seen a hurricane, it seems a shame that a state like Florida doesn't have a hurricane prognosticator of its own.

Well, now it does. Meteorologist Dr. James Elsner, who actually made his first forecast in 1993, says his results have been comparable to Gray's. Using a different theoretical model, Elsner believes that his forecasting method is a refinement to Gray's and could prove to be more reliable in the long-term.

Like Gray's model, Elsner's can project how many hurricanes (winds greater than 74 mph) and how many intense hurricanes (winds greater than 100 mph) to expect in a season. The major difference is that Elsner's model can assign probabilities to his expectations.

Although he predicted an above average seven hurricanes and two intense hurricanes for 1995, his model also said that there was a 19.4 percent chance of having five or more intense hurricanes (there were five) while the chance of having zero hurricanes was only 4.7 percent.

Elsner's computer model also is based on findings from his own research, notably that hurricanes come in two distinct kinds. The most common hurricanes, roughly six out of every 10, are "tropical only," he says. They originate off the coast of Africa and can be predicted by the levels of West African rainfall and the presence of El Nino in the Pacific. All others are "baroclinically influenced," which means they begin with an invasion of cool air from the north that stirs up tropical air and sets them into motion. Since these storms have different causes, they have a different set of predictors from "tropical only" hurricanes and need to be predicted separately, Elsner says.

Predictably, since his first report was published in 1993, Elsner has been hearing from a lot of insurance companies.

"Any time you can give (insurers) information about what you think's going to happen in the future, they can use that information to their advantage." Insurance companies now call him regularly for forecasts, and some companies have taken an interest in funding his research.

So what forecast has Elsner made for the 1996 hurricane season? Overall, it should prove to be a much quieter year than 1995, he said. In round numbers, his December 1995 report predicts six hurricanes and one intense hurricane for 1996.

Elsner's model also projects that the probability of having zero intense hurricanes is much higher than it was in 1995, 25.9 percent compared to only 4.7 percent, while the probability of having more than five intense hurricanes is only 1.2 percent.

Elsner credits FSU economist Dr. C.P. Schmertmann with help in developing his prediction model.