Cornell's Duffield Hall Scores High Marks in Vibration and Acoustic Test
It's not often that members of a facility design team have the opportunity to return to a finished building and assess their work, but vibration and acoustics expert Hal Amick did just that recently when he revisited the first nanotechnology project on which he consulted, Cornell University's Duffield Hall.

In the course of his work as a vibration and acoustics consultant, Hal Amick, vice president of Colin Gordon & Associates in San Bruno, Calif., has assembled a photo album illustrating right and wrong approaches to vibration control.

California Nanosystems Institute Confronts Multi-Use Design Challenges
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is developing a state-of-the-art small-animal imaging suite as part of the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI), a 188,000-sf cross-disciplinary nanotech research facility currently under construction on the UCLA campus. The suite will provide researchers with a powerful set of imaging tools in one centralized location, but determining that location raises a new set of challenges for facility planners. While placing the suite inside the animal containment barrier makes it easier to conduct research without compromising test animals, it limits access by the rest of the research community, a significant issue given the interdisciplinary focus of CNSI and the cost and size of the imaging equipment.

Compact Building Integrates Diverse Scientific Disciplines
Harvard University is building its first laboratory dedicated to the interdisciplinary pursuit of nanoscience research. The $100-million Laboratory for Integrated Sciences and Engineering (LISE) contains 135,000 sf, two-thirds of it underground. It is designed and situated to bring together diverse scientific disciplines and encourage scientists to rethink their research, acting as an incubator for what could be entirely novel scientific pursuits.