Unidata is happy to announce the Community Equipment Award recipients for 2011. Eight institutions received funding this year:

• New Mexico State University
• Pennsylvania State University
• Rutgers University
• San Jose State University
• Texas A&M University
• University of Colorado / CIRES
• University of Salento & CMCC, Italy
• University of South Florida

The THREDDS Data Server version 4.2.7 is available. This version is recommended for all users, including production servers. The latest update can be downloaded at https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/TDS.html.

Version 4.2.7 includes the following changes:

• Fix for NCSS point requests on curvilinear grids
• Fix to ToolsUI and IDV webstart viewers on dataset pages

 For a complete list of changes, see the Change Log.

Senior undergraduate Matt Corbi prepares a convective outlook using NMAP2

In the spring of 2010, the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences (DAES) at the University at Albany, State University of New York received funds from Unidata's annual Community Equipment Awards program to renovate the department's electronic map room. As a result, during the summer of 2010 our department purchased eight Dell Optiplex 780 desktop computers with dual-quad core CPUs (thus eight CPUs are available per unit) and eight GB of RAM.  The machines were received too late in the summer to be ready for the fall semester, but were in place for the start of the second semester in January, 2011. Seven of the systems sit in the DAES electronic maproom, while the eighth resides in the Principal Investigator's office, for use as a development machine as well as an emergency hot spare.

The Unidata Program Center is hiring! We are looking for a system administrator to join our team in creating and maintaining software and data services to support the geosciences.

As part of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, CO, Unidata offers competitive salaries and great benefits. UCAR was selected as one of the Best Companies to Work for in Colorado. Simply put, Unidata is a great place to work. Unidata's team environment provides high levels of autonomy and responsibility with great opportunity to excel individually and contribute to the team's success.

Unidata maintains a heterogeneous development environment that includes Linux, Windows, OS X, Solaris, AIX, and HPUX systems, among others. We provide access to high availability real-time data via servers and services from multiple locations in the U.S. Our next system administrator will be responsible for the installation, maintenance, and upgrade of computer and network hardware and software, and will work to ensure consistent and reliable operation of Unidata's computing environment, enhance system peformance and security, and educate other staff on system and computer usage where necessary.

For a detailed job description see the official posting: http://tinyurl.com/Unidata-SysadminII-11110

In the month of April NCEP Central Operations (NCO) delivered an updated version of the AWIPS II National Center Perspective (NCP) and an initial version of NSHARP to both the NWS Office of Science and Technology and Raytheon Technical Services, reports NCO Chief of Systems Integration Michelle Mainelli.

"The NCP will be baselined in the primary AWIPS II software in May and released to test sites across the NWS by late May or early June," says Mainelli. "This version of the software will be the first release to include the full NAWIPS migrated code and functionality."