bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A seismic gap past and future
Authors: Maggs William Ward 
Published: October 2006

A new analysis of data from a seismically quiet section of the Alaska‐Aleutian arc called the Shumagin gap suggests that a large earthquake may be likely to occur there in the next 20 years.The Aleutian archipelago trails off the end of the Alaska Peninsula like the dots of an ellipsis and lies above one of the most seismically active subduction zones in the world. Some of the largest earthquakes ever recorded have occurred along the arc, which extends from near Kamchatka in the Soviet Union to mainland Alaska and coastal British Columbia (Canada). Earthquakes with magnitudes as large as 9.2 and their aftershocks have caused ruptures along most of the length of t h e Aleutians in the last half‐century. However, some segments of the arc, including areas around Komandorski Island in the Soviet Union, Unalaska Island, and the Shumagin Islands south of the Alaska Peninsula (see figure) show historical evidence of great (Ms⩾7.75) quakes in the past but have not ruptured completely during the 20th century. These zones are called seismic gaps and have been proposed as likely sites of future great earthquakes.
Landsat 6 contract signed
Authors: Maggs William Ward 
Published: October 2006

A new agreement provides $220 million for development and construction of the Landsat 6 remote sensing satellite and its ground systems. The contract, signed on March 31, 1988, by the Department of Commerce (DOC) and the Earth Observation Satellite (EOSAT) Company of Lanham, Md., came just days after approval of DOC's Landsat commercialization plan by subcommittees of the House and Senate appropriations committees.The Landsat 6 spacecraft is due to be launched into orbit on a Titan II rocket in June 1991 from Vandenburg Air Force Base, Calif. The satellite will carry an Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) sensor, an instrument sensitive to electromagnetic radiation in seven ranges or bands of wavelengths. The satellite's payload will also include the Sea Wide Field Sensor (Sea‐WiFS), designed to provide information on sea surface temperature and ocean color. The sensor is being developed in a cooperative effort by EOSAT and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A less certain passenger is a proposed 5‐m resolution, three‐band sensor sensitive to visible light. EOSAT is trying to find both private financing for the device and potential buyers of the high‐resolution imagery that it could produce. The company has been actively courting U.S. television networks, which have in the past used imagery from the European Système Probatoire d'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) satellite for news coverage.
Paleomagnetic reunion
Authors: McElhinny Mike 
Published: October 2006

In August 1987, in Vancouver, Canada, almost all of those who worked in the paleomagnetic group at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now the University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe) were by chance attending the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics meeting. For 8 years (1958–1966) the scientists in this photograph, taken in Vancouver, formed one of the world's most productive research groups. The paleomagnetic data from central Africa acquired by the group still remain the cornerstone of data for the continent.The g roup was started by Ian Gough in 1958. In 1960, h e became one of the few foreign grantees of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Mike McElhinny, who took over the group following Gough's departure in 1963, also received an NSF grant. The group broke up in 1966 because of political events in Rhodesia. Since 1968, work has been kept going in that region by Dai Jones.
PIs rate NSF proposal process
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

The proposal evaluation process at the National Science Foundation (NSF) got a mixed review from the scientists that apply to the agency for funds, according to the results o f a new survey.In 1986, NSF surveyed all o f the more than 14,000 scientists and engineers that had proposals awarded o r declined in 1985. More than 9500 returned the questionnaire, and their responses and comments form a statistical portrait of the people that use the proposal evaluation system—both successfully and unsuccessfully—and their attitudes toward it.
Radon levels can be predicted
Authors: Wainger Lisa A. 
Published: October 2006

Scientists doing a yearlong study of radon levels in houses have identified several major factors that affect concentrations and have developed a method for predicting indoor radon levels before a house is built. Douglas Mose and George Mushrush (George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.) studied 1500 homes in northern Virginia and central Maryland near Washington, D.C.Radon is a radioactive decay product of uranium that occurs in many rock types. The gas can accumulate in buildings and pose a serious health hazard. Results from the Washington‐area study show that ∼35% of the houses had average yearly radon concentrations above 4 pico‐Curies per liter (pCi/L), the level at which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggests that a homeowner should take steps to reduce radon concentrations. At a level of 4–10 pCi/L an estimated 13–120 lung cancer deaths would be expected for every 1000 people exposed. Such a risk is comparable to having 200 chest X rays per year, according to EPA statistics.
The jubilee of plate tectonics
Authors: Glen William , Frankel Henry 
Published: October 2006

What should one expect at a birthday gathering for an idea that suffered disdain from birth, but was later transformed overnight into the ruling global theory of the Earth sciences? Tom Hilde and Richard Carlson (Texas A&M University, College Station, Tex.), under the auspices of the Texas A&M Geodynamics Research Institute, with the cooperation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) , the Inter‐Union Commission on the Lithosphere, and the U.S. Geodynamics Committee, convened an unprecedented gathering of the makers of Earth science's modern revolution and a large number of their foremost disciples at Texas A&M April 22– 24 , 1987.Those who missed the show will have to read for weeks to learn of the panoply of profound new developments across the broad front of research bearing on plate tectonics, but those with an interest in their own intellectual genealogy will not be able to recapture the sense of historic moment that pervaded Rudder Tower Conference Center as many of the old revolutionaries opened windows on the past. Of the 20 key participants or originators who were invited to speak, all but four sent abstracts. Pleased and surprised by this strong response, the convenors found themselves in the rather difficult position of having to limit the number of talks by nonoriginators to 20. The unique assembly also provided the first opportunity to video interviews with more than a dozen of the originators.
Solicited endorsements
Authors: Baker D.N. 
Published: October 2006

Writing endorsements of university promotions is getting way out of hand. I have been getting quite specific and demanding requests for opinions of individuals. The following letter is a recent instance of the kind of response I was forced to give:Dear Prof. Smith: Thank you for your letter of 25 January asking my opinion of Assoc. Research Scientist M. King Doe. I would, of course, be happy to provide a frank assessment of Dr. Doe's capabilities since I have known him for over six weeks — ever since we were trapped together in the Cathedral Hills Hotel elevator in December.
CGU takes off
Authors: Vaníĉek Petr 
Published: October 2006

Any frequent reader of Eos has probably noticed fairly regular reports from annual meetings of a mysterious organization called the “Canadian Geophysical Union” (CGU). Yet even the most ardent observer of the Canadian scene may have been somewhat puzzled about whether CGU is striving to project the proverbial Canadian “low profile” or whether this organization simply hibernates during the long Canadian winters.The explanation for CGU's relative obscurity is more prosaic. The organization, which was conceived some 15 years ago, was born with two umbilical cords. These tied it to its two “mother societies”: the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) and the Geological Association of Canada (GAC). These maternal ties were never cut, so CGU was never forced to stand on its own feet and to fend for itself. This act of maturity has now been completed—with some friendly help from the two parents—and CGU has become an independent society.
Storms and the solar cycle
Authors: Maggs William Ward 
Published: October 2006

Last fall, meteorologists Karin Labitzke and Harry van Loon announced a discovery sought by scientists for many years—a linkbetween the 11‐year sunspot cycle and conditions in Earth's stratosphere. Now a new study extends that correlation to day‐to‐day changes in weather at the planet's surface.Previous attempts to relate temperatures and pressures at different levels of the atmosphere to the periodically varying flux of radiation from the Sun have been unsuccessful. But Labitzke (Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany) and van Loon (National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.) found a criterion on which to sort data that revealed strong correlations: the direction of stratospheric winds in the tropics. The directions of the winds change from east to west every other year or so, and this quasi‐biennial oscillation (QBO) has been hypothetically related to sunspot cycles. Labitzke and van Loon found that temperatures and pressures during the west phase of the QBO varied with the solar cycle. At a solar maximum, for instance, stratospheric temperature near the North Pole is high, while at a solar maximum it is low. The same positive correlation exists between solar cycle and sea level pressure over North America.
Graedel named to AIP Board
Authors: Maggs William Ward 
Published: October 2006

Thomas E. Graedel, an atmospheric scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, N.J.), has been made an AGU representative to the Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics (AIP). The board oversees the operations of AIP, a nonprofit umbrella organization for 10 member societies, including AGU. Other AGU members currently on the governing board include Orson Anderson, a geophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles; AGU General Secretary Peter M. Bell of the Norton Company, Worcester, Mass.; AGU Executive Director A. F. Spilhaus, Jr.; and Martin Walt, a geophysicist with the Lockheed Corporation in Palo Alto, Calif.All AGU members receive the benefits of membership in AIP, including the monthly magazine Physics Today. Other AIP services available to AGU members include access to an employment service, AIP's electronic network Pi‐NET, and an insurance program. AGU members can also subscribe to journals published by the American Physical Society, another AIP member society, at discounted rates.—WWM
Earthquake Source Mechanics
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

The past 2 decades have seen substantial progress in our understanding of the nature of the earthquake faulting process, but increasingly, the subject has become an interdisciplinary one. Thus, although the observation of radiated seismic waves remains the primary tool for studying earthquakes (and has been increasingly focused on extracting the physical processes occurring in the “source”), geological studies have also begun to play a more important role in understanding the faulting process. Additionally, defining the physical underpinning for these phenomena has come to be an important subject in experimental and theoretical rock mechanics.In recognition of this, a Maurice Ewing Symposium was held at Arden House, Harriman, N.Y. (the former home of the great American statesman Averill Harriman), May 20–23, 1985. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together the international community of experimentalists, theoreticians, and observationalists who are engaged in the study of various aspects of earthquake source mechanics. The conference was attended by more than 60 scientists from nine countries (France, Italy, Japan, Poland, China, the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and the Federal Republic of Germany).
Coping with all the Earth science data
Authors: Kahn Ralph 
Published: October 2006

Even today, the volume of data collected by remote sensing instruments challenges the processing and interpretation capabilities of the Earth science community. By the mid‐1990s an additional terabit (1012 bits) per day is expected from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observing System (EOS) spacecraft alone. The Washington, D.C., phone book (white pages) contains only about 1/10,000 this amount (108 bits) of information. To put this another way, if you could read and absorb a quantity of data comparable to two 200‐page books per week, it would take over 5000 years to ingest a single day's data (Moses lived about 3300 years ago!).However, there is a growing appreciation for the interconnected nature of processes shaping the terrestrial environment [e.g., Earth System Science Committee, 1988]. This is driving the need to collect and study such large data sets. A range of time and space scales must be sampled if critical phenomena affecting the surface of Earth are to be captured by the observations. Data from multiple sources, measuring different aspects of the phenomena, must be intercompared. As a result, many of the important new insights that we hope to gain with future Earth‐observing spacecraft can only be achieved if there are data‐handling tools that are adequate for coping with the volume of new information.
OSSA queues space projects
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

For the first time, a new 5‐year blueprint for space science research developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contains an ordered list of proposed projects. The list includes specific plans for modest programs in anticipation of potentially austere budgets.The strategic plan, prepared by the Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA), establishes several categories of mission programs and basic rules for their operation. The strategy places the highest priority on the completion of NASA's existing program of launches from the Space Shuttle and expendable vehicles; the plan also calls for one new start per year for both major missions like the Advanced X Ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) and small missions like the Explorer Program. The OSSA document also expresses strong support for the Space Station, stating that NASA should “move aggressively, but sensibly, to build science instruments for the Space Station.”
Is Mexico part of North America?
Authors: Urrutia‐Fucugauchi Jaime 
Published: October 2006

This question was raised by AGU Foreign Secretary Juan Roederer during an honors banquet at a recent AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Calif. It is an interesting question, hard to answer, or perhaps with too many individual answers.We are not geographically a part of Central America or South America, although we do share language, Indian culture, Spanish heritage, and other characteristics, and these factors do play a role, as do economics and politics. However, geographically, Mexico is part of the North American continent.
Spatial Objective Analysis With Applications in Atmospheric Sciences
Authors: Guiot J. 
Published: October 2006

As the authors themselves remark, little review literature concerning spatial data analysis in atmospheric science has been published in the last 25 years. This book must thus be acknowledged as the only up‐to‐date review available. It should be of interest to meteorologists and climatologists, who are often faced with map analysis, gridpoint analysis, interpolation, spatial correlations, spatial objective analysis, analysis of vector field, or spatial stochastic models.After the first introductory chapter, the authors review, in chapter 2, the nonstatistical objective techniques based on function surfaces fitted to data arrays. These procedures involve least squares adjustment of linear or polynomial surfaces, orthogonal polynomials, Fourier harmonics, or spline surfaces. The methods are very sensitive to observation errors and erroneous model specification. Chapter 3 is concerned with empirical linear interpolation, eventually refined with a successive correction process, with an adequate definition of the weights, or with a careful examination of the frequency responses.
Meteorites and Their Parent Planets
Authors: Goodrich Cyrena Anne 
Published: October 2006

Harry Y. McSween's latest book, Meteorites and Their Parent Planets, is not intended primarily as a textbook or a technical reference for the dedicated researcher in meteoritics. Several up‐to‐date books along these lines already exist (Meteorites: A Petrologic‐Chemical Synthesis, by R. T. Dodd, Cambridge University Press, London, 1981; Meteorites: Their Record of Early Solar System History, by J. T. Wasson, W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, Calif., 1985; Meteorites and the Early Solar System, edited by J. F. Kerridge and M. Matthews, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, in press, 1988). Rather, it is intended as an introduction of the field of meteoritics and the study of the formation and evolution of the Solar System, and it is aimed at a broad spectrum of scientists and nonscientists.McSween has undertaken a difficult task. Many problems in meteoritics require synthesis of information and lines of reasoning from such diverse and highly specialized areas of study as celestial mechanics, astrophysics, cratering dynamics, spectrophotometry, igneous petrology, and isotope geochemistry. Hence these problems are often difficult for the student, or even the advanced researcher, to grasp and are rarely appreciated by the nonscientist. McSween, however, succeeds remarkably well in presenting this complex subject in a way that any curious, intelligent person can understand.
Eastern U.S. crustal structure
Authors: Hatcher Robert D. , Phillips Jeffrey D. , Zietz Isidore 
Published: October 2006

The Fifth Friends of Aeromagnetic Mapping (FOAM) Workshop was convened April 28–29, 1987, at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Center (Reston, Va.) by Isidore Zietz (George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.), Jeff Phillips (USGS, Reston, Va.), and Bob Hatcher (University of Tennessee, Knoxville/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn.). The purpose of this workshop was to discuss the crustal structure of the Appalachian region, including elements onshore covered by Coastal Plain sediments, as well as the continental shelf, slope, and rise offshore. The meeting was structured to maximize discussion. As in earlier FOAM workshops, the emphasis was upon thorough integration of potential field data, with seismic reflection, surface geology, and other data sets.The opening lecture by Hatcher outlined a block structure for the U.S. and Maritime Appalachians based primarily upon potential field data. Possible origins of the Appalachian gravity gradient, as a suture or post‐Paleozoic extensional feature, were mentioned, and it was noted that the Ouachitas have a similar gravity gradient. Hatcher also discussed the Late Paleozoic collisional tectonics of the Appalachians, which produce the huge Blue Ridge‐Piedmont thrust sheet, with 200‐500 km of displacement. The idea that the bend in the central Appalachians resulted from the collision of a promontory of Africa prior to the main collision during the late Paleozoic Alleghanian event was shown to be supported by evidence for large‐scale dextral motion along faults in the Southern Appalachians. Questions remain on the timing of motions and the continuity of deformation.
Transatlantic link
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

(left) European Geophysical Society (EGS) President Rolf Meissner at AGU Headquarters with (center) Executive Director Fred Spilhaus and (right) Foreign Secretary Juan Roederer. Meissner attended the meeting of AGU's Committee on International Participation (CIP) on February 26, 1988. At that meeting, specific ways of fostering close links between AGU and EGS were discussed.A few weeks later, Roederer and AGU staff, working with EGS Secretary‐General Arne Richter at the EGS meeting in Bologna, Italy, March 21–25, planned details of the establishment of an AGU office in Europe. The Copernicus Gesellschaft, a new entity located on the premises of the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Lindau, Federal Republic of Germany, will provide the administrative staff and handle logistics.
The dilemma of the golden age
Authors: Press Frank 
Published: October 2006

These are confused and troubling times for science and the scientific community. Limits on resources have made visible serious differences within our community, differences that may weaken the nation's scientific enterprise if they are not resolved without acrimony.We face the dilemma of living in both the best and worst of times. In all fields of science, the journals and professional meetings are filled with exciting and challenging reports of new discoveries, new ideas, new applications. At the same time, President Reagan's proposed budget for 1989 is the strongest budget in support of science and technology in recent history. Yet that budget is in difficulty with an essentially proscience Congress, and it has divided the scientific community. The United States supports more scientific research than Western Europe and Japan combined, and our system of universities and national and industrial laboratories is the envy of the world. Why then is our community in an unprecedented state of stress and internal dissension? That is the issue I want to confront. That is the issue that we as an academy must confront.
Mining neutrinos
Authors: Maggs William Ward 
Published: October 2006

Ore from a mine nearly a mile deep may hold a record of stellar collapses in our galaxy over millions of years, say two physicists in a new study. The results of their work could place constraints on the rate of supernova formation and the evolution of matter.Neutrinos are a key to many stellar processes, from the life of the Sun to the death of the Sanduleak star in the large Magellanic Cloud, reincarnated last year as Supernova SN 1987A. Most scientists now agree that when a supernova forms, 99% of the energy that held the atoms in the star together is released as neutrinos, virtually massless particles that interact very weakly with matter. In the few seconds after SN 1987A was born, ∼1058 neutrinos passed through Earth. Neutrinos are also continually produced in the Sun by nuclear reactions like electron capture and beta decay; by one estimate, ∼3×1029 solar neutrinos go through Earth each second. In addition, the collapse of stars elsewhere in the galaxy releases neutrinos that eventually reach Earth.