bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Agreement signed for NSF participation in IODP
Authors: Jacobs Judy 
Published: October 2006

The U.S. National Science Foundation on 30 March signed a cooperative agreement with the Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI) in Washington, D.C., to lead U.S. participation in the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).U.S. participation will be accomplished through the U.S. Science Support Program (USSSP), an entity created by NSF specifically to support U.S. scientists' activities in the IODP; the USSSP will be managed directly by JOI.
A code of ethics for referees?
Authors: Sturrock Peter A. 
Published: October 2006

I have read with interest the many letters commenting on the pros and cons of anonymity for referees. While I sympathize with writers who have suffered from referees who are incompetent or uncivil, I also sympathize with those who argue that one would simply exchange one set of problems for another if journals were to require that all referees waive anonymity.Perhaps there is a more direct way to address the issue. It may help if guidelines for referees were to include a code of ethics.
Revised White House peer review guidelines draw generally favorable response
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

A new bulletin from the White House Office of Management and Budget outlines minimum standards for peer review of scientific information that includes findings representing an official position of a department or agency of the federal government.The OMB Revised Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review, released on 15 April, substantially modifies a previous draft issued on 15 September 2003, which some had criticized as restrictive and imbalanced.
Earth Observing System missions benefit atmospheric research
Authors: Schoeberl M. R. , Douglass A. R. , Hilsenrath E. , Bhartia P. K. , Barnett J. , Gille J. , Beer R. , Gunson M. , Waters J. , Levelt P. F. , DeCola P. 
Published: October 2006

The Earth Observing System (EOS) Aura satellite mission is scheduled to launch in June 2004. The Aura mission wall make significantly improved measurements of atmospheric constituents.Aura is designed to tackle three science questions: Is the ozone layer recovering as expected? What are the sources and processes that control tropospheric pollutants? And, what is the quantitative impact of constituents on climate change? Aura will answer these questions by globally measuring a comprehensive set of trace gases and aerosols (Table 1) at high vertical and horizontal resolution. Figure 1 shows the Aura spacecraft and its four instruments.
U.S. oceans and human health centers funded
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

The U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences have designated for start‐up four non‐federal Centers for Oceans and Human Health, which they plan to fund at a total of $5 million annually for 5 years, the agencies announced on 22 April.Don Rice, director of the chemical oceanography program at NSR said the centers will link up experts in oceanographic and biomedical sciences. The centers will help to bridge “a decades‐long artificial disciplinary division that exists in the scientific research community [and which] is reflected in the federal funding community,” he said. Rice added that from the pool of grant applications, the agencies selected those that offered the biggest advances in science that would most quickly benefit human health.
Drilling to investigate extreme environmental changes
Authors: Giosan Liviu , Flood Roger 
Published: October 2006

Marginal basins are effective amplifiers and sensitive recorders of paleo‐environmental events of global significance. All ocean basins go through a marginal basin phase as part of their evolution, and there are a number of marginal basins in the modern world ocean. In response to sea level changes, the link between a marginal basin and the ocean can be episodically restricted or even severed.The Black Sea is a present‐day example of a marginal basin where the connection changes dramatically with sea level. Extreme changes in environmental conditions are typical of this kind of threshold‐regulated behavior; most of these changes occur abruptly and responses have dramatic consequences on the basin's hydrologic, sedimentary, geochemical, and ecological systems. For example, temporal variations in water column density structure related to changes in circulation could influence the oxygenation of a marginal basin, drastically affecting the geochemistry of the water column and sediments.
French research
Authors: Carton Xavier 
Published: October 2006

The article “Review of French Research Enterprise Underway in Light of Mass Resignations” (6 April, pp. 134–135) calls for a clarification.It stated “]Sauvons la Recherche’ called… for a ‘significant increase’ in the number of full‐time, permanent positions available to young researchers in the 2004 recruiting season.
Global topography and bathymetry grid improves research efforts
Authors: Lindquist Kent G. , Engle Kevin , Stahlke Dan , Price Evelyn 
Published: October 2006

Gridded data of topography and bathymetry of the Earth's surface have become widely available via the Internet, thanks to the efforts of multiple research groups, including, for example, the U.S. Geological Survey (http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/landdaac/gtopo30/gtopo30.html), Smith and Sandwell [1997], and Jakobsson et al. [2000]. These data are of continually growing importance both for monitoring operations and for scientific research, as they are critical for the clear presentation of final results to end‐users.Nevertheless, in general, for a given region of the world, there is a final step in assembling all the necessary sub‐regions into a continuous grid that represents the area of interest. Also, one must account for the varying resolutions of the component data sets. These issues are surmountable, though painstaking.Three publicly available gridded data sets of topography and bathymetry have been combined to produce a single, integrated data set with no loss in resolution.The 3 data sets are the GTOPO30 data from the U.S. Geological Survey the Global Bathymetry data set from Smith and Sandwell [1997],and version 1.0 of the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) data set [Jakobsson et al., 2000]. Results are provided as eight GMT grid files covering −180° to +180° longitude and −90° to 90° latitude. To facilitate ease of use without loss of resolution, all data have been sampled and merged into identically registered 30‐s grids. The actual resolutions of the topography and bathymetry data are roughly 30 arc s (0.66 km at 45° latitude) and 2 arc min (2.6 km at 45° latitude), respectively Results are made available free of charge via internet through the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA). The Web address for this server is http://www.gina.alaska.edu/page.xml?group=data&page=griddata.
Interdisciplinary discussions of hydrology and river linking take place in India
Authors: Singh Vijay P. 
Published: October 2006

Considerable investment has been made in the development, construction, and management of water resources projects in the past 150 years. Many of these projects have caused deleterious environmental consequences, such as erosion and sedimentation of reservoirs, water logging, and alkalinization and salinization of irrigated lands. With the rising demand worldwide for quality water, the increasing call for preservation of environmental quality and sustenance of biodiversity, and the simultaneous and growing acceptance that the water use and management strategies of the past have often been unsustainable, there is an urgent need for wide‐ranging discussions of past water resources policies and practices.Scientists, engineers, planners, managers, administrators, and policy makers recently met in Bhopal, India, to discuss problems and exchange ideas pertaining to water, water use, and the environment in arid, semi‐arid, subhumid, humid, and tropical regions. More than 400 participants representing 30 countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Germany, France, Italy the United States, and the United Kingdom, among others attended Water and Environment (WE)‐2003.
Exploring Mercury: The Iron Planet
Authors: Stevenson David J. 
Published: October 2006

Planet Mercury is both difficult to observe and difficult to reach by spacecraft. Just one spacecraft, Mariner 10, flew by the planet 30 years ago. An upcoming NASA mission, MESSENGER, will be launched this year and will go into orbit around Mercury at the end of this decade. A European mission is planned for the following decade. It's worth going there because Mercury is a strange body and the history of planetary exploration has taught us that strangeness gives us insight into planetary origin and evolution.Mercury is intrinsically the densest of the planets and it must be iron‐rich. Perhaps not coincidentally it has a significant magnetic field, which may mean that it can generate a field, much as Earth generates a field. Yet Mercury is small; it has an old, heavily cratered surface, and very little atmosphere. It also has unusual spectroscopic and radar characteristics. We understand it far less well than any other planet inward of Uranus.
Present and future water scarcity challenges Middle East governments
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Governments in the Middle East's Jordan River Basin have managed to maintain some level of cooperation in dealing with regional water supply issues, despite the current intifada and other tensions in the arid to semi‐arid region.However, these governments, as well as nations and nongovernmental organizations outside of the region, need to increase their efforts in order to keep up with population and development pressures, and to reverse health and environmental problems associated with water degradation, experts stated at a U.S. House of Representatives' hearing on 5 May.
Global Change in the Holocene
Authors: Alverson Keith 
Published: October 2006

Many people, even perhaps the occasional Eos reader, associate the term “global change” with warming caused by mankind's recent addiction to fossil fuels. Some may also be well aware of enormous global changes in the distant past uninfluenced by humans; for example, Pleistocene ice ages. But was there any “global change” between the end of the last ice age and the onset of industrialization? The answer to this question is addressed early— in the title, even—in the new book Global Change in the Holocene. I don't suggest anyone stop reading after the title, though; the rest of the book is both highly informative and a real pleasure to read.The opening chapter tells us that the Holocene is certainly not, as sometimes charged, a “bland, pastoral coda to the contrasted movements of a stirring Pleistocene symphony” Rather, it is a “period of continuous change.” Melodious language aside, the combination of sustained and high‐amplitude climatic variability and a wealth of well‐preserved, precisely datable paleoclimate archives make the Holocene unique. Only by studying the Holocene can we hope to unravel the low‐frequency workings of the Earth system and the degree to which humans have changed our world. This book sets out to teach the reader how to obtain the relevant data and how to use it to do much more than showing static analogues of possible future climate states. It challenges researchers to discern in their data the effects of the dynamic processes underlying coupled variability in the Earth's climate and ecosystems. These processes continue to act today and it is through providing an understanding of these system dynamics in the Holocene that paleoenvironmental studies can make the greatest contribution to future‐oriented concerns.
PAGES: Always bottom up
Authors: Bradley Raymond 
Published: October 2006

In a recent article titled “Back to the Future” (Eos, 16 March, p. 107), L. C. Witton lays out the goals of IGBP‐PAGES for the next few years, noting that, “PAGES is aiming to become a truly bottom‐up organization that is driven by the insights of individual scientists…”In fact, PAGES has always been a truly bottom‐up organization, and this statement unfortunately fosters the view that it has been otherwise. Those who promote such a view choose to overlook the countless workshops that PAGES has organized, largely at the suggestion of those “at the bottom,” and the numerous publications that have resulted from these meetings. These include reports and recommendations on inter alia: IDEAL—An International Decade for the East African Lakes, the PAGES/CLIVAR Intersection, High Resolution Records of Past Climate from Monsoon Asia, Paleomonsoons in Africa, IMAGES—International Marine Global Change Study, PANASH‐Paleoclimates of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, GNIP—Global Network for Isotopes in Precipitation, Continental Drilling for Paleoclimate Records, Climate Impact of Explosive Volcanism, International Trans‐Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE), ARTS—Annual Records of Tropical Systems and the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP) (see http://www.pages.unibe.ch).
The Mass Balance of the Cryosphere: Observations and Modelling of Contemporary and Future Changes
Authors: Clarke Garry K. C. 
Published: October 2006

“Vanishing sea ice!” “Disintegrating ice shelves!” “Rising sea level!” Such proclamations illustrate the widening gap between the kind of glaciology that makes newspaper headlines and the kind of glaciology which is reinforced in standard scientific texts. It is as if there were two kinds of ice: a benign form such as that studied by Victorian gentlefolk and a new rogue form, of concern to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).In truth, the difference is one of perspective: ice as a feature of the local land‐ or seascape versus ice as an active component of the Earth system. From the global perspective, the two most important attributes of Earth system ice, a.k.a. the cryosphere, are its high albedo (leading to a positive climate feedback) and the large mass of stored freshwater—roughly 70 m of sea‐level equivalent. These aspects are addressed in several chapters of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report, Climate Change 2001. J. Bamber and T. Payne's ambitious book provides the backstory in the form of a coherent treatise.
Cassini‐Huygens nears Saturn orbit insertion
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

After nearly 7 years and a 3.5‐billion‐km, circuitous journey from Earth, the $3‐billion Cassini‐Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan—an international effort by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency—now is just days away from its critical Saturn orbit insertion. Scheduled for 30 June, this will begin the 4‐year part of the mission to study the Saturnian system.At a 3 June briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., Robert Mitchell, the Cassini program manager with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said that scientists involved with the program are feeling excited, relieved, and also a bit anxious as the Cassini‐Huygens spacecraft draws near to the ringed planet and its system.
Chair of U.S. Oceano Policy Commission urges Law of the Sea ratification
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

The chair of the Congressionally‐mandated US. Commission on Ocean Policy has urged the Senate to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea this year. Speaking at the Capitol Hill Oceans Week 2004 conference in Washington, D.C. on 10 June, James Watkins told the audience to help “break the hold that a couple of senators have on that bill.”Ratification of the treaty is among the key recommendations of the commission's interim report, which was issued on 20 April. The commission has referred to the convention as a “constitution” for the oceans.
Cicerone tapped as next President of NAS
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

Ralph J. Cicerone, who served as AGU president from 1992 to 1994, has been nominated as the next president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, it was announced on 15 June.Cicerone's nomination, which was unanimously approved by the NAS Council, precedes an election in late 2004.
Lightning paths in sky share similarities with channel networks on Earth
Authors: Jain Sharad K. , Singh Vijay P. 
Published: October 2006

Lightning in the atmosphere is a transient, high current carrying electric discharge. It occurs when some region of the atmosphere reaches an electric charge sufficiently large so that the electric fields associated with the charge cause an electrical breakdown in the air. Lightning is produced in the cumulonimbus clouds; however, it can also occur in snowstorms and sandstorms.The analysis presented in this article demonstrates that there are many similarities between the celestial networks that are formed during a lightning event and the terrestrial channel networks associated with flowing surface waters in drainage basins. It begins with a preliminary analysis of the paths followed by the cloud‐to‐ground discharge of electric currents generated in the atmosphere during thunderstorms.
Commission fleshes out Bush Administration's space exploration agenda for NASA
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

A commission appointed by President George W. Bush has unanimously endorsed his plan to dramatically re‐orient NASA to focus on space exploration and manned and robotic missions to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations.The 16 June report of the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy finds that the new space agenda announced by Bush on 14 January will help the U.S. economy security and technological leadership, and provide educational opportunities.The report presents a series of recommendations for implementing the plan.
Comment on “Mesoplates: Resolving a decades‐old controversy”
Authors: Liu Han‐Shou , Kolenkiewicz R. 
Published: October 2006

Plate tectonics is primarily a geokinematic theory Additional new concepts or components are needed to provide insights and constraints for geodynamic modeling. Recently, in Eos (23 December 2003), Pilger has developed a new concept regarding the kinematics of the lithospheric plates and the underlying mesosphere. He proposed that three mesoplates under the lithosphere can provide a framework for resolving a decades‐old controversy on hot spots and mantle plumes.Geodynamic modelers are forced to establish the existence of these three mesoplates. We have attempted to verify the mesoplate hypothesis using satellite gravity signals for remote sensing the stresses in the mesosphere [Liu et al., 2003]. Our stress patterns of the mesosphere at 100 km depth as inferred from satellite gravity signals show that global stress concentrations are mainly restricted to the boundaries of the Hawaiian, Tristan, and Icelandic Mesoplate as defined by Pilger. From a mechanical perspective, mesoplates are more likely to behave plastically at the pressure and temperature at which they exist because they are subjected to sufficient mantle convection‐generated stresses. Therefore, the boundaries of the three mesoplates have also provided a framework to explain the stress concentrations as the origin of historically large earthquakes. Furthermore, we have found that the mantle convection‐generated stress concentrations also occur within the interior of the mesoplates. This finding could be applied to resolving another decades‐old controversy on intraplate seismicity.
Reply [to “Comment on ‘Mesoplates: Resolving a decades‐old controversy’” by Han‐Shou Liu and R. Kolenkiewicz]
Authors: Pilger Rex H. 
Published: October 2006

In the ongoing debate concerning the origin of hot spots, and more generally, the nature of mantle convection and its relation to plate tectonics, it is important to recognize that viable models need to satisfy “all” of the data. Much of the recent literature has emphasized one or two subsets of geoscientific data (typically geochemical/petrological, tomographic, or local or whole mantle convection), almost to the exclusion of other data types.In their comment on this page, and in other contributions [Liu, 2003; Liu et al., 2003], Liu, Kolenkiewicz, and their colleagues provide important reminders of this need, as they explore the implications of global gravity for convection model
New officers assume leadership
Authors: Anonymous  
Published: October 2006

The 2004–2006 AGU officers assumed their leadership roles on 1 July. To prepare for their roles, new Council members and committee chairmen participated in a Leadership Conference on 14–16 May in Montreal, Canada.The theme of this year's conference, “Strategic Alignment,” emphasized the importance of leaders working toward common strategic goals as outlined by AGU's Strategic Plan. Participants had an opportunity to obtain information and context to help them meet their responsibilities as leaders of AGU, to build common understandings with other Council members and Focus Group and committee chairs, and to contemplate the future directions of the Union and its needs.
New European training network to improve young scientists' capabilities in computational wave propagation
Authors: Igel Heiner 
Published: October 2006

The European Commission recently funded a Marie‐Curie Research Training Network (MCRTN) in the field of computational seismology within the 6th Framework Program. SPICE (Seismic wave Propagation and Imaging in Complex media: a European network) is coordinated by the computational seismology group of the Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universitat in Munich, linking 14 European research institutions in total.The 4‐year project will provide funding for 14 Ph.D. students (3‐year projects) and 14 postdoctoral positions (2‐year projects) within the various fields of computational seismology. These positions have been advertised and are currently being filled.
Comment on “Communicating with uncertainty: A critical issue with probabilistic seismic hazard analysis”
Authors: Cramer Chris H. 
Published: October 2006

Wang et al. (Eos, 18 November 2003, pp. 501, 506, 508) provide an interesting introduction to the heart of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). However, the criticisms of PSHA recited in the second half of the article do not tell the whole story.In particular, the limitations listed by Wang et al. apply equally to deterministic seismic hazard analysis, the only real alternative to PSHA. Deterministic and probabilistic seismic hazard analyses employ earthquake hazard information in a somewhat different manner to estimate earthquake ground motion (shaking) hazard at a site [Reiter, 1990]. Both approaches model in the same manner the distribution of earthquake sources and the decay (attenuation) of earthquake ground motion with increasing distance from an earthquake. In a deterministic analysis, a particular damaging earthquake is chosen from among the possible damaging earthquakes that can affect a site (usually the earthquake expected to be the most damaging). Then the distribution of probable ground motions, represented as a median ground motion and its lognormal standard deviation, from one or several attenuation relations is used to select a ground motion hazard at the site.