bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Conference peeks into the past and future of ocean science
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

During the past 50 fifty years, oceanographic research in the United States has birthed many landmark discoveries and programs that have changed our perception of the seas, how they work, and how mankind interacts with them. During these decades, ocean science also drifted through the Cold War as a frequent and strategic partner with the military, and then largely was weaned away from that source of funding as the National Science Foundation (NSF) became perhaps the principle supporter for the science.Speakers at a NSF conference held in Washington, D.C. in October reviewed some of these achievements, as well as anecdotal remembrances of programs, priorities, and personalities that have shaped ocean sciences over the past five decades, since NSF was founded in 1950. Speakers also peeked into the future of oceanography and significant affects it has on climate, coastal processes, human health, and other societal concerns.
NASA plans to return to Mars with launch of pair of spacecraft
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

NASA hopes to land a one‐two punch in gleaning more information about Mars with the launch of the Mars Climate Orbiter to the red planet in December 1998 and sending the Mars Polar Lander in January 1999. As follow‐up missions to the Mars Global Surveyor and Pathfinder, the new duo will focus on mapping the planet's surface, profiling its atmosphere, and discerning details about the planet's climate and water and geological resources. These sensors could help to determine the possibility of whether living organisms have ever existed on the planet.The Mars Climate Orbiter will start circling Mars in September 1999. When the Lander arrives that December, the Orbiter will serve as a radio relay system, beaming data to Earth. After the completion of the Lander mission, (expected to last about 60–90 Martian days through the planet's southern summer, until seasonal polar frosts may disrupt the craft's operation), the Orbiter will monitor the atmosphere, surface, and polar caps for a complete Martian year of 687 days.
Report calls for better information that could help with disaster efforts
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

The U.S. federal government should continue laying plans for an integrated disaster information network that would link disaster managers with hundreds of government, university, and private databases, recommends a new report, “Reducing Disaster Losses Through Better Information,” issued by the National Research Council's Board on Natural Disasters in November.The report says the network could be an important tool in saving lives and minimizing losses in the United States, and that it could be expanded to include other countries once the effectiveness is tested.
Record year for losses from natural disasters
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

1998 set a new record for economic losses from weather‐related disasters, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.‐based think tank. At the end of November, global losses already had totaled at least $89 billion, an amount 48% more than the previous record loss of $60 billion during 1996.The disasters—including floods, hurricanes, droughts, and fires—also have claimed about 32,000 lives and displaced more than 300 million people, according to the group.
Space studies board issues study on NASA's Research and Data Analysis Programs
Authors: Whitney Pamela 
Published: October 2006

Critical science questions must form the basis of research and data analysis (R&DA) programs at NASA, a recently published report by the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council (NRC) emphasizes. The report also warns that NASA is expecting more from its programs without assurances of adequate funding.Called “Supporting Research and Data Analysis in NASA's Science Programs: Engines for Innovation and Synthesis,” the report makes a number of recommendations, including the suggestion that NASA's science offices improve the link between R&DA programs and strategic plans. For example, it says the agency should link NASA Research Announcements (NRAs) to science questions in the plans and evaluate the balance between the programs' common subelements. These subelements include theoretical investigations, new instrument development, groundbased research, and data management.
New findings about auroras confirm importance of ionosphere in space weather
Authors: Newell Patrick T. 
Published: October 2006

A series of recent findings about the aurora has made it clear that the ionosphere is not merely a passive recipient of magnetospheric dynamics, or space weather, but plays an important—at times even controlling—role in shaping the unfolding of those dynamics. Although some researchers have been stressing the coupling between the ionosphere and the magnetosphere for many years [see, e.g., Atkinson, 1970], the only aspect of this coupling which seems to be widely accepted is the role of the ionosphere in supplying plasma to the magnetosphere.Eight recent statistical studies have now amply demonstrated that background ionospheric conductivity is a crucial determinant of whether intense auroral arcs form. In retrospect, this probably should not have been surprising—a fluorescent light will not fluoresce if a highly conducting alternate path such as a piece of copper wire exists. However, the results reviewed here did surprise the space physics community, and there are clear implications forsubstorm development and other magnetospheric processes which have not yet been thought through.
Oil company mergers raise concern among some geoscientists
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

With the blessings of the antitrust regulatory agencies and the ghost of John D. Rockefeller, the proposed marriage between Exxon and Mobil would create the world's largest energy company and corporation of any type. This merger also would reunite the two biggest pieces of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, which the U.S. Supreme Court ordered dismantled in 1911 in an antitrust case.Exxon, Mobil, and financial analysts say the merger is driven by the need to operate more efficiently in a tough, competitive environment. The price of oil, after all, recently has been scraping near bottom of the barrel at about $11 per barrel, and companies often need to muster significant capital resources to develop more remote reservoirs.
Permafrost Digital Databases now available
Authors: Brown Jerry , Haggerty Chris 
Published: October 2006

Two global cryospheric data products are now available in digital form: the Circum‐Arctic Map of Permafrost and Ground‐ice Conditions and the Circumpolar Active Layer System (CAPS) CD‐ROM.Both products are the result of multinational projects of the International Permafrost Association (IPA), a program supported at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) over the past 5 years with a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. The digital data should prove useful for global climate change models and polar and mountain research and contribute to the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Important findings expected from Europe's largest seismic array
Authors: Gregersen Søren , Pedersen L. B. , Roberts R. G. , Shomali H. , Berthelsen A. , Thybo H. , Mosegaard K. , Pedersen T. , Voss P. , Kind R. , Bock G. , Gossler J. , Wylegala K. , Rabbel W. , Woelbern I. , Budweg M. , Busche H. , Korn M. , Hock S. , Guterch A. , Grad M. , Wilde‐Piorko M. , Zuchniak M. , Plomerova J. , Ansorge J. , Kissling E. , Arlitt R. , Waldhauser F. , Ziegler P. , Achauer U. , Pedersen H. , Cotte N. , Paulssen H. , Engdahl E. R. 
Published: October 2006

An international, interdisciplinary project, which 2 years ago deployed the largest dense seismic antenna ever in Europe, expects in the next 2 years to present important findings on the lithosphere and asthenosphere of a portion of the Trans‐European Suture Zone (TESZ). Final processing is currently under way of the data from the array of 120 seismographs along a 900‐km‐long by 100‐km‐wide strip from Gottingen, Germany, in the south, through Denmark, to Stockholm, Sweden in the north, across the northwestern part of the TESZ (Figure 1).Project Tor is a teleseismic tomography experiment with interdisciplinary data exploitation. It extends across the broad TESZ boundary between two markedly different lithospheric domains.These are (1) Proterozoic Europe, with Precambrian crust in Sweden and eastern Europe, and (2) Phanerozoic central Europe, with most of the crust influenced by the Caledonian and Variscan orogenies and only small areas of relic Precambrian crust. The project is designed to investigate the deep lithosphere traces of the broad‐scale geology of the TESZ area, including the Tornquist Zone, from which Project Tor has its name. It is part of EUROPROBE, a major Earth science program of the European Science Foundation, which is run by a regional committee of the International Lithosphere Program.
A Potomac perspective on the growing global greenhouse
Authors: Doe Bruce R. 
Published: October 2006

Large‐scale climatic patterns, rather than a growing “heat island” effect, are the overriding influence on weather in the Potomac River area, and temperature data in the area can therefore be validly compared to global trends. At least temporarily, however, the area, which includes Washington, D.C., has lost its coupling with global temperature trends.Short‐term regional anomalies in the Potomac River area's weather, especially high summer temperatures, may promote legislative action in the U.S. Congress on long‐term global climate research. However, the current benign weather conditions in the political center of the United States tend to divert attention away from global climate research, diminishing the likelihood of significant expansion of research funding and greenhouse gas legislation.
Advanced Composition Explorer provides new insights into particle sources
Authors: Mewaldt R. A. 
Published: October 2006

The January 15th issue of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) includes a special section on results from Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). ACE was launched in August 1997, and is now in orbit around the L1 Lagrangian point. ACE is instrumented to measure the elemental, isotopic, and ionic charge state composition of the heavy nuclei in the solar wind, solar energetic particles, and galactic cosmic rays.As reported in the special section of GRL, a large solar particle event occurred on November 6, 1997. The energetic particle composition, as measured by ACE, was surprising with significant effects due to mass‐dependent fractionation. The isotopic abundance ratios of 13C/12C, 22Ne/20Ne, and 26Mg/24Mg were about twice as large as typical solar system values, implying charge‐to‐mass dependent acceleration. Data from ACE and the Solar, Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) show the ionic charge states of Mg, Si, and Fe increased with increasing energy for this event. This indicates that the higher energy nuclei may have come from a source millions of degrees hotter than typical coronal temperatures (∼ 1 million degrees). Several papers in the special section conclude that more than one acceleration process may have been present during the November 6 event.
Seismic survey probes urban earthquake hazards in Pacific Northwest
Authors: Fisher M. A. , Brocher T. M. , Hyndman R. D. , Trehu A. M. , Weaver C. S. , Creager K. C. , Crosson R. S. , Parsons T. , Cooper A. K. , Mosher D. , Spence G. , Zelt B. C. , Hammer P. T. , ten Brink U. , Pratt T. L. , Miller K. C. , Childs J. R. , Cochrane G. R. , Chopra S. , Walia R. 
Published: October 2006

A multidisciplinary seismic survey earlier this year in the Pacific Northwest is expected to reveal much new information about the earthquake threat to U.S. and Canadian urban areas there. A disastrous earthquake is a very real possibility in the region.The survey, known as the Seismic Hazards Investigation in Puget Sound (SHIPS), engendered close cooperation among geologists, biologists, environmental groups, and government agencies. It also succeeded in striking a fine balance between the need to prepare for a great earthquake and the requirement to protect a coveted marine environment while operating a large airgun array.
Antarctic feature named for John F. Noxon
Authors: Solomon Susan 
Published: October 2006

John F. Noxon's landmark contributions to stratospheric chemistry were recently recognized through the naming of a geographical feature in Antarctica: the Noxon Cliff.Noxon,a quintessential scientific explorer, was an international leader in the study of atmospheric chemistry and aeronomy and a member of AGU. He began his career in the 1960s as a pioneer in measurements of the airglow and aurora, research which took him to icy Greenland. In the mid‐1970s, he was among the pioneers of the technique of visible spectroscopy for measuring stratospheric trace gases, particularly nitrogen dioxide.
Field Hydrology in Tropical Countries: A Practical Introduction
Authors: Galarraga‐Sanchez Remigio H. 
Published: October 2006

Hydrology is not only a highly mathematical science but also, and mainly, a practical science of measurement of main elements needed to address questions such as water balance in a basin. It is also a matter of commitment for those involved in the everyday task of taking data from instruments and providing that data to national meteorological and hydrological services. It is a highly skillful science for those who aim to understand the water cycle and its contribution to sustainable development of the environment.Having served in a national meteorology and hydrology service in a tropical country, and having experienced the difficulties that observers go through in the field, far away from the central office, I find very familiar much of what Henry Gunston says in his book Field Hydrology in Tropical Countries: A Practical Introduction.The author himself has spent a great deal of time in the field and has a good understanding of the difficult situations that observers in tropical countries go through every day Field hydrology in many places, the tropics included, is a very difficult task because of both the lack of economic support and the lack of prepared people in the country to do the job. Most of the observers do their job because the enjoy it, hoping the next field team may bring them not only payment but also new logs to record the data and good news from the city.
Kuiper Belt may yield strange new worlds
Authors: Stansberry John 
Published: October 2006

In 1992, a new member of our solar system was discovered by D.Jewitt and J.Luu. This body, 1992QB1, follows a slightly elliptical, low‐inclination orbit approximately 14 astronomical units (AUs), or about 2 billion km, beyond the orbit of Neptune. It and approximately 80 others subsequently discovered in trans‐Neptunian orbits are the tip of an iceberg representing a potential scientific bonanza for scientists interested in the origins of our solar system—the Kuiper belt.A workshop last summer,“Exploration of the Kuiper belt: Where do we go from here?,” focused on defining the most interesting questions regarding the Kuiper belt. A report summarizing these questions and outlining strategies for answering them is to be published.
Ernie Kanasewich (1931–1998)
Authors: Schmitt Douglas R. , Sherif Helmy , Burianyk Michael 
Published: October 2006

Ernest R. Kanasewich, a pioneer in the development of active source seismology as a tool in the exploration both of hydrocarbon resources and of the Earth's crust and upper‐most mantle, died in Edmonton, Alberta, on June 19, 1998, at the age of 67.Born in rural Saskatchewan, Ernie received his B.Sc. in physics at the University of Alberta in 1952. He was introduced to geophysics when hired as a seismologist at Geophysical Services Incorporated, a subsidiary of Texas Instruments. He worked in both Canada and the Middle East for 6 formative years, during which he gained considerable practical knowledge of the capabilities of seismic methods. He returned to the University of Alberta to complete an M.Sc. in physics in 1960 on gravity methods in the nascent geophysics program begun under George Garland. He obtained his Ph.D.with R.Don Russell in 1962 on newly developed methods of isotopic lead age dating. He took a record 2 years for his Ph.D. research, and the work even resulted in publications with implications for cosmology Ernie returned to the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta in 1963 as an assistant professor rising to full professor of physics in 1971. Aside from a 1‐year sabbatical as a research associate professor at the Seismological Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, he remained at the University of Alberta until his retirement in 1996. Despite a severe pulmonary illness, Ernie continued his research and writing until the end. He was scheduled to present a scientific paper at the Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists the day before his passing. He was heavily involved in the department, having served as the associate chair from 1967 to 1973 and as acting chair from 1973 to 1974. He served as chair over the very difficult period of severe funding cutbacks from 1991 to 1996. He was also director of the Institute of Geophysics, Meteorology, and Space Physics from 1991 to 1993.
Foundations of Geomagnetism
Authors: Jackson Andy 
Published: October 2006

The study of the magnetic field of the Earth, or geomagnetism, is one of the oldest lines of scientific enquiry. Indeed, it has often been said that William Gilbert's De Magnete, published in 1600 and predating Isaac Newton's Principia by 87 years, can claim to be the first true scientific textbook; his study was essentially the first of academic rather than practical interest.What then, we may ask, has been accomplished in the nearly 400 intervening years up to the publication of Foundations of Geomagnetism? In short, a wealth of observational evidence, considerable physical understanding, and a great deal of mathematical apparatus have accrued, placing the subject on a much surer footing.The latter two categories are described in considerable detail, and with attendant rigor, in this book. The sphericity of the Earth means that a frequent theme in the book is the solution of the partial differential equations of electrodynamics in a spherical geometry.
Dunlop receives European Geophysical Society's Néel Medal
Authors: Tauxe Lisa 
Published: October 2006

David J. Dunlop of the Physics Department and Erindale College at the University of Toronto has been awarded the 1999 Louis Néel Medal of the European Geophysical Society (EGS) for “authoritative contributions to rock magnetism, setting the standards for future decades.” The medal will be presented to Dunlop in April in a special ceremony at the Nederlands Congresbebouw in The Hague, The Netherlands, during the 24th General Assembly of the EGS.The Néel Medal is awarded by the Solid Earth Geophysics section of EGS in recognition of the scientific achievements of Louis Néel, who shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his fundamental discoveries in magnetism.The medal is awarded “for outstanding achievements in the fertilization of the Earth Sciences by the transfer and application of fundamental theory and/or experimental techniques of solid state physics, defined in its broadest sense.”
Taking a clear look at cloud‐covered oceanic islands on a seasonal basis
Authors: Garvin James B. , Mahmood Ahmed , Giguere Christine 
Published: October 2006

All‐weather spaceborne imaging of isolated oceanic islands is opening the door to some new, previously unfeasible studies of global environmental change.The first orbital synthetic aperture radar (SAR) views of some relatively small,yet important islands have provided icecover and other data that until recently have been impossible to gather.These islands, whose geologic histories are dominated by the interactions of volcanism, glacier dynamics, and marine erosion, are often cloud enshrouded but can be monitored by SAR regardless of cloud cover or solar illumination.Oceanic islands are often overlooked components of the global Earth system. Yet their landscapes and ecosystems provide natural laboratories for investigating the effects of various natural and anthropogenic forcing factors in an essentially closed, controlled environment.
Report emphasizes connections between oceans and human health
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

Although the oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface, scientists and the public are just beginning to understand this vast realm's role in human health. And oceanic influences reach far beyond pollution and food supply.A new report by the Ocean Studies Board of the National Research Council attempts to pull together an overview of many of the positive and negative influences of ocean phenomena on human health—aside from pollution, which the board said was beyond its scope and has been handled in many other reports.
Earth Under Siege: From Air Pollution to Global Change
Authors: Friend James P. 
Published: October 2006

Lucky indeed are the students taking Richard Turco's course and using his book, Earth Under Siege: From Air Pollution to Global Change. They have an enthusiastic and communicative lecturer who is a true authority in his field and who passionately devotes his efforts to enlightening his students.The passion is evident in the text, but it never interferes with the rigor of the material presented.Earth Under Siege is based on lectures given by Turco in a popular course for undergraduate students of all stripes at the University of California at Los Angeles. Student knowledge that is provided by a high school college preparatory curriculum is assumed.The style is engagingly informal and the book is a delight to read. Sprinkled throughout are pithy comments, many humorous, that are designed to heighten student understanding and interest. They also reveal Turco's personal opinions about issues of air pollution. However, despite the title, it is clear that Turco is not an environmental zealot. He is scientifically accurate and thorough in presenting vital information about air pollution on all scales, local through global. He is also clear‐eyed and nondoctrinaire in presenting social, political, and economic aspects of air pollution. His devotion is to the education of individuals who can become informed members of an environmentally aware society.
Government Panel recommends methods for measuring applied and basic research
Authors: Showstack Randy 
Published: October 2006

While applied research that is geared to specific outcomes may readily lend itself to measurement and evaluation, some scientists question whether such benchmarks also can pertain to basic research—where all of the outcomes and future applications seldom are known in advance—without stunting such general, and often very significant, searches for knowledge.Now, a new report by a U.S. government panel cautiously but firmly recommends that both types of research can and should be measured, in order to meet the goals of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, or GPRA.