thursday :: february 28, 2002

One of the most fascinating aspects of manned space flight is the state of zero gravity or weightlessness. This extraordinary 'by-product' of the space programme has long been recognised as a rich scientific resource. But the art of zero gravity has barely been explored, in part due to the exclusiveness of this environment.

In recent years a small handful of artists have been able to access this new space, to experiment with dance and art in weightlessness. The Arts Catalyst, the science-art agency, presents projects from this emerging genre from zero gravity flights it has organised for artists and scientists with the Russian and European space agencies.

In October 2001, through its relationship with the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, the Arts Catalyst enabled a group of UK and Russian artists and scientists to visit Star City in Russia, in collaboration with Projekt Atol, Slovenia, and undertake projects on a parabolic 'zero gravity' flight (from afro-futurism to oriental fantasies of flying carpets, datasuits to dance movement analysis). "Artists and Cosmonauts" is a weekend of events (London, march 1-2, 2002) by the participants of that expedition. It includes new films, performances and installations, presentations by scientists and philosophers, participatory workshops and a talk by the cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev (inhabitant of MIR and 'last Soviet citizen' stranded aloft during the coup against Gorbachev; now member of teams building the International Space Station).

An event for sampling the art of weightlessness, to know the efforts to turn dreams of flying into reality. >from *Art in Zero Gravity. Arts Catalyst site*

related context
> space-art event: projects in zero gravity. october 1, 2001
> gravity zero, dance project. october, 2000
> free space celebration: 40 years of sputnik I. october 4, 1997

> the world of Tsiolkovsky: cosmonauts in weightlessness

wednesday :: february 27, 2002

> python of Pythagoras?

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) bestowed its fourth annual FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software. FSF President and founder, Richard Stallman, presented the award to Guido van Rossum for inventing and implementing as Free Software the Python programming language. The prior winners were Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, and Brian Paul.

A committee of Free Software pioneers and leaders selected the winner and two other finalists (L. Peter Deutsch and Andrew Tridgell) from the scores of mostly volunteer programmers worldwide who dedicate their time to advancing Free Software. The selection committee included: Miguel de Icaza, Ian Murdock, Eric Raymond, Peter Salus, Vernor Vinge, and Larry Wall. Prior to committee deliberations, a two month open nominations process decided the list from which the committee chose these finalists.

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at http://www.gnu.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. From *Guido van Rossum Awarded the Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software*, february 16, 2002

related context
> 10th anniversary of linux. august 25, 2001

tuesday :: february 26, 2002

Meat -- and the cooperation involved in getting it -- may be the foundation for modern-day social interactions says a Texas A&M University anthropologist. Michael Alvard, a socio-cultural anthropologist who uses evolutionary theory to learn about human behavior, says the hunting and scavenging for meat, by humans may have been a trigger for human mental abilities to evolve.

"Many important aspects of human nature revolve around solving problems related to the cooperative acquisition, defense and distribution of hunted resources," Alvard says. The mental skills required for cooperative hunting developed as responses to associated problems as well as to the need for accounting for distribution and consumption, he adds.

In other words, the development of big game hunting, forced our ancestors to refine concepts such as cooperation, cheating, and accounting for who got what - all concepts that would be unknown to the solitary scavenger. Whether or not it was the original reason for the evolution of sociality, Alvard says that cooperative hunting and meat sharing opened a niche that was unavailable to the solitary forager. These early cooperative efforts resembled mutualism - a form of cooperation where the payoffs for working together are immediate and are far greater than for working alone.

This research analyzed behavior against several types of game theory models - models that attempt to explain how organisms make decisions when these decisions depend on what others do. >from *Social interactions may be traced back to carnivorous behavior*, february 19, 2002

> hunting tools

monday :: february 25, 2002

> the one who understands [ paul klee + ]

Primatologists are challenging the current and dominant theory that competition is the driving force of social behavior in primates - both human and non-human. In place of the "aggression-competition-reconciliation model" of primate sociality, the researchers offer a new theory that recognizes cooperation and affiliation as the species' primary social behaviors.

The new paradigm or model proposed by professors Paul Garber, from the University of Illinois, and Robert Sussman, from Washington University, is based on their extensive research on primates. Until now, "data on the contexts and functions of affiliative, cooperative and agonistic behaviors in wild primates have been extremely limited." >from *Rethinking the role of affiliation and aggression in primate groups*, february 15, 2002

related context
> social skills earlier than thought. september 14, 2001
> abstract thought on non-human animals. scientific and ethical implications. october 16, 2001

friday :: february 22, 2002

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have uncovered the first genetic evidence that explains how large-scale alterations to body plans were accomplished during the early evolution of animals. The achievement is a landmark in evolutionary biology, not only because it shows how new animal body plans could arise from a simple genetic mutation, but because it effectively answers a major criticism creationists had long leveled against evolution: the absence of a genetic mechanism that could permit animals to introduce radical new body designs.

"The problem for a long time has been over this issue of macroevolution," says William McGinnis, a professor in UCSD's Division of Biology who headed the study. "How can evolution possibly introduce big changes into an animal's body shape and still generate a living animal? Creationists have argued that any big jump would result in a dead animal that wouldn't be able to perpetuate itself. And until now, no one's been able to demonstrate how you could do that at the genetic level with specific instructions in the genome."

The UCSD team, which included Matthew Ronshaugen and Nadine McGinnis, showed in its experiments that this could be accomplished with relatively simple mutations in a class of regulatory genes, known as Hox, that act as master switches by turning on and off other genes during embryonic development. The same genes that control the placement of the head, thorax and abdomen during development are a generalized feature of all animals, including humans.

The discovery of this general mechanism for producing major leaps in evolutionary change has other implications for scientists. It may provide biologists with insights into the roles of other regulatory genes involved in more evolutionarily recent changes in body designs. >from *First genetic evidence uncovered of how major changes in body shapes occurred during early animal evolution*, february 6, 2002

> evolutionary switches

thursday :: february 21, 2002

> BitTorrent diagram

CodeCon is the premier event in 2002 for the P2P, cypherpunk, and network/security application developer community. It is a workshop for developers of real-world applications that support individual liberties. Topics which won't be found at CodeCon include: digital rights management and other technologies which impair individual liberty, mathematical cryptography lacking practical implementation, political debate about key escrow, vendor sales pitches for closed-source, feature-crippled libraries, enterprise security architectures with no relevance to the public Internet.

"CodeCon 2002, organized by ex-MojoNation developer Bram Cohen, is hopefully the first in an anual series of programming presentations and workshops showcasing actual applications by the developers themselves. CodeCon is in many ways a reaction to the overwhelming number of industry conferences that cater to marketing departments and journalists, while neglecting the actual programmers. CodeCon presenters are required to have a working demo of their project, and be an active developer on the project," explains Rabbi, one of the organizers of this conference.

Projects presented included:
*Peek-A-Booty (a distributed anti-censorship application)
*Invisible IRC Project (secure, anonymous client/server networks)
*Idel (lightweight mobile code for p2p cpu sharing),
*Reptile (a distributed but uniform content exchange mechanism),
*Mnet (a universal shared filestore),
*Alpine (a social discovery mechanism which can handle high churn rates, malicious peers, and limited bandwidth),
*Eikon (an image search engine),
*CryptoMail (encrypted email for all),
*libfreenet (a case study in horrors incomprehensible to the mind of man, and other secure protocol design mistakes), *BitTorrent (hosting large, popular files cheaply),
*WikiWikiWan (ad-hoc wireless networking).

Panels on "Money: Do we need it?" (creating financially viable open source projects, open source-based company business models, getting sponsorship to work on open source projects, day jobs for the open source ronin), "Legality: Could we be in trouble?" (past victories: winning the war against export controls, fair use and the music sharing cases, the DMCA and its more evil step-child the SSSCA, when are the risks too great for technologists to pursue their careers?), and "The future of DNS security" (what makes a secure DNS system?, DNS threat models, what is DNSSEC, DNSSEC deployment, How secure is the Internet's DNS system today?). >from *CodeCon site*, february 15-17, 2002

related context
> jon johansen indicted. january 17, 2002
> sklyarov's case. december 18, 2001
> support open source software. december 14, 2001
> chaos computer club for info peace. september 17, 2001
> napster alternatives. august 10, 2001
> diy [do it yourself] january 30, 2001
> crack the code: design and deliver! march 27, 2001

wednesday :: february 20, 2002

Our understanding of reality - that is, a world where events happen over time within a three-dimensional space - may be turned on its head by the year 2005, scientist Maria Spiropulu said during the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting. "The way we think about things is about to change completely," said Spiropulu (Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago). "This is truly a revolution in the way we understand our world. We are very close" to a new reality, she said. "Right now, we imagine space and time as a static question, and we solve equations as a function of space and time. But, what we're learning is that, at the very large scale or the very small scale, space and time are dynamic. What is happening at those scales, we cannot explain. So we have to wonder, do these scales hold some extra dimensions?"

Traditionally, physicists have mathematically explained all that happens in the world by using a "standard model." In this system, all matter is made of lightweight "leptons" (such as electrons and neutrinos) and quarks. Three forces manipulate these particles: electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear reactions. But, this traditional approach doesn't explain gravity, the fourth force.

Experiments have shown that Newton's Law is valid down to the 200-micron level. That is, gravity "follows the rules" at that scale. But, the physical reality below this level remains a mystery. Somewhere within the Planck scale, or at extreme energy levels, an incredibly small extra dimension may finally combine gravity and electromagnetism, Spiropulu suggested. "We're very close into the energies where we can see effects of a very low-energy Planck scale," she said. "If an extra dimension is mirroring the Planck Scale, that means that gravity and the electromagnetic theory is going to be unified tomorrow." Gravity, Spiropulu said, may soon be unified in an "unexplainable hierarchy of scale." >from *In search of extra dimensions: Hang on-a new reality may be around the corner*, february 16, 2002

related context
> probing phenomena beyond standard model. september 13, 2001
> end of lep accelerator at cern. december, 2000
> first direct evidence for tau neutrino. july 21, 2000

> escher-gravitat

tuesday :: february 19, 2002

> origami paperfolding by Peter Budai

Fold the paper in half and then fold it in half again and eventually that piece of paper will be transformed into an airplane, a hat, or a peace crane. Origami - the ancient Japanese tradition of paper folding has long been recognized as an art, but now origami is providing the answers to real world problems in mathematics, engineering, and astronomy proving that origami is more than just child's play. Examples of origami techniques applied to scientific research were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in a session entitled, "Mathematics and Science of Origami: Visualize the Possibilities."

"Origami helps in the study of mathematics and science in many ways," says Martin Kruskal, a mathematician at Rutgers University, "Using origami anyone can become a scientific experimenter with no fuss." Kruskal found that origami is simpler to develop than most scientific theories and a lot easier to apply.

"For many years, I have thought that science and the arts really are just opposite sides of the same coin," says Patricia Wang-Iverson, senior associate for Research for Better Schools and organizer of the session, "People only seem to see the tedium and hard work of science, but don't see the creativity and beauty as they do in a great work of art." >from *Origami helps scientists solve problems*

monday :: february 18, 2002

"An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds... Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving and a new generation of open-access alternative journals are the ways to attain this goal.

... The Open Society Institute, the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal [ with a $3m grant ] ... We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish." >from *Budapest Open Access Initiative*, february 14, 2002

related context
> public library of science journals: a new model for scientific publishing. september 10, 2001
> keep publically-funded research public. december 14, 2001
> the public domain. november 9, 2001
> nurturing the cybercommons. october 18, 2001
> copy.cult and the original si(g)n. september 26-30, 2000

> almond tree blossom -van gogh-

friday :: february 15, 2002

context weblog <http://straddle3.net/context/> announces second issue of context series. The subject is "Aesthetic Computing" that refers to the search for a new development of representation and notation, the exploration on the use of artistic methods and processes within common representations found in computing. The term was coined by Paul Fishwick a researcher on modeling, simulation and computer arts.

Fishwick defined Aesthetic Computing as "the study of artistic, personalized formal model structures in computing." For him, "at a minimum, this refers to the existence of aesthetics, and its importance, in computing and mathematics. Numerous testimonies to aesthetics can be found in mathematics (Hardy and Poincare), physics (Einstein, Feynman), and computing (Knuth, Bentley with his "Programming Pearls")... But, I think we need to go beyond this minimal interpretation with a serious of "what ifs":
· What if a program was built to look like a city?
· What if an operating system really looked like Tron (the movie)?
· What if a mathematical notation was crafted using an arbitrarily chosen aesthetic or style (such as surrealist, classic Greek, or Gothic)?
· What if we had a Holodeck - would we still focus on textual representation?
· What if artistic representations could be achieved quickly, would this change our creative possibilities for formal models?
· What if we could personalize our interface to mathematics and computing by re-presenting formal model structures that fit our own peculiar and individual needs and wants?"
>more on *context series february issue press release*

wednesday :: february 13, 2002

The quantum world is a little closer to our everyday lives. The once described "spooky action at a distance" of quantum mechanics by Albert Einstein ("Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlation" or "entanglement") makes possible the science-fiction dream of teleportation --a way to transfer the complete information to reconstruct objects from one place to another without sending the objects themselves.

Quantum entanglement is a deep quantum mechanical connection between particles, allowing two particles to behave as one, no matter how far apart they are. Through the "entanglement," the act of measurement in one place can influence the quantum state of an entity in another. This could one day allow us to teleport objects by transferring their properties instantly from one place to another. Physicists have been able to entangle photons, electrons and atoms, using different methods in each case (H. Jeff Kimble, Anton Zeilinger, Eugene Polzik). "These schemes are very specific," said Sougato Bose. Sougato Bose and Dipankar Home, of the Bose Institute in Calcutta (India), have now demonstrated a single mechanism that could be used to entangle any particles, even atoms or large molecules. >from *Teleporting larger objects becomes real possibility*, New Scientist, february 6, 2002

related context
> experiment brings teleportation a step closer. september 26, 2001
> first bona fide quantum teleportation. october, 1998
> first experimental verification of quantum teleportation. december, 1997
> teleportation introduction by ibm research pioneer Charles Bennett

> teleportation traces

tuesday :: february 12, 2002

> winter gone mountain clear water sparkles
Spring comes bird sings flower flagrant

February 12, 2002 mark the beginning of the new lunar year, 4700, Year of the Water Horse. The Chinese New Year's Day is the onset of the Spring Festival.

The word Nian, which in modern Chinese solely means "year", was originally the name of a monster beast that started to prey on people the night before the beginning of a new year. One legend goes that the beast Nian had a very big mouth that would swallow a great many people with one bite. People were very scared. One day, an old man came to their rescue, offering to subdue Nian. To Nian he said, "I hear say that you are very capable, but can you swallow the other beasts of prey on earth instead of people who are by no means of your worthy opponents?" So, swollow it did many of the beasts of prey on earth that also harrassed people and their domestic animals from time to time. After that, the old man disappeared riding the beast Nian. He turned out to be an immortal god. Now that Nian is gone and other beasts of prey are also scared into forests, people begin to enjoy their peaceful life. Before the old man left, he had told people to put up red paper decorations on their windows and doors at each year's end to scare away Nian in case it sneaked back again, because red is the color the beast feared the most.

From then on, the tradition of observing the conquest of Nian is carried on from generation to generation. The term "Guo Nian", which may mean "Survive the Nian" becomes today "Celebrate the (New) Year" as the word "guo" in Chinese having both the meaning of "pass-over" and "observe." The custom of putting up red paper and firing fire-crackers to scare away Nian should it have a chance to run loose is still around. >from *Chinese New Year by Haiwang Yuan*

related context
> rosh hashanah. jewish new year 5762. september 18, 2001
> enkutatash. ethiopian new year 1994. september 11, 2001

monday :: february 11, 2002

Eat meat. That's the dietary advice given by a team of scientists who examined the dietary role of fat in a study that combined nutritional analysis with anthropologic research about the diets of ancient hunter-gatherer societies. To be as healthy as a cave man you have to eat certain kinds of fish, wild game such as venison, or grass-fed meat such as beef. Recent studies have indicated that a healthy diet should contain a balance of essential fats, and this balance of fats has changed dramatically in the past century. The two types of most concern are omega-6 and omega-3, and both are essential for proper nutrition.

The research was conducted by Bruce Watkins (Purdue University and director of the Center for Enhancing Foods to Protect Health), and anthropologist Loren Cordain (Colorado State University). Watkins and Cordain conducted detailed chemical analysis of the meats people ate 10,000 years ago and compared those results to the most common meat people eat today.

Although 10,000 years ago predates all modern civilizations, it is a small blip in the evolutionary timeline of humans. Some nutritionists believe that by studying what people ate in the Paleolithic Era, also known as the Old Stone Age, they can determine the proper mix of foods for modern man. Cordain says anthropological nutritionists such as himself have studied the few isolated hunter-gatherer societies such as the Nanamiut of Alaska, the Aborigines of Australia and the !Kung of Africa that remained into the 20th century and found that modern maladies - specifically diet-related chronic diseases -, such as heart disease, high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes, are rare in these populations. >from *Cave men diets offer insights to today's health problems, study shows*, february 4, 2002

related context
> paleolithic diet page
> abstract engravings from stone age. cognitive modernity first evolved in africa. january 18, 2002
> social skills earlier than thought. early evidence of social safety net. september 14, 2001
> technology and evolution. paleolithic technology and human evolution. march 13, 2001

> cave man

friday :: february 8, 2002

> thomas edison's electric lamp patent drawing

We cannot touch or hold it, but we can see it, and with it, see our world. Light defines our physical, visual and mental experiences. It determines how we move and stirs our emotions.

At the Hudson River Museum (New York), the exhibition The Magic of Light examine light art as physical sensation. Magic presents work by 14 artists who changed the nature of art by using light rather than paint or stone to create. Their artworks move away from the traditional art object and focus, instead, on the viewerıs perceptions.

The Magic of Light displays the work of both established and emerging American artists. James Turrell, part of the Light-and-Space movement of the 1960s and 1970s along with Robert Irwin, works with pure light, while his main goal is the viewerıs highest visual and physiological perception. Magic also shows how the vocabulary of these seminal artists is reexamined by the recent work of artists like Susan Chorpenning.

The entire museum is the framework for this exhibition. Five new installations by Stephen Antonakos, Pietro Costa, Kenny Greenberg, Erwin Redl and Robert Thurmer were created especially for The Magic of Light.

Exhibiting artists are Stephen Antonakos, Dan Flavin, Susan Chorpenning, Pietro Costa, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kenny Greenberg, Robert Irwin, Bill Jones and Ben Neill, Sheila Moss, Liz Phillips, James Turrell, Erwin Redl, Keith Sonnier and Robert Thurmer. >from *The Magic of Light, Focusing on Non-Traditional Media, Slated for Exhibition February 1 to May 19 at the Hudson River Museum*, january 11, 2002

related context
> blurring the boundaries: installation art 1969-1996. review by sonya rapoport and barbara lee williams, january 23, 2001

thursday :: february 7, 2002

In 1999 the band Blur composed a special track for the Beagle 2 mission. A piece of the music will act as the call sign to tell the world when the spacecraft lands on Mars. The haunting refrain will be the first music beamed back to Earth from another planet. The track was released conventionally on a CD but yesterday, in a music studio in West London, a unique recording session took place.

The band joined together with software engineer Roger Ward from Science Systems (Space) Ltd. and mission leader Professor Colin Pillinger to programme the same music into the source code so that all communications from the lander will carry this signal as the header. When on the surface of Mars, Beagle 2 will communicate with Earth via the ESA Mars Express satellite which will remain in orbit and also NASA's Odyssey.

The musical signal actually comprises a series of 9 notes, sounding rather like a mobile ring tone. The software destined to go onboard the lander was coded by entering a single bit for each frequency and the messages from Mars will be decoded to reveal the Blur composition. Speaking on Radio 4 Today ahead of the recording session, Blur's Alex James explained that the notes which make up the call sign are loosely based on a Fibonacci sequence.

ESA Mars Express is scheduled to blast off in May 2003 and, if all goes according to plan, the lander module Beagle 2 Mars will beam Blur sound from Mars surface on December 23, 2003. >from *Wired for Sound*, january 31, 2002

related context
> artist join the beagle 2 mars team. june 1, 1999

> beagle 2 lander showing its solar panels outspread and its instrument arm being deployed

wednesday :: february 6, 2002

mandelbrot fractal spiral <

Predicting the size, location, and timing of natural hazards is virtually impossible, but now, earth scientists are able to forecast hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, and landslides using fractals. A fractal is a mathematical formula of a pattern that repeats over a wide range of size and time scales. These patterns are hidden within more complex systems.

Earth scientists are taking Mandelbrot's fractal approach one step further and are measuring past events and making probability forecasts about the size, location, and timing of future natural disasters. "By understanding the fractal order and scale imbedded in patterns of chaos, researchers found a deeper level of understanding that can be used to predict natural hazards," says Christopher Barton, a research geologist at the United States Geological Survey, "They can measure past events like a hurricane and then apply fractal mathematics to predict future hurricane events."

In the past, earth scientists have relied on statistical methods to forecast natural hazard events, but when Barton used fractals, he found that these patterns contain a level of information that has never been seen using statistical methods. Barton discovered that by comparing the fractal formulas of the size and frequency of a hurricane's wind speed to the historic record of information about past hurricane landfall location and timing that he was able to predict the approximate wind speed of the hurricane when it made landfall at a given coastal location along the United States Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. >from *Earth scientists use fractals to measure and predict natural disasters*, january 30, 2002

related context
> Natural Disasters: Forecasting Economic and Life Losses
> Fractal 2002. Complexity and Fractals in Nature

tuesday :: february 5, 2002

The transmediale - international media art festival berlin - will be held from 5 to 10 February 2002 in Berlin. The transmediale is a platform for artistic and critical reflection on the role of digital technologies in present-day society. The festival provides a forum for communication between artists, those working in the media and a wide range of experts and offers a stimulating environment for the presentation of major new digital culture projects.

Transmediale.02 will feature conferences, workshops, presentations, a 'hands-on' media lounge and the presentation of the transmediale awards (image, interaction and software). Running through the festival programme as a thematic guide line, this year's festival motto is: 'Go public!' Citing a phrase predominantly associated with the stock market, 'Go public!' is an appeal to artists and audience alike to [re-]appropriate public space via the aesthetic transformation of New Media. The festival will provide a focus highlighting the autonomous use of digital technologies as a means of expression, exhibition and publication by individuals or individual groups. What are the new spaces offered by New Media? Are there new forms of participation? Within the global society, is there a public sphere to "go public" to? >from *transmediale web site*

related context
> diy [do it yourself] transmediale.01. january 30, 2001

> trading floor of the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange

monday :: february 4, 2002

>

A new addition to *NASA's Earth Observatory*, the Natural Hazards section contains images and information about major environmental events that are potentially hazardous to human populations. The purpose of NASA's Earth Observatory is to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet. The focus is on Earth's climate and environmental change.

Earth scientists around the world use NASA satellite imagery to better understand the causes and effects of natural hazards. The goal in sharing these images is to help people visualize where and when natural hazards occur, and to help mitigate their effects. Initially, the Earth Observatory team will track five categories of natural hazards: wildfires, severe storms, floods, volcanic eruptions, and major air pollution events (dust storms, smog, and smoke). There are plans to expand the section's scope to include other types of natural hazards information, such as earthquakes, coastal erosion, and landslides.

The Earth Science Enterprise is a long-term research program dedicated to understanding how human-induced and natural changes affect our global environment. >from *NASA Unveils New "Natural Hazards" Web Site*, january 28, 2002