Judy Jacobs

Strong Algerian earthquake strikes near capital city

On 21 May 2003, a damaging earthquake of Mw 6.8 struck the region of Boumerdes 40 km east of Algiers in northern Algeria (Figure 1). The main shock, which lasted ∼36–40 s, had devastating effects and claimed about 2300 victims, caused more than 11,450 injuries, and left about 200,000 people homeless. It destroyed and seriously damaged around 180,000 housing units and 6000 public buildings with losses estimated at

Physicist's “Sounds of Space” enters the repertoire of classical music on Earth

5 billion. The main shock was widely felt within a radius of ∼400 km in Algeria. To the north, the earthquake was felt in southeastern Spain, including the Balearic Islands, and also in Sardinia and in southern France.

Warnings of aftershocks from 1 May earthquake in eastern Turkey

With the support of NASA, AGU member Don Gurnett (SPA) has been collecting “sounds of space” from planetary magnestospheres and from interplanetary space. He collected these sounds over a 40-year period using plasma wave receivers on over 30 space missions, including such well-known missions as Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, and Cassini. A chamber work in 10 movements based on some of these sounds, and written for the San Francisco-based Kronos Quarter, had is second performance at the Wortham Center in Houston, Txas, on January 23.

Launch of First IODP Expedition

Seismologists at the University of Ulster in Belfast have warned that there is a danger of further earthquakes in the area of southeastern Turkey that was struck by a magnitude 6.4 shock on 1 May. John McCloskey one of the members of the University of Ulster Geophysics Research Group, said that preliminary calculations that he and his colleagues have performed since the tremor “…indicate significant increased hazard on the East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ) to the southwest of the rupture, toward the city of Elazig, and to the northeast of Bingol. These results, combined with the faults known to exist in the area, indicate that large aftershocks may occur, with events of magnitude 6 on the Richter scale possible.”

Re-organization of NSF's Earth sciences

The scientific team for the first expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) departed Astoria, Oregon on 28 June for the Juan de Fuca Ridge, off the coast of British Columbia. The team will undertake hydrologic, micro-biological, seismic, and tracer studies to evaluate fluid flow within the oceanic crust. Andrew Fisher, co-chief scientist and geologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, along with Tetsuro Urabe of the University of Tokyo, will lead some 50 scientists and technicians aboard the JOIDES Resolution, a “floating university?” in this leg of IODPs quest to provide information about Earths history.

“Comet‐chaser” spacecraft launched

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced 16 July that its Division of Earth Sciences would be re-organized into two new sections. The Surface Earth Processes Section (SEP) will consist of the programs in hydrology (HS), education and human resources (EHR), sedimentary geology and paleobiology (SGP), geobiology and environmental geochemistry (GEG), and geomorphology and land use dynamics (GLD). The current budget for the new section is approximately

Advisability of NOAA as independent agency discussed at hearing

50 million per year.

AAAS, other science groups issue recommendations to U.S. Government for solving Visa issuance problems

The European Space Agency successfully launched its Rosetta spacecraft on 2 March, the beginning of what is hoped will be a 10-year journey that will provide information about the origins of the solar system, by placing a lander on the nucleus of comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta was launched from the ESAs facility at Kourou, French Guiana. After three flybys of the Earth and one of Mars, Rosetta is scheduled, in mid-2011, to ignite its main engine for a major deep-space maneuver that will place it onto an intercept trajectory with the comet.

Enrollment in graduate geosciences programs appears unaffected by changes in U.S. Immigration Regulations

Several top ocean and meteorological scientists testifying before a Congressional subcommittee on 15 July were in agreement that NOAA should become an independent agency However, a representative of the U.S. Department of Commerce, of which NOAA is a part, appeared less enthusiastic about the idea. The advantages and disadvantages of NOAA acquiring independent status, and the adequacy of its current organizational structure, were only two of the topics discussed in the most recent hearings on the nature of an organic act for the agency (see Eos, 22 June 2004, p. 242). The function of such legislation, currently under consideration by both houses of Congress, would be to clearly define and codify NOAAs status, functions, and scope of responsibilities.

Satellite to measure ice sheet elevations

On 12 May, high-level U.S. science and higher education organizations outlined some practical recommendations for solving the current visa-processing crisis—by removing unnecessary barriers to multinational discoveries—and urged the federal government to adopt them. The recommendations are designed to combat “the misperception that the United States does not welcome international students, scholars, and scientists,” according to a joint statement issued by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association of American Universities (AAU), the American Physical Society, and 22 other organizations.