Bulletins

SPACE: Out to launch

Kazakhstan hopes to capitalize on its illustrious, fortuitous space history.

A “Russian-made moon” is how the U.S. media characterized Sputnik in 1957. But the world's first satellite was launched far from Moscow, in the steppes of Kazakhstan. The Central Asian nation of 15 million has a long association with space exploration–hosting the Baikonur cosmodrome that launched legions of space vehicles–but possesses little of the fame and fortune attributed to the Soviet program.

That could soon change.

Kazakhstan hopes to develop its own national space industry and plans to build new launch and tracking facilities at Baikonur and a constellation of Kazakh communication satellites. The motivation is part financial: Improved satellite systems would support economic growth, and as Russia has found, the capability to launch commercial satellites generates income.

There are environmental factors, too. For years, the lower stages of Russian Proton rockets launched from Baikonur have fallen to earth, spilling toxic fuels. To avoid this, Kazakh officials plan to configure the new Baiterek launch complex to launch only Russian-made Angara rockets, whose fuel is more environmentally friendly.

Despite Baikonur's history, Kazakhstan's space play won't have a large effect on the global space industry, which has numerous alternative launch options, according to Jeff Foust, a launch industry analyst at Futron Corporation. That's not stopping Kazakhstan. “Prestige plays a role in a lot of these matters,” Foust says. “That is certainly the case here.”

BAIKONUR SPACE MILESTONES

October 4, 1957

Sputnik (right) launches atop an R-7 rocket and remains in orbit for three months.

April 12, 1961

Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin hurls safely into space aboard the Vostok 1, making him the first man to travel out of this world.

March 17, 1988

An Indian satellite becomes the first commercial satellite launched by the Soviet Union.

November 20, 1998

The Zarya module, the first section of the International Space Station, is carried into orbit aboard a Proton rocket.

Approximately 2010

Kazakh officials plan to build the Baiterek complex at launch pad number 40 in the Proton rocket technical complex.

JONAS SIEGEL

RE: CONFLICT: A deadly inheritance

Long after the fighting stops, landmines continue to leave a dangerous legacy. Although Angola, Afghanistan, and Cambodia are usually cited as the countries most afflicted by these remnants of war, the fierce, often barbaric fighting between the Russian military and Chechen guerillas has elevated Chechnya to the top of the list. “In the past decade, Chechen rates, especially at the beginning of the second Chech en war, far exceed those of other coun tries,” notes Oleg Bilukha, a medical epidemiologist with the International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Amid the nearly constant warfare, mineclearing and educational programs that work to reduce landmine fatalities have been unable to make an impact. And sadly, landmines usually kill or maim children instead of combatants, the intended target. DANIEL KIMERLING

LANDMINE INJURIES PER 10,000 PEOPLE (2000)

Chechnya	6.6
Angola	0.7
Cambodia	0.6
Afghanistan	0.5

Q+A BARBARA G. GREEN

Reverend Barbara G. Green is the executive director of the Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy and a senior adviser to the National Religious Partnership on the Nuclear Weapons Danger (Faithful Security). She is coauthor of Lines in the Sand: Justice and the Gulf War (1992).

“Faith is stronger when the other side is there too.”

There are people out there who hate our values and intend to do us harm. What defenses are religiously defensible and which are not? I think we would find a pretty strong consensus that nuclear weapons are never an option. As in never, never, never. You find a very clear divide between those who, out of their religious convictions, refuse to participate in any expression of military force, and those who don't see a conflict between their identity as a person of faith and their participation in the military. The ones who have impressed me most are those who understand the ambiguity in both positions, even when both positions are as clear as either going to jail during the draft or being a military chaplain. But you still understand that the perspective of faith is stronger when the other side is there too.

Does a device such as our “Doomsday Clock” focus attention in a helpful way, or are people more moved by the religious idea of an Apocalypse? The “Doomsday Clock” has been very helpful because it has captured the imagination over the years and has given complex issues a bottom line, if you will. The movement of the Clock has been an easily interpretable way to express which way that movement is going. I would distinguish sharply between the Clock and the kind of apocalyptic scenarios of the Left Behind literature. I find that perspective enormously unhelpful, because it has a sort of seductiveness to it. It has kind of a longing component that suggests, “Gee, it would be a good thing if we got to doomsday.” That makes our work more difficult and is very dangerous.

What would you say to people who think the belief that religion can mobilize opinion, affect and change policy, and alter the way governments work is naïve? Well, I'd say a couple of things. First of all they have a point. (laughter) Expressions of religion can be harmful and full of conflict and can represent diametrically opposite views. They are a factor that is either in collusion with or competing with very strong other influences, such as ambition, career, money, economic power, political power. And it is extremely naïve to think that moral suasion will waltz in and walk over those very strong influences on behavior. Nevertheless, nobody else will raise or will deal with these kinds of issues in moral terms if the religious community doesn't. In my experience, people are grateful when the religious community is able to do that.

JOHN REZEK

IN BRIEF

Amid concerns that destroying the remaining known stocks of the smallpox virus could keep scientists from developing defensive measures against bioterrorism, the World Health Organization decided in February to move the actual destruction date back until at least 2010. Access denied. In early February, Google relented to pressure from the Indian government and blurred sensitive satellite images of Indian military sites and official buildings that had been available to the general public on Google Earth. Here she comes … Miss Atom? In early spring, the Russian nuclear power industry will hold online voting for its fourth annual beauty pageant, open to female employees between ages 18 and 35. No word yet if a “Mr. Fissile” pageant is also planned.

EMERGING TECHNOLOGY: The nanosance

Umberto Baldini, the noted Italian art restorer, would usually visit the chemists at the University of Florence in the morning, each time describing a classic Florentine wall painting that needed mending. For instance, smoke from a seventeenth century fire blackened much of Masaccio's frescoes in Florence's Brancacci Chapel and melted the wax from nearby candles, which permeated the wall and threatened the paintings. “Can you remove this wax from the wall?” Baldini would ask.

Such challenges intrigue Piero Baglioni and his colleagues at the university's Center for Colloid and Surface Science (CSGI). Long at the forefront of using chemistry and physics to better preserve cultural artifacts, in recent years they've added a new tool to their restoration processes–nanotechnology.

“Nano is better than classical chemistry because you have complete control over the chemical reactivity of the particle you inject into the works of art or in the system you use to clean a work of art,” says Baglioni, CSGI's director. “It's like you go back in time four centuries and reproduce something very similar to what the artist originally painted.”

Over time, the wall's chemical composition changes–and with it, the way the paint adheres, causing the paint to flake and powder. Using nanoparticles, the scientists recreate the chemical bonds that originally existed between the wall and the paint, which reinforces the painting's pigment. (The cleaning of Masaccio's frescoes in the late 1980s marked the first time nanoparticles were used in conservation science.) “In Florence, you're in an environment where it's difficult not to be interested in art,” Baglioni says. “My official position is in a different field–I mainly work on neutron scattering. But I do these restorations because it's fun.”

JOSH SCHOLLMEYER

POVERTY: Map quest

Hunger is a high-profile issue, but locating the hungry can prove challenging–particularly when influencing factors vary from country to country. To better target resources to alleviate human suffering, Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) assembled Where the Poor Are: An Atlas of Poverty, a compendium of detailed maps of impoverished areas around the globe.

What the Atlas of Poverty shows In South Africa, cities are not synonymous with poverty. Cape Town and Durban (shown above) both have relatively low poverty compared to the areas just outside their municipal borders. • People living in regions close to the coasts of Africa and Asia tend to be better off than their inland counterparts. Researchers found similar correlations in Latin America, where high poverty rates in Bolivia correspond with its being landlocked and at a high elevation. • Forty-seven percent of Ecuador's high-poverty parishes are found above 2,000 meters and almost two-thirds are found above 1,000 meters. This strong relationship suggests that high elevation might impede economic development, owing to the areas' limited access to transportation and trade.

For years, global poverty maps lacked subnational data. Researchers were “stuck assigning a single color to an entire country” to denote poverty, says Marc Levy, head of the science applications group at CIESIN. Using survey data from the U.N. Development Programme's Human Development Report Office and high-resolution maps, CIESIN researchers created 21 regional and global maps that correlate poverty to a range of factors, including such variables as topography and proximity to cities.

By presenting their data in intuitive, colorful maps, CIESIN hopes the atlas will help governments and nongovernmental organizations understand the relationship between geography and hunger, which according to Levy will “transform the way people respond to poverty.” CHARLOTTE TOOLAN