Last week, in the Archdiocese of New Orleans students returned to class in 37 Roman Catholic schools that opened for the first time since Hurricane Katrina blasted the region six weeks ago. School officials were surprised to see families returning much sooner and in greater numbers than expected. With the reopening of six high schools and 30…

History teaches that a lack of disaster awareness and preparation are common threads among all major weather-related disasters. Weather hazards come in many forms: storm surge, high winds, blizzards, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, or a combination of these. It is important for both family and work colleagues to have an action plan…

In this article, the author reports what the administrators and educators in Bay St. Louis-Waveland, the last district in Mississippi to reopen following Hurricane Katrina, are doing in order to keep their students in school after Hurricane Katrina. Students in this district attend classes in portable classrooms linked by wooden boardwalks that…

In the economics of education, no task has been more important or more difficult than identifying the relationship between school inputs and student performance. The literature on this topic has reached little resolution, largely owing to the endogeneity of school resources. In this paper I examine the effect of a vital but little studied…

Students can gain an appreciation for the structure and function of local environments by studying the potential impacts of small changes in local microclimate on plant distribution. The concept of microclimate is easy for students to comprehend, simple to measure, exists in all schoolyards, and has important and tangible ecological implications.…

This comprehensive analysis addresses the United States' alarming lack of preparedness to respond effectively to a massive disaster as evidenced by Hurricane Katrina. First, a timeline of problematic response events during and after Hurricane Katrina orients readers to some of the specific problems encountered at different levels of government.…

The influence of weather in determining suitability of areas for outdoor recreation is discussed. (PS)

Explored variation of suicide and homicide rates in the major standard metropolitan statistical areas of the United States to see whether regional variations in temperature and precipitation could account for some of the variation. Only the correlation between precipitation and homicide rates survived controls for latitude and longitude.…

A formula for assessing specific risk of lightning strikes is provided. Recent legal cases are used to illustrate potential liability. Six actions park managers can take to minimize danger from lightning are presented, and commonsense rules which should be publicly posted are listed. (MT)

This discussion of weather models uses maps to illustrate the differences among three types of frontal cyclones (long wave, short wave, and troughs). Awareness of these cyclones can provide clues to atmospheric conditions which can lead toward accurate weather forecasting. (AM)

According to a new study by two University of California, Berkeley, mathematicians and their Russian colleague, the water droplets kicked up by rough seas serve to lubricate the swirling winds of hurricanes and cyclones, letting them build to speeds approaching 200 miles per hour. Without the lubricating effect of the spray, the mathematicians…

Many people are invisible within and to the wider society. An adjunct aspect of that situation is that the marginalized are also invisible to one another. This "mutual invisibility" undermines the possibilities of cooperative transcommunal alliances. It is Cedric Sunray's ("Similarities between Tribes and the Ninth Ward,"…

As one natural disaster after another seemed to define the year 2005, library workers across the nation generously donated money, materials, and labor to help victims and damaged institutions recover. Some librarians donated to specific institutions, while others donated to more general charities. Many worried about media reports of fraudulent…

A study in St. Louis shows that large urban areas can have significant local and downwind effects. (Editor)

Although tornadoes have been one of the most elusive phenomena in meteorology, new observation techniques are now revealing how they are spawned by thunderstorms. Tornado structure and formation, thunderstorms, tornadic thunderstorms, and the evolution and structure of such thunderstorms are considered. Why the Midwest has frequent tornadoes is…