It took just one, raging storm to jump from its predicted path two years ago for Floridians to understand that hurricanes can be tragically fickle.
But, with help from the latest research, the frustratingly broad “cone of uncertainty,” which sends thousands of stressed residents ahead of every hurricane to scramble for emergency supplies, could grow slimmer and more precise.
Funded by NASA, professor Xiaolei Zou and researcher Yonghui Wu from FSU’s department of meteorology found a close connection between levels of ozone—an atmospheric gas—and hurricane movement that could help better predict destructive storm paths in the future.
Analyzing data collected from one of NASA’s satellites on 12 past hurricanes, the researchers noticed a consistent pattern: A low level of ozone encircled a bull’s-eye of high ozone levels in the core of the storms. During their most furious stages, the ozone highs matched the actual hurricanes’ eyes within 18 miles.
More importantly, when plugged into a computer forecasting-model, ozone data more precisely honed the predicted hurricane paths.
The researchers also discovered that ozone levels can tell storm-watchers where a hurricane is forming faster than other methods. While clouds can mask the early spin of a hurricane, the NASA satellite Earth Probe can peer through the clouds and map ozone patterns that tell whether a hurricane is brewing.
For survivors of the hurricanes that ambushed the South in the past couple of years, the promise of better forecasting may serve as little consolation. But it could mean some relief and improved preparedness in coming years that threaten more, dangerous hurricane seasons. —For more on Zou and Wu’s research, visit www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/ozone_drop.html.
A Bank for Biologists
Taking full advantage of the Internet’s international reach, FSU’s School of Computational Science is heading a massive effort to provide biologists open and free access to a literal snapshot of life’s natural history. 
The ambitious project, called MorphBank, is an online, searchable database that currently contains about 40,000 digital images of life, from butterfly wings to pitcher plants.
Countless more are on the way. This August, the MorphBank team announced it received a $2.25 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue to develop the project.
In coming years, SCS expects to bring thousands more photos online to provide an expansive resource for researchers around the world in diverse disciplines from taxonomy to comparative anatomy. Researchers can use the images for free as long as they properly cite the source and copyright holders.
Seven years ago, the project began modestly. It started in 1998 as a collection of wasp images put together by collaborators in Sweden, Spain and the United States. It was housed in Sweden. Four years later, researchers produced the first scientific paper based on 1,100 images in the database.
In 2004, the major hub and master server, originally at Uppsala University, moved to FSU, where a team of a dozen computer scientists, mathematicians, biologists and information specialists formed to tackle the project coordinated by associate professor of biological science Fredrik Ronquist. Working together, they recognized the broader potential of MorphBank and opened it to any biologists interested in storing and sharing their images of organisms and their DNA data.
Now, the team is working to connect to databases at other institutions and standardize the information so it’s easy to navigate. —To access MorphBank, visit www.morphbank.net.
The Cops and Crime Conundrum
Whether more cops on the street curb crime seems like a no-brainer, but it has long been debated among researchers and lawmakers.
New research by Jonathan Klick, the Jeffrey A. Stoops Professor of Law at FSU, and his George Mason University colleague, Alexander Tabarrok, could put an end to the speculation.
Some past studies have found that a bigger police presence means more crime. But there was no telling which spurt came first, the crime or the cops.
Other reports told a different story, that high police numbers have no effect on the amount of crime.
The question, for economists and the nation, is a big one. In addition to the high emotional toll that crime can inflict, the country spends more than $65 billion per year to police the streets. Toss in $35 billion for the courts and $49 billion for jails and prisons, and the total rings up to $149 billion a year.
To pin down an answer, Klick and Tabarrok analyzed crime rates during a post 9-11 period in Washington, D.C. The new terror alert system gave researchers the chance to watch what happens when a boost in police presence is not linked to a surge in local crime. Over 506 days between March 12, 2002, and July 30, 2003, the alert level rose and fell four times. They published their results in the Journal of Law and Economics.
The data showed that more cops do deter crime, Klick and Tabarrok concluded— at least in the nation’s capital, the city of focus in their research.
They found that when the alert level was high and more police were on the streets, local street crime—e.g., burglaries, stolen cars—dropped by almost 7 percent. A closer look revealed that crime near the National Mall, where cops were concentrated, fell by 15 percent.
Exactly how many more officers it takes to reduce street crime remains a question mark. In their study, Klick and Tabarrok said they were told the police numbers swelled by 50 percent during high alert, but the city police wouldn’t confirm this.
Regardless, the study implies that spending on police upfront is a worthy investment.
“Our local and federal governments spend tons of money on policing,” Klick said, “and it looks like we may be justified in spending much more.” —The report may be downloaded from the Journal of Law and Economics Web site: www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE/home.html.
Builders Online
As the rancid floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina receded from the Gulf Coast, thousands of evacuees thought they had braced for the worst as they returned to their homes. But nothing could prepare them for what they found. Their lives, their memories, their childhood homes reduced to nothing but rubble and mud. They had food and water, thanks to the feds and American Red Cross, but who would help them rebuild their capsized lives?
With lessons learned from Florida’s hurricane-ravaged coasts, one organization stepped in to address the unimaginable. Disaster Contractors Network, created by an FSU center in 2000 to connect disaster victims with licensed contractors, immediately got in touch with builders’ associations and government agencies in the Katrina-affected states.
A month later, DCN went live with an online network of contractors that could help put Mississippi’s broken coast back together again. Within a day of its debut, dozens of contractors from electricians to carpenters had registered on the Web site. In this clearinghouse of rebuilding resources, www.dcnonline.org, homeowners can find what they desperately need to raise their homes again; contractors can get the information they need to build better, stronger, more disaster-resistant homes.
DCN hopes to expand its services to Louisiana soon and has been in contact with the state’s officials, said Audrey Heffron, deputy director of FSU’s Center for Disaster Risk Policy, which runs the Web site.
The network started up five years ago from lessons learned the hard way in the wake of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. Florida officials wanted to stop the gouging that soured rebuilding efforts after Andrew, Heffron said. So the state Department of Community Affairs funded DCN, which, in addition to connecting contractors and homeowners, educates the first group on how to build stronger homes and the second on how to protect themselves from getting swindled.
So far, DCN has proved an invaluable resource. Last year—the year Charlie, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne slammed Florida—DCN’s Web site got more than 5 million hits, with more than 2 million in the month of September alone.
With the addition of Mississippi’s network and the intensity of this hurricane period, DCN may become a fixture for decades to come. It took 10 years for south Florida homeowners to recover from Andrew; Katrina flattened 10 times as many homes. —To access Disaster Contractors Network, go to www.dcnonline.org.
Housing Online, Too
For disaster victims who need temporary housing, FSU’s Center for Disaster Risk Policy launched a Web site last year to help evacuees find already-existing housing. Funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Disaster Housing Resources has posted a free listing of available housing in all 50 states. People looking for a place to stay can search the database by price range, location and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. —To access Disaster Housing Resources, go to www.dhronline.org.
Cyber Sleuths
Just about every advance has its drawbacks, and it seems the bigger the step forward, the worse the complication. The Internet was a gravity-defying leap. launched us into a new era. But it also created a vast cyberspace where criminals lurk, sneak instantaneously into unsuspecting inboxes and chat rooms, steal identities, terrorize and threaten, covering their tracks as they go.
The Worldwide Web revolutionized communication and
A few years ago, FSU, the National White Collar Crime Center and state law enforcement teamed up to form the Florida Cybersecurity Institute to combat Internet crime, which can be as chilling and harmful as its offline counterparts. This fall, computer science professor Sudhir Aggarwal announced one of the institute’s latest projects funded by a $281,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice: technology to help prosecute cyberstalkers.
Cyberstalking—defined broadly as the use of electronic communications to repeatedly harass or threaten another person—was recognized officially as a growing problem in a 1999 report by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Then vice president Al Gore said, “Make no mistake: This kind of harassment can be as frightening and as real as being followed and watched in your neighborhood or in your home.”
Indeed, the report found many similarities between offline and online stalking: many cases involve former “intimates”; most victims are women.
But because of the Internet’s potential, the differences can lead to traumatic results. In the first case successfully prosecuted under California’s cyberstalking law, a man had impersonated his 28-year-old victim in chat rooms, listing her address and describing rape fantasies. At least six times, men knocked on her door in the middle of the night, said the Justice Department report. In another California case, a man threatened violence through hundreds of e-mails to five female university students over a period of more than a year. Both cases resulted in guilty pleas and prison sentences up to six years each.
In 2003, Florida set its own cyberstalking law, declaring it a first-degree misdemeanor. Aggravated stalking and stalking of a minor are considered felonies.
Recognizing the crime is a step in the right direction, but the real challenge is in enforcement. Increasingly Web-savvy perpetrators know how to hide their tracks.
The new tool being developed by Aggarwal and the Florida Cybersecurity Institute lets police stalk the cyberstalkers.
It’s called the Predator and Prey Alert (PAPA) system and consists of a hardware/software prototype that allows law enforcement agents to shadow a victim through cyberspace. They can advise the victim and even take over the victim’s computer to interact directly with the stalker. At the same time, PAPA records the exchanges.
“The PAPA system,” Aggarwal said, “takes advantage of the cyberstalker’s aggressive and repetitive behavior by recording the victim’s desktop experience of attacks and giving investigators the ability to proactively intervene.”
He added: The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the National White Collar Crime Center would evaluate the prototype before taking it commercial in the next few years. —For more on online safety, go to the Web site for WHOA, Working to Halt Online Abuse: www.haltabuse.org.
Port Protection
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the nation raced to make its airports impenetrable to would-be hijackers. But the ports, scattered along 95,000 miles of U.S. shoreline, remained dangerously porous, critics have said.
A $30 million infusion of funds from the Department of Homeland Security aims to plug the holes. In October, more than a fifth of that was awarded to FSU’s Learning Systems Institute, a multidisciplinary center dedicated to improving methods in education and training.
Part of the challenge facing port security at the national level has been the lack of uniform standards. Security along the shores involves multiple groups from guards to port employees to local law enforcement.
“There are no national standards right now,” said project director Aubteen Darabi of LSI. “With the LSI curriculum, they’re going to be in a better situation with technologically advanced training courses and standards much more sophisticated than what they have now.”
With the $6.2 million grant, LSI will develop national performance standards and a training curriculum for individuals and teams involved with keeping ports safe. The Web-based courses will be implemented over the next two years and led by certified instructors.
“Our first responders, security guards and law enforcement officers at our seaports are our first line of defense against those who want to penetrate our most vulnerable gates to the outside world,” Darabi said. “Training these security forces in awareness and preparedness as well as responsiveness and recovery if an attack happens will allow us all to be safer.”
The remainder of the $30 million from Homeland Security was awarded to 14 other universities and groups.
Super Center Allure
Fifteen years after FSU attracted a national laboratory to Tallahassee, another international science powerhouse is making the move south.
In October, FSU and the Applied Superconductivity Center, currently housed at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, announced the ASC would set up shop at Innovation Park across from the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory—an impressive catch considering the center’s reputation.
“One of the things that has struck me,” said Greg Boebinger, director of the NHMFL, “is that in this area of applied superconductivity, there is amazing unanimity on stating that the ASC is the group that is out front.”
During its more than 20 years in Madison, ASC earned its international reputation through many successes in superconductivity research, including a major breakthrough just last year with magnesium diboride, a relatively cheap superconductor discovered in 2001.
“For the first time in about 30 years,” Boebinger said, “we have not just one new material that could completely revolutionize superconductivity applications, but we’ve got two: magnesium diboride and high temperature superconductors, copper oxides.”
That revolution could take root with ASC’s move, which will begin in early 2006 with four top researchers coming to Tallahassee from the center, including its pioneering director, David Larbalestier. It could lead to building the next generation of superconducting magnets, new materials in medical science and other fields.
Aiding in a smooth transition is the group’s experience with the magnet lab. ASC has already visited the magnet lab and conducted research there.
“David Larbalestier is a frequent visitor,” Boebinger said, “and has been known to the mag lab since our first days.”
In all, ASC, largely funded by the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, may bring about 30 researchers to its new home along with some $2 million in grants and another $2.5 million in laboratory equipment.
Conquering Space
Finally, an information superhighway that doesn’t get clogged with millions of daily e-mails, music downloads and digital images fighting their way across an increasingly congested cyberspace. The good news is reserved mostly for researchers who exchange encyclopedias of information at a time: The new superhighway is just for them.
Earlier this year, the Florida LambdaRail Network completed its next-generation system designed to keep pace with the research community’s rapidly growing tech needs. Its frame is a fiber-optic, high-bandwidth network that connects nine Florida universities. It hooks into the National LambdaRail project that crisscrosses the country and links major cities from Los Angeles to New York City through its Jacksonville, Fla., hub.
Architecture aside, what this all means is Florida researchers are now able to swap data and images at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. For scientists, that translates into libraries of information from DNA sequences, climate models and computer analyses that were previously unwelcome travelers through cyberspace.
“This gives us a networking speed we could not even dream about just three years ago,” said Larry Conrad, chair of the Florida LambdaRail Board and associate vice president and chief information officer at FSU. “Before, it would have taken days to download multiple terabyte files. Now it will take a few hours.”
The universities participating in the massive undertaking include: Florida State University, the University of Florida, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Institute of Technology, Florida International University, Nova Southeastern University, the University of Central Florida, the University of Miami, the University of West Florida and the University of North Florida. Corporate partners include: Cisco Systems, Level3 Communications and FiberCo.
Other regions are also plugging into the National LambdaRail. Florida’s is the only one fully created, funded and controlled by a consortium of universities. —For more on the Florida LambdaRail Network, visit: www.flrnet.org.
