A Web Sampler

It's been 10 years since the Loma Prieta earthquake rocked northern California, and the San Francisco Exploratium is marking the occasion with a tour of the science of the San Andreas fault. Webcast visits from 9 to 17 October will include a seismology lab, trenches dug across the fault, and a huge drill used to study crustal stresses.

One of the hottest areas in environmental science is "ecological economics," which probes the interplay of commerce and ecosystem health. A new online article in the journal Conservation Ecology features a computer model for exploring such trade-offs. The model lets participants assume the guise of farmers or land managers, whose competing interests determine how much phosphorus--a by-product of fertilizer use that spurs algal growth--gets dumped into a lake. Too much and you can kiss those fish goodbye.

Dinosaur fans won't want to miss this fact-packed BBC home page featuring remarkably lifelike video clips of creatures such as Peteinosaurus (a flying lizard) and Postosuchus (a 6-meter-long carnivore). The site accompanies a TV series that will air this fall.

--JOCELYN KAISER