NASA Scientists Use Satellites to Help Track and Control a Disease
Using weather satellites to spot the early signs of an El Nino, NASA and Defense scientists may be able to help save East Africans and their livestock from Rift Valley Fever, a mosquito-borne disease that can be fatal to humans and animals.

HUD Tailors Its Website for Customers and Partners
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has created "shortcuts" on its website to help its partners--such as academics, appraisers and attorneys--and citizen groups--such as farmworkers, seniors, and veterans--get the information they want.

200 Programs Help Make Livable Communities
How do you make your community a better place to live? This site collects and sorts more than 200 programs and links across a dozen federal agencies. Categories include Strengthening Local Economies, Reclaiming Brownfields, Promoting Transportation Choices, Securing Safe Streets, Preserving Open Space and Farmland, and Creating Community Schools and Civic Places.

Digital Maps: An Idea Whose Time Had Come
The US Geological Survey's highly-regarded topographic "quad" maps have been used for everything from determining a dam site to planning a bird watching trip. It takes 55,000 maps to cover the continental United States. It took the USGS several decades of work to produce this many maps, finishing in 1993. They are wonderful, but they are expensive to produce or revise. Besides, a growing customer segment wanted digital maps they could display on computer monitors. It took the agency less than two and a half years to scan these maps. Now they are selling well in a new medium--CDs, with 67 maps on each one. The disks have a multitude of uses, including helping monitor clean-up work in the Fargo, ND, area following the 1998 flood.