Measurements and observations made on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday show the nature of the activity is less hazardous than the explosive activity the volcano exhibited in mid-January.

Increased levels of carbon dioxide measured in emissions and overflight observations indicate recent seismicity is tied to dome building rather than explosions.

"Now we're in a period of big dome growth," said Peter Cervelli, a U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Overflight observations and emissions measurements have found that the dome walls have accumulated more rock and that carbon dioxide levels have risen, indicating that the volcano is producing new magma. But new magma does not necessarily mean more explosions.

"Sometimes it comes out violently and sometimes it oozes out like a tube of toothpaste," Cervelli said. "And that's what it's doing right now."

The kind of lava that flows from Augustine tends to be cooler and thicker than the lava that flows from Hawaiian volcanoes.

Whether or not the volcano explodes or oozes depends on whether the path of the lava, and the gases contained in it, is obstructed.

"The system seems to be open and flowing now," said Rick Wessels, a research geophysicist for USGS and AVO.

The current toothpaste-like flow of lava from Augustine Volcano is building up the walls of the dome, causing occasional collapses and resulting in some of the increased seismic activity that has been measured over the course of the last couple of weeks.

Most of the recent low-elevation ash clouds can also be attributed to the collapses. The low-elevation ash clouds are not likely to travel far beyond the island.

Although explosive eruptive activity has not been ruled out for the near future, the volcano is likely to continue its current dome building activity for a couple of months, Cervelli said.

Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis Ababa University were amazed -- and frightened. They had only just stepped out of their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when the ground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for the scientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: the Earth split open. Crevices began racing toward the researchers like a zipper opening up. After a few seconds, the ground stopped moving, and after they had recovered from their shock, Ayalew and his colleagues realized they had just witnessed history. For the first time ever, human beings were able to witness the first stages in the birth of an ocean.

Normally changes to our geological environment take place almost imperceptibly. A life time is too short to see rivers changing course, mountains rising skywards or valleys opening up. In north-eastern Africa's Afar Triangle, though, recent months have seen hundreds of crevices splitting the desert floor and the ground has slumped by as much as 100 meters (328 feet). At the same time, scientists have observed magma rising from deep below as it begins to form what will eventually become a basalt ocean floor. Geologically speaking, it won't be long until the Red Sea floods the region. The ocean that will then be born will split Africa apart.

The Afar Triangle, which cuts across Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, is the largest construction site on the planet. Three tectonic plates meet there with the African and Arabian plates drifting apart along two separate fault lines by one centimeter a year. A team of scientists working with Christophe Vigny of the Paris Laboratory of Geology reported on the phenomenon in a 2006 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. While the two plates move apart, the ground sinks to make room for the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Bubbling magma and the smell of sulphur

A third crevice cuts south, splitting not far from Lake Victoria. One branch of the rift runs to the east, the other to the west of the lake. The two branches of this third crevice are moving apart by about one millimeter a year.

The dramatic event that Ayalew and his colleagues witnessed in the Afar Desert on Sept. 26, 2005 was the first visual proof of this process -- and it was followed by a week-long series of earthquakes. During the months that followed, hundreds of further crevices opened up in the ground, spreading across an area of 345 square miles. "The earth has not stopped moving since," geophysicist Tim Wright of the University of Oxford says. The ground is still splitting open and sinking, he says; small earthquakes are constantly shaking the region.

Scientists have made repeated trips to the area since the drama of last September. Locals have reported a number of new cracks opening in the ground, says geologist Cynthia Ebinger from the University of London, and during each visit, new crevices are discovered. Fumes as hot as 400 degrees Celsius (752 degrees Fahrenheit) shoot up from some of them; the sound of bubbling magma and the smell of sulphur rise from others. The larger crevices are dozens of meters deep and several hundred meters long. Traces of recent volcanic eruptions are also visible.

In a number of places, cracks have opened up beneath the thin layer of volcanic ash that covers the region. As there is no ash in the fissures, it's clear that they opened up after the volcanic eruptions, most of which took place at the end of September or in October, 2005. A number of locals who fled the eruptions have reported that a black cloud of ash -- spewed out of the Dabbahu volcano -- darkened the sky for three days.

A new ocean floor on the Earth's surface

Basalt magma has risen into some of the crevices. For the moment, Ayalew explains, the lava seems not to be rising further. A number of recent eruptions, though, have left layers of new basalt lava on the Earth's surface. And it's the exact same kind of lava that spews out of volcanic ridges deep under the ocean -- a process which slowly pushes older lava sediments away on either side. The process has only just begun in the Afar Triangle -- and scientists for the first time can witness the birth of a new ocean floor.

The source of the African magma looks to be a gigantic stream of molten rock rising from beneath the Earth's crust and slicing through the African continental plate like a blow torch. It's a process that began thirty million years ago when lava broke through the continent for the first time, separating the Arabian Peninsula from Africa and creating the Red Sea.

Now, it's the Afar Triangle's turn and it's sinking rapidly. Large areas are already more than 100 meters (328 feet) below sea level. For now, the highlands surrounding the Denakil Depression prevent the Red Sea from flooding these areas, but erosion and tectonic plate movement are continually reducing the height of this natural barrier. The Denakil Depression, which lies to the east of Afar, is already prey to regular floods -- each flood leaving behind a crust of salt.

Africa to lose its horn

The chain of volcanoes that runs along the roughly 6,000 kilometer (3,730 mile) long East African Rift System offers further testimony to the breaking apart of the continent. In some areas around the outer edges of the Rift System, the Earth's crust has already cracked open, making room for the magma below. From the Red Sea to Mozambique in the south, dozens of volcanoes have formed, the best known being Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Nyiragongo.

These fiery mountains too will one day sink into the sea. Geophysicists have calculated that in 10 million years the East African Rift System will be as large as the Red Sea. When that happens, Africa will lose its horn.

Thursday morning, most of the state was under a red flag warning - meaning a critical danger of fires - because of the dry air pushing into the region and the forecast of 20-25 mph winds, the National Weather Service said.

In Texas, where 50 mph wind gusts had swept a line of flames toward six Panhandle cities on Wednesday, the winds had shifted by Thursday morning and dropped below 10 mph.

"Right now, the fire is contained," said Lipscomb County Sheriff's dispatcher Jay Johnson, whose office had urged nearly 3,000 residents in the far northern county to evacuate the day before. "The wind has shifted and they've lit a backfire to get the fire burning back on itself."

Authorities said the fires had traveled as far as 40 miles to the northeast on Wednesday.

The winds, which blew away ash and created sandstorms, were the strongest since wildfires started racing across the plains northeast of Amarillo on Sunday. Eleven people have died, more than 840,000 acres have burned, and animal health officials have estimated the number of dead horses and cattle at 10,000.

"When fire is advancing at 40 mph, you can't put it out," Borger Fire Chief Gayland Darnell said. "It would be like trying to stop a tornado."

Gov. Rick Perry is scheduled to tour the area Thursday.

In Oklahoma, already under a burn ban because of fire outbreaks in recent months, 14 fires raged Wednesday from near Lawton, in the southwest, to west of Tulsa in the northeast, said Dale Armstrong, a fire information officer.

The largest of those fires burned about 3,000 acres near Moore, southeast of Oklahoma City, forcing the evacuation of 30 homes for several hours Wednesday, Armstrong said.

Wildfires have also broken out in western Kansas, where 14,000 acres burned Wednesday in Hodgeman County.

"It's dry. It's way too dry," said Joy Moser, spokeswoman for the Kansas Division of Emergency Management. "We haven't had anything like this in years."

In Texas, fires have consumed about 3.7 million acres and nearly 400 homes since late December.

Firefighters in Texas were battling 10 major blazes Wednesday and responded to more than 200 new fires for a second consecutive 24-hour period. The Panhandle got some relief Wednesday afternoon with brief rain in the Borger and Pampa areas, overcast skies and higher humidity.

In their efforts to quell the wildfires, some departments have used soapy water because it sticks to vegetation better and doesn't evaporate as quickly. Firefighters also have set back fires and used bulldozers to clear land in an effort to rob advancing fires of fuel. Helicopters have dropped hundreds of thousands of gallons of fire retardant and water.

In the sparsely populated rural Panhandle, the mostly flat terrain combined with grasses and some brush that can fuel fires contribute to quickly advancing flames.

"The problem is they can spread over such a wide area quickly, exponentially, it makes it hard to get a handle on it," said Frederick.

The risks of living along the coast inside what amounts to little more than an aluminum box are already obvious to Mitchell and Marie Bartholomew, whose travel trailer here in Port Sulphur, about 40 miles southeast of New Orleans, rocked so violently in a recent routine storm that they abandoned it for a hotel.

"It rattles, it rolls," said Mr. Bartholomew, 62, a retired boat captain, whose trailer sits between the Mississippi River and the slab where his home once stood. "It is like telling you to get out."

Government officials along the Gulf Coast and in Washington agree that the temporary housing, while better than a tent or emergency shelter, is far from ideal.

"They're campers," Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi told a Senate committee this month. "They're not designed to be used as housing for a family for months, much less years. The trailers don't provide even the most basic protection from high winds or severe thunderstorms, much less tornadoes or hurricanes."

With hurricane season less than three months away, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in an interview that he too was worried about the situation. Not only are the trailers lightweight, they are often placed next to partly reconstructed homes and debris that can turn into dangerous projectiles when the wind picks up, Mr. Chertoff said.

Since the travel trailers used by the Bartholomews and others are intended to be portable, they are mounted on wheels so they can be pulled by large pickup trucks until, on reaching their destination, they are jacked up and mounted on concrete blocks. Designed initially for recreational use, the units - 35 feet long, 8 eight feet wide and weighing about 6,000 pounds - are much smaller, lighter and less expensive than so-called mobile or manufactured homes, which are typically emplaced permanently.

More than 87,100 families in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are living in the FEMA trailers, while only some 2,300 are in the sturdier mobile homes.

FEMA ordered far more travel trailers than mobile homes after the hurricane because the trailers could be towed to a homeowner's property and quickly dropped into place. Being portable, they are not generally covered by building codes and not explicitly banned in flood zones.

For further security along the windy Gulf Coast, FEMA secured the trailers to the ground with steel straps that connect to four corner anchors, although many homeowners have installed their own trailers, in some cases without anchoring them at all.

The added security for the FEMA trailers means that while they may vibrate or rock in the wind, they should not be vulnerable to tipping over until winds exceed 75 miles per hour or so, said Mark C. Smith, a spokesman for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. That speed is typical during intense tropical storms, extremely severe thunderstorms and all hurricanes. (FEMA agrees that 75 m.p.h. should be the threshold for evacuation, although Eddie Abbott of Gulf Stream Coach, a trailer manufacturer, said he thought an anchored trailer would be stable at higher wind speeds.)

By comparison, new coastal homes must be able to withstand winds of up to 110 to 150 m.p.h., depending on location, said Gene Humphrey, an official in the Mississippi fire marshal's office.

The potential hazards with the trailers are obvious across the gulf region. In Myrtle Grove, La., north of Port Sulphur, FEMA trailers sit on the ground below houses that are suspended on stilts to avoid routine floodwaters that would swamp the trailers. Elsewhere, they have been installed just a few feet away from homes that remain ripped wide open from Hurricane Katrina.

Add wind, and the environment can quickly become treacherous. Jimmy Cappiello, a retired oil platform operator who now lives part time in a Port Sulphur trailer, saw sheet metal, trash, wood planks and even the carport from a nearby house flying during a recent storm. He waited it out in his pickup, which he felt was more solid than the trailer.

"I ain't taking no chances," Mr. Cappiello said. "I don't feel safe in it."

In early February, the New Orleans police reported that at least one FEMA trailer was ripped from its anchors when a tornado passed through. And last July, in Pensacola, Fla., a number of trailers installed after a 2004 hurricane were damaged or flipped when Hurricane Dennis hit.

Mr. Humphrey, from the Mississippi fire marshal's office, said he realized that many families wanted a trailer next to their damaged houses. But FEMA, he said, made a mistake in installing the lightweight trailers, instead of the heavier mobile homes, in this high-wind zone on the coast.

"This is pretty serious," he said. "It never should have happened."

With so many trailers and damaged homes along the gulf, and with some levees weakened, local officials will most likely call for coastal evacuations more frequently this year, said Mr. Smith, the Louisiana official. "The key," he said, "is going to be trying to figure out how to word it so people don't get a false sense of security, but people don't panic, either."

Mr. Chertoff said he had already spoken with officials at FEMA and the Defense Department to make sure that federal agencies are ready if needed to help in evacuations.

"We are going to say, 'We want to see the plan, and we want to see what the capabilities are,' " Mr. Chertoff said. " 'And if you don't have the capabilities, we need to know that, because we are going to make sure we have those capabilities in place.' "

In recent weeks, some coastal cities, including Biloxi and Ocean City, Miss., have decided that when severe storms approach, they will open temporary shelters where people living in travel trailers or damaged homes can wait out the bad weather.

"We have to be on our toes sooner," said Ashley Roth, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. "The trailers are just not safe to stay in, in the event of severe weather."

Some trailer residents along the coast in Mississippi and Louisiana said they would not be reluctant to head for more solid shelter. "They won't have to tell me - we will be moving out," said Daisy Lightell, 57, of Happy Jack, La., north of Port Sulphur, who lives in a FEMA trailer with her husband. "Otherwise, we could end up in 'The Wizard of Oz.' "

Above all, officials want to discourage residents from trying to evacuate with their trailer in tow, a circumstance that could create an even worse hazard.

"I imagine there are going to be some people who consider it," said Jesse St. Amant, emergency preparedness director for Plaquemines Parish, La. "But I hope they think better of it. Trying to haul a travel trailer during an evacuation would be cumbersome and dangerous."

"By developing technologies for carbon capture and storage, we can reduce emissions in the medium-term as we move to large scale use of renewable, carbon-free energy sources," said EU science commissioner Janez Potocnik.

The CASTOR project works by capturing CO2 emissions as they are produced by power stations and then storing them underground, to prevent them interacting with the atmosphere and producing the greenhouse effect.

In particular the EU, which has given 8.5 million euros for the project, hopes to make the process more attractive by cutting the cost, from about 60 euros per tonne currently to 20 euros per tonne in the future.

"It is hoped that this ... project will allow scientists to improve the technological processes involved in carbon capture, provide a means for better understanding of the process among the public and consolidate Europes position as a leader in this scientific field," said the EU commission.

Commission spokeswoman Antonia Mochan noted that the Danish project launch comes only two days after new US figures showing a big increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Research into alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar power, has surged of late partly due to soaring world oil prices, but also due to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Projects like CASTOR "could be a medium term solution to the current dichotomy of our dependence on fossil fuel technology and the fact that alternative sources of energy aren't yet ready to satisfy the global demand for energy," said Mochan.

The EU executive said it also wanted to work with other countries on such new projects, as shown by a recent agreement with China on near-zero emission power plant technology.

"But we believe this is a longer route," Dankvert said.

"We forecast that bird flu mutation is possible in the countries where the number of different viruses is high. This group includes the United States," Dankvert added.

Bird flu has spread with alarming speed in recent weeks across Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia.

The U.S. government is treating avian flu as a scourge that will inevitably reach the United States and is preparing accordingly, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said this week.

The virus occasionally infects people who have direct contact with infected birds and has killed around 100 people since late 2003.

Scientists fear that the virus may mutate into a form which could easily pass from one person to another, causing a pandemic, in which millions could die.