Spurred on by technical and political developments, the com puter networks for the academic and research communities (illustrated on the front cover) are evolving rapidly. However, without some forceful actions, Europe could easily slip behind in abandoning a vital industrial sector. To highlight some of the issues we report here on the applications of networks and their status, developments in a particular discipline of rapidly growing importance, namely climate modelling, US initiatives,

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... ean attitudes, expansion towards central and eastern Europe, and EPS proposals.