 clinician groups, and healthcare management organizations. Conduct site visits and learn from others' experience. Develop a system with inherent flexibility that changes as constituents' needs change. The USHSC deployed a regional, interactive video communication system using dedicated T1 lines. The IP network utilizes Polycom's latest protocols (H.323) with 768 Kbps connectivity for point-to-point calls. The network includes three Polycom MGC's for bridging multiple video calls. This arrangement combines broadcast of training sessions to large audiences, with the advantages of interactive video. PREVENTING NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Russia's atomic energy ministry constructed a videoconferencing link between the two countries' energy departments during the year 2000 date rollover. U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and Russia's Minister of Atomic Energy Yevgeniy Adamov demonstrated the videoconferencing equipment that linked the DOE's Emergency Operations Center in Washington to a MinAtom Situation and Crisis Center that was dedicated October 2, 1999 in Moscow. The videoconferencing system used a T1 line and off-the-shelf switches, codecs, and LCD video projectors. The DOE used internally developed Unix-based routing Video Communications: The Whole Picture software for the internal routing of video signals, and videoconferencing allowed officials in Moscow and Washington to view graphics and stored pictures simultaneously to address issues that arose. Russian experts were in the DOE's emergency center and U.S. experts were in the MinAtom center to monitor and to provide advice on year 2000-related issues regarding Russia's electricity grid and nuclear power plants. Additionally, U.S. experts resided in Ukraine to monitor the site of the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. The DOE began working on the videoconferencing link in March after Richardson and Adamov signed the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation's repor