Birational modifications of surfaces via unprojections (Q974390)

Unprojection was introduced by Miles Reid in ``informative and attractive, rather than strictly accurate'' seminar notes \textit{Graded rings and birational geometry} [Proc. of Algebraic Symposium, Kinosaki, Oct. 2000, 1--72, available from \url{http://www.warwick.ac.uk}], as a technique for describing birational transformations in higher-dimensional geometry in terms of commutative algebra. In particular, this technique is used to construct Fano 3-folds, to describe Mori flips of Type A, touching on the minimal model program. In the paper under review, the authors describe elementary transformations between minimal models of rational surfaces in terms of unprojections.