Good questions. The abstracts for these reports are at the link:

Friday, March 15, 2002
CARBONATE AND MAGNETITE IN ALH 84001.
Lunar and Planetary Science XXXIII (2002).
8:30 a.m. Marina Plaza Ballroom
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2002/pdf/sess83.pdf

Brig Klyce's panspermia site has a short description of these new reports in the news section of his site:

March 15 Houston TX: The biological nature of the magnetites in ALH84001 is still in dispute, and contamination is still an issue.
http://panspermia.org/whatsnew.htm#%20020315

According to Klyce, Kathy Thomas-Keptra does not believe the synthetic magnetite matches the biologically produced ones.

An interesting comment on the proposed synthetic forms of the magnetite appears in a web article by Kirshvink and Weiss:

MARS, PANSPERMIA, AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE:
WHERE DID IT ALL BEGIN?
"The second line of evidence is the possible presence of 3.9-4.1 Ga magnetofossils (indistinguishable from those made by modern Earthly bacteria) in the ALH84001 carbonates (Friedmann et al. 2001; Thomas-Keprta et al. 2000, 2001). Although this hypothesis remains highly controversial, no one has yet documented a plausible, inorganic mechanism for producing similar particles. The ferrite industry (which makes small magnetic particles for disk drives and magnetic recording tapes, and is worth $35 billion per year) has tried to make similar particles of magnetite inorganically for the past 60 years and has failed. The inorganic synthesis of magnetosome-like magnetite particles is clearly not a simple feat. Although Golden et al. (2001) claim to have produced magnetofossil-like magnetites from heating of siderite, they have not yet documented the shape and chemistry of those inorganic magnetites in detail (see Thomas-Keprta et al. 2001). Nevertheless, their mechanism should be studied further given that shocks have probably affected ALH84001 carbonates."
http://palaeo-electronica.org/2001_2/editor/mars.htm

So apparently if Golden and Koziol have succeeded in artificially producing these magnetite forms previously seen only in bacteria, they can be expecting a call from the electronics industry quite soon. :-)

Bob Clark