NSF News
Summer storms are a regular feature in the North Atlantic, and while most pose little threat to our shores, a choice few become devastating hurricanes.
To decipher which storms could bring danger, and which will not, atmospheric scientists are heading to the tropics to observe these systems as they form and dissipate--or develop into hurricanes.
By learning to identify which weather systems are the most critical to track, the efforts may ultimately allow for earlier hurricane ...
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• Acrobatic Robots
Dennis Hong is living his dreams ... literally ... in a lab filled with wacky robots
Full story at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/acrobaticrobots.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_51
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• Latest "Green" Packing Material? Mushrooms!
A new packing material that grows itself is now appearing in shipped products across the country.
The composite of inedible agricultural waste and mushroom roots is called Mycobond™, and its manufacture requires just one eighth the energy and one tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material.
And unlike most foam substitutes, when no longer useful, it makes great compost in the garden.
The technology was the brainchild of two former Rensselaer ...
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• Study Reveals a Secret to the Success of Notorious, Disease-Causing Microbes
A study published in the July 23 issue of Cell identifies the mechanism used by several types of common, virulent microbes to infect plants and cause devastating blights. Microbes using this infection mechanism include fungi that are currently causing wheat rust epidemics in Africa and Asia, and a class of parasitic algae, called oomycetes, that resulted in the Irish potato blight of the 19th Century. These microbes remain an agricultural scourge today.
The researchers ...
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• Green Bank Telescope Enables "Intensity Mapping" to Shed Light on Mysteries o...
Using the world's largest, fully steerable radio telescope--the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in W.Va.--an international team of researchers has given astronomers the promise of a new tool for mapping the universe and gaining valuable clues about the nature of the mysterious "dark energy" believed to constitute nearly three-fourths of the universe's mass and energy. "Intensity Mapping" offers the potential for ...
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• Frog Killer Caught in the Act
A killer has been caught in the act: the first before-and-after view of an infectious disease that led to an amphibian die-off has been released by the scientists who tracked it.
The results are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Like a wave, incidence of the fungal disease that wipes out Central American frogs--chytridiomycosis--advances through the region's highlands at a rate of about 30 kilometers ...
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• Black Holes: Peering Into the Heart of Darkness
Astronomers use infrared "eyes" to shed light on these enigmatic cosmic structures
Full story at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/blackholes.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_51
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• Tiny Marine Microbes Exert Influence on Global Climate
New research indicates that the interactions of microscopic organisms around a particular organic material may alter the chemical properties of the ocean--influencing global climate by affecting cloud formation in the atmosphere.
Justin Seymour, a research fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, is the lead author of a paper reporting the results, published in this week's issue of the journal Science.
The paper describes how a relative of the chemical ...
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• Gulf Oil Spill: NSF Awards Rapid Response Grant to Study Emotional Response t...
Political scientists at Louisiana State University want to know how your close friends and family influence you during times of crisis. They say the information could be crucial to understanding how people make social and political decisions in the context of a major disaster such as the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Our study is unique in its focus on the ways in which social context shapes individual responses to disaster," said LSU Associate ...
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• Indian Ocean Sea-Level Rise Threatens Coastal Areas
Indian Ocean sea levels are rising unevenly and threatening residents in some densely populated coastal areas and islands, a new study concludes.
The study, led by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., finds that the sea-level rise is at least partly a result of climate change.
Sea-level rise is particularly high along the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, as well as ...
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• New Primate Fossil Found in Saudi Arabia
A new Catarrhine primate fossil discovered in Saudi Arabia suggests the evolutionary spilt between Old World monkeys and humans occurred older than previously thought, around 29 million years ago. The discovery challenges the theory that the groups diverged around 5 million years earlier than the date of the recent fossil find.
Geologist and paleontologist Iyad Zalmout and his colleagues from the University of Michigan and the Saudi Geological Survey reported the finding this week in ...
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• Good Vibrations
Treating brain disease with some good vibes
Full story at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/goodvibrations.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_51
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• Stirring It Up: North Pacific Circulation Was Radically Changed by Past Post-...
A study in the July 9, 2010, issue of Science identifies changes in oceanic circulation that followed past glacial retreat. The article, titled, "Deep Water Formation in the North Pacific during the Last Glacial Termination" is by Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, and his colleagues.
In a video interview, Timmermann summarizes the results of this study, its implications for our understanding of past changes in oceanic circulation, and how the ...
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• Setting a Molecular Clock for Malaria Parasites
Scientists have determined the evolutionary timeline for the microscopic parasites that cause one of the world's most widespread infectious diseases: malaria.
Having an understanding of the origins of the lineages of such pathogens, or disease-causing organisms, is fundamental to understanding emerging diseases, according to the researchers.
The origin of malaria in humans has been dated to as recent as 10,000 years ago and as long as several million years ago.
Now ...
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• New Findings Indicate Sediment Composition Affected the Strength of Sumatran ...
Sumatra experiences frequent seismic activity because it is located near the boundary of two of Earth's tectonic plates. Earthquakes occur at 'subduction zones,' such as the one west of Indonesia, when one tectonic plate is forced under another--or subducts. Instead of sliding across one another smoothly, the plates stick, and energy builds up until they finally slip or 'rupture', releasing that stored energy as an earthquake.
These earthquakes can generate tsunamis when the seafloor ...
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