NSF News
After more than three decades of service to researchers and staff stationed at the bottom of the world, the dome at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was deconstructed this austral summer.
The dome provided a platform for countless scientific discoveries in astronomy, physics, climatology, and other fields, and it also provided a home away from home for the station's 'winter over' crew during 8 months at the station during the austral winter, much of the time in darkness. The dome ...
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• NSF Selects Young Theoretical Computer Scientist for its Highest Honor
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is pleased to announce the selection of New York University's Subhash Khot, an associate professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, to receive its 2010 Alan T. Waterman Award. Considered the NSF's most prestigious honorary award since its establishment in 1975, this honor is given annually to an outstanding researcher under the age of 36 in any field of science and engineering supported by NSF. The honor includes a grant of ...
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• Scientists Find Signs of "Snowball Earth" Amidst Early Animal Evolution
Geologists have found evidence that sea ice extended to the equator 716.5 million years ago, bringing new precision to a "snowball Earth" event long suspected to have taken place around that time.
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and led by scientists at Harvard University, the team reports on its work this week in the journal Science.
The new findings--based on an analysis of ancient tropical rocks that are now found in remote northwestern ...
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• Revisiting Chicxulub
For decades, scientists have accumulated ever-larger datasets that suggest an enormous space rock crashed into the ocean off the Yucatan Peninsula more than 65 million years ago, resulting in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction.
Recent research, supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF), suggested that the impact could have occurred 300,000 years prior to the K-Pg extinction, and that another cause--perhaps a second impact, or the long-lasting volcanic activity ...
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• Methane Releases From Arctic Shelf May Be Much Larger and Faster Than Anticip...
A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov.
The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable ...
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• Forest Tree Species Diversity Depends on Individual Variation
It's a paradox that's puzzled scientists for a half-century.
Models clearly show that the coexistence of competing species depends on those species responding differently to the availability of resources. Then why do studies comparing competing tree species draw a blank?
Competitors like black gums and red maples have coexisted for millennia in the shaded understories of eastern U.S. forests, yet species-level data offer scant proof that they respond differently to ...
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• More than One: Long-Reigning Microbe Controlling Ocean Nitrogen Shares the Th...
Marine scientists long believed that a microbe called Trichodesmium, a member of a group called the cyanobacteria, reigned over the ocean's nitrogen budget.
New research results reported on-line today in a paper in Science Express show that Trichodesmium may have to share its nitrogen-fixing throne: two others of its kind, small spherical species of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria called UCYN-A and Crocosphaera watsonii, are also abundant in ...
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• Top Scientists to Discuss Global Changes at Arctic Conference in Miami
Hundreds of the world's top scientists and policymakers are expected to attend the State of the Arctic conference at the Miami Hyatt Regency from March 16 - 19, 2010. Speakers will include Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), Jane Lubchenko, administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Wendy Watson-Wright, assistant director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). ...
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• Take a Nanooze Break
A new long-term exhibition at the Walt Disney World Resort® in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., will bring visitors face to face with the nanoworld.
Housed at INNOVENTIONS at Epcot®, the exhibition Take a Nanooze Break features a series of interactive, continually updated displays that allow visitors to manipulate models of molecules, study everyday items at the nanoscale, and interact with scientists and engineers who conduct the latest nano ...
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• NSF and USC School of Cinematic Arts Announce Novel Partnership
A major government research agency and a renowned cinematic arts school announced on Feb. 19 that they will combine talents to forge collaborations between researchers and entertainment scholars to produce cutting-edge materials that inspire and inform mass-media audiences about science and engineering concepts. It is the first program to link a federal science agency with an academic leader in the field of entertainment and interactive media.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and ...
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• NSF Builds Science and Engineering Capacity in Communities Around the United ...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced five new Science and Technology Center (STC) awards as a result of a recent, merit-based competition. The STC program supports integrative partnerships that require large-scale, long-term funding to produce research and education of the highest quality. In October of 2008, NSF received 247 preliminary proposals. Following extensive panel review, 45 full proposals were invited and reviewed by both panel and ad hoc experts, 11 sites were visited, .....
• NSF Forum to Address "Ecosystem Services" in a Changing World
Humans are sustained by a multitude of processes and resources in the environment around us. These benefits are called "ecosystem services," and include products like clean drinking water and the provision of foods such as crops and spices.
On Thursday, March 4, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will host a symposium titled, "Ecosystem Services in a Changing World: Perspectives from Long-Term Ecological Research." The meeting is the ninth such annual NSF ...
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• Fighting Crime With Math
What causes a crime wave and what measures should law enforcement use to reduce the spread of criminal offense? Researchers at UCLA and the University of California, Irvine, who are funded by the Human and Social Dynamics program at the National Science Foundation, say they may have an answer.
Andrea Bertozzi, director of applied mathematics at UCLA, says crime hotspots form either when small spikes in crime grow and spread--but not far enough to bind distant crimes together--or when a ...
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• National Science Board Urges Action to Sustain U.S. Leadership in Science and...
Today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Board (NSB) released the policy-oriented companion piece to its biennial publication, Science and Engineering Indicators (SEI). SEI 2010 was delivered to the President and to Congress and disseminated broadly on Jan. 15.
Carrying out its congressional mandate to oversee the collection of a very broad set of quantitative ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116372&WT.m...
• International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge
Visuals can communicate research results and scientific phenomena in ways that words cannot. That's why NSF cosponsors this international contest to recognize outstanding achievements in this area.
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/index.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_51
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