Imagine the effect on scientific literacy if every college teacher could turn at will to a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on biodiversity and gifted lecturer to explain biology fundamentals to undergraduates.
A yearlong series of Hubble Space Telescope observations of comet Hale-Bopp has revealed surprising new information about comet structure. The findings will be described in the March 28 issue of "Science." Embargoed until 4 p.m. EST on March 27.
A new material developed at Virginia Tech has the potential to strengthen structures such as airplane wings and fuselage as well as the armor in cars and tanks.
Resources for the Future today releases the first in a series of briefing papers on key issues in the debate over global climate change. As decisionmakers prepare for domestic policy debates and the ongoing international negotiations under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, RFF's briefs provide topical, timely, and non-technical information and analysis.
This is a trick question. Until now, the only way to be sure of the answer would be to violate confidentiality laws and track down the individual students.
Computer scientists at Regis University in Denver are working with the Denver Police Department to make the stressful art of police dispatching into a more exact--and a cheaper-- science.
Most rural areas of the United States are catching on with the national "information revolution," as the gaps between cyber "haves" and "havenÃt yets" are lessening, according to a new study funded by NSF. Recent legislation to restructure the nationÃs electric energy systems industry also contained some high-performance challenges, which NSF is helping the industry to meet. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE) have agreed to jointly fund a program to explore fundamental processes in plasma science and engineering.
Trinity College in Hartford, Ct., will sponsor its fourth annual Fire-Fighting Home-Robot contest--the largest public robotics contest held in the United States (participants range from ages ten to 65)--on Sunday, April 20.
The U.S. must play a key role in saving central Africa s tropical forests, now in sudden peril due to an unprecedented land rush by high-volume logging companies, according to Michael Fay, a conservation biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) headquartered at the Bronx Zoo.
A chocoholic Johns Hopkins graduate student working in a computer vision lab has figured out how a computer can tell the difference between the kind with the creamy middles and the bumpy peanut clusters. It may sound like a silly exercise, but, actually, teaching a computer to distinguish among curved objects -- not just those with straight, hard edges -- is quite an advance.
Highlights of March 22 New Scientist.
The FAA and NCAR explore a new detection and warning system for Juneau, Alaska, and tackle remote sensing and forecasting problems. Meanwhile the U.S. Navy seeks NCAR's help with choppy winds on high- speed vessels
A pilot school security program between Sandia and Belen High School (N.M.) is being credited for an impressive decline in the number of incidents that typically distress school administrators and students alike -- violence, theft, and drug and alcohol use. In a recent letter sent to President Clinton, Belen
While the controversy continues over whether a martian meteorite bears evidence of ancient life on mars, a Purdue University scientist says the rocky fragments can tell us something about the early life of the planet itself.
Modern movie superheroes rescue hostages by evading hailstorms of bullets and harming only evil-doers who resist. In the flesh-and-blood world, people who sign on to be cops -- whether city, state or FBI -- need extensive training to make the split-second judgments that would protect themselves, rescue the innocent, and disarm or disable hostage-takers. To widen access to such training, lessen its cost yet broaden its focus, a virtual reality simulation that allows two-person law enforcement teams to grip guns, don virtual reality glasses, and burst into the harsh environment of hostage-takers and their victims has been created in prototype by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories.
The federal government has made substantial progress recently to improve America's food safety system by adopting a new regulatory framework that focuses on prevention and clearly defines the roles industry and government must play. But reform of the system must go further and assign responsibilities more clearly, make better use of scarce resources, and prepare for future challenges, including those posed by persistent foodborne illnesses and the globalization of the food economy, according to a new article authored by the former head of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. The article appears in the current Food and Drug Law Journal.
The Biotechnology Information Institute is now offering the Federal Bio-Technology Transfer Directory as an online Internet Web database. Besides being the largest specialized database of licensing opportunities in the biomedical, biotechnology and pharmaceutical areas, it is the only source for information about federal bio-technology transfers and related commercialization activities.
What do boiling-hot fissures in the earth's crust, the insides of airplane fuel tanks, vast expanses of ice in Antarctica and the parched sands of baking deserts have in common with environments on other planets?
The International GovNews Project has announced a special government category on the InternetÃs Usenet news system. The creation of this new category lays the groundwork for the wide, cost-effective electronic dissemination and discussion by topic of large amounts of public government information.
The 25 million acres of land entrusted to the U.S. military may now benefit from more than 50 years of study in conservation and land management. A new 500-page publication called ≥Conserving Biodiversity on Military Lands: A Handbook for Natural Resource Managers≤ is now available for the U.S. Department of Defense. The bookπs publication is due in part to the efforts of Dr. Gary Meffe, a senior research ecologist with the University of Georgiaπs Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. He wrote the book with Michele Leslie, Jeffrey Hardesty and Diane Adams, all with The Nature Conservancy.
As the United States Congress considers legislation that would restrict the trading of municipal solid waste (MSW) among states, researchers at Resources for the Future have found that, under certain circumstances, limits placed on the volume of MSW shipped by one state to another state may actually increase the number of interstate waste shipments as well as increase disposal costs for some regions of the country. Embargoed March 20
The Northeast survived the 11th warmest February in 103 years of record -- warm enough to shatter six all-time temperature records for the month and set or tie 47 daily high-temperature records, according to climatologists at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.
The community around York, NY will hear a report on the feasibility of a central plant that would remove manure odor, recycle manure for value-added products, improve dairy waste management and perhaps provide energy back to the community. All this, and it would more than pay for itself, too, according to a Cornell professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
A team of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Caltech scientists have made important breakthroughs in applying a powerful new technique that marries two existing technologies to probe materials at a microscopic level. EMBARGOED until Mar 19, 1997 at 1:30 p.m. Central Time
LAWRENCE -- Another match has been set in a long-running academic debate about whether birds descended from dinosaurs. At issue, said Larry Dean Martin, curator of paleontology at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, is whether these dinosaurs had feathers.
When the anti-nausea drug Thalidomide came out on the market in the late 1950s, one molecule in the drug caused terrible birth defects. That molecule was what chemists call a "chiral" molecule. Chiral molecules are molecules which are chemically and structurally the same, but are mirror images -- one is right-handed and the other is left-handed. Until now there has been no reliable way to separate right- and left-handed chiral molecules. But that is changing.
Discoveries by a team of LSU researchers could lead to control of the destructive Formosan termite.
Background information relating to the accuracy and reliability of global climate monitoring by microwave sounding units aboard NOAA satellites has been posted on the UAH web site. The address is: http://www.atmos.uah.edu./essl/msu/background.html
Professionals involved in the research, design, operation and regulation of America's 114 waste-to-energy plants and more than 400 facilities around the world, will meet at the Fifth Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference (NAWTEC V) this April 22-25, at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel and Convention Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Vaccines can improve a hog producer's bottom line, according to research conducted by a team of eight Purdue University animal scientists and veterinarians.
It's a technophobe's worst nightmare - a machine that actually makes a computer MORE difficult to operate. But that's what students from seven universities are building for the ninth annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest April 5.
Spring traditionally is the season when schools give students -- particularly elementary school students -- the opportunity to develop science fair projects that showcase their knowledge and ingenuity. Finding ideas, however, can test parental mettle and student inventiveness.
Two geologists, from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, have demonstrated that an adjustment to one of those models --- involving reducing the assumed thickness of the tectonic plate --- allows the model to fit the data much more precisely.
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have successfully defeated every tamper-indicating seal thrown at them, and are working with manufacturers to improve such seals.
Using ultrafast pulses of laser light, University of Michigan physicists have found a way to control the random oscillations of atoms in a crystal lattice. Their study describes the first experimental modification of one of the most fundamental quantum states of solid matter.
Press release of issue dated March 15 for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly news magazine
Most residents of states surrounding the red wolf re-establishment zones in eastern North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park endorse wolf-recovery efforts and may spend as much as $170 million a year to visit the endangered animals, a Cornell University study has shown.
More college students are grabbing midday "power naps" to restore their mind and body function. But students still aren't getting enough sleep, and neither are most Americans, says Cornell University psychologist and sleep-researcher James B. Maas. He offers tips to overcome sleep deprivation.
There may be more life beneath earth's surface than on its surface. There is little doubt that a "deep biosphere" exists, scientists say; at issue are its nature and extent. The recent, rapid growth of interest in the existence of microbial life in the seafloor and continental subsurface has created a need for information synthesis to guide development of research strategies and programs.
Human brains may be wired with a sort of universal language program, enabling infants to pick up quickly the complex and subtle patterns of their drastically different native tongues.
HOUSTON, TEXAS--Boosting the octane number of gasoline just got easier, thanks to new software that lets engineers and scientists build a model of the naphtha reforming process in hours, rather than months, University of Delaware researchers reported March 13 during the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) meeting. EMBARGOED: 4:00 p.m., Thursday, March 13, 1997.
Temperature-gleaning satellites are useful tools in the quest to diagnose global change, but only when their limitations are well understood. This is the message conveyed by scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, in an article appearing in the journal Nature on March 13. NCAR is managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship of the National Science Foundation.
A new study on a Mars meteorite supports a low-temperature origin for carbonate globules inside the rock, researchers said today. This new evidence is consistent with theories that microscopic depositions in the rock may be the fossilized remains of bacteria. The research was published today in the journal Science. **EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M EST, THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1997**
In Cornell University's concrete lab, a shake table was used to test, for the first time, whether interior infilled concrete/masonry walls have an effect on structural integrity during an earthquake.
An article in Nature (13 March) by two NCAR scientists provides new findings on a controversy involving the reliability of global temperature trends available via satellite, which conflict with surface readings. In the same issue is an overview of how computer models of global climate are used and misused.
Researchers supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have presented the first direct evidence that increased ultraviolet light (UVB) damages the DNA of animals in a natural population in Antarctica -- the eggs and larvae of icefish, an Antarctic fish lacking hemoglobin. The ozone hole opens up over Antarctica every southern spring, letting more UVB from the sun penetrate to the earth's surface.
Four tips from Los Alamos: 1- Measuring material strain, 2- Less noise in your video camera, 3- Laser slappers, and 4- Dielectric materials for fine-tuning microwaves.
ATHENS, Ga. -- A botanist at the University of Georgia and a colleague at Purdue University have shown for the first time that filamentous fungi contain crucial "scaffold" proteins called septins. Perhaps even more important, the researchers have found that the gene which directs the production of septins in one fungus (Aspergillus nidulans) is crucial to the survival of the organism. The discovery could point toward a method of treating fungal diseases, which have dramatically increased in the past decade.
Press release of issue dated March 8 for New Scientist, the international science and technology weekly news magazine
NEW ORLEANS, LA.--With a tip just 25 microns in diameter, a new microelectrode sheds light on the complex natural chemistry of "swamp scum and sea slime"--including the corrosive ocean "biofilms" that damage boats, docks and off-shore platforms, a University of Delaware researcher reported today during the National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE) meeting.
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