National Science Foundation - News

People planning baseball games, picnics, and other outdoor events may have more precise short-term forecasts of rainfall in the next few years, thanks to an observing strategy now being tested by atmospheric scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. The effort, nicknamed REFRACTT (refractivity experiment for H2O research and collaborative operational technology transfer), is for the first time using multiple Doppler weather radars to track More ...

In a report released today, scientists call for a new systematic study of the Earth's "critical zone"--the life-sustaining outermost surface of the planet, from the vegetation canopy to groundwater and everything in between.Understanding and predicting responses to global and regional change is necessary, they say, to mitigate the impacts of humans on complex ecosystems and ultimately sustain food production. "Development is having a great effect on the critical zone,&q More ...

People planning baseball games, picnics, and other outdoor events may have more precise short-term forecasts of rainfall in the next few years, thanks to an observing strategy now being tested by atmospheric scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. The effort, nicknamed REFRACTT (refractivity experiment for H2O research and collaborative operational technology transfer), is for the first time using multiple Doppler weather radars to track wat More ...

Today, the White House honored 20 NSF-supported researchers with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), one of the most prestigious awards to honor investigators in the early stages of promising research and education careers. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists and engineers beginning independent careers. The 20 are among 56 recipients whose work was funded by federal agencies. President Bush honors More ...

Early Sunday morning, July 23, an abandoned campfire in Cleveland National Forest erupted into a 7,000-acre wildfire that continues to spread. Now known as the Horse Fire, it threatens more than 1,500 homes and 100 commercial properties near San Diego, Calif. Within 24 hours, communications expert Hans-Werner Braun and his collaborators from the NSF-supported High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (More ...

While erosion and wetland loss have become huge problems along Louisiana's coast, the land 30 to 50 feet beneath much of the Mississippi Delta has been very stable for the past 8,000 years, with low to nonexistent subsidence rates. So say geoscientists from Tulane University and Utrecht University in the Netherlands, challenging the notion that subsidence, or sinking of the earth, bears much of the blame for Louisiana's coastal geology problems. A research team led by Tulane's To More ...

For the first time, scientists have established the age structure of a non-avian dinosaur population. Using this information, they inferred which factors led to survival or death of group members. Did these animals show survival patterns akin to extant living dinosaurs, the birds, as did their crocodilian cousins? Or, did they mirror that of more distantly related dinosaurs that lived in a similar environment? A pile of bones from the North American tyrannosaur Albertosaurus sarco More ...

The Four Corners region of the United States (where Ariz., N.M., Colo. and Utah meet) will be at greater risk for hantavirus outbreak this year than in 2005, say scientists at Johns Hopkins University, the University of New Mexico, and other institutions. They also warn that parts of southern Colo. and north-central N.M.--previously at low-risk for hantavirus compared to the Four Corners region--are at increased risk in 2006. The study is among the first to forecast the locati More ...

Every day, the sun bathes the planet in energy--free of charge--yet few systems can take advantage of that source for both heating and cooling. Now, researchers are making progress on a thin-film technology that adheres both solar cells and heat pumps onto surfaces, ultimately turning walls, windows, and maybe even soda bottles into climate control systems. On July 12, 2006, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) researcher Steven Van Dessel and his colleagues will announce their most More ...

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced the awarding of 12 fellowships and 22 institutional grants in the two agencies' partnership on Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL). This is the second round of their multi-year campaign to preserve records of languages threatened with extinction. Experts estimate that more than half of the approximately 7,000 currently used human languages are headed for oblivion in this century. These More ...

Researchers have created organic gel nanomaterials that could be used to encapsulate pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic products and to build 3-D biological scaffolds for tissue engineering. Using olive oil and six other liquid solvents, the scientists added a simple enzyme to chemically activate a sugar that changed the liquids to organic gels. Funding for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation through the Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures, a Nanosc More ...

Worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning are dramatically altering ocean chemistry and threatening marine organisms, including corals, that secrete skeletal structures and help support ocean biodiversity. A report released today summarizes the known effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on these organisms, known as marine calcifiers, and recommends future research for determining the extent of these impacts. "It is clear that seawater chemi More ...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded nearly $12 million to the California Institute of Technology for computer software to analyze neutron-scattering experiments. The work could show how to design new materials for a huge variety of applications in transportation, construction, electronics and space exploration. The five-year Distributed Data Analysis for Neutron Scattering Experiments (DANSE) project is led by Brent Fultz, a professor of materials science and applied phy More ...

On July 4th, many Americans will travel hundreds of miles to visit the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. But at this time in 2003, the bell was getting ready for its own trip--roughly 200 yards from its existing location into a new museum. Moving the 250-year-old bell over even that short a distance, however, might have caused a catastrophic break. NSF-supported engineers proved critical to keeping the icon safe. A long, hairline fracture extends from the Liberty Bell's famous crack, and More ...