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| News From the National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) — For more information about NSF and its programs, visit www.nsf.gov NSF Funded News
Key: Meeting
Showing releases 351-375 out of 701 releases.
Public Release: 2-Sep-2009
 Nature{DISSERTATION} Denitrification, its importance once diluted, may be back on top, Princeton-led team says After more than a decade of inquiry, a Princeton-led team of scientists has turned the tables on a long-standing controversy to re-establish an old truth about nitrogen mixing in the oceans. 
National Science Foundation
Contact: Emily Aronson
Public Release: 2-Sep-2009
Astrophysical Journal{DISSERTATION} University of Georgia researchers show component of mothballs is present in deep-space clouds Researchers from the University of Georgia have just shown for the first time that one component of clouds emitting unusual infrared light know as the Unidentified Infrared Bands is a gaseous version of naphthalene, the chief component of mothballs back on Earth. The UIRs have been seen by astronomers for more than 30 years, but no one has ever identified what specific molecules cause these patterns.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Philiip Lee Williams
Public Release: 2-Sep-2009
Nano Letters{DISSERTATION} Researchers design new graphene-based, nanomaterial with magnetic properties An international team of researchers has designed a new graphite-based, magnetic nanomaterial that acts as a semiconductor and could help material scientists create the next generation of electronic devices like microchips.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Sathya Achia Abraham
Public Release: 2-Sep-2009
Nature{DISSERTATION} Gladstone scientists find first genetic link between reptile and human heart evolution Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease have traced the evolution of the four-chambered human heart to a common genetic factor linked to the development of hearts in turtles and other reptiles. The research, published in the Sept. 3 issue of the journal Nature, shows how a specific protein that turns on genes is involved in heart formation in turtles, lizards and humans.
March of Dimes, William H. Younger Jr., National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, University of Toronto, Fumi Yamamura Foundation, Sumitomo and Nakajima Foundations, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, others
Contact: Valerie Tucker
Public Release: 1-Sep-2009
{DISSERTATION} New design keeps buildings standing and habitable after major earthquakes A new earthquake-resistant structural system for buildings, just successfully tested in Japan, will not only help a multi-story building hold itself together during a violent earthquake, but also return it to standing up straight on its foundation afterward, true and plumb, with damage confined to a few easily replaceable parts. During testing on a massive shake table, the system survived simulated earthquakes bigger than either the 1994 Northridge earthquake or the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
National Science Foundation, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention in Japan, American Institute of Steel Construction
Contact: Louis Bergeron
Public Release: 1-Sep-2009
American Society of Mechanical Engineers Design Engineering Technical Conference{DISSERTATION} 'FEAsy' analyzes designs from raw sketches to speed parts creation Going back to the drawing board is much easier now that researchers have developed a new type of design program called FEAsy. The program allows the designer to sketch a rough concept of the part and then analyze the part's characteristics while it is still only a drawing, said Karthik Ramani, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Emil Venere
Public Release: 1-Sep-2009
Nature Geoscience{DISSERTATION} Scientists say climate change mitigation strategies ignore carbon cycling processes of inland waters Scientists from the University of Vienna, Uppsala University in Sweden, University of Antwerp and the US-based Stroud Water Research Center argue that current international strategies to mitigate manmade carbon emissions and address climate change have overlooked a critical player -- inland waters. Carbon burial and outgassing by streams, rivers, lakes, reservoirs and wetlands play important roles in the carbon cycle that are unaccounted for in conventional carbon cycling models.
Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning, Austrian Science Foundation, Centre of Excellence, Research Foundation-Flanders, National Science Foundation
Contact: Liz Brooking
Public Release: 1-Sep-2009
Astrophysical Journal{DISSERTATION} Radio-telescope measurements advance frontier physics Extremely precise measurements of the curvature of space caused by the sun's gravity are a key to understanding the relationship between Einstein's General Relativity theory and quantum theory. Uniting these two theories is a major frontier of modern physics.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Dave Finley
Public Release: 1-Sep-2009
ACS Nano{DISSERTATION} Promise of nanodiamonds for safer gene therapy A team of Northwestern University researchers has introduced the power of nanodiamonds as a novel gene delivery technology that combines key properties in one approach: enhanced delivery efficiency along with outstanding biocompatibility. The researchers engineered surface-modified nanodiamond particles that successfully and efficiently delivered DNA into mammalian cells. The delivery efficiency was 70 times greater than that of a conventional standard for gene delivery. The new hybrid material could impact many facets of nanomedicine.
National Science Foundation, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, V Foundation for Cancer Research
Contact: Megan Fellman
Public Release: 1-Sep-2009
BioScience{DISSERTATION} Shifting baselines confound river restoration Historical records show that rivers worldwide once held many more fish and other fauna than they do today. Overharvesting seems to have been one principle cause of steep declines in recent centuries. Although it is hard to estimate historical numbers of freshwater wildlife with accuracy, efforts to determine earlier levels of abundance may help planners avoid using falsely low estimates as baseline assumptions. Restoration programs could investigate the effects of reintroducing extirpated species.
Charles Sturt University, National Science Foundation, US Fulbright Scholar Program, National Geographic Society
Contact: Jennifer Williams
Public Release: 1-Sep-2009
Journal of Clinical Investigation{DISSERTATION} The protein modifier SUMO helps set apart females and males One way in which men and women differ is in their expression of liver proteins that control energy generation and lipid and steroid hormone production and turnover. Researchers at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, have identified a new mechanism -- involving a process known as sumoylation -- underlying this differential expression of proteins in male and female mice. They also suggest drugs that may prevent estrogen-induced intrahepatic cholestasis, the most common liver disease during pregnancy.
Swiss National Science Foundation, Etat de Vaud, National Research Center Frontiers in Genetics
Contact: Karen Honey
Public Release: 31-Aug-2009
{DISSERTATION} National Science Foundation awards $1.4 million for GenoCAD development An NSF award supports development of a web-based Computer Assisted Design environment for synthetic biology, which applies methods developed in engineering to design artificial biological systems that meet user-defined specifications. It has also been used to redesign natural systems to better understand the fundamental properties of living organisms.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Darleen Baker
Public Release: 31-Aug-2009
{DISSERTATION} NSF awards Rutgers $7.6 million for sustainable energy development, graduate education The National Science Foundation has awarded Rutgers University two grants worth $6.4 million to fund graduate research in clean and sustainable energy resources using biotechnology and nanotechnology. The grants are funded under the five-year Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program. The foundation also has awarded the university up to $1.25 million to extend practices developed under four earlier IGERT grants. These will benefit Rutgers students throughout science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Carl Blesch
Public Release: 31-Aug-2009
Angewandte Chemie International{DISSERTATION} Platinum nanocatalyst could aid drugmakers Nanoparticles combining platinum and gold act as superefficient catalysts, but chemists have struggled to create them in an industrially useful form. In the Sept. 1 issue of the German scientific journal Angewandte Chemie, Rice University chemists report making a plastic-coated gold-platinum nanorod that can be used in the organic solvents favored by chemical and drug manufacturers. Tests reveal that the polymer-functionalized particles have nearly 100 percent catalytic selectivity for the hydrogenation of terminal olefins.
National Science Foundation, Robert A. Welch Foundation, Alfred Sloan Foundation
Contact: Jade Boyd
Public Release: 31-Aug-2009
Advanced Materials{DISSERTATION} Silk-based optical waveguides meet biomedical needs Researchers at Tufts and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrate a new way to make silk-based optical waveguides that are biocompatible, biodegradable and readily functionalized with active molecules. This opens up opportunities in biologically based modulation and sensing and ability to integrate light delivery in living tissue.
National Science Foundation, US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, US Department of Energy
Contact: Kim Thurler
Public Release: 31-Aug-2009
Astrophysical Journal{DISSERTATION} Is the Milky Way doomed to be destroyed by galactic bombardment? Probably not, study says As scientists attempt to learn more about how galaxies evolve, an open question has been whether collisions with our dwarf galactic neighbors will one day tear apart the disk of the Milky Way. That grisly fate is unlikely, a new study now suggests.
National Science Foundation, NASA, Ohio State University
Contact: Stelios Kazantzidis
Public Release: 31-Aug-2009
Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History{DISSERTATION} Moths cloaked in color In a new Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, James Miller revises the taxonomy of the Dioptinae, a subfamily of moths that have conquered the day in the tropical Americas. The roughly 500 described dioptines have a wide diversity of wing types -- from blue to yellow-stripes to clear -- and converge with another group of diurnal insects that probably evolved from a nocturnal, brown moth, the butterflies.
National Science Foundation, American Museum of Natural History
Contact: Kristin Elise Phillips
Public Release: 31-Aug-2009
{DISSERTATION} Clemson research nets $2 million from NSF to mimic nature's probes The National Science Foundation has awarded Clemson University researchers $2 million to study ways to mimic the suction mechanism used by butterflies and moths to feed so that the same method can be used in medical diagnostics. The research will help develop a new class of fiber-based devices capable of probing and transporting previously impossible-to-reach liquids, such as those drawn from a single cell or tissue.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Susan Polowczuk
Public Release: 30-Aug-2009
Nature Genetics{DISSERTATION} Counting duplicated genome segments now possible A new computational method has proven its usefulness in counting duplicated sequences in human genomes and in initially assessing their content. Duplicated segments have been linked with several types of diseases, including intellectual impairment, schizoprhenia, lupus, Crohn's, psoriasis and macular degeneration. They have also been found in resistance to certain diseases, like HIV infections. Determining the number, content, and location of segmental duplications is vital to understanding their health implications.
National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Contact: Leila Gray
Public Release: 30-Aug-2009
Nature{DISSERTATION} World's smallest semiconductor laser heralds new era in optical science UC Berkeley researchers have reached a new milestone in laser physics by creating the world's smallest semiconductor laser, capable of generating visible light in a space smaller than a single protein molecule.
US Air Force, National Science Foundation
Contact: Sarah Yang
Public Release: 28-Aug-2009
Lab on a Chip{DISSERTATION} Acoustic tweezers can position tiny objects Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough to place on a chip, according to Penn State engineers.
National Science Foundation
Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer
Public Release: 28-Aug-2009
Lancet{DISSERTATION} New tool to predict the risk of death in COPD may help physicians to individualize treatment Researchers have developed an index scale to help physicians predict a patient's risk of dying from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The ADO index can help physicians assess the severity of a patient's illness to determine the appropriate level of treatment. COPD is a major public health problem and it is the fourth leading cause of death in the US. The study of the ADO index is published in the Aug. 29 edition of the Lancet.
Swiss National Science Foundation, Klinik Barmelweid, Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria Ministry of Health, Spain, Agència d'Avaluació de Tecnologia i Recerca Mèdiques, Catalonia Government, Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery
Contact: Tim Parsons
Public Release: 27-Aug-2009
Geology{DISSERTATION} Slowly slip-sliding faults don't cause earthquakes Some slow-moving faults may help protect against destructive earthquakes, suggests new research. Until now, geologists thought when the crack between two pieces of the Earth's crust was at a very gentle slope, there was no movement along that particular fault line. Now two University of Arizona geoscientists have found that such a low-angle normal fault in Italy is moving slowly and steadily.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Mari N. Jensen
Public Release: 27-Aug-2009
{DISSERTATION} Fisk/Vanderbilt program receives $3.7 million to increase minority Ph.D.s in the physical sciences A unique collaboration between Fisk and Vanderbilt universities that is poised to become the nation's top source of Ph.D.s awarded to underrepresented minorities in physics and astronomy has received a major boost from three federal grants totaling $3.7 million.
National Science Foundation, US Department of Education
Contact: David F. Salisbury
Public Release: 27-Aug-2009
Marine Biodiversity{DISSERTATION} Texas A&M-Galveston professor discovers new species of marine life Two tiny worms much smaller than a rice grain and a strange crustacean that has no eyes and poisonous fangs are among several new species of marine life discovered in an underwater cave by a Texas A&M University at Galveston researcher, who has had one of the new species named after him.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Tom Iliffe
Showing releases 351-375 out of 701 releases.
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