NSF News

Minority Students Earned Greater Number of Academic Degrees in Fiscal Year 2006

A new National Science Foundation report shows an increase in the number of academic degrees awarded to minority students since 2004, the last time such data were published.

The report, Science and Engineering Degrees by Race/Ethnicity: 1997-2006, developed by the Science Resources Statistics division of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate shows more degrees awarded to minorities in nearly all categories.

Among U.S. citizens and permanent residents ...

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Secretary Clinton Announces New Initiatives to Bolster Science and Technology Collaboration With Muslim Communities Around the World

In remarks at the Forum for the Future in Marrakech today, Secretary Clinton announced new initiatives to bolster science and technology collaboration with Muslim communities around the world. The Secretary named Dr. Bruce Alberts, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, and Dr. Ahmed Zewail as the first three U.S. Science and Technology Envoys and announced that the State Department will expand positions for environment, science, technology, and health officers at U.S. embassies.

"We want to help ...

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VERITAS Discovers Very High Energy Gamma Rays from the Starburst Galaxy M82

The VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) collaboration, an international team of astronomers from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, has discovered very high energy (VHE) gamma rays emitted by the starburst galaxy M82 (the Cigar Galaxy). The observed gamma rays have energies more than a trillion times higher than the energy of visible light, and are the highest energy photons ever detected from a galaxy undergoing large amounts of star ...

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The Snows of Kilimanjaro: For How Much Longer?

The iconic snows of Kilimanjaro still exist--but for how long?

The remaining ice fields atop famed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania could be gone within two decades and perhaps even sooner, based on the latest survey of the ice fields remaining on the mountain.

These predictions, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), are among the latest dramatic physical evidence of global climate change.

The findings, by ...

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Computer Science Provides a More Sound Way to Test for Sleep Apnea

A computer scientist from the University of Houston and a doctor of sleep medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have teamed up to create a new, less invasive method of diagnosing sleep apnea. Their findings appear in the November issue of the journal Sleep.

Sleep apnea is serious disorder that causes a person to momentarily stop breathing while they sleep. These pauses in breathing can occur many times an hour, and can cause low oxygen levels in ...

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National Science Foundation Takes Part in Education Technology Showcase

On Wednesday, Nov. 4, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., 17 different educational technologies developed with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will be included among the exhibits in an Education Technology Showcase on Capitol Hill, in Room 902 of the Hart Senate Office Building. Sponsored by the State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA), the event's special guests include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as Senators Patty Murray, Jeff Bingaman, Kay Hagan ...

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Ancient Ocean Oxygen Production Began 100 Million Years Earlier than Thought

Scientists widely accept that around 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth's atmosphere underwent a dramatic change when oxygen levels rose sharply.

Called the "Great Oxidation Event" (GOE), the oxygen spike marks an important milestone in Earth's history, the transformation from an oxygen-poor atmosphere to an oxygen-rich one, paving the way for complex life to develop.

Two questions that remain unresolved in studies of the early Earth are when oxygen production via ...

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"Technology" Plays Large Role in Wealth Inheritance

A new study reveals the important role inherited wealth plays in sustaining economic inequality in small scale societies. A team of 26 anthropologists, statisticians, and economists based at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico amassed an unprecedented data set allowing 43 estimates of a family's wealth inheritance and found that financial inequality among populations largely depends on the "technologies" that produce a people's livelihood.

According to the report, released ...

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NSF Lectures Explore Timely Research in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences

The National Science Foundation (NSF) invites media and members of the public to a series of lectures sponsored by the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Upcoming talks listed below will help promote a national discussion of issues that scientists expect to shape their research in the coming years. The next one will be on Tuesday, Nov. 3, and will feature Nobel Laureate Mario Molina who will address climate change.

All lectures will be held at NSF, 4201 Wilson Blvd in ...

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Identifying Molecules in Infrared Could Lead to New Medicines

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has created a new, ultra-sensitive technique to analyze life-sustaining protein molecules. The technique may profoundly change the methodology of biomolecular studies and chart a new path to effective diagnostics and early treatment of complex diseases.

Researchers from Boston University and Tufts University near Boston recently demonstrated an infrared spectroscopy technique that can directly identify the "vibrational fingerprints" of ...

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"The Music Instinct" Wins International Recognition

The Music Instinct: Science and Song, is a television documentary that brings together researchers and musicians to investigate the biological, emotional and psychological impact of music. Elena Mannes and Margaret Smilow, director and producer (respectively), of the two-hour documentary--developed with major funding from the National Science Foundation--were awarded the Grand Prix at Pariscience 2009, an international science film festival.

A group of researchers led by neuroscientist ...

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Seeing Previously Invisible Molecules for the First Time

A team of Harvard chemists led by X. Sunney Xie has developed a new microscopic technique for seeing, in color, molecules with undetectable fluorescence. The room-temperature technique allows researchers to identify previously unseen molecules in living organisms and offers broad applications in biomedical imaging and research.

The scientists' results are published in the Oct. 22 issue of Nature. Partial funding for the project was provided by the National Science ...

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Ancient Lemurs Take Bite Out of Evolutionary Tree

About 40 miles outside Cairo, Egypt, National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported paleontologists from three American universities are revealing features of a newly discovered African primate and solving a riddle about humankind's evolutionary past.

Lead researcher Erik Seiffert of New York's Stony Brook University and his colleagues say their find has the potential to clear up a portion of the human evolutionary tree by resolving the location of a misplaced species.

"The ...

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Diverting Sediment-rich Water Below New Orleans Could Lead to Extensive New Land

Diverting sediment-rich water from the Mississippi River below New Orleans could generate new land in the river's delta in the next century.

The land would equal almost half the acreage otherwise expected to disappear during that period, a new study shows.

For decades, sea-level rise, land subsidence, and a decrease in river sediment have caused vast swaths of the Mississippi Delta to vanish into the sea.

The anticipated build-up of new land in a portion of the delta, as ...

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NSF Awards 32 New Projects for Plant Genome Research

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has made 32 new awards totaling $101.6 million during the twelfth year of its Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP).

These awards--which cover two to five years and range from $500,000 to $10.4 million--support research and tool development to further knowledge of genome structure and function. They will leverage sequence and functional genomics resources to increase understanding of gene function and interactions between genomes and the environment ...

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