National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has sent to Congress a fiscal 2004 budget request of $5.48 billion -- an investment representing what the agency believes will "sustain and build U.S. global leadership in science, engineering and technology, and help the United States address priorities of immediate national importance." The increase sought in 2004 over NSF's 2003 request would amount to about 9 percent. Although NSF's 2004 request calls for a 60 percent hike in major research equipment and facilities, the overall 8.5 percent increase sought for core research and related activities (people, ideas and tools) is at the heart of NSF's overall budget priorities for the coming year.
Astronomers have traced the orbit through our Milky Way Galaxy of a voracious neutron star and a companion star it is cannibalizing, and conclude that the pair joined more than 30 million years ago and probably were catapulted out of a cluster of stars far from the Galaxy's center. The pair of stars, called Scorpius X-1, form a "microquasar," in which material sucked from the "normal" star forms a rapidly-rotating disk around the superdense neutron star. The disk becomes so hot it emits X-rays, and also spits out "jets" of subatomic particles at nearly the speed of light.
Researchers using three dimensional computer modeling and wind tunnels have made the first accurate comparative measurements of muscle power output of birds in-flight to establish that physical structure, body mass, force and flight style all have major effects upon the magnitude and shape of a species' power curve.
Dust and debris deposits associated with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center have left a distinct fingerprint on the sedimentary record in New York Harbor, scientists have found. Their results appear in the January 21, 2003, issue of the journal EOS, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. This geochemical fingerprint, the researchers believe, may facilitate a better understanding of the short-to-medium term processes that affect the input, dispersal, and fate of particles and contaminants in the lower Hudson River.
Two-legged dinosaurs may have used their forelimbs as wing-like structures to propel themselves rapidly up steep inclines long before they took to the skies, reports a University of Montana researcher in the January 17 issue of the journal Science. The new theory adds a middle step that may link two current and opposing explanations for how reptiles evolved into flying birds.
A new study posits an alternative theory regarding why Antarctica suddenly became glaciated 34 million years ago. The study challenges previous thinking about why the ice sheet formed and holds ramifications for the next several hundred years as greenhouse gases continue to rise. "Scientists have long known that Antarctica was not always covered in a sheet of ice. Rather, the continent was once highly vegetated and populated with dinosaurs, with perhaps just a few Alpine glaciers and small ice caps in the continental interior," the study's lead researcher said.
Scientists have revealed evidence that increased numbers of households, even where populations are declining, are having a vast impact on the world's biodiversity and environment. Reduction in household size has led to a rapid rise in household numbers around the world and has posed serious challenges to biodiversity conservation, write the researchers. Biodiversity is threatened severely not only by increased numbers of households, but also by less efficient per capita consumption of natural resources, the researchers say. They cite examples that larger numbers of households require more use of natural resources for construction, and that smaller numbers of people per household use on average more energy and goods per person.
Giant jets of subatomic particles moving at nearly the speed of light have been found coming from thousands of galaxies across the Universe, but always from elliptical galaxies or galaxies in the process of merging -- until now. Using the combined power of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array (VLA) and the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope, astronomers have discovered a huge jet coming from a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way.
A new type of star has been discovered lurking as a low mass component in a very compact binary star system. Astronomers announced today at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Seattle, Wash., that they have confirmed the existence of a new variety of stellar end-product. This previously unknown type of star has some properties similar to brown dwarf stars and may help astronomers understand some of the recently discovered extra-solar planets in close proximity to their suns.
A 2001 nationwide survey conducted for the National Science Foundation reports that for the first time in nine years, the number of doctoral degrees (Ph.D.s) awarded by U.S. universities dropped to below 41,000.* And since 1998, when total Ph.D.s reached an all-time high, a significant decline in science and engineering (S&E) doctorates has led a rollback of total Ph.D.s to pre-1994 levels. Analysts say, however, that a two-year turn upward in 2000-2001 graduate enrollments in S&E could reverse the downward trend in doctorates produced in those fields.
Combining concepts from electromagnetic radiation research and fiber optics, researchers have created an extreme-ultraviolet, laser-like beam capable of producing tightly-focused light in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum not previously accessible to scientists. Between 10-100 times shorter than visible light waves, the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths will allow researchers to "see" tiny features and carve miniature patterns, with applications in such fields as microscopy, lithography and nanotechnology. The achievement is based on a new structure called a "waveguide," a hollow glass tube with internal humps that coax light waves into traveling along at the same speed and help the waves reinforce each other.
Researchers drilling into Lake Vida, an Antarctic "ice-block" lake, have found the lake isn't really an ice block at all. In the December 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reveals that Antarctic Lake Vida may represent a previously unknown ecosystem, a frigid, "ice-sealed," lake that contains the thickest non-glacial lake ice cover on Earth and water seven times saltier than seawater. Because of the arid, chilled environment in which it resides, scientists believe the lake may be an important template for the search for evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars and other icy worlds.
Using a powerful new instrument at the South Pole, a team of cosmologists has produced the most detailed images of the early Universe ever recorded. The research team, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has made public their measurements of subtle temperature differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. The CMB is the remnant radiation that escaped from the rapidly cooling Universe about 400,000 years after the Big Bang. Images of the CMB provide researchers with a snapshot of the Universe in its infancy, and can be used to place strong constraints on its constituents and structure. The new results provide additional evidence to support the currently favored model of the Universe in which 30 percent of all energy is a strange form of dark matter that doesn't interact with light and 65 percent is in an even stranger form of dark energy that appears to be causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. Only the remaining five percent of the energy in the Universe takes the form of familiar matter like that which makes up planets and stars.
Scientists have uncovered evidence of what is believed to be the earliest form of writing ever found in the New World. The discovery was based on glyphs carved on a cylindrical seal used to make imprints, and on greenstone plaque fragments found near La Venta in Tabasco, Mexico in the Gulf Coast region. The writings were produced during the Olmec era, a pre-Mayan civilization, and are estimated to date from 650 B.C.
Researchers examining plants growing in the geothermal soils of Yellowstone National Park and Lassen Volcanic National Park have found evidence of symbiosis between fungi and plants that may hold clues to how plants adapt to and tolerate extreme environments.
