New Moon

Astronomers Sight an Asteroid's Moon
Astronomers this week announced their discovery of a moon orbiting an asteroid, in the first images ever obtained of such an object from Earth. Only one satellite orbiting an asteroid had been seen before from space. In work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, an international team headed by William Merline of the Southwest Research Institute sighted a moon orbiting the asteroid (45) Eugenia, in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The images will be published in the October 7 issue of Nature. "Making this discovery with the newly developed adaptive optics moves ground-based astronomy to the forefront in exploring neighboring objects in our solar system," said Vernon Pankonin, manager of NSF's planetary astronomy program.    More...

NSF Approves District-Wide Education Awards in Five U.S. Cities
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently named three cities in Texas (Brownsville, Dallas and El Paso), along with Detroit, Mich. and San Francisco, Calif. to receive awards ranging from $7.5 $11.5 million each over five years for district-wide reform in K-12 science, mathematics, and technology education. The awards, worth a total of $52 million (approximately $11.5 million each for Dallas, Detroit and El Paso, $10 million for San Francisco and $7.5 million for Brownsville) take the form of individual cooperative agreements between NSF and the school systems, and will commence in the 1999-2000 academic year.    More...

Antarctic Research Season to Highlight Seal Ecology, Microscopic Life, Cosmic Origins
In one of the world's largest annual deployments of scientific researchers, more than 800 hundred scientists from universities and other institutions across the United States will travel to Antarctica in the coming months during the U.S. Antarctic Program's 1999-2000 austral summer research season. Once in the field, research teams will undertake a range of projects, including: investigating the ecology of microbes that survive at the South Pole; studying the composition of a continental sheet of ice that covers West Antarctica and attempting to predict its future from its past behavior; and observing the Earth's climate of eons ago, as reflected in materials collected by drilling into the seabed around the continent.    More...

Inhaled Gases May Boost Lung Imaging Capabilities
Researchers supported by the National Science Foundation are developing techniques that could help physicians diagnose and treat lung disease and aid pulmonary science. A new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology uses a hyperpolarized gas inhaled into the lungs to produce images of lung tissue and airways that are difficult to image with traditional MRI. The technology could allow physicians to pinpoint airway obstructions and screen for diseases with much greater precision and less risk than current techniques that use ionizing radiation.    More...