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Distributed Terascale
Facility to Commence with $53 Million NSF Award
The worlds first multi-site supercomputing system Distributed
Terascale Facility (DTF) will be built and operated with
$53-million from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The DTF
will perform 11.6-trillion calculations per second and store more
than 450-trillion bytes of data, with a comprehensive infrastructure
called the TeraGrid to link computers, visualization
systems and data at four sites through a 40-billion bits-per-second
optical network. The National Science Board (NSB) today approved
a three-year NSF award, pending negotiations between NSF and a consortium
led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
in Illinois and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) in California,
the two leading-edge sites of NSFs Partnerships for Advanced
Computational Infrastructure (PACI).
More...
(posted August 9, 2001)
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Dinosaurs' Large Noses
May Have Been Key to Physiological Processes
With only bones for clues, scientists continue to puzzle over many
details of dinosaur appearances and physiology. Detective work by
a paleontologist at Ohio University now indicates that the creatures'
fleshy nasal passages were larger than had been thought, which could
lead to more-realistic depictions and greater understanding of their
respiratory functions. In the August 3 issue of the journal Science,
National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported researcher Lawrence
Witmer reveals that nostrils on many dinosaurs were much farther
from the eyes and closer to the mouths than previously depicted.
More...
(posted August 2, 2001)
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Earliest Human Ancestors
Discovered in Ethiopia
Anthropologists have discovered the remains of the earliest known
human ancestor in Ethiopia, dating to between 5.2 and 5.8 million
years ago and which predate the previously oldest-known fossils
by almost a million years. The previous discovery of the 4.4-million-year-old
Ardipithecus ramidus was up to this point the oldest known hominid,
the primate zoological family that includes all species on the human
side of the evolutionary split with chimpanzees. The fossil finds,
reported in the July 12 issue of Nature, were made by National
Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientists over a four-year period
in Ethiopia's Middle Awash study area, about 140 miles northeast
of the capital, Addis Ababa. To the team of scientists, the discovery
represents more evidence to confirm Darwin's conclusion that the
earliest humans, or hominids, arose in Africa.
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(posted July 23, 2001)
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Scientists Discover Secrets
of 'Lost City'
Hydrothermal vent structures serendipitously discovered last December
in the mid-Atlantic Ocean, including a massive 18-story vent taller
than any seen before, are formed in a very different way than ocean-floor
vents studied since the 1970s. The findings are published by National
Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers in the July 12 edition
of Nature. This new class of hydrothermal vents apparently forms
where circulating seawater reacts directly with mantle rocks, as
opposed to where seawater interacts with basaltic rocks from magma
chambers beneath the seafloor.
More...
(posted July 23, 2001)
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Microbiologists Find
a New Source of Nitrogen Fixation
Microbiologists have discovered that a type of bacteria found in
termite guts and in fresh and salt water plays a major role in the
process of nitrogen fixation. All organisms require the element
to survive. In the June 29 issue of the journal Science, a team
led by National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded microbiologist John
Breznak of Michigan State University (MSU) reports that spirochetes
- spiral and wavy-shaped bacteria -- are important providers of
nitrogen in termites, whose ability to thrive despite a nitrogen-poor
diet of plant matter had posed a decades-old puzzle.
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(posted July 23, 2001)
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New
Database to Save Endanged Languages
The emergence of English and Spanish as the dominant languages of
global commerce is causing many other tongues to fall into disuse.
This trend alarms social scientists worldwide because linguistic
research not only provides cultural information, but also insight
into the diverse capabilities of the human mind. To combat the decrease
in the number and diversity of languages and to capitalize on a
growing store of digitized linguistic data, a team of National Science
Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers led by Anthony Aristar at Wayne
State University is developing an endangered languages database
and a central information server that will allow users to access
the material remotely by computer.
More...
(posted July 23, 2001)
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