Internet Use Takes a Toll on Television Viewing
Americans with Internet access are watching less television, according to the UCLA Internet Report 2001. The survey of 2,000 households also shows that, as users get more on-line experience, their television viewing declines further. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the UCLA Internet Project polls non-users and users alike. The objective is to survey populations in the U.S. and abroad for an entire generation, and to get a comprehensive picture of how the Internet is affecting society.
More... (posted November 29, 2001)

Scientists Succeed at First-Ever Attempt to Sequence DNA at Sea
Scientists funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated from the University of Delaware and Amersham Biosciences, Inc., in Piscataway, New Jersey, have succeeded in conducting the first-ever DNA sequencing experiments at sea. Using the research vessel Atlantis and submersible Alvin, the team carried out a pioneering environmental genomic study of the strange life that inhabits super-hot hydrothermal vents almost two miles deep in the Pacific Ocean.
More... (posted November 23, 2001)

Melting Glaciers Diminished Gulf Stream, Cooled Western Europe, During Last Ice Age
At the end of the last Ice Age --11.5 to 13 thousand years ago -- the north Atlantic deep water circulation system that drives the Gulf Stream may have shut down because of melting glaciers that added freshwater into the north Atlantic Ocean over several hundred years, confirm researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s paleoclimate program. "For the first time, we have shown that realistic additions of glacial meltwater into the north Atlantic would have shut down north Atlantic deep water production over a period of a few hundred years, if the initial ocean circulation was somewhat weaker than that of today," said David Rind, lead author of the study and a senior climate researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The study appears in the current issue of Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres.
More... (posted November 23, 2001)

NSF-Funded Terascale Computing System Ranks as World's Second Fastest
According to a new ranking of the world's fastest computers, the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Terascale Computing System (TCS) is the second most powerful. No other system for university-based research can match its peak of 6 trillion calculations per second, known as "teraflops." The TCS reached more than four teraflops when running Linpack, a standard software test for comparing supercomputers.
More... (posted November 23, 2001)

Earth's Ecosystems Slowed Greenhouse Gas Buildup in 1990s; Climate Change Could Speed It
Earth's terrestrial ecosystems absorbed all of the carbon released by deforestation and some of the carbon emitted by fossil-fuel burning during the 1990s. But those ecosystems cannot be relied upon to nullify carbon’s influence on global climate change in the future, according to researchers funded partly by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
More... (posted November 23, 2001)