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OMB Director Praises NSF Efficiency
White House Office of Management and Budget director Mitch Daniels
lauded NSF as a model of administrative efficiency in a speech at
the National Press Club Nov. 28. Daniels called NSF one of the "true
centers of excellence in this government" for its low overhead
costs and efficient use of tax dollars. He praised the proposal
review process, which determines how tax dollars are to be disseminated
"on a competitive basis directly to researchers pursuing the
frontiers of science." Daniels also mentioned that eight of
the 12 most recent Nobel Laureates were supported by NSF.
More... (posted
December 10, 2001)
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Guide to Programs for FY 2002 Is Now Available
The new edition of the Guide to Programs (NSF 02-03) is now available
on the NSF website at http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?gp.
Published each fiscal year, the Guide is a compilation of funding
opportunities offered by NSF for research and education in science,
mathematics, engineering, and technology. NSF funds research and
education in most fields of science and engineering. It does this
through grants to and cooperative agreements with more than 2,000
colleges, universities, K-12 school systems, businesses, informal
science organizations, and other research institutions throughout
the United States. NSF accounts for about one-fourth of all Federal
support to academic institutions for basic research.
More... (posted
December 10, 2001)
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Spectrograph
Could Identify Chemical and Biological Agents
A team of researchers has developed a rugged portable detection
system that could provide real-time recognition of chemical and
biological weapons using infrared spectroscopy. John Rabolt, Mei-Wei
Tsao, Douglas Elmore and Simon Frisk of the University of Delaware,
and Bruce Chase of the DuPont Company developed the planar array
infrared spectrograph with GOALI (Grant Opportunities for Academic
Liaison with Industry) and instrumentation grants from the National
Science Foundation (NSF). The shoebox-sized device can detect small
amounts of chemical agents in solid, liquid or vapor phases. When
programmed to recognize specific compounds and placed near at-risk
sites, the sensor can report the presence of a compound in real
time via wireless transmitters.
More... (posted
December 10, 2001)
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World's
Smallest Lizard Discovered in the Caribbean
The world's smallest lizard has been discovered on a tiny Caribbean
island off the coast of the Dominican Republic. The newly discovered
species not only ranks as the smallest lizard, but it also is the
smallest of all 23,000 species of reptiles, birds, and mammals,
according to a paper published in the December issue of the Caribbean
Journal of Science. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn
State, and Richard Thomas, a biologist at the University of Puerto
Rico, are co-authors. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded
their research.
More... (posted
December 10, 2001)
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