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This Just In...
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Updated Poll Finds Americans' Fear of Possible "Y2K"
Problems Falls as Awareness Level Rises; Concern Voiced
Over Air Travel, Banking
While a growing number of Americans appear
to have less overall concern from possible Year 2000
problems than those polled three months ago, concern
remains high over air travel and financial account
accuracy, according to a new Gallup poll conducted
this past weekend. The nationwide telephone poll,
done in partnership with the National Science Foundation
and USA Today, surveyed 1,021 adults between March
5 and 7. The poll has a margin of error of plus or
minus three percentage points.
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NSF
To Establish "Cybersystem" For Earthquake Engineering
Simulation
Testifying before a House Science subcommittee
on February 23, NSF Acting Deputy Director Joseph
Bordogna described the Foundation's plans to use information
technology [IT] to establish a cyber Network for Earthquake
Engineering Simulation [NEES]. Bordogna said that
NEES "will change the face of earthquake engineering."
NSF is seeking $7.7 million in its fiscal 2000 budget
request for the first year of a planned five-year,
$81.9 million program for NEES. NEES "will use IT
to serve a critical national need (reducing and mitigating
effects of earthquakes): to help save lives and money;
and to make more efficient use of government's investment
in science and engineering," Bordogna said.
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Molecular
Control Mechanism Of Embryonic Development Unraveled
National
Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers at the
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland,
and at California's Stanford University have shed
new light on the molecular switches that control the
complex process by which a single fertilized egg develops
into a mature organism. Their paper is published in
the February 19, 1999, issue of the journal Cell.
"Failure of the molecular systems that control development
prevents normal embryonic growth, and alterations
in these control systems can lead to a wide variety
of cancers," explains Kamal Shukla, program director
in NSF's division of cellular and molecular biosciences,
which funds the research. "Understanding the molecular
mechanisms that control normal embryonic development
is the first step in developing strategies to prevent
these errors, or to repair them when they have gone
wrong."
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Graduate
Science, Math, Engineering & Technology Students Can
Become K-12 Teaching Fellows
The National
Science Foundation (NSF) is unveiling an innovative
$7.5-million educational program that will enable
talented graduate students and advanced undergraduates
to serve as teaching fellows in K-12 science, mathematics
and technology-based education. "We cannot expect
the task of science and math education to be the responsibility
solely of K-12 teachers while scientists, engineers
and graduate students remain busy in their universities
and laboratories. There is no group of people that
should feel more responsible for science and math
education in this nation than our scientists and engineers
and scientists- and engineers-to-be," NSF Director
Rita Colwell said in announcing the program.
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A color-infrared Spot Image
mosaic covering the Island of Kauai that
has been contrast enhanced by Steven Adams,
JPL and Oliver Chadwick, UC Santa Barbara.
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Ecosystems on Hawaiian Islands Sustained by Distant
Dust--From Asia
As soils
develop, rock-derived elements gradually leach out.
In the absence of erosion, ecosystems should reach
a state of profound and irreversible nutrient depletion
that would limit rates of plant production, scientists
once believed. Researcher Oliver Chadwick of the University
of California at Santa Barbara selected sites in Hawaii
at which to study the sources and fates of ecosystem
nutrients. Funded by the National Science Foundation
(NSF), he used locations on Hawaii's islands to look
at most environmental influences on ecosystem development,
except for the passage of time. Investigations in
ecology, geochemistry and atmospheric chemistry have
documented that drastic nutrient depletion does not
occur as predicted. Says Chadwick, "Ecosystems on
highly weathered lava on older Hawaiian islands, in
particular, are sustained at productive levels by
nutrients dissolved in rainwater--and added as phosphorus
in atmospheric dust transported from Asia, more than
6,000 kilometers away."
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