This Just In ...

NSF Statement on Completion of South Pole Medical Air Drop

A U.S. Air Force C-141 cargo jet has successfully air-dropped the medical supplies needed to treat a woman spending the winter months at the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The 47-year-old patient, whose identity is being kept confidential, recently discovered a lump in one of her breasts. The plane arrived at the South Pole at 1:30 a.m. (U.S. Eastern time) on Sunday, July 11. The drop took place at approximately 1:55 a.m. Station personnel retrieved all six of the dropped bundles, which contained medical supplies and equipment.   More...

Photo courtesy CGIAR and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)

Where the Wild Ones Are:
Origins of Staple Crop Found
As the 20th century draws to a close, little is yet known about the origins of a staple subsistence crop that feeds an estimated 600 million Third World people. The cassava (Manihot esculenta), a bushy plant producing tubers -- starchy underground stems -- have fed the indigenous people of the Americas for millennia, and much of Africa since the 17th century. But now NSF-funded biologists affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis have written the ultimate "roots" story for this plant. Researcher Barbara Schaal has pinpointed cassava's origins to the southern border of the Amazon River basin in Brazil. Tracing variation in a single gene found in cultivated and wild cassava using sophisticated DNA sequencing techniques, Schaal identified a cassava subspecies, still present in the diminishing wilds of the Amazon basin, as the plant's progenitor. Her work reveals a wealth of genetic diversity in wild and domesticated cassava strains, information that plant breeders can use to create hardier plants that are more resistant to disease.    More...

	Photo courtesy Gemini Observatory, National Science Foundation and the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy

New Telescope Gives Astronomers a Clearer Vision of the Universe
At the recent dedication of Gemini North in Hawaii, astronomers revealed some of the sharpest infrared images ever obtained by a ground-based telescope. These first high-resolution images from one of the largest telescopes in the world, near the summit of Mauna Kea, show the remarkable power of the telescope's technologies, which minimize distortions that have blurred astronomical images since Galileo first pointed a telescope skyward almost 400 years ago. The clarity of these images is equivalent to resolving the separation between a set of automobile headlights at a distance of 2,000 miles! Built by an international partnership of seven nations, Gemini North is the first of two 8-meter telescopes that together can explore the entire northern and southern skies in optical and infrared light.    More...

"Robofly" Solves Mystery of Insect Flight
Insects have been flitting about the planet far longer than any other creature, yet how they manage to stay aloft has been a mystery. But now, a University of California, Berkeley, biologist funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) has solved the riddle. Using a pair of robotic wings he has dubbed "robofly," Michael Dickinson and his colleagues have found three distinct wing motions that not only allow insects like flies and bees to stay airborne, but also let them steer and execute amazing acrobatic maneuvers. These mechanisms seem to be common to most insects, and perhaps even to the hummingbird. "We now have a unified theory of insect flight aerodynamics that explains how they can steer and maneuver," says Dickinson. "We've solved the old riddle."    More...

Singaporean Math Education "Demystified"
U.S. students' generally dismal achievement in mathematics, as revealed in international comparisons, has prompted a national self-examination for practical answers to the question of how to boost America's rank in math performance. In one effort by mathematics educators at the University of Washington-Seattle, mathematicians and graduate students are comparing the middle school math curricula materials of Singapore -- whose students are the top math performers internationally - against two widely used sets of math materials whose development was supported by the National Science Foundation. This comparative study will entail a thorough examination of mathematics instructional materials in grades six through eight.    More...