'Exciting Findings'

Seafloor Off Mid-Atlantic Coast Highly Charged with Gas
A team of scientists investigating whether possible cracks along the outer continental shelf off the mid-Atlantic coast might lead to a tsunami-causing landslide has discovered that the entire area is charged with gas. Based on preliminary results from a just-completed two-week cruise to the area funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the scientists say the suspected cracks are a system of large depressions along the shelf edge that appear to have been excavated by gas erupting through the seafloor. "We don't know the source of the gas," team leader Neal Driscoll of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) said. "But it is clear that gas has played an important role in the formation of these features."    More...

Exploring the Far Frontiers of Sea and Space
Ever wonder what else is out there? Scientists are expanding our knowledge of the limits of the universe by exploring the depths of the oceans and the farthest reaches of space. You can join the President, First Lady, and two noted scientists, Marcia McNutt, President of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and Neil Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, at the next Millennium Matinee as they discuss the American urge to discover what new ocean and space exploration is teaching us. "Under the Sea, Beyond the Stars" is the focus of the White House Millennium Council's Ninth Millennium Evening at the White House.    More...

Humanity's First 'Oyster Bar' - Stone Tools Push Back Date of Earliest Use of Marine Resources
An international research team supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) has unearthed ancient stone tools from a marine setting in Africa. The finding pushes back by 10,000 years the date for the earliest evidence of human consumption of shellfish, marking the onset of a new type of feeding strategy in human evolution. The tools may contribute to knowledge of the geographic origins and adaptations of modern humans.    More...

Membrane Protein Research Yields New Insights into Inner Workings of the Cell
Biophysicists at the National Science Foundation’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, have discovered that membrane proteins give rise to unique patterns of signals in their nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra. This result opens a new approach for the three dimensional characterization of membrane protein structures. "About 25 percent of proteins are membrane proteins, yet structures of only few of these are known," says Kamal Shukla, director of NSF's molecular biophysics program, which funded the research. "X-ray crystallography and solution NMR cannot be used for these proteins because they are hard to crystallize and are not soluble. The methodology developed by Cross and his colleagues for obtaining structural information of integral membrane proteins is therefore exceedingly important."    More...

NSF Awards High Performance Connections to Ten Institutions
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded high performance network connections for ten additional universities, bringing the total number of institutions assisted through such grants to 177. They will join previous awardees in connecting to a national grid of research networks that operate at speeds up to 2.4 billion bits per second. The two-year awards average $350,000, which will be matched at least equally by each recipient. Awardees may use the funds to connect with the vBNS (very high performance Backbone Network System), the Internet2 consortium's Abilene network or another national research network. NSF and MCI Worldcom recently announced an agreement that will keep vBNS in operation through March 2003.    More...