October 31, 1997
For more information on these science news and feature story tips, please
contact the public information officer at the end of each item at (703)
292-8070. Editor: Bill Noxon
Contents of this News Tip:
The United States and Singapore will agree November 7 to link high performance
networks, allowing collaboration among research institutions in the two
nations.
The National Science Foundation's (NSF) very high performance Backbone
Network Service (vBNS) and Singapore Internet Next Generation Advanced
Research and Education Network (SINGAREN) will foster research relationships
in the areas of medicine, manufacturing, education, tele-immersion and
architecture.
This is the first trans-Pacific high performance connection for the
vBNS. A connection to Canada's high performance network was the first
international link. SINGAREN's physical link will be the NSF-funded Science,
Technology And Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP), which is designed
to facilite the long-term interconnection and interoperability of advanced
international networking.
The vBNS is a research tool for U.S. universities, managed through
a cooperative agreement with MCI. It has a transmission capacity of 622
megabits (mbps) per second and is expected to increase to as much as a
few gigabits per second by the year 2000. The average home has less than
30 mbps.
For more information, see: http://www.singaren.net.sg and http://www.startap.net [Beth Gaston]
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Recently, considerable interest has focused on a plant plankton genus
called Pseudo-nitzchia, diatoms in which some species produce domoic
acid, a potent neurotoxin which causes short-term memory loss and death.
Preliminary data from the Louisiana coastal zone show that some species
of Pseudo-nitzchia reach very high abundances every spring in water
plumes discharged into the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi and Atchafalya
Rivers, and that high abundances occur frequently, but less predictably,
at another Louisiana coastal location.
With funding from the NSF's ECOHAB (Ecology of Harmful Algal Blooms)
program, scientists Greg Doucette of the University of South Carolina
and Quay Dortch of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium will test
a possible link between blooms of Pseudo-nitzchia and coastal areas
characterized by eutrophication. Eutrophication is a process in which
plant life "overgrows," a result of increased amounts of nutrients like
nitrogen and phosphorus. The increase in nitrogen and/or phosphorus can
result from agricultural fertilizer runoff, disposal of manufacturing
waste, or draining of sewage.
The researchers say their studies should lead to a better understanding
of how harmful algal blooms and eutrophication may be linked.
[Cheryl Dybas]
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A major hurdle in understanding how living cells function has recently
been overcome with the discovery of a simple method that allows visualization
of events in living cells and organisms.
Scientists got their first views of the activities of living cells
through discovery of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) from the Pacific
Northwest jellyfish Aequorea victoria.
Biochemists John Murphy and Clark Lagarias of the University of California
at Berkeley and Davis, respectively, have conducted research to extend
the range of applications currently available using so-called fluorescent
protein probes. Their research, published in the November issue of the
journal Current Biology, discusses a new class of fluorescent
molecules that can be produced in living cells, allowing scientists to
view the cells' activities "from the outside."
This new class of molecules is called phytofluors, which can be produced
in cells with the gene for a plant light receptor known as a phytochrome.
Upon treatment with a pigment, phytofluors spontaneously assemble into
markers that emit fluorescent light in the orange part of the light spectrum.
"Phytofluors extend the usefulness of noninvasive markers in the study
of processes such as gene expression, protein-protein interactions, and
targeting of proteins," says Marcia Steinberg, NSF program director for
biomolecular structure and function. [Cheryl Dybas]
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