Beyond the "Beltway"

National Science Board to Meet in Houston
The National Science Board (NSB) will convene its first off-site meeting of the year in October. (The board normally meets at the National Science Foundation headquarters in Arlington, Va.) The off-site meeting demonstrates the board's desire to reserve at least one such meeting each year (1) to focus on an important national science policy topic, and (2) to solicit input from communities outside of Washington D.C. The Houston meeting will focus on graduate education and will address such questions as: What is the nation getting from the federal investment in graduate education? Is the federal government investing in graduate education in a way that supports national needs?    More...

Ships Depart to Launch
Ice Station SHEBA in the Arctic Ocean
Two icebreaking ships were scheduled to depart Tuktoyaktuk, Canada, around September 18 to establish Ice Station SHEBA in the Arctic Ocean, launching the largest and most complex science experiment ever supported in the Arctic by the National Science Foundation (NSF). One ship will be frozen into the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean and left to drift as a floating science platform for 13 months. The target of the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean project: charting the fate of the great canopy of pack ice about the size of the United States, which seals off the Arctic Ocean.    More...

NSF Grant Will Spur Collaboration for
Internet Tools, Information and Protocols
The Internet is a global network of networks--mostly private, and often competing among themselves. While the diffuse structure of the Internet is one of its strengths, the competitive environment has made collaboration on operational and engineering requirements difficult, and has made research on the metrics of the Internet virtually impossible. To help address these concerns, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded a seed grant of more than $3.1 million over three years to the University of California, San Diego to establish the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA).    More...