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News Tip

 


December 4, 2000

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: Tom Garritano

NSF Director Honored by Explorer's Club

NSF Director and microbiologist Rita Colwell was honored by The Explorer's Club for her role in marine exploration. Colwell and 12 others received the Lowell Thomas Award For Outstanding Achievement in Ocean Exploration Nov. 28 in New York City.

Colwell calls exploration the "essence of NSF's mission." Her own fascination with the sea began early in life and found root in the emerging field of marine microbiology. Today, powerful new tools and infrastructure have led to "the threshold of a new era of exploration" in oceanography as well as other fields, she says.

The Explorers Club was created in 1904 to advance field research and scientific exploration, and to champion the instinct to explore. Members have included Teddy Roosevelt, Admiral Perry, Neil Armstrong and Carl Sagan. The Lowell Thomas Award was begun in 1980 to periodically recognize groups of particularly outstanding explorers. [Mary Hanson]

For more information on The Explorer's Club, see: http://www.explorers.org/

For a list of all awardees, see: http://www.explorers.org/programsfiles/lowell2000.html

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Team Finds Ancient X-Rays from the Farthest Quasar

A team of U.S. and European astronomers has detected X-rays from the most distant quasar on record. The x-rays, detected with the XMM-Newton satellite, came from a quasar with a redshift of 5.8 -- which means the x-rays were emitted when the universe was less than one billion years old.

The NSF-supported team, led by Niel Brandt of Pennsylvania State University, is using x-ray observations to study some of the oldest and hottest objects in the universe to learn more about how the first quasars and galaxies were formed. The ancient radiation provides a glimpse of the universe shortly after the dawn of the modern universe.

Quasars can emit 1,000 times the energy of our entire galaxy and are believed to be fueled by supermassive black holes that in turn are powered by material from their host galaxies. The findings will be published in the February 2001 issue of The Astronomical Journal.
[Amber Jones]

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Photosynthesis Widespread in Ocean Bacteria

In a study that adds to our basic understanding of ocean biology, scientist Zbigniew Kolber of Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and colleagues have identified biophysical evidence that clearly shows for the first time that aerobic bacterial photosynthesis is widespread in the tropical surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean and in temperate coastal waters of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean.

Aerobic photosynthetic bacteria differ from their evolutionary predecessors, purple photosynthetic bacteria, in that they need oxygen for pigmentation, and perform oxygen-based respiration. Prior to Kolber's work, aerobic photosynthetic bacteria had been found exclusively in nutrient-rich but geographically-limited ecological niches, such as beach sands, hydrothermal vents, and certain bacterial mats formed of cyanobacteria. The distribution of aerobic photosynthetic bacteria in the world's open oceans is not known, but Kolber and colleagues believe that these bacteria may account for some two to five percent of the photosynthesis in the upper ocean.

The research, say Kolber and colleagues Cindy Van Dover of the College of William and Mary and Robert Niederman and Paul Falkowski of Rutgers, may have important implications for global carbon cycling, and may ultimately increase our understanding of global climate change. [Cheryl Dybas]

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-NSF-

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