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News Tip

 


May 9, 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

NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD MEMBERS CONFIRMED

Nine members of the National Science Board (NSB) were confirmed by the Senate May 1, 1997, and will become voting members when sworn in. Six of them were sworn in by Jack Gibbons, President Clinton's science advisor, on May 7.

The newly confirmed members include: John A. Armstrong; Mary K. Gaillard; M.R.C. Greenwood; Stanley V. Jaskolski; Eamon M. Kelly; Jane Lubchenco; Vera C. Rubin; Bob Suzuki; and Richard Tapia.

The National Science Board was established by Congress in 1950 to serve both as an independent national science policy body and to oversee and guide activities of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The board consists of 24 members and the NSF director, who is an ex-officio member. Members serve six-year terms. NSB members are drawn from industry and academia, and represent a wide variety of disciplines and geographic areas. They are selected for distinguished service in research, education or public service. Editors: Full titles and affiliations of all NSB members may be found at URL http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/members/start.htm [Beth Gaston]

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HIGH PERFORMANCE NETWORKS NOW HAVE ACCESS POINT

A key piece of infrastructure for high performance connections will enable greater international connectivity among high performance networks. The National Science Foundation has established The Chicago STAR TAP (Science, Technology and Research Transit Access Point) that will support the Global Information Infrastructure project, "Global Interoperability of Broadband Networking," by providing a common interconnection point with staff support and performance modeling. The University of Illinois at Chicago, along with the National Center for Supercomputer Applications, the Argonne National Laboratory and Ameritech Corporation will provide this operational interconnection point through Ameritech facilities.

The first connection has been formed between NSF's very high performance Backbone Network Service and the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education to help U.S. and Canadian scientists collaborate on research in many disciplines, as well as on joint educational projects involving large, shared databases.

Several other U.S. agencies involved in the Next Generation Internet effort have indicated an intention to link additional high performance networks at STAR TAP. [Beth Gaston]

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WHALES JUST LIKE AMOEBAS? YES!

In a fundamental way, whales are just like amoebas.

Nature retains the same relative scales throughout and between all living things, says a particle physicist who has teamed with two ecologists to devise a model that explains why all biological systems are inherently similar. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Geoffrey West of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and James Brown and Brian Enquist of the University of New Mexico have for the first time developed a general model of the essential features of transport systems in plants and animals.

Systems built from similar cellular foundations will operate within the same laws of scale, explains Brown, such that the metabolic rate of a mouse, for example, follows the same rules as the metabolic rate for all other mammals, including humans.

Living systems efficiently transport resources through a branching network of fractals, Brown adds. The smallest fraction of the system must be a miniature replica of the entire network, the only difference between the two being scale. Cardiovascular systems, respiratory systems, plant vascular systems, and even river systems are all examples of fractal branching networks.

"We all are walking fractals," West says.

The model, according to the scientists, offers profound implications for large-scale aspects of biology. It is being used in such investigations as calculating the length and cross-sectional area of the human aorta, and in development of new drugs, allowing researchers to better predict effects of chemicals on humans, based on laboratory animal studies. [Cheryl Dybas]

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