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
Contents of this News Tip:
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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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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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] Top of Page
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