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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:
MUSEUM DISPLAY SETS MILLIONS A-QUAKINGOver the next four years, the museum exhibit "Earth in Motion," helped by funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), will travel to some of the largest science museums across the country. The exhibit, which will be viewed by more than five million people in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Columbus, Boston, St. Paul and Fort Worth, will teach visitors about why earthquakes happen, where they're most likely to occur, how they are measured and what kind of damage they can do. A working seismograph will give visitors a hands-on approach to seismology. Those who are willing to jump up and down a little may actually create their own earthquake on a seismograph installed directly in the museum's floor. The exhibit's objective, says Greg van der Vink, director of planning at the NSF-supported Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), is to present earthquakes not as destructive events, but as signals of the geologic forces that build mountains and create ocean basins. "It's a reminder that we're living on the thin, outer crust of a planet whose interior is still cooling," says van der Vink. "Visitors to the exhibit see that earthquakes are always happening somewhere, and learn about the relationship between seismicity and plate tectonics, the driving geologic force on our planet." [Cheryl Dybas] UNEXPECTED LINKS FOUND AMONG ACORNS, GYPSY MOTHS AND LYME DISEASEIf an acorn falls in the forest, will you contract Lyme disease? Perhaps so, according to some surprising research funded by NSF's division of environmental biology, and performed by scientists at the Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. Researchers Clive Jones, Richard Ostfeld and colleagues conducted a study in which forest plots at the institute were experimentally manipulated, first by removing white-footed mice and then by adding acorns. Scientists found several interrelationships between acorn production, populations of white-footed mice, gypsy moth larvae and Lyme disease-carrying black-legged (formerly deer) ticks. In years of large acorn production - mast years - populations and survival rates of white-footed mice increase. In years of lower acorn production, mice populations decrease. The rise and fall in mice population impacts the cycles of gypsy moth production. And, in a complex process, acorn production affects the density of larval ticks. "Mast events may be very useful in predicting the risk of Lyme disease and gypsy moth outbreaks," Jones said. "A remarkable amount of nature is interconnected, with unexpected players and interactions over time that have important implications for human health, and for how we understand, predict and manage the functioning of complex ecosystems." [Cheryl Dybas] KNOWLEDGE AND DISTRIBUTED INTELLIGENCE INITIATIVE GETS INCREASED NSF SUPPORTNSF is proposing an additional $78 million in fiscal 1999 for its Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI), a wide-ranging effort to discover, collect, represent, transmit and apply information in revolutionary ways. NSF has issued a solicitation requesting competitive research proposals in Knowledge Networking, Learning and Intelligent Systems and New Computational Challenges. The agency expects to award between 60 and 75 standard three-year research grants for this foundation-wide KDI initiative with the additional funds available in 1999. An explosive growth in computing power, connectivity, content and flexibility has reshaped relationships among people and organizations, and is quickly transforming the processes of discovery, learning, exploration, cooperation and communications. KDI research, will allow the study of vastly more complex systems than was formerly possible and provides a base for rapid advances in the understanding of learning and intelligent behavior in living and engineered systems. The solicitation for KDI can be found at: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1998/nsf9855/nsf9855.htm
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