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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: Beth Gaston Contents of this Tipsheet:
SUPER-COLD CHAMBER MAY TRANSFORM STUDIES OF TURBULENCEA cryogenic (super-cold) test chamber filled with fluid helium will soon allow researchers to test many central questions of physics related to intense convection and turbulence. Turbulence, which can limit the performance of high speed aircraft and the safety of skyscrapers in high winds, is an important unsolved problem in classical physics. The unconventional use of cryogenic helium in turbulence studies will allow more extreme conditions to be tested in the laboratory. With a $5 million NSF grant researchers will build and refine a one-meter-tall prototype "cryostat," an insulated tank filled with helium at temperatures minus 450F. The information obtained will be more accurate over wider ranges of turbulence than with other methods, according to University of Oregon physicist Russell Donnelly. Donnelly and colleagues from Yale University and Brookhaven National Laboratory will build the tank, to become the heart of the Laboratory for Cryogenic Turbulence Studies at the University of Oregon. Technical limitations have kept scientists from creating wind tunnel conditions with Reynolds numbers, used to represent turbulence, much higher than ten million. This presents a major obstacle, since the wind flowing over a jet's wing has a Reynolds number of about 70 million. Donnelly's device will achieve Reynolds numbers of 100 million. [Cary Lee Hanes]
OLDEST CRAYFISH FOSSILS DISCOVERED IN ANTARCTICAFossils discovered on an NSF-funded expedition in Antarctica last December show new evidence that freshwater crayfish evolved at least 65 million years earlier than previously thought. Researchers in the Shackleton Glacier area discovered crayfish burrows in 240-million-year-old deposits of the Triassic Period, and identified a fossil claw of the Late Carboniferous-Early Permian Age (285-million-years-old). The newly found crayfish claw is the oldest known evidence of decapod crustaceans from freshwater deposits anywhere on earth. Crayfish are important components of freshwater ecosystems because they are large and abundant omnivores. Their presence in these very old deposits suggests that freshwater ecosystems resembling those of today developed much earlier than was thought. The breakage pattern on the claw, which appears to have been caused by a predator or scavenger, supports this theory by suggesting the presence of a community of species. Scientists have long speculated that decapod crustaceans invaded freshwater stream and lake systems before the end of the Palezoic Era, but had no direct evidence until now. "This forces us to rethink how and where they evolved," said Dr. John Isbell of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who took part in the expedition with Dr. Molly Miller of Vanderbilt University. "We're pretty excited -- we're starting to believe that Antarctica was not a dead, barren world during the late Palezoic age." [Cary Lee Hanes]
NSF AND NBS SIGN AGREEMENT ON BIODIVERSITY INFORMATICSThe NSF and the National Biological Service (NBS) have signed an interagency agreement to contribute funds to support projects in biodiversity informatics. This agreement includes support for the Bishop Museum of Hawaii to develop an interdisciplinary information model for biological collections, and for subsequent related projects to make systematics, collections and other biodiversity data more accessible through the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). The newly developed information model will help foster increased collaboration among biological collections institutions, according to Jim Beach, program director in NSF's division of biological infrastructure. Development of a National Biological Information Infrastructure is part of a broad cooperative effort to make data and information on biological resources more accessible so they can be used to support resource management decisions. The goal of the NBII is to establish a distributed "federation" of biological data and information sources, relying on a network of partners and cooperators to make the data they generate and/or maintain available to others throughout this federation using the Internet, thus facilitating biological data stewardship. [Cheryl Dybas]
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