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May 22, 2001

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 Official Honored Posthumously by Genetics Society of America

DeLill Nasser directed the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) eukoryotic genetics program and for decades supported research that made Arabidopsis thaliana the model plant for genetic study. She lived to see Arabidopsis become the first plant whose genome has been completely sequenced -- an achievement featured last December on the cover of the journal Nature -- but cancer took Nasser’s life soon afterward.

Now the Genetics Society of America (GSA) has honored her by creating the DeLill Nasser Award for Professional Development in Genetics. The award will give financial support to students and postdoctoral researchers.

"DeLill’s contributions to the field of plant genetics were numerous," said Machi Dilworth, who directs the NSF Division of Biological Infrastructure, "and all of us involved in Arabidopsis research continue to be indebted to her. It is entirely fitting that the GSA would honor her this way, as she herself spent so much time supporting young scientists."

NSF has begun a ten-year effort, called the 2010 Project, to identify the functions of each Arabidopsis gene. Arabidopsis is a flowering weed in the mustard family with a relatively small number of genes; due to the similarity among flowering-plant genomes, research into Arabidopsis is directly applicable to over 250,000 other plant species. The research is helping to make other plants easier to grow under adverse conditions and healthier to eat. It also has implications for renewable energy, human disease and medicine. [Tom Garritano]

For more about the GSA, see: http://www.faseb.org/genetics/gsa/gsamenu.htm

For Arabidopsis facts, see: http://nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/2000/fsarabidopsis.htm

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Nanotubes: The Next Flat-Panel Displays?

Move over, LEDs (light-emitting diodes) and LCDs (liquid-crystal displays). Researchers have developed a flat-screen display using carbon nanotubes -- tubular devices only a few atoms wide. The screen could offer greater durability, cost-effectiveness and much higher resolution than current technologies.

Robert Chang and colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., built a prototype screen using hundreds of thousands of stationary carbon nanotubes that emit electrons to light up the pixels on the screen. Unlike a standard cathode ray tube (CRT) screen, in which one electron beam emitted from a hot filament moves rapidly back and forth to light the pixels, in Chang's prototype each pixel is lit by its own electron beam. The screen can be slim, the emission is steady and the display is extremely sharp. Further.more, the process can occur at room temperature or in even colder environments.

"Carbon nanotubes are so small that each pixel can contain hundreds or even thousands of them, guaranteeing redundancy -- the pixels will not deteriorate over time," said Chang, who directs the NSF's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at Northwestern. One million of the nanotubes lined up side-by-side would measure only about a centimeter across. In theory, this type of screen could boast a resolution sharper than the eye can detect, said Chang.

In a few years it might be feasible to manufacture nanotubes in bulk, Chang said, "and you could then make huge screens very cheaply, without expensive lithographic techniques."
[Amber Jones]

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Colonizing The Deep Sea: Scientists Solve Puzzle of Hydrothermal Vents

Giant red-tipped tubeworms are among the exotic marine life found at hydrothermal vents on the deep seafloor. For nearly 25 years, scientists have wondered how the tubeworms move about, and how their larvae survive in the perpetual cold and dark.

Now scientists in the NSF-funded LARVE (Larvae at Ridge Vents) project have the first direct answer to the questions: How long can a vent larva live? And how far can it disperse?

Biologists Lauren Mullineaux of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Adam Marsh and Donal Manahan of the University of Southern California, and Craig Young of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution studied larvae of the giant tubeworm Riftia pachyptila. This red-tipped worm can grow to several feet in length and lives in a white plastic-like tube about 1.5 inches in diameter.

Working with specimens from the eastern Pacific Ocean, the team raised larvae in the laboratory under deep-ocean temperatures and pressures. The researchers found that a typical larva could survive for 38 days -- just long enough so it may travel many miles to colonize another active hydrothermal vent site.

The tubeworms' range depends on where a vent is located; if currents are stronger, hydrothermal vent animals can travel farther. At active vents, hot vent waters mix with seawater to form buoyant plumes that rise until they cool to neutral buoyancy at some 600 feet above the seafloor. Once carried to that level by a plume, creatures can travel long distances via local currents that form a "larval highway." [Cheryl Dybas]

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