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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: Cheryl Dybas Contents of this News Tip:
RESEARCHERS CONTINUE EFFORT TO ESTABLISH SEAFLOOR OBSERVATORY ON VOLCANO SUMMITResearchers funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have gone to sea to further study undersea volcanoes to determine how they affect the ocean floor environment. The scientists will collect specimens of the unique biota living near the volcanoes. Two oceanographic research cruises are underway. Aboard the Oregon State University research vessel Wecoma, scientists are conducting the latest in a 15-year-long series of surveys along portions of the Juan de Fuca Ridge. This ridge, a several-hundred-mile-long volcanically active seam in the earth's crust, lies some 300 miles off the Oregon and Washington coasts at depths of one to two miles. Another cruise aboard the University of Washington's research vessel Thomas G. Thompson will see scientists enter a second phase in establishing an unmanned long-term seafloor observatory, called the New Millennium Observatory (NeMO), built into the caldera, or crater, of a huge undersea volcano along the ridge system. A swarm of earthquakes under this volcano occurred in January, 1998. It is the most volcanically active site on the Juan de Fuca Ridge. The main objective at NeMO is to understand the community of microorganisms that lives beneath the seafloor and thrives at temperatures that can exceed 212 degrees Fahrenheit. These heat loving creatures have a wide variety of potential biotechnical and pharmaceutical applications. [Cheryl Dybas] WHERE THE WILD ONES ARE: ORIGINS OF STAPLE CROP FOUNDAs the 20th century draws to a close, little is yet known about the origins of a staple subsistence crop that feeds an estimated 600 million Third World people. The cassava (Manihot esculenta), a bushy plant producing tubers -- starchy underground stems -- have fed the indigenous people of the Americas for millennia, and much of Africa since the 17th century. But now NSF-funded biologists affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis have written the ultimate "roots" story for this plant. Researcher Barbara Schaal has pinpointed cassava's origins to the southern border of the Amazon River basin in Brazil. Tracing variation in a single gene found in cultivated and wild cassava using sophisticated DNA sequencing techniques, Schaal identified a cassava subspecies, still present in the diminishing wilds of the Amazon basin, as the plant's progenitor. The find provides important insights into cassava's evolutionary origin. Schaal's work reveals a wealth of genetic diversity in wild and domesticated cassava strains, information that plant breeders can use to create hardier plants that are more resistant to disease. Cassava ranks sixth among crops in global production. Those living in the developed world have sampled cassava in tapioca and in flours at specialty food stores. But the vast majority of consumers are the world's poor, who grow cassava in small patches of soil. [Cheryl Dybas] SINGAPOREAN MATH EDUCATION "DEMYSTIFIED"U.S. students' generally dismal achievement in mathematics, as revealed in international comparisons, has prompted a national self-examination for practical answers to the question of how to boost America's rank in math performance. In one effort by mathematics educators at the University of Washington-Seattle, mathematicians and graduate students are comparing the middle school math curricula materials of Singapore -- whose students are the top math performers internationally - against two widely used sets of math materials whose development was supported by the National Science Foundation. This comparative study will entail a thorough examination of mathematics instructional materials in grades six through eight. The researchers are giving particular attention to the treatment of mathematics topics, the level and sophistication of the treatment and the contexts in which the topics are presented. They say results will not spur a "reverse-engineering" of U.S. math education, but could potentially benefit teachers and administrators who make selections of math curricula. [Lee Herring]
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