Chem Feed

Cassandra Brooks is a Stanford University doctoral student with the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources.

She spent two months in 2013 aboard the National Science Foundation-operated icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer as part of a research cruise investigating the role of dissolved organic carbon in the Ross Sea ecosystem.

She--and a video she produced on the voyage--became ...
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The University of Chicago launched the first secure cloud-based computing system that enables researchers to access and analyze human genomic cancer information without the costly and cumbersome infrastructure normally needed to download and store massive amounts of data.

The Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud, as it is called, enables researchers who are authorized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to access and analyze data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) ...
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Two fossil discoveries from the East African Rift reveal new information about the evolution of primates, according to a paper published this week in the journal Nature.

Findings by scientists at Ohio University's (OU) Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and colleagues document the oldest fossils of two major groups of primates: the group that today includes apes and humans (hominoids) and the group that includes Old World monkeys such as baboons and ...
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The newest public health threat in Africa, scientists have found, is coming from a previously unknown source: the banded mongoose.

Leptospirosis, the disease is called. And the banded mongoose carries it.

Leptospirosis is the world's most common illness transmitted to humans by animals. It's a two-phase disease that begins with flu-like symptoms. If untreated, it can cause meningitis, liver damage, pulmonary hemorrhage, renal failure and death.

"The ...
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Nouabale-Ndoki National Park is a tree-dotted enclave in Central Africa's Republic of Congo. Heavy logging surrounds the park, but it still has one of the largest intact forests in Africa. In recognition, it recently became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Trees--thousands of them--make up a forest. How did Nouabale-Ndoki's trees become so numerous, and how do they stay that way?

The answer, say biologists, lies far below the tree canopy, in the soil where seedlings ...
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For a time, many people believed that the world of pure math, which involves solving problems in the abstract, was distinct from that of applied math, which uses math to solve real world problems, such as in engineering, and relies more heavily on the use of computers.

The perception of the pure mathematician was of someone with a pencil and paper, proving a theorem, while people who used math for practical applications through computations simply traveled a different path. ...
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To better predict where and when spring thunderstorms rip across Colorado's Front Range and the adjacent Great Plains, researchers are launching a major field project this week with high-flying aircraft and fine-grained computer simulations.

The month-long study could point the way to major improvements in lead times for weather forecasts during what has been called a crucial six- to 24-hour window.

"People want to know whether there will be thunderstorms ...
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On May 16, the Directorate for Engineering at the National Science Foundation will host a Distinguished Lecture on the challenges of landing the rover, "Curiosity," on Mars.

Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, will discuss the intricate technical challenges and engineering steps undertaken to successfully land Curiosity.

The feat, accomplished on Aug. 5, 2012, ...
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) is pleased to have participated in the development of the new National Strategy for the Arctic Region. The release of the Arctic Strategy is timely and builds upon existing governmental collaborations to identify and address ...
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The Arctic was very warm during a period roughly 3.5 to 2 million years ago--a time when research suggests that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was roughly comparable to today's--leading to the conclusion that relatively small fluctuations in carbon dioxide levels can have a major influence on Arctic climate, according to a new analysis of the longest terrestrial sediment core ever collected in the Arctic.

"One of our major findings is that the Arctic was very warm in the ...
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Imagine a young athlete arriving at a university with the potential to win big over the next four years. Now imagine this athlete sitting out an entire season while practicing with the team and getting the lay of the land. This strategy is called redshirting, and it has proven to be an effective way to prepare athletes for success.

Now imagine using the same concept for preparing undergraduates for a degree in engineering. It's just one of the creative approaches ...
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When is insult added to injury for a Caribbean coral reef?

When overfishing removes predatory fish that feed on sponges, according to results reported this week in the journal PLOS ONE.

Using the undersea habitat Aquarius--moored on Conch Reef off Key Largo, Florida--marine scientist Joseph Pawlik of the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) and colleagues found that these predator-fish are the same brightly colored angelfish and parrotfish ...
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Breathing oxygen...can be hazardous to your health?

Indeed, our bodies aren't perfect. They make mistakes, among them producing toxic chemicals, called oxidants, in cells. We fight these oxidants naturally, and by eating foods rich in antioxidants such as blueberries and dark chocolate.

All forms of life that breathe oxygen--even ones that can't be seen with the naked eye, such as bacteria--must fight oxidants to live.

"If they don't," ...
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The National Science Board (NSB) will meet May 9-10, 2013, to address science and engineering policy of interest to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The meeting will also feature presentations from the NSB Public Service Award recipient Jo Anne Vasquez, Vannevar Bush Award recipient Neal Lane, and ...
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Not everyone likes to make decisions alone. People sometimes need feedback. Now they have a social media site that can give it to them.

"Think of it as 'Facebook for Decision-Making,'" says Ali Abbas, associate professor in the department of industrial and enterprise systems engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who designed the new system. "The idea was to build a decision support site online through a social network."

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced two grants totaling $13 million to support multi-university projects in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). These projects are key components of NSF's CPS technologies portfolio, for which investments exceeded $150 million during the last four years.

CPS technologies employ sensors, ...
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected five high-school students from as many states nationwide to deploy to the Arctic this summer as part of a science-education and cultural-exchange program with their peers from Denmark and Greenland.

The students will participate in a three-week field experience in Greenland as part of the multinational Joint Science Education Project (JSEP). The U.S. students were selected in a competitive process that drew 375 ...
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As a new crop of graduates from U.S. colleges and universities hits the street, the country is counting on a new wave of skilled workers to navigate a complex set of challenges to national security, health and rehabilitation, energy security, and reliability of critical infrastructure, among others.

In the critical fields of engineering and computer science, industry leaders lament an-inadequate supply of graduates with the knowledge and skills needed in ...
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Today, Andrew Viterbi, Donald Bitzer and John Daugman will be among 17 honorees inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame at the United States Patent and Trademark Office headquarters in Alexandria, Va. The honor and their accomplishments are in part a testimony to the power of funding by the National Science Foundation.

Viterbi, an electrical engineer and cofounder of wireless technology giant Qualcomm, used NSF support to develop an important ...
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Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth's largest mass extinction 252 million years ago.

Or did they?

That thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia.

It turns out, however, that scientists may have been looking in the wrong places.

Newly discovered fossils from 10 million years after the mass extinction ...
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