[News] National Science Board Members Confirmed - Tipsheet
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Title : National Science Board Members Confirmed - Tipsheet
Type : News
NSF Org: OD / LPA
Date : May 9, 1997
File : tip70509
May 9, 1997
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) 306-1070. Editor: Bill Noxon
NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD MEMBERS CONFIRMED
Nine members of the National Science Board (NSB) were
confirmed by the Senate May 1, 1997, and will become voting
members when sworn in. Six of them were sworn in by Jack
Gibbons, President Clinton's science advisor, on May 7.
The newly confirmed members include: John A. Armstrong; Mary
K. Gaillard; M.R.C. Greenwood; Stanley V. Jaskolski; Eamon M.
Kelly; Jane Lubchenco; Vera C. Rubin; Bob Suzuki; and Richard
Tapia.
The National Science Board was established by Congress in 1950
to serve both as an independent national science policy body and
to oversee and guide activities of the National Science
Foundation (NSF). The board consists of 24 members and the NSF
director, who is an ex-officio member. Members serve six-year
terms. NSB members are drawn from industry and academia, and
represent a wide variety of disciplines and geographic areas.
They are selected for distinguished service in research,
education or public service. Editors: Full titles and
affiliations of all NSB members may be found at URL
http://www.nsf.gov/home/nsb/members.htm [Beth Gaston]
HIGH PERFORMANCE NETWORKS
NOW HAVE ACCESS POINT
A key piece of infrastructure for high performance connections
will enable greater international connectivity among high
performance networks. The National Science Foundation has
established The Chicago STAR TAP (Science, Technology and
Research Transit Access Point) that will support the Global
Information Infrastructure project, "Global Interoperability of
Broadband Networking," by providing a common interconnection
point with staff support and performance modeling. The
University of Illinois at Chicago, along with the National Center
for Supercomputer Applications, the Argonne National Laboratory
and Ameritech Corporation will provide this operational
interconnection point through Ameritech facilities.
The first connection has been formed between NSF's very high
performance Backbone Network Service and the Canadian Network for
the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education to help U.S.
and Canadian scientists collaborate on research in many
disciplines, as well as on joint educational projects involving
large, shared databases.
Several other U.S. agencies involved in the Next Generation
Internet effort have indicated an intention to link additional
high performance networks at STAR TAP. [Beth Gaston]
WHALES JUST LIKE AMOEBAS? YES!
In a fundamental way, whales are just like amoebas.
Nature retains the same relative scales throughout and between
all living things, says a particle physicist who has teamed with
two ecologists to devise a model that explains why all biological
systems are inherently similar. The research was supported by
the National Science Foundation.
Geoffrey West of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and James
Brown and Brian Enquist of the University of New Mexico have for
the first time developed a general model of the essential
features of transport systems in plants and animals.
Systems built from similar cellular foundations will operate
within the same laws of scale, explains Brown, such that the
metabolic rate of a mouse, for example, follows the same rules as
the metabolic rate for all other mammals, including humans.
Living systems efficiently transport resources through a
branching network of fractals, Brown adds. The smallest fraction
of the system must be a miniature replica of the entire network,
the only difference between the two being scale. Cardiovascular
systems, respiratory systems, plant vascular systems, and even
river systems are all examples of fractal branching networks.
"We all are walking fractals," West says.
The model, according to the scientists, offers profound
implications for large-scale aspects of biology. It is being
used in such investigations as calculating the length and cross
sectional area of the human aorta, and in development of new
drugs, allowing researchers to better predict effects of
chemicals on humans, based on laboratory animal studies.
[Cheryl Dybas]
-NSF-
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