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We've all seen the movies and television shows where police detectives and anti-terrorist teams plug a suspect's name into a computer and receive all the relevant data they need to stop a crime or attack before it happens.

But the reality of law enforcement and intelligence work is not nearly as simple as these Hollywood fantasies appear. In a world that is drowning in data, where everyone from border guards to supermarket checkouts gather personal information, finding the right facts ...
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In developing a model to explain the motion of atoms in a magnetic field, scientists have overcome a decades-old obstacle to understanding a key component of magnetic resonance. 

The new understanding may eventually lead to better control of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and higher resolution MRI diagnoses.

Collaborators at Ohio State University in Columbus and three institutions in ...
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Many computing luminaries, such as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, have an early experience in common--an engaging experience in middle school or high school that sparked an excitement for learning everything they could about computers. Today, many young people are surrounded by computing at home and in school, and some of them will likely find a similar passion that will lead them to push tomorrow's frontiers in computer science.

For visually impaired students, however, the pathways to ...
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Like most middle-school science teachers, Shakira Brown, a teacher at New York's Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy, has spent the past months working hard to grab her student's interest in science. It's probably safe to say, however, that few of her colleagues are going to the extreme--both in distance and effort--that she is this fall.

Brown is currently in Antarctica as a member of a National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported scientific expedition that seeks to document what ...
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded 37 new grants totaling $28.3 million to researchers engaged in interdisciplinary projects concerning human and social dynamics. These are the last awards that will be granted by NSF's Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) priority area, whose five-year run ends having awarded more than 400 research grants totaling about $166 million.

"NSF's HSD program has been relentlessly interdisciplinary in funding transformative ...
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The November issue of Ecology is a special issue devoted to the efforts of the Coordinating Research on the North Atlantic (CORONA) network. The group, which includes ecologists, geneticists, paleontologists and oceanographers, among others, met on five separate occasions with the goal of expanding the scope of work performed across the North Atlantic, both geographically and scientifically. The resulting papers are comprehensive reviews of the field that cover topics including ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112687&govDel=USNSF_51

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A recently discovered female pelvis is changing minds about the head size of an ancient human ancestor, Homo erectus, and consequently revising notions about how smart they may have been. Found in Gona, Ethiopia, not far from the site that yielded the 3.2 million year old remains of the famed Australopithecus afarensi "Lucy," the pelvis indicates that Homo erectus, which lived in Africa roughly 2 million years ago, had a larger birth canal than originally ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112620&govDel=USNSF_51

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Firefly, it's called, this new small satellite mission sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). It's designed to help solve the mystery of the most powerful natural particle accelerator in Earth's atmosphere: TGFs, or terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. TGFs likely result from thunderstorms.

The mission is the second project under the new NSF CubeSat program. A CubeSat satellite, about the size of a loaf of bread, consists of three cubes attached end to end in a rectangular ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112591&govDel=USNSF_51

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An unusual microorganism discovered in the open ocean may force scientists to rethink their understanding of how carbon and nitrogen cycle through ocean ecosystems.

A paper describing the new findings appears in the November 14 issue of the journal Science.

A research team led by Jonathan Zehr, a marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, characterized the new microbe by analyzing its genetic material, even though researchers have not been able to grow ...
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Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain in the Hawaiian chain, have obtained the first-ever direct images identifying a multi-planet system around a normal star.

The Gemini images allowed the international team to make the initial discovery of two of the planets in the confirmed planetary system with data obtained on Oct. 17, 2007. Then, on Oct. 25, 2007, and in the summer of 2008, the team, led by ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112613&govDel=USNSF_51

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Researchers at Cornell University recently made a major breakthrough when they invented a method to test and demonstrate a long-held hypothesis that some very, very small metal particles work much better than others in various chemical processes such as converting chemical energy to electricity in fuel cells or reducing automobile pollution.

The breakthrough, reported in this week's edition of the journal Nature Materials, also came with a surprise. By devising a way to watch ...
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Throughout history, the changing fortunes of human societies in Asia have been linked to variations in the precipitation resulting from seasonal monsoons.

A new paper published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that variations in monsoon climate over longer time scales also influenced the evolution of the Himalaya mountain chain, the world's highest.

The climate over much of Asia is dominated by seasonal winds that carry moist air over the Pacific ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112584&govDel=USNSF_51

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Brain scans of young, aggressive bullies suggest they may actually enjoy seeing others in pain, according to a new University of Chicago study.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans of eight 16- to 18-year-old boys with aggressive conduct disorder and eight matched adolescents without conduct disorder led researchers to this new hypothesis. The study showed increased activity in an area of the brain associated with rewards when the aggressive boys watched a video clip of ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112582&govDel=USNSF_51

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Ecologists and oceanographers are attempting to predict the future impacts of climate change by reconstructing the past behavior of Arctic climate and ocean circulation.

In a November special issue of the journal Ecology, a group of scientists report that if current patterns of change in the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans continue, alterations of ocean circulation could occur on a global scale, with potentially dramatic implications for the world's climate and ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112592&govDel=USNSF_51

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A wild fungus has been found to produce a variety of hydrocarbon components of diesel fuel. The harmless, microscopic fungus, known as Gliocladium roseum (NRRL 50073), lives quietly within ulmo trees in the Patagonian rainforest.

Gary Strobel of Montana State University has found that the fungus produces many energy-rich hydrocarbons, and that the particular diesel components produced can be varied by changing the growing medium and environment of the fungus. The fungus ...
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Wildfires can boost ozone pollution to levels that violate U.S. health standards, a new study concludes.

The research, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., focused on California wildfires in 2007, finding that they repeatedly caused ground-level ozone to spike to unhealthy levels across a broad area, including much of rural California as well as neighboring Nevada.

Results of the study are published today in the journal ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112403&govDel=USNSF_51

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The stickleback fish, Gasterosteus aculeatus, is one of the most thoroughly studied organisms in the wild, and has been a particularly useful model for understanding variation in physiology, behavior, life history and morphology caused by different ecological situations in the wild.

On biological levels from molecular and genetic to developmental and morphological, and finally ending with the population level, it has proven far more complex than even imagined.

Studies of ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112436&govDel=USNSF_51

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Researchers are homing in on the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea to assess the likely changes, between now and the middle of the century, in the frequency, intensity, and tracks of these powerful storms. Initial results are expected early next year.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., working with federal agencies as well as the insurance and energy industries, has launched an intensive study to examine how global warming will ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112394&govDel=USNSF_51

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces the establishment of five new NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) for the development of interdisciplinary research and education programs in partnership with industry. The NSF ERCs share the goal of advancing knowledge, technology, and innovations that address significant societal problems and provide the workforce and technical foundation for economic competitiveness. NSF will invest approximately $92.5 million in the centers over the ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112313&govDel=USNSF_51

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To better understand the interactions between humans and their environment, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Forest Service have awarded 10 grants to scientists, engineers and educators across the country to study coupled natural and human systems.

Research conducted through NSF's Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program, in its second year as a multi-directorate NSF program, will provide a better understanding of natural processes and cycles, human ...
More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112346&govDel=USNSF_51

This is an NSF News item.