ΝΑΤΙΟΝΑL SCIENCE FOUNDATION update

NSF Director Cordova speaks at Washington Auto Show

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Dr. France A. Cordova opens the "Mobility Talks International" session, a public policy forum, at the Washington Auto Show on Jan. 24, 2017. Cordova highlighted the essential role federal, basic research funding plays in current and future ...

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Method allows intricate polymer brush patterns (Image 2)

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

A stop-flow cell designed at the University of California, Santa Barbara's, Materials Research Laboratory, a National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. More about this imageEngineered surfaces like antimicrobial cutting boards, flame-retardant ...

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Brain imaging links Alzheimers decline to tau protein

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

Scientists at Washington University are collaborating with the pharmaceutical companies AbbVie, Biogen and Eli Lilly & Company to investigate the buildup and clearance of tau protein in the brains of patients with Alzheimers disease. The positron emission tomography image on the left shows the ...

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Bed bug genome sequenced

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

Bed bug (Cimex lectularius). More about this image Research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) has found that the genome sequence of the common bed bug reveals the mechanisms behind the pest's ability to resist insecticides and to mitigate rough sexual ...

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Image from 'Atom Art: Beauty at the Atomic Scale' exhibit

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

This image shows silicon nitride and highlights how differently atoms can organize in a material depending on how it was manufactured. All silicon nitride is composed of the same atoms, but those atoms can be arranged in very different ways. In this example, the silicon nitride, whose pattern is ...

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Which trees face death in drought (Image 2)

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

Dead trees in the San Juan National Forest near Mancos, Colorado, July 2013. Scientists are trying to understand how a warming climate could affect how often tree mortality events occur--and how severe they could become. More about this image Large numbers of trees are dying in ...

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Which trees face death in drought (Image 1)

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

Trembling aspen trees killed by severe drought near Grand Canyon Junction, Colorado, August 2010. Scientists are trying to understand how a warming climate could affect how often tree mortality events occur--and how severe they could become. More about this image Large numbers of ...

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Possible new component of next-generation computers (Image 1)

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

A vortex laser on a chip. Because the laser beam travels in a corkscrew pattern, encoding information into different vortex twists, its able to carry ten times or more the amount of information than that of conventional lasers. The optics advancement could become a central component of ...

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Brain maps predict neural activation patterns

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

These brain maps show how accurately it was possible for researchers at the University of Rochester to predict neural activation patterns for new, previously unseen sentences in different regions of the brain. The brighter the area, the higher the accuracy. The most accurate area, which can be ...

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Evolving a bigger brain with human DNA

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

The human version of a DNA sequence, called HARE5, turns on a gene important for brain development (the gene activity is stained blue in this image) and causes a mouse embryo to grow a 12 percent larger brain by the end of pregnancy than an embryo injected with the chimpanzee version of ...

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Possible new component of next-generation computers (Image 2)

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

A close-up view of the beam created by the vortex laser. Because the laser beam travels in a corkscrew pattern, encoding information into different vortex twists, its able to carry ten times or more the amount of information than that of conventional lasers. The optics advancement could become a ...

This is an NSF Multimedia Gallery item.

Astronomers use empty space to study universe

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

This simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe reveals the cosmic web of galaxies and the vast empty regions known as voids. An international team of astronomers achieved four times better precision in measurements of how the universes visible matter is clustered together by ...

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Which trees face death in drought (Image 3)

01/25/2017 12:01 PM EST

A dead ponderosa pine tree near Grand Canyon, Arizona, June 2014. Scientists are trying to understand how a warming climate could affect how often tree mortality events occur--and how severe they could become.More about this image Large numbers of trees are dying in extreme heat and ...

This is an NSF Multimedia Gallery item.