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NSF Helps Launch Environmental Research Center

Throughout human history, weather and climate predictions have impacted almost all aspects of our survival, including agricultural production, water supply and usage, and public health. Yet, the uncertainty surrounding what we know about climate change and climate variability continues to complicate the decision-making process -- whether in government or on an individual level. If how people deal with such uncertainty can be better understood, the manner in which people adapt to increased variability and change can be improved using better decision tools, including advances in the format and delivery of climate forecasts.

A new center to investigate individual and group decision making under climate uncertainty and environmental risk has been created at Columbia with a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $5.9 million. The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) is led by David Krantz, professor of psychology and statistics at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS); Elke Weber, Jerome A. Chazen Professor of Management, International Business and Psychology at Columbia Business School; Roberta Balstad, director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN); and Kenneth Broad, assistant professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami.

The center will provide a cross-disciplinary approach to research. According to Krantz and Weber, individual and group decision mechanisms have generally been studied separately, the first by cognitive and social psychologists and the second by social scientists. CRED will integrate these approaches and provide research based in the laboratory and in field sites.

Another mission of the center is to develop new interventions and tools to improve decisions by those who respond to conditions of climate uncertainty. By educating scientists, CRED directors aim to improve the quality of information flow to experts and decision makers concerning climate change. The center also will develop educational programming for audiences ranging from high school students to academic researchers and policy makers.

CRED currently serves as an umbrella for 16 projects conducted by 24 researchers at 8 universities. Research projects include a wide range of decision makers -- farmers, water resource managers and policy makers -- in a variety of geographical regions around the globe. Bridging the social and natural sciences, CRED is a joint center of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) and the Earth Institute, and is affiliated with ISERP's Center for the Decision Sciences. The work of the center is coordinated by Director Elke Weber, Associate Director Sabine Marx and Assistant Director Debika Shome.

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NIH Funds Eleven High-End Instrumentation Grants

Representatives of The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced it will provide nearly $18 million for 11 High-End Instrumentation (HEI) grants that will fund the purchase of new state-of-the-art equipment required to advance biomedical research. Awarded to research institutions around the country, the one-time grants support the acquisition of instruments that cost more than $750,000, with a maximum of $2 million each.

Instruments in this price range include structural and functional imaging systems, macromolecular nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, high-resolution mass spectrometers, electron microscopes, and supercomputers. Imaging technology provides functional, biochemical and physiological information from intact biological systems including humans. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometers allow researchers to determine three-dimensional structures of large proteins and protein complexes, while mass spectrometers provide very high resolution and accurate molecular weight measurement for the study of large biopolymers and their interactions. Electron microscopes offer high resolution imaging of single molecules and allow investigators to perform computer reconstruction at the subnanometer scale for large and complex macromolecular assemblies. Super computers with high performance visualization hardware and parallel architectures allow for large data storage and high-speed transfer.

Three or more NIH-funded investigators whose research requires the instrument must be identified in advance by the institution. Matching funds are not required for HEI grants. However, institutions are expected to provide an appropriate level of support for associated infrastructure, such as building alterations or renovations, technical personnel, and post-award service contracts for instrument maintenance and operation.

FY 2005 High-End Instrumentation Grants:

• Arizona State University ( Tempe, Ariz.)
• Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory ( Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)
• Kennedy Krieger Institute, Inc. ( Baltimore, Maryland)
• University of California, San Diego ( La Jolla, Calif.)
• University of Cincinnati ( Cincinnati, Ohio)
• University of Maryland, Baltimore ( Baltimore, Maryland)
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ( Chapel Hill, N.C.) (two awards)
• University of Southern California ( Los Angeles, Calif.)
• University of Virginia ( Charlottesville, Va.)
• Washington University in St. Louis ( St. Louis, Mo.)

 

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NASA Investigates Shuttle Failure

NASA is hunting the source of a problem that forced it to abort the launch of space shuttle Discovery.

The US space agency had to scrub Wednesday's launch attempt when a fuel tank sensor started to play up. The orbiter was all set to make the first flight since the loss of Columbia and its crew of seven in February 2003. Discovery's astronauts had all been strapped into the shuttle and were preparing for blast-off when the order came through to stand down.

NASA says the launch will now take place no earlier than Saturday.

However, it is considered more likely lift-off will be delayed until Monday.

The agency's administrator, Dr Mike Griffin, told reporters he did not know whether the problem could be fixed at the launch pad or would require the shuttle to be rolled back into its hangar.

The latter would mean a lengthy delay to Discovery's mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA officials said that from the troubleshooting done so far, the problem could be down to suspect transistors in the box that supplies the sensors with power. This type of sensor has caused problems before, during the first "tanking test" of STS-114 in April. Then, the external fuel tank was rolled back into the Vehicle Assembly Building. But Discovery is now using an entirely different tank.

The faulty sensor is one of four in the shuttle's external tank responsible for making sure the spacecraft's engines shut down at the proper point during the ascent. The sensors ensure the engines are not suddenly starved of propellants and are switched off in a controlled fashion. The current launch window runs until the end of July, after which Discovery would have to wait until September to get airborne.

The long wait results from the need to have the ISS in the right position in orbit and NASA's desire to launch during daylight hours so it can photograph all aspects of the ascent.

Discovery's mission will be the first for a space shuttle in two and a half years.

Improvements to Discovery include a 50ft-long (15m) robotic arm that will inspect parts of the orbiter for damage once in orbit.

The giant external tank has undergone modifications that should ensure it sheds little of its insulation foam on blast-off.

It was a suitcase-sized chunk of this material that crashed into Columbia's left wing, punching a large hole and leaving the orbiter open to the destructive super-heated gases of re-entry.

More cameras than ever before will be trained on Discovery during launch, to watch for any debris that could damage the spacecraft.

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First Planet Under Three Suns Is Discovered

An extrasolar planet under three suns has been discovered in the constellation Cygnus by a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology using the 10-meter Keck I telescope in Hawaii. The planet is slightly larger than Jupiter and, given that it has to contend with the gravitational pull of three bodies, promises to seriously challenge our current understanding of how planets are formed.

In the July 14 issue of Nature, Maciej Konacki, a senior postdoctoral scholar in planetary science at Caltech, reports on the discovery of the Jupiter-class planet orbiting the main star of the close-triple-star system known as HD 188753. The three stars are about 149 light-years from Earth and are about as close to one another as the distance between the sun and Saturn.

In other words, a viewer there would see three bright suns in the sky. In fact, the sun that the planet orbits would be a very large object in the sky indeed, given that the planet's "year" is only three and a half days long. And it would be yellow, because the main star of HD 188753 is very similar to our own sun. The larger of the other two suns would be orange, and the smaller red.

Konacki refers to the new type of planet as "Tatooine planets," because of the similarity to Luke Skywalker's view of his home planet's sky in the first Star Wars movie.

Konacki adds that the fact that a planet can even exist in a multiple-star system is amazing in itself. Binary and multiple stars are quite common in the solar neigborhood, and in fact outnumber single stars by some 20 percent.

Researchers have found most of the extrasolar planets discovered so far by using a precision velocity technique that is easier to employ on studies of single stars. Experts generally avoided close-binary and close-multiple stars because the existing planet detection techniques fail for such complicated systems, and also because theories of solar-system formation suggested that planets were very unlikely to form in such environments.

Konacki's breakthrough was made possible by his development of a novel method that allows him to precisely measure velocities of all members of close-binary and close-multiple-star systems. He used the technique for a search for extrasolar planets in such systems with the Keck I telescope. The planet in the HD 188753 system is the first one from this survey.

Scientists in 1995 discovered the first "hot Jupiter"-in other words, an extrasolar gas-giant planet with an orbital period of three to nine days. Today, more than 20 such planets are known to orbit other stars. These planets are believed to form in a disk of gas and condensed matter at or beyond three astronomical units (three times the 93-million-mile distance between the sun and Earth).

A sufficient amount of solid material exists at three astronomical units to produce a core capable of capturing enough gas to form a giant planet. After formation, these planets are believed to migrate inward to their present very close orbits.

If the parent star is orbited by a close stellar companion, then its gravitational pull can significantly truncate a protoplanetary disk around the main star. In the case of HD 188753, the two stellar companions would truncate the disk around the main star to a radius of only 1.3 astronomical units, leaving no space for a planet to form.

The research was funded by NASA.