The National Science Foundation (NSF) :NSF invests $72 million in innovations at nexus of food, energy and water systems.- NSF invierte $ 72 millones de dolares en las innovaciones en el nexo de los sistemas de alimentos, energía y agua

https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=189898&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

New interdisciplinary, fundamental research to address major challenge of new millennium

Take a photo tour of NSF INFEWS-related research. Credit and Larger Version

September 28, 2016

To help secure the future of food, energy, and water systems while maintaining vital ecosystem services, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded more than $72 million for fundamental science and engineering research.

The investments are part of the NSF Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems program, known as INFEWS.

"Demands on food, energy and water will increase in the future as a result of population growth, migration patterns and urbanization in a changing climate," says Roger Wakimoto, assistant director for NSF's Geosciences Directorate. "NSF recognized the challenge ahead of us by creating the INFEWS initiative, which supports research on these interconnected needs. The results from these awards will benefit all of us."

While the complex relationship between energy and water systems has been studied for decades -- and agricultural diversions of water date back much farther -- how these systems interact has become an area of frontier research. Drought and the depletion of aquifers. Shifts in farming between food and fuel crops. Concerns about food waste and the relentless demand for energy for food production. Food processing and transportation. All of these areas have prompted a deeper and broader examination of the linked food-energy-water system.

The outcomes of the INFEWS investments will help decision-makers at every level better serve human needs and protect the natural world. Scientists and policy-makers will gain a new understanding of food-energy-water systems, gather insights from data and innovative modeling, and develop new capabilities from cutting-edge technologies to reduce waste or increase efficiencies.

INFEWS investments will also prepare graduate students to understand and manage the complex interactions of food-energy-water systems, and to draw upon and integrate knowledge across disciplines.

INFEWS investigators will incorporate physical, engineering, geological, biological, social and behavioral processes, as well as cyber elements, into their projects.

"The interconnections and interdependencies associated with the food-energy-water nexus generate critical questions about how the complex, coupled systems and processes of society and the environment function now, and in the future," says Grace Wang, acting assistant director for NSF's Engineering Directorate. "INFEWS research will enable new means of adapting to future challenges."

Award details

INFEWS projects are designed to address one or more of the following four goals:

• Advance our understanding of the food-energy-water system through quantitative and computational modeling, including support for relevant cyberinfrastructure.
• Develop real-time, cyber-enabled interfaces that improve understanding of the behavior of food-energy-water systems and increase decision-making capabilities.
• Enable research that will lead to system innovations and technological solutions to critical food-energy-water problems.
• Grow the scientific workforce capable of studying and managing food-energy-water systems through education and other professional development opportunities.

This year's awards include:

NSF and the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA/NIFA) awards

Through INFEWS, NSF and NIFA will support 17 new awards for an initial investment in Fiscal Years (FY) 2016 and 2017 of more than $40 million. The awards will foster collaboration among research communities and accelerate discovery and innovation at the nexus of food, energy and water systems.

"NIFA is pleased to support this joint effort with the National Science Foundation to better understand the existential threat of the 21^st century -- how can we meet the growing demand for food, water and energy while protecting the ecosystems that support them," says NIFA Director Sonny Ramaswamy.

NSF INFEWS Dear Colleague Letter awards

NSF has invested more than $3 million in nine Dear Colleague Letter awards investigating nitrogen, phosphorus and water. These awards will focus on advancing fundamental knowledge of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, as well as the energy-efficient manufacture and sustainable use of fertilizers for food production. They will also focus on the detection, separation, reclamation and recycling of nitrogen- and phosphorus-containing molecules in and from fresh and ocean waters.

 

Research Infrastructure Improvement awards

In August, NSF announced seven awards at the nexus of food, energy and water totaling almost $30 million to build research capacity nationwide through the NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) awards

In FY 2016, NSF invested nearly $9 million in three NRT awards in the INFEWS research area that will encourage the development and implementation of bold, new and potentially transformative models for graduate education. The NSF NRT INFEWS projects provide students with comprehensive training to advance INFEWS research goals, and foster opportunities to partner with industry, government, community and non-profit stakeholders in food, energy and water systems.

In addition to the awards funded through the programs above, NSF's core programs for research and education also have invested in projects related to the food-energy-water nexus.

-NSF-

Media Contacts Sarah Bates (ENG), NSF, (703) 292-7738,
 sabates@nsf.gov
Cheryl Dybas (GEO), NSF, (703) 292-7734,
cdybas@nsf.gov
Program Contacts JoAnn S. Lighty (ENG), NSF, (703) 292-5382,
jlighty@nsf.gov
Thomas Torgersen (GEO), NSF, (703) 292-8549,
 ttorgers@nsf.gov

Related WebsitesNSF Food Energy Water blog:
 https://foodenergywater.wordpress.com/
EPSCOR release:
 https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=189466
NSF invests in a clean water future:
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=138061
New grants foster research on food, energy and water: a linked system: https://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=135642
On World Water Day, scientists peer into rivers to answer water availability questions: https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=137901

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2016, its budget is $7.5 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 48,000 competitive proposals for funding and makes about 12,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $626 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

 Get News Updates by Email 
Useful NSF Web Sites:
NSF Home Page:
https://www.nsf.gov
NSF News:
 https://www.nsf.gov/news/
For the News Media:
https://www.nsf.gov/news/newsroom.jsp
Science and Engineering Statistics:
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/
Awards Searches:
 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/

The National Science Foundation (NSF)
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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NASA : NASA Satellite Set to Get the Dirt on Soil Moisture .- Un satélite de la NASA, que será la próxima misión intentará sacar la suciedad de la humedad del suelo

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., la Agencia Espacial NASA, nos informa que uno de sus satélites : The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) misión;(SMAP - Humedad del Suelo Activo Pasivo). La próxima misión de la NASA para estudiar la Tierra es un asignador de humedad del suelo conocido como SMAP (Humedad del Suelo Activo Pasivo). Los datos de SMAP se utilizarán para mejorar la comprensión de los procesos que vinculan los ciclos del agua, energía y carbono, y para ampliar las capacidades de los modelos meteorológicos y de predicción del clima, incluyendo la mejora de las capacidades de predicción de inundaciones y control de la sequía...... Un nuevo satélite de la NASA que mirar en la capa superior de los suelos de la Tierra para medir las aguas ocultas que influyen en nuestro tiempo y el clima está en los preparativos finales para un amanecer de lanzamiento 29 de enero de California...."

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Quizás quisiste decir: NASA's next mission to study Earth is a soil moisture mapper known as SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive). Data from SMAP will be used to enhance understanding of processes that link the water, energy and carbon cycles, and to extend the capabilities of weather and climate prediction models including improved flood prediction and drought monitoring capabilities.

La humedad del suelo Activo Pasivo (SMAP) misión tomará el pulso de una medida clave de nuestro planeta el agua: cómo el agua dulce ciclos sobre la superficie terrestre de la Tierra en forma de humedad del suelo. La misión producirá el, la más alta resolución más precisa mapas globales jamás obtenidas desde el espacio de la humedad presente en la parte superior 2 pulgadas (5 centímetros) de los suelos de la Tierra. También será detectar y cartografiar si el suelo está congelado o descongelado. Estos datos serán utilizados para mejorar la comprensión científica de los procesos que vinculan agua, energía y carbono ciclos de la Tierra............."

 

 

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NASA's next mission to study Earth is a soil moisture mapper know as SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive). Data from SMAP will be used to enhance understanding of processes that link the water, energy and carbon cycles, and to extend the capabilities of weather and climate prediction models including improved flood prediction and drought monitoring capabilities.

Image Credit: 

NASA

 

A new NASA satellite that will peer into the topmost layer of Earth's soils to measure the hidden waters that influence our weather and climate is in final preparations for a Jan. 29 dawn launch from California.

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will take the pulse of a key measure of our water planet: how freshwater cycles over Earth's land surfaces in the form of soil moisture. The mission will produce the most accurate, highest-resolution global maps ever obtained from space of the moisture present in the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of Earth's soils. It also will detect and map whether the ground is frozen or thawed. This data will be used to enhance scientists' understanding of the processes that link Earth's water, energy and carbon cycles.

"With data from SMAP, scientists and decision makers around the world will be better equipped to understand how Earth works as a system and how soil moisture impacts a myriad of human activities, from floods and drought to weather and crop yield forecasts," said Christine Bonniksen, SMAP program executive with the Science Mission Directorate's Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "SMAP's global soil moisture measurements will provide a new capability to improve our understanding of Earth's climate."

Globally, the volume of soil moisture varies between three and five percent in desert and arid regions, to between 40 and 50 percent in saturated soils. In general, the amount depends on such factors as precipitation patterns, topography, vegetation cover and soil composition. There are not enough sensors in the ground to map the variability in global soil moisture at the level of detail needed by scientists and decision makers. From space, SMAP will produce global maps with 6-mile (10-kilometer) resolution every two to three days.

 

Researchers want to measure soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state better for numerous reasons. Plants and crops draw water from the soil through their roots to grow. If soil moisture is inadequate, plants fail to grow, which over time can lead to reduced crop yields. Also, energy from the sun evaporates moisture in the soil, thereby cooling surface temperatures and also increasing moisture in the atmosphere, allowing clouds and precipitation to form more readily. In this way, soil moisture has a significant effect on both short-term regional weather and longer-term global climate.

In summer, plants in Earth's northern boreal regions -- the forests found in Earth's high northern latitudes -- take in carbon dioxide from the air and use it to grow, but lay dormant during the winter freeze period. All other factors being equal, the longer the growing season, the more carbon plants take in and the more effective forests are in removing carbon dioxide from the air. Since the start of the growing season is marked by the thawing and refreezing of water in soils, mapping the freeze/thaw state of soils with SMAP will help scientists more accurately account for how much carbon plants are removing from the atmosphere each year. This information will lead to better estimates of the carbon budget in the atmosphere and, hence, better assessments of future global warming.

SMAP data will enhance our confidence in projections of how Earth's water cycle will respond to climate change.

"Assessing future changes in regional water availability is perhaps one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world today," said Dara Entekhabi, SMAP science team leader at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "Today's computer models disagree on how the water cycle -- precipitation, clouds, evaporation, runoff, soil water availability -- will increase or decrease over time and in different regions as our world warms. SMAP's higher-resolution soil moisture data will improve the models used to make daily weather and longer-term climate predictions."

SMAP also will advance our ability to monitor droughts, predict floods and mitigate the related impacts of these extreme events. It will allow the monitoring of regional deficits in soil moisture and provide critical inputs into drought monitoring and early warning systems used by resource managers. The mission's high-resolution observations of soil moisture will improve flood warnings by providing information on ground saturation conditions before rainstorms.

SMAP's two advanced instruments work together to produce soil moisture maps. Its active radar works much like a flash camera, but instead of transmitting visible light, it transmits microwave pulses that pass through clouds and moderate vegetation cover to the ground and measures how much of that signal is reflected back. Its passive radiometer operates like a natural-light camera, capturing emitted microwave radiation without transmitting a pulse. Unlike traditional cameras, however, SMAP's images are in the microwave range of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is invisible to the naked eye. Microwave radiation is sensitive to how much moisture is contained in the soil.

The two instruments share a large, lightweight reflector antenna that will be unfurled in orbit like a blooming flower and then spin at about 14 revolutions per minute. The antenna will allow the instruments to collect data across a 621-mile (1,000-kilometer) swath, enabling global coverage every two to three days.

SMAP's radiometer measurements extend and expand on soil moisture measurements currently made by the European Space Agency's Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, launched in 2009. With the addition of a radar instrument, SMAP's soil moisture measurements will be able to distinguish finer features on the ground.

SMAP will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket and maneuver into a 426-mile (685-kilometer) altitude, near-polar orbit that repeats exactly every eight days. The mission is designed to operate at least three years.

SMAP is managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, with instrument hardware and science contributions made by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL is responsible for project management, system engineering, radar instrumentation, mission operations and the ground data system. Goddard is responsible for the radiometer instrument. Both centers collaborate on science data processing and delivery to the Alaska Satellite Facility, in Fairbanks, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, at the University of Colorado in Boulder, for public distribution and archiving. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for launch management. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about the Soil Moisture Active Passive mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/smap

and

http://smap.jpl.nasa.gov

 

SMAP will be the fifth NASA Earth science mission to launch within a 12-month period. NASA monitors Earth’s vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing.

For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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NASA - NASA Telescope Observes How Sun Stores and Releases Energy

 

The Hi-resolution Coronal Imager full resolution image shown here is from the solar active region outlined in the AIA image (upper left). Several partial frame images are shown including a potion of a filament channel (upper center/right), the braided ensemble (left, second from top), an example of magnetic recognition and flaring (left, third from top), and fine stranded loops (left, bottom). These Hi-C images are at a resolution of 0.2" or 90 miles. This resolution is the equivalent of resolving a dime from 10 miles away. Image credit: NASA
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 NASA Telescope Observes How Sun Stores and Releases Energy

 

 

WASHINGTON -- A NASA suborbital telescope has given scientists the first clear evidence of energy transfer from to the solar atmosphere or corona. This process, known as solar braiding, has been theorized by researchers, but remained unobserved until now.

Researchers were able to witness this phenomenon in the highest resolution images ever taken of the solar corona. These images were obtained by the agency's High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) telescope, which was launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in July 2012.

"Scientists have tried for decades to understand how the sun's dynamic atmosphere is heated to millions of degrees," said Hi-C principal investigator Jonathan Cirtain, a heliophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Because of the level of solar activity, we were able to clearly focus on an active sunspot, and obtain some remarkable images. Seeing this for the first time is a major advance in understanding how our sun continuously generates the vast amount of energy needed to heat its atmosphere."

The telescope, the centerpiece of a payload weighing 464 pounds and measuring 10-feet long, flew for about 10 minutes and captured 165 images of a large, active region in the sun's corona. The telescope acquired data for five minutes, taking one image every five seconds. Initial image sequences demonstrated the evolution of the magnetic field and showed the repeated release of energy through activity seen on the sun at temperatures of 2 million to 4 million degrees.

Many of the stars in the universe have magnetic fields. The evolution of these fields is used to explain the emission of the star and any events like flares. Understanding how the magnetic field of the sun heats the solar atmosphere helps explain how all magnetized stars evolve.

These observations ultimately will lead to better predictions for space weather because the evolution of the magnetic field in the solar atmosphere drives all solar eruptions. These eruptions can reach Earth's atmosphere and affect operations of Earth-orbiting communication and navigation satellites.

The images were made possible by a set of innovations on Hi-C's optics array. The telescope's mirrors were approximately 9 1/2 inches across. New techniques for grinding the optics and polishing the surfaces were developed for the mirrors. Scientists and engineers worked to complete alignment of the mirrors, maintaining optic spacing to within a few ten-thousandths of an inch.

"The Hi-C observations are part of a technology demonstration that will enable a future generation of telescopes to solve the fundamental questions concerning the heating of the solar atmosphere and the origins of space weather, "said Jeffrey Newmark, sounding rocket program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Hi-C's resolution is about five times finer than the imaging instrument aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) launched in February 2010 to study the sun and its dynamic behavior. The Hi-C images complement global sun observations continuously taken by SDO.

NASA's suborbital sounding rockets provide low-cost means to conduct space science and studies of Earth's upper atmosphere. The Hi-C mission cost about $5 million.

"This suborbital mission has given us a unique look into the workings of the sun addressing a major mystery in nature. Hi-C has demonstrated that high value science can be achieved on a small budget," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) in Washington. "NASA's sounding rocket program is a key training ground for the next generation of scientists, in addition to developing new space technologies."

Partners associated with the development of the Hi-C telescope include the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.; L-3Com/Tinsley Laboratories in Richmond, Calif.; Lockheed Martin's Solar Astrophysical Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.; the University of Central Lancashire in England; and the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., built, operates and manages SDO for SMD.

To view the Hi-C images, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/10Ss9MA

More information about NASA's sounding rocket program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/soundingrockets

For more information about SDO, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/sdo

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

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ayabaca@hotmail.com

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nsf.gov - National Science Foundation - Marginal Lands Are Prime Fuel Source for Alternative Energy

Lands unsuited for food crops represent huge untapped resource to grow mixed species biomass for ethanol.-

 

Bales of cellulosic biomass: Marginal lands may be a prime source for alternative energy.
Credit: Phil Robertson, MSU
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (1.2 MB) 

NSF's Long-Term Ecological Research Network comprises 26 land, coastal and ocean sites.
Credit: NSF LTER Network
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NSF KBS LTER site experimental plots: Corn and hybrid poplar are in the background.
Credit: Julie Doll, MSU
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Corn at the KBS LTER site: Corn currently dominates biofuel production in the U.S.
Credit: K. Stepnitz, MSU
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (306 KB) 

Researchers collect soil cores to determine carbon storage at the LTER site.
Credit: K. Stepnitz, MSU
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (317 KB)  

Satellite view of the cropping systems experiment: Each rectangle is 2.5 acres.
Credit: SPOT Image
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (382 KB)

Marginal lands--those unsuited for food crops--can serve as prime real estate for meeting the nation's alternative energy production goals.

In the current issue of the journal Nature, scientists at Michigan State University (MSU) and other institutions show that marginal lands are a huge untapped resource for growing mixed-species cellulosic biomass.

These lands could annually produce up to 5.5 billion gallons of ethanol in the Midwest alone.

Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel produced from wood, grasses or the inedible parts of plants.

"Understanding the environmental impact of widespread biofuel production is a major unanswered question in the U.S. and worldwide," said Ilya Gelfand, lead author of the paper.

"We estimate that using marginal lands for growing cellulosic biomass crops could provide up to 215 gallons of ethanol per acre with substantial greenhouse gas mitigation."

The notion of making better use of marginal lands has been around for nearly 15 years.

However, this is the first study to provide an estimate for greenhouse gas benefits, and an assessment of the total potential of these lands to produce significant amounts of biomass, Gelfand said.

Focusing on 10 midwestern states, researchers from MSU, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland used 20 years of data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Kellogg Biological Station (KBS) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site.

Kellogg Biological Station is one of 26 such NSF LTER sites in ecosystems around the world from grasslands to deserts, coral reefs to tundra.

"The study underscores the critical role that long-term basic research plays in determining the optimum balance between economic prosperity and environmental sustainability," said Saran Twombly, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology.

"Long-term basic experiments suggest that wise management of marginal lands, rather than wholesale conversion of valuable agricultural lands, could contribute significantly to a sustainable future," Twombly said.

The scientists characterized the comparative productivity and greenhouse gas impacts of different crops, including corn, poplar, alfalfa and old-field vegetation.

They then used a supercomputer to identify and model biomass production that could grow enough feedstock to support a local biorefinery with a capacity of at least 24 million gallons per year.

The final tally of 5.5 billion gallons of ethanol represents about 25 percent of Congress' 2022 cellulosic biofuels target, said Phil Robertson, co-author of the paper and director of the KBS LTER site.

"The value of marginal lands for energy production has been long-speculated and often discounted," he said.

"This research shows that these lands could make a major contribution to transportation energy needs, while providing substantial climate and--if managed properly--conservation benefits."

This is also the first study to demonstrate that grasses and other non-woody plants that grow naturally on unmanaged lands are sufficiently productive to make ethanol production worthwhile, he said.

Conservative numbers were used in the study, the scientists said, and production efficiency could be increased by carefully selecting the mix of plant species.

Additional benefits of using marginal lands include:

• New revenue for farmers and other land owners;
• No food-vs.-fuel conflict, as food production would not be displaced by fuel production;
• No indirect land-use effects, where land in another part of the globe is cleared to replace land lost to food production; and
• No carbon debt from land conversion, if existing vegetation is used or if new perennial crops are planted directly in existing vegetation.

The research was also funded by the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center and MSU AgBioResearch.

-NSF-

Media Contacts Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov
Layne Cameron, MSU (765) 748-4827 layne.cameron@cabs.msu.edu

Related WebsitesNSF Long-Term Ecological Research Network: http://www.lternet.edu
NSF Kellogg Biological Station LTER Site: http://www.lternet.edu/sites/kbs
NSF News Release: Scientists Develop New Carbon Accounting Method to Reduce Farmers' Use of Nitrogen Fertilizer: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123848
NSF LTER Discovery Articles Series: http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=125511&org=NSF

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget is $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards nearly $420 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

 Get News Updates by Email 

Useful NSF Web Sites:
NSF Home Page: http://www.nsf.gov
NSF News: http://www.nsf.gov/news/
For the News Media: http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsroom.jsp
Science and Engineering Statistics: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/
Awards Searches: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/

The National Science Foundation (NSF) .-

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

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ayabaca@hotmail.com

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NASA - NASA's SAMPEX Mission: A Space Weather Warrior

NASA Ceremony to Rename Twin Earth Radiation Belt Spacecraft

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An artist's rendition of the Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer or SAMPEX. Credit: NASA .

 NASA's very first small explorer, the Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer or SAMPEX, was launched July 3, 1992 to study the zoo of particles and cosmic rays surrounding Earth. Surviving much longer than its expected mission of three years and providing invaluable observations for those who study space weather, the SAMPEX mission is now almost over. In early November, the spacecraft's orbit will decay enough that it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere, burning up completely on re-entry.

When SAMPEX launched, the sun was just finishing the peak of its 11-year solar cycle and beginning to move toward solar minimum. Scientists were eager to watch what happened in near-Earth space in those first few years, as eruptions on the sun shot out energy and solar material and eventually tapered down into a period of quiet. However, those same effects were also predicted to lead to the spacecraft's demise. As the sun once again ramped up to solar maximum around 2000, the sun's output would create enough atmospheric drag that SAMPEX was expected to tumble out of its stable orbit.

Contrary to such predictions, SAMPEX is still in orbit having survived that maximum and continuing in orbit long enough to see the sun move toward another solar max, currently predicted for 2013. But time is running out. As the atmosphere near Earth heats and swells in response to the sun's activity, the expansion of the uppermost atmosphere has encased SAMPEX, slowing it down. Soon the 20-year-old spacecraft will succumb to the very space weather it has helped scientists to study. Some time at the end of 2012, the orbit of the five-by-three-foot craft will spiral far enough in that SAMPEX will re-enter Earth's atmosphere, burning up completely and disappearing forever.

"SAMPEX was launched on a shoe string budget," says Shri Kanekal, a space weather scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Weather Center in Greenbelt, Md. who has been involved with SAMPEX research since its launch. "It was proposed as a minimum one-year mission with a goal of three years, but it lasted for an unexpectedly long time. It has provided 20 years of high quality data, used by nearly everyone who studies near-Earth space."

In its two decades, SAMPEX provided one of the main sources of data on how the radiation environment around Earth changed over time, waxing and waning in response to incoming particles from the sun and galaxy. SAMPEX confirmed earlier theories that cosmic rays streaming in from outer space were being trapped in Earth's own magnetic environment, the magnetosphere, and it helped pinpoint the location where they gathered in a belt around Earth. Another area of research has been to tease out the composition of various particle populations from high-speed and high-energy particles from the sun known as solar energetic particles, to the host of electrons in Earth's middle atmosphere.

Also, SAMPEX has been one of our best eyes on the radiation belts – two giant donuts of radiation surrounding Earth that can affect satellites in orbit during their occasional bouts of swelling. Indeed, scientists are eager for SAMPEX data still, eking out the last weeks of observation time to compare with early data from the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission that launched in August, 2012.

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 SAMPEX data have provided some of the most useful observations of the Van Allen Belts -- two rings of radiation around Earth. This SAMPEX data shows the belts during what's known as the Halloween Storms in October 2003, a time when the radiation belts around Earth swelled so much that they merged into a single ring. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

 When those who study the radiation belts realized how imminent was the demise of SAMPEX, they adjusted the schedule to turn on a SAMPEX-compatible instrument aboard RBSP, an instrument called Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT), earlier than planned. One of the space phenomena that SAMPEX has helped categorize is something called microbursts, an intense but short lived phase during which electrons drop out of the radiation belts. From its viewpoint under the radiation belts, SAMPEX can still record such microbursts. As part of RBSP, on the other hand, REPT can look at the electron population while traveling through the radiation belts proper. In combination, the data may help show what occurrences in the radiation belts correlate to the rain of electrons, the microbursts.

"Since one of the main goals of RBSP is to understand why and how electrons rain down out of the radiation belts, this will be important science," says Kanekal. "It's made all the more impressive that we can do this kind of research despite the fact that SAMPEX's science mission officially ended in 2004."

Although the spacecraft has remained in orbit, the official SAMPEX science mission ended in June 2004. New data remained available, however, thanks to The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, Calif., which continued to fund costs to download data, and to Bowie State University in Bowie, Md., which operated the spacecraft to maintain the download process as an educational tool for its students. Kanekal was also instrumental in getting a grant to process all the data from 2004 to 2012, so it will be usable by the science community.

NASA's first small explorer had an impressive run, far outliving its planned three-year mission. It provided data crucial to understanding how the space around Earth responds to space weather from the sun and will continue to do so up until the moment it re-enters Earth's atmosphere, disappearing forever.
Karen C. Fox

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

 NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

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Science : Why We Need Insects--Even "Pesky" Ones

Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Hard evidence of evolution: a five-year study shows that plants may quickly lose important traits through evolution soon after insects are removed from the environment

 

Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (2.6 MB)

A large natural population of evening primrose (yellow), which is a common plant in eastern North America.

Agrawal's team set up 16 identical plots. During each growing season for five years, eight of the plots were treated biweekly with an insecticide; the other eight were controls.

Credit: Anurag Agrawal

View a video interview with Anurag Agrawal of Cornell University.

At first blush, many people would probably love to get rid of insects, such as pesky mosquitoes, ants and roaches. But a new study indicates that getting rid of insects could trigger some unwelcome ecological consequences, such as the rapid loss of desired traits in plants, including their good taste and high yields.

Specifically, the study--described in the Oct. 5, 2012 issue of Science and funded by the National Science Foundation showed that evening primroses grown in insecticide-treated plots quickly lost, through evolution, defensive traits that helped protect them from plant-eating moths. The protective traits lost included the production of insect-deterring chemicals and later blooms that gave evening primroses temporal distance from plant-eating larvae that peak early in the growing season.

These results indicate that once the plants no longer needed their anti-insect defenses, they lost those defenses. What's more, they did so quickly--in only three or four generations.

Anurag Agrawal, the leader of the study and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University, explains, "We demonstrated that when you take moths out of the environment, certain varieties of evening primrose were particularly successful. These successful varieties have genes that produce less defenses against moths."

In the absence of insects, the evening primroses apparently stopped investing energy in their anti-insect defenses, and so these defenses disappeared through natural selection. Agrawal says that he was "very surprised" by how quickly this process occurred, and that such surprises, "tell us something about the potential speed and complexities of evolution. In addition, experiments like ours that follow evolutionary change in real-time provide definitive evidence of evolution."

Agrawal believes that his team's study results are applicable to many other insect-plant interactions beyond evening primroses and moths.  Here's why: The ubiquitous consumption of plants by insects represents one of the dominant species interactions on Earth. With insect-plant relationships so important, it is widely believed that many plant traits originally evolved solely as defenses against insects. Some of these anti-insect plant defenses, such as the bitter taste of some fruits, are desirable.

"This experimental demonstration of how rapid evolution can shape ecological interactions supports the idea that we need to understand feedbacks between evolutionary and ecological processes in order to be able to predict how communities and ecosystems will respond to change," said Alan Tessier, a program director in NSF's Directorate for Biological Sciences.

"One of the things farmers are trying to do is breed agricultural crops to be more resistant to pests," said Agrawal. "Our study indicates that various genetic tradeoffs may make it difficult or impossible to maintain certain desired traits in plants that are bred for pest resistance."

In addition, oils produced by evening primroses have been used medicinally for hundreds of years and are beginning to be used as herbal remedies. Agrawal's insights about pests that attack these plants and about chemical compounds produced by these plants may ultimately be useful to the herbal and pharmaceutical industries.

Agrawal says that most previous real-time experiments on evolution have been conducted with bacteria in test tubes in laboratories. "One of things we were excited about is that we were able to repeat that kind of experiment in nature. You can expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing in future. We will keep our experiment running as a long-term living laboratory. "

More information about this study is available from a Cornell University press release. 

-NSF-

Media Contacts John Carberry, Cornell University (607) 255-5353 johncarberry@cornell.edu
Lily Whiteman, National Science Foundation (703) 292-8310 lwhitema@nsf.gov

Program Contacts Alan Tessier, National Science Foundation (703) 292-7198 atessier@nsf.gov

Principal Investigators Anurag Agrawal, Cornell University (607) 254-4255 aa337@cornell.edu

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget is $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards nearly $420 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

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Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

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