sensational 60

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Cover credits

Background: 2010 JupiterImages Corporation

Inset credits (left to right): Courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Gemini Observatory; Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science

Foundation; Zee Evans, National Science Foundation; Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation; Zina Deretsky, National Science

Foundation, adapted from map by Chris Harrison, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University; Tobias Hertel, Insti-

tute for Physical Chemistry, University of Wrzburg

Design by: Adrian Apodaca, National Science Foundation


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Introduction

Te National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent ederal agency that supports undamentalresearch and education across all elds o science and engineering. Congress passed legislation creatingthe NSF in 1950 and President Harry S. ruman signed that legislation on May 10, 1950, creating agovernment agency that unds research in the basic sciences, engineering, mathematics and technology.NSF is the ederal agency responsible or nonmedical research in all elds o science, engineering,education and technology.

NSF unding is approved through the ederal budget process. In scal year (FY) 2010, its budget isabout $6.9 billion. NSF has an independent governing body called the National Science Board (NSB)that oversees and helps direct NSF programs and activities.

NSF unds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 universities and institutions. NSF isthe unding source or approximately 20 percent o all ederally supported basic research conductedby Americas colleges and universities. Each year, NSF receives over 45,000 competitive requestsor unding, and makes over 11,500 new unding awards. NSF also awards over $400 million inproessional and service contracts yearly.

NSF has a total workorce o about 1,700 at its Arlington, Va., headquarters, including approximately

1,200 career employees, 150 scientists rom research institutions on temporary duty, 200 contractworkers and the sta o the NSB oce and the Oce o the Inspector General. However, more than200,000 people, including researchers, graduate students and teachers, are involved in NSF programsand activities nationwide.

NSF is divided into the ollowing seven directorates that support science and engineering research andeducation: Biological Sciences (BIO), Computer and Inormation Science and Engineering (CISE),Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), Geosciences (GEO), Mathematics andPhysical Sciences (MPS) and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). Some o the oceswithin NSFs Oce o the Director also support research and researchers. Tese oces include theOce o Polar Programs (OPP), which unds and coordinates all research eorts in the Arctic andAntarctic; the Oce o Integrative Activities; the Oce o International Science and Engineering andthe Oce o Cyberinrastructure.


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Sensational 60

During the past 60 years, we have seen incredible developments in science and engineering. NSFhas played a role in that progress. As we celebrate the National Science Foundation (NSF)s 60thanniversary, we can point with quiet pride to immeasurable ways work supported by NSF has servedour society in practical, benecial ways.

Within the section that ollows are 60 discoveries or advances that NSF believes have had a largeimpact or inuence on every Americans lie. We call this list the Sensational 60, in honor o theNational Science Foundation 60th anniversary.

Just as the path to discovery is seldom a straight line, so too is the process o selecting such a list. As inscientic research, the selection process involved trial and error and strong doses o patience and vision.All items in the Sensational 60 are listed alphabetically, and listing here does not imply any ranking oone items importance over another.

NSF invites you to learn more about our leadership in scientic discoveries and the development onew technologies. We look orward to the next 60 years o discoveries and advances.


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Contents

NSF Milestones

Sensational 60

1. Alvin: Deep-sea Explorer(Alvin) 2. Cataloging the Sign(American Sign Language Dictionary Development)

3. Why Youll Only Find Frozen Fish in the Freezer(Antireeze Proteins)

4. Designer GenesArabidopsis style (ArabidopsisA Plant Genome Project)5. ArdiReconstructed (Ardi, the Earliest Hominid Found)6. Bar CodesTeyre or Penguins too (Bar Codes)7. Dead CenterSuper-massiveBlack Holes at the Center o the Milky Way Galaxy(Black Holes

Conrmed)8. Sustaining the Power(Biouels and Clean Energy)9. Developing New echnologies with Buckyballs(Buckyballs)10. Speaking Out: NSFBringing Science to the Public (Bringing Science to the Public)11. Developing Manuacturing InnovationsCAD-CAM (CAD/CAM)12. Water o Lie(Clean and Adequate Water)13. Cloud Computing: Building a Platorm to the Sky (Cloud Computing)

14. Unlocking the Universes Origin (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation)15. Into the Unknown: Dark Energy(Dark Energy)16. Deep-Sea DrillingReveals Youthul Sea-oor Features(Deep-Sea Drilling)17. Extra Solar Planets loom on the Horizon (Discovery o Extra Solar Planets)18. Te Fingerprints o Lie(DNA Evidence)19. Eye in the Sky(Doppler Rader)20. Supply and Demand(Economics Research to Economic Policy)21. Fire and Brimstone(Eects o Acid Rain)22. Mother Nature Simmers with Latin Spice(El Nio and La Nia Predictions)23. Centers o Knowledge(Engineering Research and Science and echnology Centers) 24. Extremophilia(Extremophiles)25. Solving the Insolvable(Fermats Last Teorem)26. Te Age o Enlightenment(Fiber Optics)27. Sleep ight, Dont Let the Bedbugs Bite(Firefies and Fruit Flies Aid New Research Advances)28. X-Ray Vision Not Just or Superheroes(unctional Magnetic Resonance Imaging)29. A Burst o Heavenly Fire(Gamma Ray Bursts)30. Te Changing Earth and Sky(Global Climate Change) 31. JustGoogle It(Google)32. Educating omorrows Scientic Giants(Graduate Research Fellowship Program)33. icks in the Lyme Light(Lyme disease)34. Sciences Global Generation (International Cooperation)35. Researchers Work Across the Globe(International Networking)36. Surng the Inormation Superhighway(Internet and Web Browsers)

37. Harry Potter Science(Invisibility Cloaks)38. Kids Stuf: Science and echnology Education (K-12 Science and echnology Education)39. Beyond the Falling Apple(LIGO and Advanced LIGO)40. Te Web o LieAnd Ecological Research oo (Te Long erm Ecological Research Network and

the National Ecological Observatory Network)41. Come Fly with Us(Microburst Research)42. Lie Beore Lie Was Known: Prehistoric Cells(A Model or the Earliest Cell)43. Good Tings Come in Small Packages(Nanotechnology)44. Looking to the Stars(National Observatories)45. Down and Dirty(Overcoming Soil Contamination)46. Its a Bird! Its a Plane! No, Its anOzone Hole! (Ozone Hole)


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47. All Access Pass(Persons with Disabilities Access on the Web)48. High-tech Auto Makeover(Reaction Injection Molding)49. Bionic Eyes: Better, Stronger, Faster(Te Retina Chip)50. Spreading the Code(RSA & Public-Key Cryptography)51. With a Grain o Salt(Salt oxicity)52. Listen to the Ice(SHEBA Program)53. Friends and Neighbors(Social Science Databases)54. Computers Finally Speaking our Language(Speech Recognition echnology)55. Supercomputing Speed Demon (Supercomputer Facilities)56. Making the Cut(Surgical Innovations)57. issue Engineering58. Cancer and the Cosmos(umor Detection)59. Shaking of the Damage(Understanding and Mitigating Damage rom Earthquakes)60. Volcanic Risk(Volcano Eruption Detection)


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SENSATIONAL 60 NSF MILESTONES

1945 Vannevar Bushs ScienceTe Endless Frontiercalls or the establishment o a NationalResearch Foundation.

1950 On May 10, President Harry S. ruman signs Public Law 507 creating the National ScienceFoundation. Te act provides or a National Science Board o 24 part-time members and a director aschie executive ocer, all nominated by the President and conrmed by the Senate.

1951 NSFs initial appropriation is $225,000.1952 Requesting rom the Congress a rst real budget o $33.5 million, NSF receives only $3.5million; ninety-seven research grants are awarded.

1953 NSFs appropriation is $4.7 million; 173 research grants awarded.

1955 NSF moves toward unding big science, which will eventually take a sizable portion o theoundations budget. Te mid-1950s see the growth o new centers or radio and optical astronomyand or atmospheric sciences.

1957-58 Te Soviet Union orbits SputnikI on Oct. 5, 1957. It dramatically underscores in America

the need or improving science education and basic researchdeciencies already known to thescientic community. In the year beore Sputnik, the oundations appropriation was $40 million. Teyear ater Sputnik, it more than triples to $136 million.

1960 Emphasis on international scientic and technological competition urther accelerates NSFgrowth. o build university inrastructure, the oundation starts the Institutional Support Programthe single largest beneciary o NSF budget growth in the 1960s. NSFs appropriation is $154.8million; 2,000 grants are awarded.

1966-68 NSFs budget reaches real-dollar peaks not attained again until the 1980s. Te oundationsappropriation or both 1966 and 1967 is $480 million; education budget is 25 percent o NSF total.

1968 A major amendment to the NSF act expands the oundations explicit responsibilities to include

support or applied research and the social sciences; NSFs appropriation is $495 million.

1969 NSF takes a budget cut o nearly 20 percent rom a spending-conscious Administration andCongress. Te Manseld Amendment limits the Department o Deense to mission-related basicresearch, placing additional responsibilities or support o basic research on NSF.

1971 A major new program is startedResearch Applied to National Needs (RANN)that ocuseson research support o engineering, applied and environmental science.

1972 RANN growth, combined with transers o basic research projects rom the Department oDeense, creates an increase in the NSF budget; the Materials Research Laboratories Program isreceived rom the Army; U.S. Antarctic Program operations budget is transerred rom the Navy.

Credit: Gemini Observatory


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1973 Nixon Administration abolishes White House Oce o Science and echnology; NSF DirectorH. Guyord Stever assumes new responsibility as science advisor.

1974 Research budget surpasses 80 percent o NSFs total annual budget and has remained abovethat level ever since. NSF receives 13,000 proposals and makes 6,400 awards. Institutional SupportProgram closes out; the Foundation expends nearly $2 billion over 15 years.

1975 Internal and external scrutiny o NSFs merit review process results in changes that open, clariyand codiy its operation.

1976 Congress establishes the Oce o Science and echnology Policy in the White House,terminating the dual role o the NSF director.

1977 RANN is phased out; programs go to other agencies and/or are incorporated into NSFresearch directorates.

1981 Engineering is elevated to separate NSF directorate; Directorate or Science Education isrenamed the Directorate or Science and Engineering Education.

1982 First budget o the Reagan Administration dramatically reduces NSF budget or Science andEngineering Education.

1983 Major increase in research budget is proposed as the nation recognizes the importance o researchin science and technology as well as education. A separate appropriation is established or the U.S.Antarctic Program. NSF receives more than 27,000 proposalsover 12,000 are awarded grants.

1984 Advanced Scientic Computing Centers are established; rst awards made in the PresidentialYoung Investigators Program.

1985 First awards made to new Engineering Research Centers.

1986 Various agency computer programs are organized under the new Directorate or Computerand Inormation Science and Engineering. Proposals received climbed to over 30,000, with awardstopping 13,000.

1987 Oce o Science and echnology Centers Development is established.

1988 Reagan Administration proposes ve-year doubling o NSF budget.

1990 NSFs appropriation passes $2 billion or the rst time; Science and Engineering Educationbudget doubles over the past three years.

1991 Te new Directorate or Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences is established.

1992 National Science Board establishes a Special Commission on the Future o NSF to examine howit can best serve the nation in the years ahead. Te commission recommends that a new vision o therole o science and engineering in society be part o the national agenda or change.

Credit: Jonathan Berry, National Science Foundation


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1994 Fastlane project is launched, with the goal o automating and streamlining all businessinteractions between NSF and its external customers via the Internet. It is the rst o its kind toautomate interaction with the research and education communities.

1995 Te rst publication o NSFs Strategic Plan, NSF in a Changing Worldis released. It outlinesthe vision, goals and strategies or leadership and stewardship in scientic and engineering researchand education.

1997 National Science Board approves new merit review criteria to evaluate proposals submitted to

NSF. Te new criteria mark the rst change since 1981.1999 NSF unding reaches a level o nearly $4 billion.

2000 Te Clinton Administration proposes a $675 million increase to the NSF budget. Tis is doublethe largest increase ever proposed.

2003 NSFs appropriation exceeds $5 billion.

2004 Almost 44,000 proposals are submitteda new high; less than one in our are unded.

2005 Te Oce o Cyberinrastructure is established.

2007-08 NSF leads U.S. participation in 4th International Polar Year.

2009 Te American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides $3 billion to NSF in addition to over $6billion included in the appropriation.

2010 Te Obama Administration budget request or NSF is over $7 billion.

Credit: 2002 The Regents of the University of California

Credit: Christine Hush, National Science Foundation


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Sensational 60

1. Alvin: Deep-sea Explorer

Alvin, a deep-sea research vessel, and the worlds oldest research submersible, can carry two scientistsand a pilot as deep as 4,500 meters or dives that can last up to 10 hours. In 1973, NSF assumed

responsibility or the contract originally managedby the Navy to support the Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution operation oAlvin.

Since then,Alvin has been used in many scienticexpeditions including: Project FAMOUS (French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study), whichwas the rst comprehensive use o a mannedsubmersible in a major scientic program,and conrmed the theory o plate tectonicsand continental drit in 1974; the discovery ohydrothermal vents in 1977 and black smokersulde chimneys in 1979; and the exploration o

the wreck o RMS itanicin 1986. Research inAlvin has also been essential in demonstrating the

great diversity o lie in the deep-sea.

With unding rom NSF, researchers designed a new, more capable HOV (Human Occupied Vehicle)as part o a collection o ocean research tools that include remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) andautonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Te improved speed and maneuverability o these new toolswill make underwater exploration more ecient.

2. Cataloging the Sign

For more than hal o the 20th century, sign language was regarded by experts and the general public

alike as some sort o inerior gestural system, more o a handicap than a help to the dea who usedit. Te reigning establishment in dea education avored an oralist approach, which emphasizedteaching students to read lips and pronounce words without the use o signing. Tat changed whenWilliam Stokoe, a young English proessor at Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University), theleading higher-education institution or the dea, who had studied linguistics and American SignLanguage (ASL), discovered that ASL was as complex and highly structured as spoken languages are.

With an NSF grant, Stokoe and two colleaguesat Gallaudet published the Dictionary oAmerican Sign Language on Linguistic Principles(1965),which in turn drew the attention o thelinguistic community to ASL. Further research by

scientists, primarily supported by NSF, led to anunderstanding that ASL has all o the undamentalormal properties o a spoken language, includinga visual counterpart to the phonology (sound

structure). Tis discovery opened up a whole new dimension in linguistic study and revolutionizeddea education in the United States.

NSF continues to support research on ASL. At the same time, while recognizing that sign languagesdier around the world, NSF has expanded its purview to include important cross-linguistic work,thus enriching our knowledge o sign languages and languages in general.

Credit: Courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Credit: 2010 JupiterImages Corporation


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3. Antifreeze Proteins: Why Youll Only Find Frozen Fish in

the Freezer

In the late 1960s, NSF-unded research discovered that antireeze glycoproteins in the blood oAntarctic notothenioid sh protect them rom the dangers o reezing in subzero temperatures. Tecompounds inhibit the growth o ice crystals, preventing damage to cells and tissues. Ater thediscovery in Antarctic sh, researchers ound similar compounds in other cold-water sh, insects,plants, ungi and bacteria.

In 2006, the mystery o where the antireeze glycoproteins originate in sh was solved. Althoughmany researchers had assumed that the antireeze glycoproteins were produced by the liver, researchunded by NSF and the University o Auckland discovered that the glycoproteins originated primarilyrom the exocrine pancreas and the stomach.

Discovery o the antireeze proteins has beena plus or some commercial industries. Teantireeze proteins have commercial uses. Unileverproduces ice cream with the proteins to preventreezer burn. Some cosmetic companies use theproteins in makeup, claiming they protect skin

rom the cold. Companies have explored usingthe compounds to increase reeze tolerance ocommercial plants; improve arm sh productionin cold climates; extend shel lie o rozen oods;and improve preservation o tissues or transplantor transusion.

NSF and the Department o Agriculture support research on the distribution, evolution, regulationand mode o action o antireeze proteins.

4. Designer Genes, Arabidopsis style

Genetic plant research can lead to improved ood-plantproductivity; more ecient use o water in growing crops; and anincrease in the raw material or biouels to replace dwindling ossiluel reserves and lower carbon dioxide output. Genome researchprovides support or integrative plant research across many species.Some o the areas that have already proven to be promising arethe identication o disease-resistant genes and environmental andhormonal responses. With NSF unding, biologists rst mappedall o the genes o a model organism--identiying the sequence andlocation o each gene and then identiying the unction o each o

these genes.

NSF began working with leaders in plant biology in the 1980s tooster a spirit o cooperation and to encourage the use o modelplants in research.Arabidopsis thaliana was selected as the rstmodel, because it is easily manipulated and genetically tractable,and researchers were already knowledgeable about it. By studyingthe biology oArabidopsis, researchers could gain comprehensiveknowledge about the structure, organization and unctions o a plant.

In 1990, NSF led a multi-agency, multinational project to identiy all the genes inArabidopsisby theend o 2000. Following that successul project, NSF established the Arabidopsis2010 Project, which

Credit: Randall Davis, Texas A&M University; images under autho-

rization of Marine Mammal Permit No. 821-1588-01

Credit: Rick Grifths; composition by Bar-

bara Corbett; Virginia Tech


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had the bold goal o identiying the unctions o all the genes by the year 2010. Te NSF-undedArabidopsis Inormation Resource (AIR) maintains a database o genetic and molecular biology dataorArabidopsis, including the data rom the 2010 Project.

Arabidopsisresearch has paved the way or advances in broader plant biology. Its tools andresources have enabled the rst systems-level understanding o plant gene networks and their rolesin plant growth and development. Applications resulting rom this work have led to commercialdevelopment o new crops with improved cold tolerance and yield. Building on the knowledgegained romArabidopsis, several other plant genomes have been sequenced, including rice,maize (corn), poplar, Medicago, soybean, sorghum, and grape, and genomic tools developed.Integration o these new crop and model plant genomic resources with the tools and resources romArabidopsisare enabling new insights into undamental biological processes that in turn will inormdevelopment o plant-based biomaterials.

5. Ardi Reconstructed

Finding a skeleton o a hominid that is mostly complete is very rare and when recovered, is bothexciting and extremely valuable scientically. Only a ew o these skeletons have ever been recovered:theAustralopithecus aarensis skeleton, called Lucydates to about 3.2 million years old; the Homo erectus

skeleton called urkana Boydates to about 1.8 million years old; and in 2009, an international teamo scientists announced their thrilling discovery and reconstructiono a airly complete skeleton oArdipithecus ramidus, dating to 4.4million years old.

NicknamedArdi, the emale skeleton is 1.2 million years olderthan the skeleton oLucy. Te rst ossils oArdiwere discoveredin Ethiopia in 1994, but due to the poor condition o the bones,it took researchers 15 years to excavateArdi, remove distortionsdigitally and analyze the bones. Researchers thinkArdirepresentsa new kind o hominid, rom the amily that includes humans andour ancestors, but does not include ancestors o other living apes.Ardisanatomy is unusual and is not similar to living apes or laterhominids including Lucy. Her bones suggest that she walked in aprimitive orm o bipedalism on the ground, but supported herselon her palms and eet when in the trees. She also consumed oodsindicative o woodland and orest patches, rather than those thatwould indicate more open environments.

Tere are also revolutionary implications or social structurethat may be evident in the anatomy o this hominid. Scientistshave interpreted the skeleton to show evidence o reduced male

competitiveness. Tis led to the conclusion that these hominids may have lived in social units

consisting o a number o couples. Males may even have helped in gathering ood or sharing.

In all, 47 scientists rom 10 countries contributed to the research onArdiand the reconstructions othe biology and geology o the area where she lived. NSF was one o many who provided unding orthis large, collaborative scientic eort.

Credit: T. White 2009, from Science Oct.

2 issue; (fossil housed in National Museum of

Ethiopia, Addis Ababa)


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6. Bar CodesTheyre for Penguins too

Bar codes, those dizzying combinations o 30 lines and 29 spaces, are on everything rom chewing gumto sot drinks, rom books and newspapers to airline luggage tags and penguins. Inormation gleanedrom bar codes helps supermarket chains, bookstores, airlines and many other industries determinewhat products are marketed and, sometimes more importantly, how, to whom and or what pricegoods are sold.

Bar codes are also used to help detect anddetermine consumer buying trends, literally thewhy behind consumer choices. It is estimatedmore than 100,000 grocery store items alonehave bar codes. Scientists even tag penguins inAntarctica with bar codes to help make datagathering aster and more precise, providing helpin research on migration and endangered species.

Researchers are exploring the use o bar codesin coordinating pervasive wireless sensors torevolutionalize battleeld management, intelligenttransportation systems, military and civilian

logistics, assistive technologies or the blind ormonitor medication compliance.

NSF unding played a crucial role in the development o bar codes. In the 1970s, NSF helped undbar-code research to perect the accuracy o the scanners that read bar codes. In the early 1990s,research in computer vision conducted at the State University o New York-Stony Brook led to majoradvances in algorithms or bar-code readers. Tat research led to commercial development o a newproduct line o barcode readers that has been described as a revolutionary advance, enabling bar-codereaders to operate under messy situations and adverse conditions.

Bar-code technology continues to improve. Recently, researchers developed two-dimensional bar codesthat are shapes, not lines, which yield more inormation.

7. Dead CenterSuper-massive Black Holes at the Center of

the Milky Way Galaxy

Te question o what lies in the center o our Milky Way galaxy has been one o astronomy's majorunanswered questions. NSF-unded researcher Andrea Ghez has conrmed the presence o anenormous black hole at the center o our galaxy,providing new understanding o how galaxiesevolve and surprising many astronomers, whothought it unlikely that the Milky Way, a normal

galaxy with a relatively quiet center, or nucleus,could host an enormous black hole.

A black hole consists o a large mass compactedso densely that not even light can escape its orceo gravity. Black holes are normally ormed romthe remnants o collapsed stars. However, nearthe centers o galaxies enough matter can collectrom stellar collisions and the accumulationo interstellar gas to orm a black hole. In 1995, using a technique in which computers analyzedthousands o high-speed, high-resolution snapshots to correct the turbulence in the Earths atmosphere


Credit: NASA and G. Bacon (STScl)


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that ordinarily blurs images, Ghez was able to improve the resolution o the galactic center by at leasta actor o 20. Tis enabled her to track the movement o 200 stars near the center o our galaxy ormore than a decade. She ound at least 20 stars moving as i they were in orbit around an invisibleobject about our million times the suns mass. Her observations argued or the existence o the super-massive black hole at the center o the Milky Way, which suggest that most galaxies have a black holeat their centers.

8. Sustaining the Power

Developing a sustainable energy supply is one o the great challenges acing the nation. Te UnitedStates relies heavily on coal, oil, and natural gas or its energy, but ossil uels are nonrenewable. Teseresources are limited and will eventually become too expensive or too environmentally damaging toretrieve. For this reason, the U.S. has started to ocus on clean biouels and renewable energy sources,such as wind and solar energy, which are constantly replenished.

Natural gas is a relatively clean orm o ossil uel, but it can be dicult to extract rom the Earth ata reasonable cost. Te Marcellus black shale ound throughout much o the Appalachia Basin is ahuge reservoir o natural gas. In the early 1980s, an NSF-unded researcher identied and mappedthe natural ractures in the Marcellus black shale, and estimated that it contains sucient recoverablenatural gas, using current technology, to meet the needs o the U.S. or almost 20 years. Researchersare investigating economically easible ways to recover this natural gas.

Biouels, derived rom plants, are an important type o renewable uel, but there is concern thatethanol production will consume signicant quantities o grain and water resourcesgiving rise toserious problems. Furthermore, ethanol and some other biouels are not ully compatible with existingcars and pipelines. NSF-unded researchers have developed an integrated process to produce jetuel and gasoline economically rom waste products such as native perennial grasses or orest waste.Researchers are also exploring ways to use algae and engineered bacteria to produce gasoline thatcould go directly into cars. Tese green gasoline alternatives would provide products that are more

compatible and more energy dense than corn grain ethanol or soybean biodiesel, and would be arbetter or the environment.

Additionally, NSF supports research to overcome the challenges to renewable energyranging romdeveloping wind turbines and integrating renewable energy into the power grid to developing newtechnologies or low-cost solar energy and using the power o ocean waves to generate electricity.

Credit: Bob Henson (left); U.S. Air Force (right)


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9. Developing New Technologies with Buckyballs

Buckyballs, developed by NSF-unded researchers in 1985, are a orm o carbon-composed clustersmade up o 60 carbon atoms, bonded together in apolyhedral, or a many-sided structure composedo pentagons and hexagons, like the surace o a soccer ball. Researchers discovered that you couldmodiy buckyballs by adding or replacing an atom, which changesthe properties o the buckyball.

Modied buckyballs can help to diagnose, treat and preventserious diseases. Tey are being developed as antioxidants and ortargeted drug delivery. Another medical application or buckyballswas ound by Luna Innovations, Inc., an NSF Small BusinessInnovation Research grantee. Luna Innovations demonstratedthat buckyballs have potential as MRI contrast agents, and astherapeutic agents or allergies, arthritis and neurodegenerativediseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons.

In addition to use in the medical elds, there are a number opromising applications or buckyballs in building materials dueto their sheer strength. Since buckyballs have a hardness akin

to or greater than that o a diamond, buckyballs can be added to various polymers to make themstrong. Due to their unique structure, heat resistance and ability to conduct electricity, applicationsor buckyballs range rom materials that are lightweight, strong and multiunctional, to more ecientsolar cells to coatings or urniture and other suraces that protect the public rom inectious diseases.

10. Speaking Out: NSF Brings Science to the Public

Since the early 1970s, NSF and its partners have been bringing cutting-edge discoveries to millions oAmericans via the ull range o contemporary media.

Early television productions included the widely acclaimed NOVA Science Now and Discover:Te World o Science. In the 1980s, numerous projects were developed to particularly excite andengage young people. Te program 3-2-1 Contactinvolved middle-school students in science andmathematics, especially targeting girls and minorities, and Square One V brought mathematicsto 8-12 year olds. Stand and Deliver was the story o JaimeEscalante, the Los Angeles high school mathematics teacher whoought to get inner-city minority students interested in math andscience. NSF continues to inspire and educate the nations youthwith productions like Cyberchase, a mystery-adventure cartoonor teaching mathematical problem-solving, and Design Squad, areality competition show or engineering projects.

NSF-supported Earth & Sky, one o the longest-running scienceradio shows in existence, and which recently launched a Spanish-language version, Cielo y ierra. NSF also supported the NPRscience unit, bringing science to nationally distributed programssuch as Morning Edition and All Tings Considered.

Current NSF-unded projects use a range o integrated contemporary media to support lielonglearning by public and proessional audiences. For example, QUES, a large-scale, cross-platorminitiative in the San Francisco Bay Area, combines award-winning television and radio materials,original web media, community and educational outreach, and involves research institutes, science-ocused organizations, and the public, to create a growing repository o science media and educational

Credit: Ivan S. Umtsev, Stanford University

Credit: Educational Broadcasting

Corporation.


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content or use both in and out o schools. Such projects are creating and evaluating models or theuture o public media.

In addition, NSF has unded an extensive array o high-prole projects that support publicunderstanding and engagement in science, via exhibitions, youth and community programs,cyberlearning, citizen science, orums, networks and other innovative ormats.

11. Developing Manufacturing InnovationsCAD-CAM

Research by NSF-unded scientists on solid modeling led to widespread use o computer-aideddesign and computer-aided Manuacturing (CAD-CAM), which has revolutionized much o themanuacturing processes in the U.S. CAD systems allow mechanical designers to create geometricmodels o the parts they want to produce using computer graphics. Digital descriptions are essentialor computerized manuacturing, since they can be interpreted to produce the instructions thatcomputerized, numerically controlled machine tools use to make hardware.

Tis work enabled U.S. rms to address todaysmanuacturing challengeswhere companiesmust respond quickly to rapidly changing global

markets. NSF-supported research continues toprovide the oundation or new manuacturingtechnologies that increase eciency and allow U.S.rms to be globally competitive.

From small beginnings at Carnegie MellonUniversity and other institutions in the early1970s, NSF-unded research evolved into anaverage total o several million dollars annually at

dozens o universities. NSF was willing to supportand eventually encourageproposals to addressproblems with design that neither private rms nor ederal mission agencies were interested in solving.Tis process was seemingly instrumental to the successes realized through CAD-CAM. For example,research at the University o Rochester developed the rst practical sotware or 3-D modeling. Tisadvance raised quality, reduced costs and helped the U.S. regain the productivity it lost in the 1980s.A signicant development has been the CAD modeling o objects as 3-D volumes, which allows thevirtual assembly o products such as the Boeing 777 aircrat. With NSF and industry unding, a systemto produce sotware was rened to the point where it would be used by industry in 1982.

Recent technical developments have undamentally impacted the utility o CAD-CAM systems. Forexample, the ever-increasing processing power o computers has given them viability as a vehicleor CAD-CAM application. Another important trend is the establishment o a single CAD-CAMstandardthe United States National CAD Standard. Finally, CAD-CAM sotware continues toevolve on a continuing basis in such realms as visual representation and integration o modeling and

testing applications.

12. Water of Life

According to the National Academy of Engineering, approximately one in six people in theworld lack access to adequate water and in some countries half the population does not have safedrinking water. More people die due to polluted or inadequate water supply than from war andin the near future, clean water may be the worlds most valuable resource. The United Nationshas identified the need for clean water as one of the greatest human development challenges ofthe early 21st century. Even in the United States, the long-term water supply is under threat.

Credit: Eduemoni/Wikipedia


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There is contamination bypesticides and heavy metals, salt water intrusion in coastal areas andinadequate replenishment o resh groundwater.

With NSF unding, scientists are respondingto this challenge by nding relatively low-cost,low-energy usage ways to obtain clean drinkingwater. At the Center o Advanced Materials orPurication o Water with Systems at the Universityo Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, researchersare investigating methods or desalination,decontamination and disinection o water. Withhelp rom nanotechnology, the researchers havedeveloped inexpensive, rapid and more sensitiveways o detecting and removing water contaminantsincluding arsenic, lead and mercury.

NSF-unded researchers at the University o exas at Austin recently developed a chlorine-tolerantmembrane that could simpliy the water desalination process, while increasing eciency and loweringcosts o the process.

Researchers have also developed models or analyzing watersheds and the links between water andinrastructure systems such as electricity and biouels. Analysis rom these models helps governmentsmake more inormed decisions about water and environmental and energy policies. For example,a University o Washington engineer developed a method to provide early warning and monitoringo droughts, saving states up to millions o dollars each year. Her system has already helped shapedrought plans in Arizona, Georgia and Washington.

Other approaches to providing abundant, clean resh water are being explored and developed by a numbero other NSF-supported research acilities and teams rom Arizona, exas, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

13. Cloud Computing: Building a Platform to the Sky

Cloud computing represents a growing paradigm o on-demand access (as a service) to computing,data and sotware utilities, an abstraction o unlimited resources, and a usage-based billing model,where users essentially rent virtual resourcesand pay or what they use. Underlying thesecloud (inrastructure, platorm, data, sotware,etc.) services are consolidated and virtualizeddata centers that provide virtual machine (VM)containers hosting computation and applicationsrom a large number o distributed users. It isanticipated that cloud platorms and services

will increasingly play a critical role in academic,government and industry sectors, and will havea widespread societal impact. Accordingly,NSF is committed to providing the science andengineering communities with the opportunityto leverage highly scalable cloud computing platorms to conduct research and education activities incloud and data-intensive computing and their applications.

In 2007, NSF partnered with IBM and Google to provide computer science students with thenecessary skills to develop cloud applications. In 2008, NSF created the Cluster Exploratory Initiativeto provide NSF-unded researchers access to sotware and services running on the Google-IBM cluster.

Credit: Josh Chamot, National Science Foundation

Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation


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Tese unding initiatives and partnerships were the rst steps in developing new approaches to solvingdata-intensive problems over a wide range o scientic and engineering areas.

Since investigating an increasing number o research questions requires large amounts o data, romphysics to medicine to economics, the main challenge or computing is how to turn those massive datasets into knowledge. o help address the need to process and respond to large amounts o data, NSFrecently awarded a grant to the University o Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to establish an experimentalcomputing cluster with that ocus. Te computing cluster will be part o the HP, Intel, Yahoo! CloudComputing est Bed, one o the six centers o excellence that HP, Intel and Yahoo! are creating topromote research in data-intensive computing.

Most recently in 2010, NSF created the Computing in the Cloud (CiC) program that was based on amemorandum o understanding between Microsot Corporation and NSF and provides the scienceand engineering communities with the opportunity to leverage the Microsot Azure computingplatorm to stimulate research and education advances in cloud and data-intensive computing andtheir applications.

14. Unlocking the Universes Origin

NSF-unded researcher George Smoot o the University o Caliornia at Berkeley shared the 2006Nobel Prize in Physics with John Mather o the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center or their 1992discovery o the basic orm and small variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation,conrming the Big Bang theory o how the universe was created.

Te Big Bang theory predicts that there should still be radiation lling the universe that is aremnant o the original explosion. Te radiation would not be visible to the human eye, but wouldbe at wavelengths that could be detected by radio telescopes. Furthermore, the radiation would

be particularly strong at a well-dened wavelength, and would exist wherever one looked (at thiswavelength) in the sky. o the human eye, or using an optical telescope, the space between stars and

galaxies is black, but using a radio telescope there is a aint glow that is strongest in the microwaveregion o the radio spectrum.

Using the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, launched by NASA in 1989, Smoot and Matheranalyzed the cosmic microwave background radiation and were able to observe the universe at an earlystage, about 380,000 years ater the universe was born. Tey detected extremely small variations inthe temperature o the radiation, which oered a clue to the distribution o matter in the universethe beginning. Tese small variations are the seeds rom which galaxies developed. Teir resultsprovided a precise test o our knowledge o the history and composition o the universe and the natureo the Big Bang. Te English physicist Stephen Hawking called the results the greatest discovery othe century, i not o all times, while a government task orce called it one o the most spectacularscientic breakthroughs in past decades. Te research was also unded by the Department o Energys

Oce o Science and NASA.

Credit: NASA / COBE Science Team (left); NASA (right)


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15. Into the Unknown: Dark Energy

In 1998, two independent teams o astronomers, both with NSF support, demonstrated that theexpansion o the universe was accelerating. Although researchers knew the universe had beencontinually expanding since the Big Bang, this new discovery drew an unexpected picture that theuniverse is becoming larger at an ever-increasing rate, driven by a yet unknown orce that has beendubbed dark energy.

It was previously unknown whether the gravitational attractionbetween galaxies would be enough to slow down and perhapsreverse the observed expansion o the universe. However, NSF-unded astronomers Saul Perlmutter, Robert Kirshner, and AlexeiFilippenko, as well as a team o astronomers at Cerro ololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, an NSF-unded acility, discoveredthat not enough matter exists to slow the pace o the expandinguniverse.

In the current standard model o cosmology, dark energy accountsor almost three-quarters o the total mass-energy o the universe,yet the exact nature o dark energy is still speculative. o solve this

major problem in cosmology, research continues with unding romNSF, as well as rom NASA and the Department o Energy.

16. Deep-Sea Drilling Reveals Youthful Sea-oor Features

In the 1950s, NSF began supporting deep-sea drilling projects to explore the ocean oor and researchthe geological history o the continents. In the 1960s, NSF unded the Deep Sea Drilling Project, inwhich NSF partnered with a consortium o marine research centers called the Joint OceanographicInstitutions or Deep Earth Sampling and the Scripps Institution o Oceanography. Te rst NSF-unded drill ship in the project was the Glomar Challenger.

Te Glomar Challengerretrieved samples that provided denitive proo or continental drit andseaoor renewal at rit zones; gave urther evidence to support the plate tectonics theory; anddemonstrated how youthul the ocean oor isin comparison to Earths geologic history. Teanalysis o the samples suggested that the oceanoor could be as young as 200 million years,which is signicantly younger than the 4.5 billionyears o the Earth.

Ater the Glomar Challengerdocked or the lasttime, the project continued with new ships as part

o the Ocean Drilling program that explored thesea oor through 2003. In 2003, the IntegratedOcean Drilling Program (IODP) was launched.Te IODP is an international research programinvolving 24 countries to monitor, drill, sampleand analyze the sub-seaoor environments. Te current IODP research vessel, theJOIDESResolution,launched its scientic operations in early 2009.

Credit: Courtesy of SLAC and Nicolle Rager

Credit: Integrated Ocean Drilling Program; illustration by Charles Floyd


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17. Extra Solar Planets Loom on the Horizon

Observatories and their telescopes, unded and supported by NSF, have helped to discover and identiydozens o new planets outside our solar system since NSF-unded researchers discovered the rst othree extra solar planets using radio telescopes in the early 1990s. wo o these planets are similar inmass to the Earth. Te third has roughly the mass o the Moon. Since these planets orbit a pulsar, thecollapsed remnant o a supernova explosion, none o them is likely to support lie.

In 1995, an NSF-unded team o astronomersindependently conrmed by optical techniques,the discovery o a ourth new planet. Teollowing year the same team announced theoptical detection o two more planets orbitingsun-like stars.

In 2009, NSF-unded researchers discovered anew super Earth orbiting a red dwar star 40light-years rom Earth. A super-Earth is a planetbetween one and ten times the mass o the Earth.Tis new super Earth is about 6.5 times the mass

o the Earth. What made this new discovery evenmore exciting was the super-Earth planet may be made mostly o water. Additionally in the same year,astronomers using the International Gemini Observatory, an NSF-unded acility, obtained images othree planets orbiting a nearby star, the rst pictures o another solar system.

Presently, the number o known exoplanets has risen to over 420, with major unding or the researchcoming rom NSF, NASA and the Department o Energy.

18. The Fingerprints of Life

DNA ngerprinting, also called orensic DNA analysis was rstused in a criminal investigation in England in 1986. Since then,DNA ngerprinting has become an essential part o the Americanlegal system. NSF-unded projects in basic biological research werecritical to the discovery o a microbe's enzyme that makes modernDNA ngerprinting possible.

DNA ngerprints are sequences o DNA molecules unique to eachindividual. Te patterns o these sequences can be identied whentiny amounts o DNA are amplied with a technique known as thepolymerase chain reaction (PCR).

PCR involves DNA polymerase, an enzyme that assembles DNAchains over many cycles o heating and cooling. Most DNApolymerase cannot withstand high temperatures, but NSF-supported researchers discovered a bacterium (Termus aquaticus),in the hot springs at Yellowstone National Park that can toleratehigh temperatures. Tis discovery, along with private sector

research on developing a heat-resistant DNA polymerase, enabled the commercial production o PCRand its ability to ampliy millions o copies o DNA in a matter o hours. Since its invention, PCR hasbecome an essential tool o DNA analysis or orensic and other identication uses.

In addition to DNA ngerprinting, these techniques are also used to track endangered species andtrace human migrations and have led to development o enzymes or non-polluting detergents.

Credit: David Aguilar, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA



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19. Eye in the Sky

Research at the NSF-supported National Center or Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and at universitieswas instrumental in the development o Doppler radar as a meteorological research tool. Doppler radaris what Americans see every day on V news and weather reporting.

NCAR and several universities made important renements to sotware and hardware technologiesassociated with Doppler radar that enhanced its use or both research and operational purposes.Conventional radar provides inormation aboutthe location and intensity o precipitationassociated with a storm, while Doppler radaradds the capability to discern air motions withina storm. Doppler radar helps scientists andmeteorologists see or detect near-ground windshears, which are dangerous to aircrat, and alsoenables meteorologists to orecast the locationand severity o weather with greater accuracy,resulting in improved public saety and, in somecases, lives saved. NSF has also been involved inthe development o ground-based and airborne

Doppler radars, which have been used extensivelyin undamental research on meteorological phenomena rom tornadoes to large winter storms.

Beginning in 2003, NSF began unding the Engineering Research Center or Collaborative AdaptiveSensing o the Atmosphere (CASA). CASAs goal is to develop revolutionary weather-sensing networkso small, distributed and highly interconnected, low-cost Doppler radars that save lives and propertyby sensing the region o the lower atmosphere, currently below conventional radar range, wheremost severe weather such as tornadoes orms. Tese new networks will map storms, winds, rain,temperature, humidity, and the ow o airborne hazards, and transmit the inormation to end users intime to make necessary decisions.

20. Supply and Demand

Over the years, NSF has supported researchers whose work has transormed economic policy. Tissupport is clearly demonstrated by the act that over 40 winners o the Nobel Prize in Economicshave been NSF grantees. In act, every winner o the prize since 1998 received NSF unding or hisor her research.

For example in 2004, Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott shared the Nobel Prize in Economics ortheir contributions to macroeconomics, particularly in addressing the time-consistency problem inormulating economic policy and in understandingthe causes o business cycles. Kydland and

Prescott changed the way economists thoughtabout the design o economic policy and thecauses o business cycles, both transormingeconomic research and inuencing the practice oeconomic policy in general and monetary policyin particular. Tey demonstrated that what atrst seems to be an optimal policy today may notbe time consistent. Government policies otendemand that uture government actions willimpose a political cost on the government. Whenthat happens, governments will not want to stick

Credit: Josh Wurman, CSWR

Credit: Comstock Images/Getty Images


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physical processes that couple or connect the tropical Pacic Ocean and the atmosphere work andhow to make those processes predictable. In the United States, OGA was a multiagency eortinvolving NSF, NOAA, NASA and the Oce o Naval Research.

Even beore OGA, meteorologists and oceanographers, unded by NSFs Division o Ocean Sciences, setout to test the hypothesis that the El Nio SouthernOscillation (ENSO) cycle, which includes both ElNio and La Nia phases, can be predicted.

Te main benet o the OGA program is thatmore accurate and useul predictions o El Nio/La Nia weather cycles can be conducted up totwo to three seasons, or about nine months inadvance. Predictions o El Nio (the warming)and La Nia (the cooling) o tropical PacicOcean waters are now providing extra monthso preparation, helping to lessen economic andhuman losses that oten result rom these events.

23. Centers of KnowledgeNSF-unded centers such as Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) and Science and echnologyCenters (SCs) play a key role in driving discovery at the rontiers and developing creative solutions tosocietal problems. Te centers bring together experts rom dierent elds to tackle complex issues andtrain the next generations leaders in research and innovation.

Te ERCs oster highly productive, long-term industry-university research collaborations and developknowledge about innovative processes and products in a broad spectrum o advanced technologies.For example, the bioengineering ERCs have developed new technologies ranging rom implantabledevices that enhance sight, hearing, and movement to special robots that assist surgeons to scaoldsthat promote the growth o skin and bone. Manuacturing and processing centers have developed new

approaches to engineering design and novel manuacturing processes that allow companies to respondquickly and eectively to changing global markets. Other centers have ocused on topics rangingrom minimizing damage rom earthquakes to producing biorenewable chemicals and developing newapproaches to renewable electric energy and oshore oil production. NSFs support or the ERCs hashad a signicant impact on their academic elds, on industry and on society through new approachesto research, and through the development o new processes, products, companies and jobs.

NSF supports on average, 15-20 ERCs at any given time. For example, the Synthetic BiologyEngineering Research Center (SynBERC) seeks to develop engineered biological systems that will

Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center; the SeaWiFS Project

and ORBIMAGE; Science Visualization Studio

Credit: Courtesy Georgia Techs Center for Low Cost Electronics Packaging Research, photo by Stanley F. Leary (left); NSF Engineering

Research Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems, University of Michigan (right)


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be an impetus to new technologies or processing inormation, producing energy, manuacturingchemicals and pharmaceuticals and abricating materials. Using synthetic biologyengineering yeastand E. colibacteriathe Principal Investigator, Jay Keasling, has developed a simple and cost-eectivemethod or producing anti-malarial drugs. Low-cost drugs are desperately needed by more than 300million people worldwide who are af icted by malaria. SynBERC is making rapid progress in buildingbiological modular parts with specic perormance characteristics and making them availablethrough open inventories to researchers worldwide.

NSF expanded the centers idea beyond engineering with the creation o the SC program in1987. Te objective o the SCs is to encourage technological transer and innovative approachesto interdisciplinary problems, while supporting basic research and education. Currently, thereare 17 SCs located at prestigious universities around the country. Research conducted at theSCs ranges rom materials, meteorology, and electronics to computers, biotechnology andenvironmental management.

Centers have proven to be powerul tools in solving current problems and training young researchersto solve the problems o the uture. One indicator o the importance o these centers to the Americanscience and engineering enterprise is the number o breakthroughs and discoveries that have resultedrom research conducted at the ERCs and SCs.

24. Extremophilia

Lie has proven to be more resilient and more varied than had been imagined just a ew years ago.NSF-unded research has shown that living organisms can be ound in what had been thought to beimpossibly hostile environments, including extremely arid deserts, highly acidic uids and extremeso heat and cold. Tese organisms have been termed extremophiles. Examples o extremophiles thatresearchers have ound include bacteria deep in a South Arican gold mine that survive by eatingthe byproducts o radioactivity; other bacteria that survive the winters at Antarctica; cells that can godormant in arid conditions or 20 years, but can revive in the presence o water; single-celled archaeathriving near hot, undersea vents that convert hydrogen sulde into ood; and organisms which haveevolved to live in highly acidic conditions.

Te discovery o extremophiles demonstrates the diversity o lie on this planet and contradictsprevious theories that these kinds o extreme environments could not support lie. Moreover, ndingextremophiles on Earth living in hostile environments revolutionizes the search or extraterrestrial lie.Te conditions under which a planet might support lie are now much broader and the possibilityo nding lie has increased. I microbial lie can survive a oot below the terrain o Chiles AtacamaDesert, one o the driest places on Earth, then there is a better possibility or lie in extremely dryenvironments, including Mars. Research into this question is being unded by NSF and NASA.

Credit: University of Washington, Center for Environmental Visualization (left); Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation (right)


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25. Solving the Insolvable

Ater 350 years, the challenge laid down by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in the 1630swas met by Princeton Universitys Andrew Wiles. Proessor Wiles proved that there are no positiveintegers or which xn + yn = zn when n is greater than 2.

A key piece to the puzzle ell into place in 1986, when mathematician Ken Ribet showed that solving amodern problem in math, called the aniyama-Shimura conjecture, would allow you to prove FermatsLast Teorem. Tere was one small hitch: no onewas really sure how to approach the aniyama-Shimura conjecture, or whether it was even provableat all. With support rom NSF, Wiles devoted sevenyears o his career to Fermats challenge.

Wiles demonstration o Fermats simply statedproposition is more than a hundred pages ocomplex math. However, within the complexity,the proo had more practical signicancenotbecause o Fermats Last Teorem itsel, whichdespite its 350-year pedigree is more o an

intellectual curiosity, but because o the routeWiles took to get there. Te aniyama-Shimuraconjecture connects two previously unrelated branches o mathematicsnumber theory (the studyo whole numbers) and geometry (the study o curves, suraces and objects in space). Wiles proved aspecial case o the conjecture to solve Fermats theorem and in 1999, a team o mathematicians builton Wiles work to prove the ull conjecture.

Proving Fermats Last Teorem has had a number o impacts on the eld. First, it related twopreviously unrelated branches o mathematics, number theory and geometry. Secondly, thedemonstration sparked numerous developments in number theory and arithmetic geometry. Finally,and maybe most importantly, Wiles proving Fermats Last Teorem excited a whole new generation oyoung scholars interested in pursuing mathematics.

26. The Age of Enlightenment

Optical ber has been a critical component in the ongoing communications revolution, especially aterthe emergence o the Internet and other high-speed data applications. Te cable V industry, long-distance telephone services and computer networks all rely on advances in ber optics to deliver theirproduct to consumers. Over 1 billion kilometers o ber have been installed worldwide, enough tocircle the globe more than 25,000 times.

While industry played a lead role, NSF-unded

research on solid-state physics, ceramics/glassengineering and other areas was essential to thedevelopment o optical bers. Additionally,ederal unds helped train doctoral scientists andengineers in industrial research and developmenton optical bers and related components such assemiconductor lasers, and by supporting basicresearch at materials engineering centers. Inaddition, NSF supported optical communicationsresearch in two areas with strong academic bases:integrated electro-optics and network theory.

Credit: C. J. Mozzochi, Princeton N.J



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Fiber optics is an example o how basic research unded by NSF gets transormed into a commercialendeavor by private industry. Te insight into how to transmit light over long distances via opticalbers was done using NSF unds, ater which industry leaders Corning and A& transormed theidea into a practical technology. Tus, NSF played an important role in supporting research relevantto the development o the nonber components and devices needed in a ber-optic communicationsystem. Without these components, advances in the ber alone could not have produced thecommunications systems that we enjoy today.

27. Sleep Tight, Dont Let the Bedbugs Bite

Humans have always measured their existence by outward signs o the passage o timeday and nightor sunrise and sunset. Commonly reerred to as a 24-hour clock or circadian rhythm in humans, acluster o cells in the brain regulates our metabolism, digestion and the sleep-wake cycle.

Gaining control o this clock, researchers claim, could producemany benets, including lowering blood pressure, improving drugmetabolism, overcoming jet lag and helping shit workers unctionmore eectively. But, as oten happens in science, key tools that arenow making it possible to understand the clocks mechanism came

rom an unexpected direction. Research begun in the early 1950s ledto identiying the compound lucierase as the enzyme responsible orthe bioluminescent re o reies. Decades later, researchers at theUniversity o Caliornia-San Diego isolated and cloned the lucierasegene and subsequently developed a new molecular probe by attachingthe lucierase gene to other genes in plants and animals. Tistechnology allowed scientists to measure activities o specic genes ointerest under natural conditions and opened up a whole new way totudy how genes regulate lie processes.

Researchers at the NSF Science and echnology Center at the University o Virginia and otherlocations were able to use the lucierase technology to show periodic cycling as a luminescent glowwhen biological clock genes turned on and o in living plants and animals. Tese plants andanimals, with well-studied genes, include the mustard plantArabidopsis thaliana and a ruit y species(Drosophila melanogaster). Tis research has allowed new ways to precisely monitor clock gene activityand has increased our understanding o the importance o human beings internal 24-hour clock andits role in everyones daily lie.

Recently, researchers at the Scripps Research Institute, the University o Virginia and BrandeisUniversity have called into question that our internal 24-hour clock is centrally controlled by thebrain. Using the ruit y as a model, researchers ound clock genes in tissues throughout the bodythat were controlled locally. Tis recent nding may shit our thinking about the 24-hour clock,increase our understanding o daily rhythms associated with drug metabolism, and could lead to the

development o more eective treatments or disorders associated with the 24-hour clock, such as jetlag, shit work and seasonal depression.

28. X-Ray Vision Not Just for Superheroes

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a noninvasive imaging method that uses a powerul magneticeld and radio requency pulses to image most internal structures. MRI technology was made possibleby combining inormation about the spin characteristics o matter with research in mathematics andhigh-ux magnets. It relies on the physics o nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and on the coretechnology o NMR spectrometry, measuring the wavelengths o a spectrum. Fundamental research,

Credit: Steve A. Kay, the Scripps Research sInstitute


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supported by NSF, led to the development o MRI technology, now widely used in hospitals to detecttumors and internal tissue damage in patients and to investigate dierences in brain tissue.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures the hemodynamic response or changein blood ow and blood oxygenation that is related to neural activity in the brain. MRI enablesphysicians and researchers to image human brain unction and understand the connection betweenthe physical brain and cognition. Additionally, MRI is used prior to neurosurgery to show individualbrain unction maps o the cortical areas close to a tumor beore surgery.

Since the development o MRI in the early 1990s, NSF has supported numerous MRI studies thathave resulted in a deeper understanding o human cognition across a spectrum o areas, includingsensation, perception, motor control, memory,empathy, language and emotion. Additionally,NSF has unded the development o newstatistical methods necessary or the analysisand interpretation o MRI data. In 1999, NSFhelped launch the National Functional MagneticResonance Imaging Data Center (MRIDC)at Dartmouth University. Now unded by theNational Institutes o Health and maintained at

the University o Caliornia, Santa Barbara, theMRIDC provides a publicly accessible repositoryo studies and data to urther the study o thehuman brain.

Te MRI is an excellent example o how NSF unding supports technological innovation and medicaladvances. NSF supported the underlying NMR, as well as research in other areas directly related tothe development o MRI technology, such as electromagnetics, digital systems, computer engineering,biophysics and biochemistry.

29. A Burst of Heavenly Fire

Until recently, little had been known about the reballs known as gamma ray bursts. Since theirdiscovery about 30 years ago by deense satellites, these intense cosmic outbursts seemed to occurrandomly around the sky about once per day.

In 1997, a team o astronomers using a pair o NSF radio telescopes made the rst measurements othe size and expansion o gamma ray bursts. Tese scientists have learned the reball is actually debristhat expands at very nearly the speed o light.In these events, enormous amounts o energyare released within a very small region, which isconsidered much less than the typical distance

separating stars.

Te cause o gamma ray bursts is still unknown,but is likely due to the explosion o a very massivestar. One burst in 1997 lasted or only 15 seconds,but emitted an aterglow that lasted severaldays. Study o the aterglow revealed the initialexplosion released more energy during 15 secondsthan the sun will release in its entire 10-billion-year lietime, making it one o the most energetic events known to have occurred since the Big Bang.Optical studies reveal the 1997 gamma ray burst was at least seven billion light-years away. Because otheir short duration, gamma ray bursts are dicult to catch.

Credit: Maximilian Riesenhuber, Georgetown University Medical Center

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)


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31. Just Google It

It is dicult or most o us to remember an Internet beore Google, but in the early 1990s, theInternet had ewer than 100 Websites and people looked or them without a search engine. Evenwith a low number o sites, the need or accessible interaces to this growing data collection becameclear. o solve this problem, NSF led the multi-agency Digital Library Initiative (DLI). In 1994, theDLI made its rst six awards and included in those awards was a Stanord University project led byproessors Hector Garcia-Molina and erry Winograd. Tese early awards were submitted beore theWorld Wide Web exploded and beore Web search tools had been developed.

Te rst Web search tools included Yahoo!, started by two Stanordstudents, and Lycos and WebCrawler. Tese early search enginesbegan indexing Web pages ocused on keyword-based techniquesto rank the results rom the search. Another Stanord student,Larry Page, along with Sergey Brin, who was supported by an NSFGraduate Student Fellowship, created a new way to search theWeb as a collection and to crawl rom page to page by ollowinglinks. Page uncovered how important Web page ranking was andrecognized that the act o linking one page to another requiredconscious eort, which was evidence o human judgment about

the links destination. Teir new engine prototype could map outa vast amily tree reecting the links among the pages. o calculaterankings on the tree, they developed the PageRank method thatwould rank a Web page higher i other highly ranked Web pageslinked to it.

Teir prototype, BackRub, was unded by the DLI project and other industrial contributions. Bythe end o 1998, Page and Brin received outside unding and incorporated into Google, Inc. TePageRank method survives as one o the main components in todays Google search engine.

32. Educating Tomorrows Scientic Giants

o ensure human capital or science, technology, engineering and mathematics, NSF has run theGraduate Research Fellowship (GRF) program since 1952. Te graduate research ellowships arethree-year ellowships or graduate study resulting in a mastersor doctoral degree in the science, technology, engineering ormathematics elds.

Since the creation o the program, NSF has unded over 42,000graduate research ellowships. In the 2009 competition, NSF-unded graduate research ellows came rom over 300 dierentbaccalaureate institutions and are enrolled at approximately 140

dierent graduate institutions. Additionally, the GRF program isa tool to reinorce diversity in science and engineering. During thepast three years, over 50 percent o the awardees were women andapproximately 15 percent were underrepresented minority students.

Te GRF program has been successul at selecting individualswho will complete their training and become scientic leadersin their elds. Te program has a high rate o doctoral degreecompletionmore than 70 percent o graduate research ellowscomplete their doctoral degrees within 11 years.

Credit: 2010 Google

Credit: Doug Levere, University at Buffalo


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Te record o the NSF GRF program is impressive. Te Chairman o the Federal Reserve Bank, BenBernanke, Google co-ounder Sergey Brin and Freakonomics coauthor Steven Levitt are past ellows, aswell as numerous Nobel laureates, including the Secretary o Energy Steven Chu.

33. Ticks in the Lyme Light

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in North America and Europe and one o the

astest-growing inectious diseases in the United States. Lyme disease rst emerged in 1975 when arash o cases plagued the town o Lyme, Conn. It was not until 1982 that the cause was determinedto be bacterial in nature. Lyme disease can aect multiple animal species, rom humans to dogs, romdeer to skunk. Te bacteria can also be passed rom mother to etus through the placenta duringpregnancy. NSF-unded research on Lyme disease has led to basic discoveries regarding the risk ohuman exposure and eective control o that risk.

Lyme disease incidence is rising in the U.S., and is in act ar more common than West Nile virus andother insect-borne diseases. Forest ragmentation could explain the increase. Over the past 16 years,scientists have ound that orest patches, common in cities, suburbia, and some rural areas, oten have

more Lyme disease-carrying ticks, which could increase the risk o human exposure to the disease. Whileorest ragments generally have ewer species than continuous habitat does, some species actually arebetter in small patches. icks are one o these species, largely because the host species o the bacteriumthat causes Lyme disease, the white-ooted mouse, has larger populations in ragmented orests due to lowpredator and competitor populations. icks eeding on these mice are at least twice as likely to becomeinected (and thereore dangerous) as are ticks that eed on any other mammal or bird host.

Tis NSF-unded research is important because it provides a novel way o looking at the transmissiono diseases, and demonstrates that human health is aected by the local ecology, and by land-usepractices. For any given disease that is spread by an animal, at least our species are intimately involved:the human victim, the pathogen, the vector and at least one wildlie reservoir. By studying theinterconnectedness o these species in real landscapes, scientists can trace potential disease routes. Te

ability o ecologists to predict disease risk is leading to better education o the public about when andwhere they are most at risk and how to avoid exposure to this and other tick-borne diseases. Avoidanceis particularly important in light o the lack o a Lyme disease vaccine, poor diagnostic accuracy andproblems with post-exposure treatment.

34. Sciences Global Generation

Te science and engineering enterprise is increasingly global. odays research requires globally engagedinvestigators working collaboratively to advance the rontiers o knowledge and to apply the results obasic research to long-standing global challenges such as epidemics, natural disasters and the search oralternative energy sources.

Credit: Graham Hickling, University of Tennessee-Knoxville (left); Scott Bauer, Agricultural Research Service, USDA (right)


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As societies and nations grow increasingly interdependent, international research partnerships aregrowing in importance. Te ability to develop collaborations that create new value or the partnersis oten the limiting actor or progress in critical areas o science, engineering and technology.International scientic partnerships that oster cooperation, build global research capacity and advancethe rontiers o science can provide benets to scientists, academic institutions and nations throughoutthe world. NSF has played a signicant role in advancing such international scientic partnershipsthereby increasing the collaborative advantage o participating U.S. researchers and institutions.

A ew examples o international scientic collaborations include inter alia, the Materials WorldNetwork (MWN), the Partnerships or International Research and Educations Arica Array projectand the Global Ring Network or Advanced Application Development (GLORIAD). Workingjointly with counterpart national, regional and multinational unding organizations worldwide,MWN has increased and enhanced opportunities or collaborative research activities in materialsresearch and education between U.S. investigators and their colleagues abroad. Tese collaborationshave contributed to major advances in condensed matter physics, solid state and materials chemistry,polymers, biomaterials, metallic materials and nanostructures, ceramics, electronic and photonicmaterials, and condensed matter and materials theory. Te Arica Array project has been instrumentalin building collaborative research networks and acilitating inrastructure development or geoscience

research in Arica. Tese activities are enabling a much better understanding o the Earths mantlebeneath eastern and southern Arica and are strengthening scientists ability to understand localgeohazards and to locate valuable geo-resources such as minerals and water. GLORIADs cyber-connectivity activities have dramatically improved existing U.S. science-dedicated network links withChina, Russia, Korea, Canada and the Nordic region, and with the recent extension through the ajconnection, have brought U.S. researchers broadband collaborative potential with researchers in India,Singapore, Hong Kong and Egypt.

35. Researchers Work Across the Globe

As ar back as 1990, NSF supported linkages between the U.S. and international research and education

communities and supported partnerships to assist other countries in connecting to the global Internet.In 1997, NSF established a program to connect new and existing networks in other countries with theU.S. academic research community and institutions. By early 1999, about 15 countriesas well as otheragencys advanced networks had been interconnected at the Science, echnology and Research ransitAccess Point (SAR AP), in Chicago. SAR AP was the rst interconnection point or the exchangeo high-speed network trac among research institutions worldwide, built and managed by a partnershipincluding the University o Illinois at Chicago and the National Center or Supercomputing Applications(NCSA) at the University o Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

NSF has supported high-perormance connections between the U.S. and Europe, the Asia-Pacicregion, Latin America, China, Russia, and other countries. Over the last decade, the number and sizeo these connections have grown, and the number o network exchange points has similarly expanded.

Credit: Materials World Modules Program, Northwestern University (left); GLORIAD (right)


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Te increased network capacity and connectivity has opened the door to exciting new global initiativesacross the sciences. Te adoption o cyberinrastructure tools is changing the practices o sciencetowards network-dependent collaborations to support data-intensive science. Tis phenomenonhas started to accelerate as a result o the NSF-unded International Research Network Connection(IRNC) links, providing a high-availability science and engineering research and education productionenvironment. Supported scientic initiatives with the U.S. span countries and continents. Examples

include: (Europe) Te Large Hadron Collider,whose particle physics experiments engage dozenso universities in the U.S.; (South America) largeastronomy observatories and instruments in Chileare now leveraged remotely by astronomy studentsand researchers; and (Asia-Pacic) environmental,biological, and geological studies requiringinteraction with sensors and other instruments orbird migrations in China, tsunami early warningsystems in the South Pacic, and earthquake-related shake tables in Japan. Several o theseindividual projects can produce enough data aloneto congest a 10 gigabit-per-second link.

oday, a rich and diverse high-speed abric o multi gigabit connections devoted to supportinginternational collaborations in scientic and engineering research and education span the globe, withNSF continuing to support the global networking needs o U.S. academic research and education

36. Surng the Information Superhighway

Internet technology began with government-unded networking eorts, including NSFs NSFNEthat have now matured and spurred vast commercial development. From the beginning, computernetworks were expected to expand the reach and grasp o researchers, providing better access tocomputer resources and easier transer o inormation. NSF made this expectation a reality.

Te rst Internet was the interconnection o unrelated networks consisting o the Advanced ResearchProjects Agencys ARPANE, run by the Deense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in1977. Over the next decade, increasing NSF involvement led to a three-tiered system o internetworksthat were managed by a mix o universities, nonprot organizations and government agencies. Bythe mid-1980s, primary nancial support o the Internet had been assumed by NSF. Te increasingdemand or advanced networking and research computing capabilities was met by NSFNE and theoundations Partnerships or Advanced Computational Inrastructure (PACI). In March 1991, theNSFNE acceptable use policy was altered to allow commercial trac.

Creation o NSFNE was an intellectual leap.It was the rst, large-scale implementation o

Internet technologies in a complex environmento many independently operated networks.NSFNE orced the Internet community toiron out technical issues arising rom the rapidlyincreasing number o computers and addressmany practical details o operations, managementand conormance. NSF leadership played a majorrole in NSFNEs use o CP/IP, a decision thatinuenced the evolution o the Internet and itsprotocol oundation. Troughout its existence,NSFNE carried, at no cost to institutions, any

Credit: National Science Foundation

Credit: Donna Cox and Robert Patterson, courtesy of the National

Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Board of

Trustees of the University of Illinois


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U.S. research and education trac that could reach it. At the same time, the number o Internet-connected computers grew rom 2,000 in 1985 to more than 2 million in 1993.

In the years ollowing NSFNE, NSF helped navigate the road to a sel-governing and commerciallyviable Internet during a period o remarkable growth. Te year 1998 marked the end o NSFs directrole in supporting maintenance and management o the Internet. Tat year, the network access pointsand routing arbiter unctions were transerred to the commercial sector. Since then, NSF has continuedto support research, development and experimental deployment o new Internet technologies andprotocols. Over the years, NSF has been instrumental in providing international research networkconnections to Europe, Russia, South America and the Pacic Rim.

In addition to the Internet, the worlds rst reely available Web browser originated rom NSF-undedresearch at the National Center or Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University o Illinois,Urbana-Champaign. Tis Web browser allowed browsers to view Web pages that included bothgraphics and text. Called Mosaic, it spurred a revolution in communications, business, educationand entertainment that has had a trillion-dollar impact on the global economy. With a graphicalbrowser, programmers began to post images, sound, video clips and multi-ont text within the Webshypertext system. Less than 18 months ater its introduction, Mosaic had become the Internetbrowser o choice or more than a million users and set o an exponential growth in the number oWeb servers and surers.

37. Harry Potter Science

Some aspects o the world o Harry Potter may soon be possible. With unding rom the NSF and theU.S. Army Research Oce, scientists have made major strides in developing invisibility cloaks.

In 2008, researchers developed metamaterialscomposite materials with extraordinary capabilitiesto bend electromagnetic wavesto hide 3-D objects. Metamaterials deect radar, light, or otherwaves around an object, rather than scattering it, so none o the waves reect back to the eye or otherreceiver. Tese cloaks only worked or one color and or very small objects.

Another development in cloaking technology developed byNSF-supported researchers was a tapered optical waveguide(mirrored conduit) that works or all the colors o the spectrumand cloaks objects 100 times larger than those rendered invisibleby the metamaterials.

Recently, NSF-unded researchers have developed an active cloakingmethod that uses devices that generate electromagnetic elds ratherthan being composed o metamaterials that passively shield objectsrom electromagnetic waves. Te new method is two-dimensional,but the researchers believe it can be easily extended to three

dimensions, which means real objects could be cloaked. Activecloaking, unlike passive cloaking using metamaterials, can cloakobjects rom a broader band o wavelengths.

Although not close to the invisibility cloaks used by Harry Potteror the Romulan spaceships in Star rek, these new invisibilitycloaking methods might be able to shield submarines rom sonar, planes rom radar and buildingsrom earthquakes.

Credit: Keith Drake


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38. Kids Stuff: Science and Technology Education

In the early 1950s, there was widespread recognition that science and mathematics teachers inelementary through high school lacked sucient knowledge o the subject matter or eective science,technology, engineering and mathematics (SEM) teaching. Beginning as a small experiment inthe summer o 1954, NSF has unded a variety o programs that provide proessional developmentin SEM subject areas or hundreds o thousands o teachers. Te rst eorts were summer andacademic year institutes or practicing teachers. Tose programs provided reresher courses or teacherswho had been let behind by the rapid changes in scientic knowledge; basic training or teachers whohad had inadequate preparation in the rst place; and reorientation so that teachers could eectivelyteach new curricula being introduced.

More recent NSF investments in preparation and proessional development o SEM teachers havetaken the orm o local and state systemic change programs and the current Math Science Partnership(MSP) program. Te concept o teacher institutes has been redeveloped as Institute Partnerships:eacher Institutes or the 21st century, enlisting K-12 teachers and school systems in entirely newrelationships with science and mathematics aculty rom colleges and universities. Tese institutesencourage teachers to rethink mathematics and science education in the classroom and to developleadership skills to be used in their schools, districts and states. Te MSP program also supportsargeted Partnerships,whichocus on studying and solving teaching and learning issues within a

specic grade range or at a critical juncture ineducation, and/or within a specic disciplinaryocus in mathematics or the sciences. In all o itswork with schools, NSF emphasizes evaluationo progress or teachers and students, as wellas research on innovative practices that can beadopted by the eld o SEM education.

Almost rom the beginning, NSFs national eortsto improve SEM education in K-12 schools hasincluded supporting projects designed to develop,test, and disseminate innovative curriculummaterials. NSF unds were critical resources orpost-Sputnik projects in mathematics, physics,

biology, chemistry and general science. In the more recent standards era, NSF unds enabled 13 majorprojects in mathematics and over 40 projects in science and technology to produce comprehensivecurriculum materials that support innovations in elementary, middle and high-school SEMinstruction.

Tose curriculum development projects produced student text materials, resources or teachersand a variety o supporting materials (assessments, laboratory materials, etc.) with the aim o: (1)introducing discipline-based science, technology and mathematics ideas to the school curriculum;(2) demonstrating new ways o organizing and presenting amiliar content; and/or (3) supporting

innovative ways o teaching SEM content and assessing learning. Recent SEM curriculumdevelopment projects have also produced innovative technologies to enhance student explorationslearning, and problem solving in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and are activelytranslating new insights rom the learning sciences into improved strategies or teaching and assessinglearning o SEM content and thinking processes.

aken together, the sustained NSF investment in teacher and instructional materials development hasbeen the primary national engine o innovation in U.S. SEM education or over 55 years.

Credit: Barry Myers


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39. Beyond the Falling Apple

Te Laser Intererometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is designed to conrm the existenceo gravity waves, a basic and still mysterious cosmic orce predicted by Albert Einstein nearly 100years ago. Einstein described space and time as dierent aspects o reality in which both are ultimatelythe same. Te presence o large amounts o mass or energy distorts the space-time and is observedas gravity. When large masses move suddenly, some o this space-time curvature ripples outward.Gravity waves are created during the collision o stars and other heavy objects in the universe. Tey arebelieved to aect space as well as objects in much the same way a dropped pebble disturbs the suraceo a quiet pond.

Using a laser intererometer, the LIGO acilitiescan detect the ripples in space-time. Te laserintererometer is like a microphone that convertsgravitational waves to electrical signals. LIGOconsists o two nearly 2.5-mile long installationslocated at Hanord, Wash. and Livingston Parish,La. LIGO should be able to detect and measuregravitational waves out to distances o 70 millionlight years.

Funded by NSF, LIGO was designed andconstructed by a team o scientists rom theCaliornia Institute o echnology, the Massachusetts Institute o echnology and by industrialcontractors. Construction o the acility was completed in 1999. Initial operations o the detectorsbegan in 2001, and represented an advance over all previous searches o two or three orders omagnitude in sensitivity and in bandwidth. LIGO has provided insight into the nature o the universeshortly ater

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