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Warm and Getting Warmer
The Arctic ice cap is shrinking… that much is known with certainty. Over the past century, the extent of the winter pack ice in the Nordic Seas has decreased by about 25%. Last winter the Bering Sea was effectively ice-free, which is unprecedented, and if this big melt continues, some say the...
February 05, 2002
When Every Minute Counts
A razor nick during a much-too-close-shave ten years ago may result in hundreds of thousands of lives saved in the future. Scientist Frank Hursey was working with absorptive materials back in the late 80’s when he cut himself shaving. He picked up a volcanic mineral he’d been studying and decided to...
May 30, 2002
ONR Announces Young Investigator Program Awards
The Office of Naval Research today announced the award of 26 grants totaling $8.4 million as a result of the Fiscal Year 2002 ONR Young Investigator Program competition. A total of 260 proposals were submitted in response to this year's program announcement. The Young Investigator Program supports...
February 05, 2003
A Glint of Light Will Unite Thousands of Children Worldwide
Arlington, VA -- Some 40,000 children from 26 countries around the world are participants in Project Starshine, a series of satellites that will measure the effects of solar storms on the earth's upper atmosphere. Starshine 3, is scheduled to be launched from Kodiak, Alaska on September 21st at 9:00...
September 21, 2001
A Match for Life
No bones about it, few would guess that the Office of Naval Research is the backbone of the National Bone Marrow Donor Program. In the 1950s, the Navy emerged as a pioneer in figuring out how to keep the body from rejecting organ transplants, including bone marrow transplants. For a bone marrow...
January 01, 2001
Move Over Smoke Detectors, Anthrax Detectors Are Coming
A researcher working under an Office of Naval Research grant is just a couple of months away from completing a prototype detector designed to sound the alarm when airborne microbes such as anthrax are in the air. Dr. Jeanne Small, a biophysicist and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Eastern...
October 01, 2001
A Surfeit of Eels
For centuries, schoolchildren have recited the tale of the demise of England's King Henry I, a cruel medieval monarch (blinded one kinsman, imprisoned another for 28 years) who died in a wretched state (so we're told) after dining on "…a surfeit of eels of which he was inordinately fond" thus...
June 01, 2001
Battling the Barnacle (and other ship-fouling critters)
By Gail Cleere, Office of Naval Research For as long as we’ve been building boats and putting them in the water, we’ve been battling those pesky little ocean critters that want to attach themselves to our boats for a free ride. The ubiquitous, determined barnacle — not to mention tubeworms, oysters...
January 01, 2001
Boneless, Brainy, and Ancient
How to make a robotic arm that is able to flex in an infinite number of ways and order it to do so without disorder and confusion? Get yourself an octopus and study it. That is exactly what researchers funded by the Office of Naval Research are doing. Octopuses are boneless, brainy, and ancient...
November 01, 2001
Brainy Cameras
In about half a second, the human brain (specifically the superior colliculus) will analyze its current environment, and then decide whether or not one thing or another is worth taking any notice of. Exactly how the brain does this is still somewhat a mystery, but we do know that the more sensory...
September 01, 2001