Welcome to the NAI Newsletter! The Newsletter is a compendium of announcements, events, updates, and news items related to the NAI and its research. If you have news items or suggestions you can send them to the editor, Marco Boldt at: Marco.Boldt@nasa.gov.
Newsletter for July 9, 2007
- NSBRI Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Accepting Applications
- NAI Selects Six Lewis and Clark Field Scholars
- Chemical Complexity in an Old Star
- Methane in the Martian Atmosphere
- Evidence for Ancient Ocean on Mars
- Extracellular Protein-Metal Aggregates: A New Biosignature?
NSBRI Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Accepting Applications
The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) is soliciting applications for its Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Two-year fellowships are available in any U.S. laboratory carrying out space-related biomedical or biotechnological research that supports the NSBRI's goals. NSBRI research addresses and seeks solutions to the various health concerns associated with long-duration human space exploration.
Applicants must submit proposals with the support of a mentor and institution, and all proposals will be evaluated by a peer-review panel. The program is open to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or persons with pre-existing visas obtained through their sponsoring institutions that permit postdoctoral training for the project's duration.
Detailed program and application submission information is available on the NSBRI Web site at www.nsbri.org/Announcements/rfa07-02.html. Notices of intent are due July 10, 2007, and the application deadline is August 1, 2007.
NAI Selects Six Lewis and Clark Field Scholars
The NAI and the American Philosophical Society (APS), the oldest learned society in North America and the sponsor of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery in 1804, are partners in the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research in Astrobiology. This program provides opportunities for the continued exploration of the world around us through research grants in support of astrobiological field studies–encouraging the best young scientists to engage in the exploration vision of NASA. This year, six Lewis and Clark Field Scholars were jointly selected by the NAI and APS. Their projects span the breadth of astrobiology research – and the globe – taking them this summer to locales such as Iceland, Greenland, Utah, and the Andes. For more information on the program, go to: http://nai.nasa.gov/funding/LewisandClarklist.cfm
Recently Published Research from the NAI
Chemical Complexity in an Old Star
Scientists from NAI's University of Arizona Team have studied the outflow of VY Canis Majoris, an oxygen-rich supergiant star. Thier results show that, against expectations, an old, oxygen-rich star can synthesize a chemically varied molecular cocktail. The study is published in this week's Nature, and a News and Views about the paper is also available.
Methane in the Martian Atmosphere
Scientists from NAI's IPTAI Team have a paper out in Geophysical Research Letters detailing a new mechanism for recent methane release on Mars. Their results show that increasing salinity can cause destabilization of subsurface methane hydrates, and that active thermal or pressure fluctuations are not required to account for the presence of methane in the atmosphere.
Evidence for Ancient Ocean on Mars
Scientists from NAI's University of California, Berkeley Team have a new paper out in Nature outlining evidence for the presence of an ancient ocean on Mars. The study points to a large body of liquid water at the pole which could have shifted Mars' spin axis. This shift would have in turn deformed the shoreline of this ocean relative to the rest of the surface topography, in accordance with observations.
Extracellular Protein-Metal Aggregates: A New Biosignature?
Deep inside a flooded mine in Wisconsin, scientists from NAI’s University of California, Berkeley Team have discovered an environment in which bacteria emit proteins that sweep up metal nanoparticles into immobile clumps. Their finding may lead to innovative ways to remediate subsurface metal toxins, and have exciting implications for identifying biosignatures on Earth and other worlds. The research, published in the June 14th issue of Science, was done in collaboration with a team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Astrobiology EPO, Undergrads, Grads, Postdocs
Online Documentary from the "Martian" Desert
Pennsylvania State University grad student Irene Schneider served as radiation specialist on a recent expedition to the Mars Desert Research Station in the Utah desert. The crew simulated living and working on Mars, with extensive extravehicular activity. Their mission: "Emergency Preparedness." Follow along with her experiences in this new online documentary: http://www.rps.psu.edu/explorations/mars/feature.html.
Your Assistance is needed for Bioastronomy 2007 Meeting
Many NAI members will be attending next week's Bioastronomy meeting in San Juan Puerto Rico. As an experiment at this interdisciplinary conference, we have asked our meeting attendees to define jargon and vocabulary words that someone outside their discipline might not understand in an interdisciplinary event. We have had quite good response to this, but would like to fill out our list a bit more, and are asking you to help. Think back to your recent talks or upcoming talks and select a few words you use that could be entered into our glossary. Our hope is that this will be a continuing/ evolving resource for the whole institute.
We will be producing our final handouts for shipping on Wed 7/11, so if you could take a few moments first thing on Tues 7/10 to contribute it would be greatly appreciated!
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/UHNAI/bioast07.htm
Click on the science program button, then speaker's glossary (you can search and add, or look at the glossary we have to date).
As an example, I gave a talk earlier this semester to a diverse group, being careful to define real jargon, but didn't realize that while the biologists had the gist of what a "comet" was in my talk, they didn't appreciate it well enough to fully understand the context of my talk. By the same token, I recently participated in a volcanology conference - and while many of the terms were things I'd heard before, they were not things I could define for someone, and after pestering the volcanologists during all the breaks for definitions e.g. pyroclastic flow, dykes, rootless cone etc.), I really appreciated the science presented at a much greater level and started to see how it was applicable to comet physics.
Kind regards,
Karen Meech
LOC Chair
Formation, Composition and Early Evolution of Outer Giant and Dwarf Planets and of their Satellites
Date: December 6-7th, 2007
Time: TBA
Venue: NASA Ames Research Center, Auditorium, Building N-245, Mountain View, CA
Organizing Committee: Ignacio Mosqueira (NASA Ames/SETI Institute), Dale Cruikshank (NASA Ames)
Owing to spacecraft missions and groundbased observations, we possess a wealth of Solar System data. The richness of the observations should provide a solid foundation for our understanding of the early history of the Solar System. Yet, this abundance also means that in practice one must subdivide the problem into more manageable pieces. While this is a practical approach, before reliable conclusions can be obtained in this way, they must survive consistency checks, and a battery of tests involving a sufficiently broad observational sample. Only then can we attain a deeper understanding of the origins of planetary systems in general, and the Solar System in particular.
The objective of this meeting is to address a number of key aspects of the early history of the outer Solar System. The emphasis is on the origin of the giant and dwarf planets and of their satellites, and on the connections and contrasts that exist between planetary and satellite systems. The aim is to bring together a diverse group of researchers employing independent sets of constraints. Discussion of laboratory work will be included when appropriate.
Note: Please email Ignacio Mosqueira at mosqueir@cosmic.arc.nasa.gov if you are interested in attending this meeting.
For more information: http://spacescience.arc.nasa.gov/agu/
AbSciCon 2008 Call for Session Topic Proposals
The Science Steering Committee of the 2008 Astrobiology Science Conference (April 15-17, Santa Clara, California, USA) invites proposals for sessions related to the major scientific themes: "The Astronomical and Planetary Context for Life", "The Origin and Evolution of Life", and "The Search for Life in our Solar System and Beyond".
To submit proposals, and for more details, please go to the conference website, http://abscicon.seti.org.
The deadline for submission of session topic proposals is July 23, 2007.
Questions can be addressed to: session.proposals@seti.org.
