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GOAL: Promoting the discovery, integration, dissemination, and employment of new 

 knowledge in service to society. 



Research Project Support: The discoveries produced by NSF-funded research projects provide 

 a foundation for broad and useful applications of knowledge and the development of new 

 technologies. Researchers in the academic, government, and private sectors build upon the 

 results of NSF-funded work 



• Advanced Storage Systems Advanced storage systems are vital to the U S computer 

 industry's ability to maintain its competitive edge in world markets and continue its world 

 leadership of the information super-highway One crucial technology involves improving 

 recording heads as they access data at very small distances from rapidly spinning storage 

 discs Researchers at the Data Storage Systems Engineering Research Center combined the 

 effects of air bearing design, gas dynamics, dynamical mechanical forces between heads and 

 discs, and surface roughness and wear to develop state-of-the-art head/disk interface 

 simulation programs Companies such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Seagate Technology 

 have received licenses from the ERC to use this technology in the design of the next 

 generation of storage devices NSF has provided about $9 6 million to this ERC over the past 

 six years. 



• Geographic Data Display. With NSF support of $9 4 million over the past eight years, 

 researchers at the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) have 

 developed powerful methods for manipulating, correlating, analyzing, and displaying 

 geographic data Geographic information systems are a major tool in both the public and 

 private sectors for land use. transportation planning, and environmental management NCGIA 

 has developed automated support systems for spatial decision making and for processing 

 satellite and other remote sensing data These developments provide the key framework for 

 a multi-million dollar industry that develops geographic information systems 



• Energy Dissipation in Structural Systems. Over the last five years. NSF has invested 

 approximately $5 million in the area of passive energy dissipation As one part of this broader 

 field, research on energy dissipation and large deformations of thin-walled cylinder cluster 

 structural systems has provided extremely useful results Innovative energy absorption 

 hardware has been used to develop new transportation safety technologies, such as the 

 crash cushions located at the exits of many interstate highways and around temporary 

 construction sites The Federal Highway Administration estimates that the use of these 

 impact attenuation devices has prevented thousands of highway deaths and serious injuries 

 each year, with an annual savings of about $400 million. 



• Medical Imaging In keeping with its desire to fund scientific research with potentially 

 significant societal benefits, NSF is supporting a collaboration among researchers at the 

 Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer 

 Research Center, and Johns Hopkins University to detect signs of cancer in digitized 

 mammograms. Sophisticated astronomical image processing techniques, the product of 

 decades of investment by NSF and other Federal agencies, makes such research possible 

 In this case, image-processing software developed by NASA for the Hubble Space Telescope 

 reconstructs and filters images which, when applied to a digitized mammogram, enables 

 researchers to distinguish suspicious areas that may indicate breast cancer from other areas 

 With initial results showing promise, the team of researchers will work on refining and testing 

 the detection methods 



• Economics Over the past decade, NSF has provided about $160 million for fundamental 

 research in management and decision science, and economics This research has included 

 experiments that have been used to identify strengths and weaknesses of existing and 



