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News Release 04-061

United States Still Leads in Science and Engineering, But Uncertainties Complicate Outlook


National Science Board highlights workforce issues in its release of S&E Indicators 2004

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Cover of Science and Engineering Indicators 2004

The cover of S&E Indicators 2004 features a model of the potassium channel in the bacterium Streptomyces lividans. Roderick MacKinnon's discovery of the details of this structure and his explanation for how membranes pass electrical charge through cell walls led to his 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The potassium ion is shown in red at the center of the channel in the symmetrical structure. The surrounding four identical subunits of the protein are conserved in all known potassium ion channels. MacKinnon's work was supported by the National Institutes of Health at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), a facility developed around an accelerator funded by the National Science Foundation originally built for studies of high-energy physics. Credit: Cover image reprinted with permission from Science 280 (5360), April 3, 1998, copyright 1998 AAAS.

Credit: Cover image reprinted with permission from Science 280 (5360), April 3, 1998, copyright 1998 AAAS.