Tech
River systems are essential resources for everything from drinking water supply to power generation - but these systems are also hydrologically complex, and it is not always clear how water flow data from various monitoring points relates to any specific piece of infrastructure. Researchers from Cornell University and North Carolina State University have now developed a tool that draws from multiple databases to give water resource managers and infrastructure users the information they need to make informed decisions about water use on river networks.
If you have ever stepped into a car parked under the sun, you would be familiar with how hot it can get on the inside. This occurs because although sunlight can pass through the transparent windows, the thermal radiation re-emitted by the interior cannot, thereby creating a "greenhouse effect" and heating the inside of the car to temperatures as high as 82°C. Elderly people and children are at a particularly high risk of suffering heatstroke or hyperthermia at such temperatures.
Infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite revealed that dry air is eroding Tropical Storm Norbert, located off the coast of southwestern Mexico.
Infrared Data Reveals Dry Air Effects
On Oct. 7 at 4:30 a.m. EDT (0830 UTC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite gathered temperature information about Norbert's cloud tops. Infrared data provides temperature information, and the strongest thunderstorms that reach high into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures.
A NASA satellite rainfall product that incorporates data from satellites and observations found heavy rainfall occurring throughout Typhoon Chan-hom and the heaviest rainfall in the eyewall. Chan-hom is expected to bring rainfall to Japan on its track through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.
Chan-hom's Status on Sept. 18
How things deform and break is important for engineers, as it helps them choose and design what materials they're going to use for building things. Researchers at Aalto University and Tampere University have stretched metal alloy samples to their breaking point and filmed it using ultra-fast cameras to study what happens. Their discoveries have the potential to open up a whole new line of research in the study of materials deformation.
When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Caribbean Sea on Oct. 7, it gathered water vapor data on Hurricane Delta as Mexico's Yucatan continues to feel its effects.
Water vapor analysis of tropical cyclones tells forecasters how much potential a storm has to develop. Water vapor releases latent heat as it condenses into liquid. That liquid becomes clouds and thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone. Temperature is important when trying to understand how strong storms can be. The higher the cloud tops, the colder and stronger the storms.
An unusually shallow earthquake triggered by hydraulic fracturing in a Chinese shale gas field could change how experts view the risks of fracking for faults that lie very near the Earth's surface.
In the journal Seismological Research Letters, Hongfeng Yang of The Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues suggest that the magnitude 4.9 earthquake that struck Rongxian County, Sichuan, China on 25 February 2019 took place along a fault about one kilometer (0.6 miles) deep.
Researchers might be able to treat a troublesome cough in disease without disrupting the protective cough we need for optimal lung health, by targeting the different brain circuits involved. That's according to new research published this week in The Journal of Physiology.
More people seek medical advice for an unwanted, nagging cough than any other ailment. In some people their cough can persist for years without relief, as effective treatments are not readily available.
A device that stimulates the ears and tongue substantially reduced the severity of tinnitus symptoms in 326 patients for as long as 1 year, while achieving high patient satisfaction and adherence. The study - one of the largest clinical trials of a tinnitus treatment to date - indicates the bimodal technique could potentially provide the first effective, clinically viable device for tinnitus, which affects up to 15% of the population. This irritating auditory disorder manifests when patients perceive phantom noises such as ringing without any external input.
All cells with nuclei, from yeast to humans, are organized like cities, with a variety of small compartments - organelles - that serve as factories where various types of work are done. Some of those factories, like the ones that break down and recycle molecules, need to continually pump in protons - hydrogen atoms with their electrons stripped off - to maintain the acidic environment they need to do their job. For this they rely on molecular Ferris wheels.
The powerful electronics packed inside the latest smartphones can be a significant challenge to keep cool. KAUST researchers have developed a fast and efficient way to make a carbon material that could be ideally suited to dissipating heat in electronic devices. This versatile material could also have additional uses ranging from gas sensors to solar cells.
Neuroscientists have found new evidence that learning to play an instrument may be good for the brain. Musically trained children perform better at attention and memory recall and have greater activation in brain regions related to attention control and auditory encoding, executive functions known to be associated with improved reading, higher resilience, greater creativity, and a better quality of life.
Magnetic resonance imaging is the most sensitive and reliable technique for diagnosing and monitoring neurodegenerative diseases. Through the images obtained, we can make a complete anatomical analysis of the brain and detect atrophy in specific regions. However, the inspection of the images is usually visual, which means that certain signs of neurodegeneration, invisible to the human eye, are not detected until the damage is already advanced.
The roles of scientists change as research teams become more interdisciplinary and larger, finds new research from ESMT Berlin. Contemporary scientific challenges increasingly require large teams and interdisciplinary perspectives. However, it is not fully understood how these trends affect the division of labor among team members. In other words, how do team members divide the work and how do teams assure that individuals' contributions are brought back together to solve a scientific problem?
A new IIASA-led study shows that coordinated international action on energy-efficient, climate-friendly cooling could avoid as much as 600 billion tonnes CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions in this century.
Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are mainly used for cooling and refrigeration. While they were originally developed to replace ozone-depleting substances that are being phased out under the Montreal Protocol, many HFCs are potent greenhouse gases with a global warming potential up to 12,400 times that of CO2 over a 100-year period.