Tech
NASA's Aqua satellite and the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite provided views of the strength, extent and rainfall potential as Hurricane Sally was making landfall during the morning hours of Sept. 16.
Watches and Warnings
NOAA's National Hurricane Center has many warnings and watches in place today, Sept. 16. A Storm Surge Warning is in effect from Dauphin Island, Alabama to the Walton/Bay County Line, Florida. A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the Mississippi/Alabama border to the Okaloosa/Walton County line, Florida.
Although Earth is uniquely situated in the solar system to support creatures that call it home, different forms of life could have once existed, or might still exist, on other planets. But finding traces of past or current lifeforms on other worlds is challenging. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Analytical Chemistry have developed a fully automated microchip electrophoresis analyzer that, when incorporated into a planetary rover, could someday detect organic biosignatures in extraterrestrial soil.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, public transport agencies across North America have made significant adjustments to services, including cutting trip frequency in many areas while increasing it in others. In many cases, these changes, especially service cuts, have disproportionately affected areas where lower-income and more vulnerable groups live, according to a new study from McGill University.
Optical signals produced by laser sources are extensively used in fiber-optic communications, which work by pulsing information packaged as light through cables, even at great distances, from a transmitter to a receiver. Through this technology it is possible to transmit telephone conversations, internet messages and cable television images. The great advantage of this technology over electrical signal transmission is its bandwidth -- namely, the amount of information that can be broadcast.
The risk of severe coral bleaching--a condition in which corals lose their symbiotic algae, called zooxanthellae--is five times more frequent today than it was forty years ago. Coral bleaching is a direct result of global warming, where rising temperatures cause marine heat waves, which place stress on the living coral animals, as well as the photosynthetic algae on which they depend for energy. This heat stress causes the algae to malfunction, at which point they are expelled by the corals, causing the organisms to lose their color and appear white (thus the term coral "bleaching").
Before autonomous vehicles participate in road traffic, they must demonstrate conclusively that they do not pose a danger to others. New software developed at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) prevents accidents by predicting different variants of a traffic situation every millisecond.
NASA's Terra satellite obtained visible imagery of Tropical Storm Vicky as it continued moving through the eastern North Atlantic Ocean fighting strong wind shear. Outside winds are pushing at the storm and weakening it.
Terra Sees Wind Shear Tearing Vicky Apart
Colloidal particles have become increasingly important for research as vehicles of biochemical agents. In future, it will be possible to study their behaviour much more efficiently than before by placing them on a magnetised chip. A research team from the University of Bayreuth reports on these new findings in the journal Nature Communications. The scientists have discovered that colloidal rods can be moved on a chip quickly, precisely, and in different directions, almost like chess pieces.
During a research stay in the highlands of Colombia conducted as part of her doctorate, Charlotte Hopfe, PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Thomas Scheibel at the Biomaterials research group at the University of Bayreuth, has discovered and zoologically described a new species of spider. The previously unknown arachnids are native to the central cordillera, not far from the Pacific coast, at an altitude of over 3,500 meters above sea-level. In the magazine PLOS ONE, the scientist from Bayreuth presents the spider she has called Ocrepeira klamt.
Perfectionists often have high standards, not only for themselves but for their children. Yet, in their quest for perfection, they might find themselves with a less-than-ideal label: helicopter parent.
So-called helicopter parents engage in what's known as "over-parenting" - hovering over their young adult children and taking care of tasks that the children should be able to do themselves, such as cooking, cleaning or paying bills.
HOUSTON - (Sept. 16, 2020) - A simpler and more efficient way to predict performance will lead to better batteries, according to Rice University engineers.
That their method is 100,000 times faster than current modeling techniques is a nice bonus.
The analytical model developed by materials scientist Ming Tang and graduate student Fan Wang of Rice University's Brown School of Engineering doesn't require complex numerical simulation to guide the selection and design of battery components and how they interact.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the Moffitt Cancer Centre have created a mathematical model that can determine the impact of the immune system on tumour evolution. The information gained from using this model may be able to be used to predict whether immunotherapy is likely to be effective for a patient's cancer, helping to guide treatment decisions.
A battle between cancer cells and immune cells
Tropical cyclones can become post-tropical before they dissipate, meaning they can become sub-tropical, extra-tropical or a remnant low-pressure area. As Hurricane Paulette transitioned into an extra-tropical storm, NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of the powerful storm, and the National Hurricane Center issued their final advisory on the system.
What is a Post-tropical Storm?
Chat with an atmospheric scientist for more than a few minutes, and it's likely they'll start advocating for a planetary name change. Planet Ocean-Cloud is much more fitting than Earth, they'll say, when so much of our planet's life systems are affected by the interactions of clouds and the oceans.
The ability to predict the behavior of clouds gives meteorologists, climate scientists, physicists and others a better understanding of change of precipitation (currently one of the most difficult aspects of weather forecasting to predict) and improves climate modeling.
NASA analyzed the cloud top temperatures in Hurricane Teddy using infrared light to determine the strength of the storm. Infrared imagery revealed that the strongest storms were on Teddy's western side.
An Infrared View of Teddy
One of the ways NASA researches tropical cyclones is using infrared data that provides temperature information. Cloud top temperatures identify where the strongest storms are located. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and the colder the cloud top temperatures.