For some, finding just the right light can make the difference between a good room and a great room. GE's new iPhone app should help: it lets you choose a desired mood and tells you which bulb can achieve it. More »
North Americans may remember 2005 as the year of Hurricane Katrina, but below the equator another fearsome tempest wrought its own devastation that year. From January 16th to 18th a line of thunderstorms tore through the Amazon basin, and researchers who conducted a botanical “body count” after the storm estimate that it laid low between 441 and 663 million trees.
Over the course of two days, a squall line measuring 620 miles (1,000 km) long and 124 miles (200 km) wide raged across the region from southwest to northeast, with buzzsaw-like winds of 90 mph (146 km/hr) causing widespread damage to property and a handful of deaths [Time].
Jeffrey Chambers, a forest ecologist at Tulane University, wanted to assess the damage caused throughout the massive Amazon basin, so he turned to satellites.
Using satellite images of about 34,000 square kilometers of the region from 2004 and comparing them with post-storm images, the researchers discovered that the wind had cut an enormous swath through the rainforest, running in a northeasterly direction across the Amazon basin. In all, the storm affected possibly 70% of the basin. [ScienceNOW]
Previously, other researchers had suggested that drought was responsible for a massive tree die-off in 2005, but Chambers says the satellite data and investigations of five field sites disproved the drought theory. In the hardest hit areas, the researchers found up to 80 percent of the trees snapped in half or blown over from their roots. Says Chambers:
“If a tree dies from drought, it generally dies standing…. It looks very different from trees that die snapped by a storm.” [Discovery News]
The paper and its full details will appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Environmentalists note that the huge blow-down didn’t do the planet any favors, since the Amazon acts as a carbon sink–its living trees suck up and store planet-warming carbon dioxide. But as fallen trees rot, they release their stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. What’s more, some climate change forecasts predict that there will be more severe storms in a warmer world, so it’s possible that the Amazon will be battered by more mega-storms in the future.
Related Content:
80beats: Amazonians Turned Poor Land Into Great Farms—and Healthy Ecosystems
80beats: Massive Hydroelectric Dam in the Amazon Will Go Ahead
80beats: Next Year’s Nike: Amazon-Friendly Air Jordans
80beats: Researchers Find the Lost “Garden Cities” of the Ancient Amazon
DISCOVER: Clear-Cutting Has a High Cost
Image: Jeffrey Chambers/Tulane University
The talented professors/writers Claudia Dreifus and Andrew Hacker have a new book coming out in August called Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It. It's a topic CM and I frequently explore here so I'm very much looking forward to this one. Yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Eduction included an interesting article adapted from their book entitled, Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission? Good question. Hacker and Dreifus begin: Tuition charges at both public and private colleges have more than doubled—in real dollars—compared with a generation ago. For most Americans, educating their offspring will be the largest financial outlay, after their home mortgage, they'll ever make. And if parents can't or won't pay, young people often find themselves burdened with staggering loans. Graduating with six figures' worth of debt is becoming increasingly common. So are colleges giving good value for those investments? What are families buying? What are individuals—and our society as a whole—gaining from higher education?
So after years of interviews with policymakers, students, and university leaders... Their conclusion?
Colleges are taking on too many roles and doing none of them well. They are staffed by casts ...
Breaking up is hard to do, especially in the age of the internet. How can you really avoid her when there's Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of it? With the new Ex-Blocker plugin, that's how. More »
anyone familiar with NPK Enhanced Efficiency Fertilizers
NASA OIG Review of Constellation Program Manager Jeffrey Hanley's Reassignment
"The OIG found that Hanley's reassignment was a management decision made by Douglas Cooke, Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems, with the concurrence of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, and was taken in response to actions by Hanley that led senior NASA leadership to believe he could no longer effectively lead Constellation during a period when the President was seeking to cancel the Program in the face of significant congressional opposition. ... The OIG review found that Hanley does not claim he was retaliated against through this reassignment and we uncovered no evidence of unlawful reprisal. The OIG also found no evidence to suggest that Hanley was reassigned in order to delay or thwart execution of the Constellation Program or to foreclose Congress's ability to consider alternatives to the Administration's plan for NASA."
Text of Letter from NASA OIG to Sens. Rockefeller and Hutchison Regarding Jeff Hanley's Reassignment
"After attending the speech. Hanley sent Bolden an e-mail later that day with the subject line "Respectfully submitted." In the e-mail, Hanley thanked Bolden for his words of support, but requested that Bolden "hear us out'" regarding Constellation. He told Bolden that "Walking away so lightly from a focused concerted effort to explore in our lifetimes should be reconsidered," and questioned Bolden for "decisions being made without yourself ever receiving a briefing from anyone in the program as to what we are all about."' He continued that "to not hear our story, directly, and to hear NASA leadership and administration officials further spread the spin and accusations of others without giving us a chance to rebutt [sic] or respond does not align with the core values you recited to us today."
Sure, your GPS-enabled cellphone might tell you which way is north, but why settle for a mere compass when you can monitor the Earth’s entire magnetic field?
According to its developer, Tomasso, a Droid app called Solaris weaves together data from several satellites that monitor the Sun’s activity and its effects on our planet’s magnetic field.
NASA satellite team STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) provides information on “Earth-directed solar ejections.” NASA’s SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) also gives stats on what the Sun is sending our way in the forms of solar wind and energetic particles. Finally, the NOAA’s polar orbiter satellites provide information on the Earth’s weather.
Combining this information, the app allegedly can show (almost) real-time changes in the Earth’s magnetic field from solar activity and even indicate when trapped, Sun-spewed subatomic particles are making a spectacular show, in the form of the northern or southern lights.
The app can also tell you when to look up since, as reported by Gizmodo, the “Phone vibrates when geomagnetic storm level rises or aurora may be overhead at your location.”
Related content:
Discoblog: NASA iPhone App Lets You Drive a Lunar Rover (Just Try Not to Get Stuck)
Discoblog: Need to Find the Big Dipper? There’s an App for That
Discoblog: iCop: Police to Use Facial Recognition App to Nab Criminals
Discoblog: Augmented Reality Phone App Can Identify Strangers on the Street
Discoblog: iPhone Translator App Speaks for You, Using Your Mouth
Image: Solaris / Tomasso via AndriodPIT
We all check the weather in habitual, niche ways. Some watch the news, others glance at their phones. And others still? They require nothing short of 6,000 windows illuminated by 72,000 RGB LEDs that abstractly report the weather. More »
Hi, what is the difference between air handling units and fan coil units, and why in some chilled water AC systems they connect the AHU to a FCU?
WHAT IS THE HARDNESS OF EN8A AS PER STANDARD
Any ideas of Spray Gun Companies that I might consult regarding Spray Coating Technology involving very viscous / quick seperating coating material?
Thank - you
Finally, a big head comes in handy.
For a study out this week in Neurology, scientists looked at 270 Alzheimer’s patients from the Multi-Institutional Research in Alzheimer’s Genetic Epidemiology study (MIRAGE) and found that a larger head size was correlated with better-preserved cognitive and memory skills. The team, led by Robert Perneczky, argues that a bigger cranial circumference could mean a person has more “brain reserve,” offering some protection against the deterioration brought on by Alzheimer’s.
Finding this out took a lot more than just scanning the patients for cerebral atrophy and then wrapping a tape measure around their heads to gauge circumference:
They took blood to see which variant of the APOE gene was in their DNA (having one or two copies of the e4 version of APOE is thought to increase one’s risk of Alzheimer’s). They looked up the results of each patient’s most recent mini-mental state examination (MMSE) to measure cognitive function. They also took into account each patient’s age and ethnicity, how long they’d had Alzheimer’s and whether they had diabetes, hypertension or major depression [Los Angeles Times].
When the scientists controlled for the other factors and simply compared head size to cognitive function, they found that patients with the larger heads scored higher on the MMSE cognitive test.
Unfortunately for most of us, the brain reaches nearly its full size—93 percent of it—by the time we’re 6. So if the researchers are right about brain size and its effect against the ravages of Alzheimer’s, then the best time to start protecting a person’s mental health late in life is early in life.
Dr Simon Ridley, head of research for the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: “Alzheimer’s is a very complex disease, so we should be careful not to focus too much on a single risk factor, particularly as there is little we can do about the size of our heads. The researchers have also posed the idea that nutrition, injury or infection in early life can have an impact on brain reserve, suggesting that we should look after our brain from day one” [BBC News].
Related Content:
80beats: Lack of ZZZZs Linked to Alzheimer’s in Mice
80beats: Big Neurons & Way With Words May Help Prevent Alzheimer’s
80beats: A Toke a Day Might Keep Alzheimer’s Away
80beats: New Theory of Alzheimer’s: Brain’s Memory Center Is “Overworked”
Image: flickr / Délirante bestiole
NASA Announces Three New Centennial Challenges
"NASA announced three new Centennial Challenges Tuesday, with an overall prize purse of $5 million. NASA's Centennial Challenges are prize competitions for technological achievements by independent teams who work without government funding. NASA sponsors prize competitions because the agency believes student teams, private companies of all sizes and citizen-inventors can provide creative solutions to problems of interest to NASA and the nation," said Bobby Braun, the agency's chief technologist."
i have 3phase, 415V, 50Hz squirrel cage motor.
what is starting torque of the motor?
Motor Nominal RPM is 1500.
current of motor during star connection is 89A.
current of motor delta connection is 52A.
Can anybody have solution?
what is starting torque of mo
Does some one know about bakelite - also does any one know were to obtain a Bakelite Machine (new or used) assuming some devise has to make bakelite :Thanks
Full details follow. Hope very much to see you there!
Word for Word Université at Bryant Park
In cooperation with Oxford University Press
Presents
Stephen Asma, author of On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears
In conversation with
Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy Blog and Library
“Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, monsters have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for many centuries. Using philosophical treatises, theological tracts, newspapers, films, and novels, author Stephen T. Asma unpacks traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of our fears and fascinations throughout the ages.” – Amazon.com review
Please join us for a fascinating discussion of the monsters in our lives and our need to classify them. Stephen Asma is the distinguished scholar and Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago. Joanna Ebenstein is the creator and writer of the Morbid Anatomy blog and the related Brooklyn-based Morbid Anatomy Library.
Place: Bryant Park Reading Room*
Date: July 21, 2010
Time: 7pm
This program is free to the public. For more details, visit http://www.bryantpark.org.
*The Bryant Park Reading Room is located on the 42nd Street side of Bryant Park, between 5th Avenue and Sixth Avenue. Look for the big burgundy/white umbrellas.
Directions to Bryant Park: Subways B, D, F, V to 6th Ave. @ 42nd St. 7 line to 5th Ave.@ 42nd St.; Bus M1, M2, M3, M4, Q32, to 5th Ave.@ 42nd St.; M5, M6, M7 to 6th Ave.@ 42nd St.
Image: As used in Asma's book, and as seen in the Anatomical Theatre exhibition: Museum of Anatomical Waxes “Luigi Cattezneo” (Museo Delle Cere Anatomiche “Luigi Cattaneo”): Bologna, Italy "Iniope–conjoined twins" Wax anatomical model; Cesare Bettini, Early 19th Century
NASA Chief Technologist Hosts Forum to Discuss New Space Technology Programs
"NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist will host a Space Technology Industry Forum at the University of Maryland on July 13-14 to discuss the agency's proposed new space technology investments. The event will focus on the President's fiscal year 2011 budget for NASA's new Space Technology Programs. Representatives from industry, academia, and the federal government are invited to learn the latest plans for these programs and discuss strategy, development, and implementation of these broadly applicable technology development activities."
The European space probe Rosetta passed about 3000 km from the asteroid Lutetia on Saturday, July 10, 2010, and it sent back incredible closeup images of the rock. Check ’em out below!
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If you have any questions or feedback, please email webmaster@discovermagazine.com. Thank you for reading Discover, and we apologize for the inconvenience.
–
Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog has more details, as always.
Related posts:
- Rosetta takes some home pictures
- Rosetta swings past home one final time
- Rosetta swings by Mars
And no, I don't mean sexy. This is a NASA image from the start of hurricane season, showing the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and especially in the main hurricane development region. I got the image from this great analysis over at the WWF Climate Blog, which is mainly devoted to summarizing a recent congressional briefing on why we very likely have a really bad hurricane year to look forward to. Some observations that emerged from that meeting:
* We've never had a pre-season forecast of 23 storms before. Let's hope that is an overshot, rather than an undershot.
* The Atlantic is even hotter than it was before the devastating 2005 hurricane season.
* Oh yeah, and there's oil out there. (The title of the briefing was "Hurricanes and Oil Will Mix: Managing Risk Now.") How much of the Atlantic's current, alarming temperature has to do with global warming? Well, listen to Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research:
When asked about the degree to which rising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere were contributing to the trend of rising sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean, Holland said the temperatures could not be explained without accounting for rising GHG concentrations. He said that ...
Good Day
Can u please help me with my design regarding Automated Paddy Dryer
The dryer is programmed to maintain its temperature
It also programmed that when the desired amount of moisture is reached, the system will automatically stops
Thanks
