Two and a half years of meager rain have shriveled crops, killed livestock and brought the Horn of Africa, one of the world’s poorest regions, to famine’s brink. Millions of people have faced food and water shortages. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, seeking relief. A below-normal forecast for the current rainy season means the suffering could continue.

Human-caused climate change has made droughts of such severity at least 100 times as likely in this part of Africa as they were in the preindustrial era, an international team of scientists said in a study released Thursday. The findings starkly illustrate the misery that the burning of fossil fuels, mostly by wealthy countries, inflicts on societies that emit almost nothing by comparison.

In parts of the nations hit hardest by the drought — Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia — climate hazards have piled on top of political and economic vulnerabilities. The region’s string of weak rainy seasons is now the longest in around 70 years of reliable rainfall records. But according to the study, what has made this drought exceptional isn’t just the poor rain, but the high temperatures that have parched the land.

The study estimated that periods as hot and dry as the recent one now have a roughly 5 percent chance of developing each year in the region — a figure that is poised to rise as the planet continues to warm, said Joyce Kimutai, principal meteorologist at the Kenya Meteorological Department and the study’s lead author. “We’re likely to see the combined effect of low precipitation with temperatures causing really exceptional droughts in this part of the world.”

Climate groups have for years pointed to the calamity in East Africa as evidence of the immense harm inflicted on poor regions by global warming from emissions of heat-trapping gases. The new analysis could give more ammunition to those urging polluter nations to pay for the economic damage attributable to their emissions.

“This vital study shows that climate change is not just something our children need to worry about — it’s already here,” said Mohamed Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa, a think tank in Nairobi, Kenya. “People on the front lines of the climate crisis need, and deserve, financial help to recover and rebuild their lives.”

At United Nations climate talks last year in Egypt, diplomats from nearly 200 countries agreed to establish a fund to help vulnerable nations cope with climate disasters.

“Now we must ensure that the fund is made fit for purpose,” said Harjeet Singh, head of political strategy for Climate Action Network International. “This means rich nations and big polluters paying their share to bring the fund to life and to ensure that adequate money reaches those affected on the ground before it is too late.”

In Somalia in particular, the dryness has compounded the instability caused by years of armed conflict. There, the drought may have caused 43,000 excess deaths last year, according to estimates issued last month. Nearly half of these were among children younger than 5.

The new analysis was conducted by Dr. Kimutai and 18 other researchers as part of World Weather Attribution, a scientific collaboration that tries to untangle the influence of human-induced climate change on specific heat waves, floods and other episodes of extreme weather. The study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, though it relies on methods that are widely used and accepted by researchers.

Scientists know that global warming is increasing the average likelihood and severity of certain kinds of wild weather in many regions. But to understand how it has affected a particular one-off event, they need to dig deeper. It’s like smoking and cancer: The two are undeniably linked, but not all smokers develop cancer, and not all cancer patients were smokers. Each person is slightly different, and so is every weather event.

To determine the effects of global warming on individual weather episodes, climate researchers use computer simulations to compare the global climate as it really is — with billions of tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by humans over decades — and a hypothetical climate without any of those emissions.

The authors of the new study examined the drought in East Africa by looking at data on average rainfall over 24 months and during both of the region’s wet seasons, one between March and May and the other between October and December. Their mathematical models showed that climate change had made springtime rains as weak as the recent ones about twice as likely. The models also showed that climate change was having the opposite effect on the fall rainy seasons, making them wetter. And they indicated no effect on combined rainfall over two-year periods.

A different picture emerged, however, when the researchers looked at both rainfall and evapotranspiration, or how much water leaves the soil because of warm temperatures. Their models showed that global warming had made combinations of high evapotranspiration and poor rainfall as severe as the recent spell at least 100 times as likely as they were before the Industrial Revolution.

Scientists are getting a much better grasp on the atmospheric conditions that lead the rains to fail above the Horn of Africa, and on how global warming might be affecting them.

In recent decades, when the Pacific Ocean has experienced La Niña conditions, the trade winds strengthen and push warm water from the ocean’s eastern end toward its western one. Heat builds up in the western equatorial Pacific around Indonesia, causing moist air to rise from the sea surface and form thunderstorms. This in turn affects the circulation of air above the Indian Ocean, which draws more moisture from the western end of that ocean toward the eastern end, and leaves less to fall as rain above the Horn of Africa.

Climate change has been steadily heating up the surface of the western Pacific, which amplifies this sequence of events and increases the odds of poor rains in East Africa during La Niña periods.

Improved scientific understanding has helped forecasters predict the recent weak rainfall in East Africa months in advance, said Chris Funk, a climate scientist and director of the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“That’s light-years ahead of where we were in 2010 or 2016,” he said, referring to years that preceded past droughts in the region.

Policymakers in East Africa need to help communities become better equipped to recover from future droughts — for instance, by encouraging the use of drought-tolerant crops and livestock, said Phoebe Wafubwa Shikuku, an adviser in Nairobi with the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies. “Drought will continue to happen,” she said. “Now we have to look at, How do we address the various impacts?”

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Q: What can we do to avoid getting arthritis as we age?

What was once an easy run may feel tougher to complete. Or perhaps a challenging game of tennis might leave your hip or ankle sore for days.

Painful, stiff or swollen joints are a common complaint among older adults — and for many, they’re the first sign of what may feel like an unavoidable diagnosis: arthritis.

In a recent survey of more than 2,200 people between ages 50 and 80 in the United States, 60 percent said they had been told by a health care provider that they had some form of arthritis. And about three-quarters considered joint pain and arthritis a normal part of aging.

But arthritis is not inevitable as we age, said Kelli Dominick Allen, an exercise physiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

“Sometimes people will start to get aches and pains in their joints and not do anything about it because they think everyone gets arthritis as they get older,” Dr. Allen said. “We shouldn’t think about arthritis as something that we just have to deal with passively.”

Arthritis is a catchall term for the more than 100 kinds of inflammatory joint conditions, each of which can arise for different reasons. Many of those causes have little to do with age, Dr. Allen said.

One form of degenerative joint disease, though, known as osteoarthritis, is somewhat more likely to occur as a person gets older, said Dr. Wayne McCormick, a geriatrician at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “It’s basically just worn-out joints,” he said.

Osteoarthritis is most commonly seen among people over 50, particularly women, Dr. Allen said.

Scientists don’t know precisely why some people are more prone to joint inflammation and pain with age than others. But about 12 percent of osteoarthritis cases are a result of joint injuries, such as meniscus or ligament tears, from when they were young.

Arthritis is also more common among people who have a family history of the condition, or who have certain chronic conditions such as obesity, heart disease or diabetes.

Some people may find that their joint pain limits their activities as they age. But others, whose X-rays may show significantly worn-out joints, may experience no pain at all, Dr. McCormick said. As a result, he added, “each person has to develop their own plan of how to stay healthy and functional with the help of their physician.”

For most people, Dr. Allen said, preventing arthritis later in life should begin many years before it is a concern — by taking steps to prevent joint injuries during sports or exercise, and recovering properly when they occur.

For those who are not at risk of developing sports-related injuries, staying physically active and maintaining a healthy weight can help to prevent excessive wear and tear of your joints and to reduce pain if arthritis sets in later in life, Dr. Allen said.

In a 2015 review of 44 clinical trials, for instance, researchers found that participants who exercised regularly had reduced knee pain related to osteoarthritis and improved physical function and quality of life.

“It actually does help if you can do low-impact exercise, like a stationary bicycle where your knees, hips and joints aren’t receiving so much impact,” Dr. McCormick said. Strengthening muscles such as the quadriceps and hamstrings helps to support the joints, he added.

In addition to regular exercise, supportive knee or ankle braces, over-the-counter pain medications such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen, or steroid injections into a problematic joint can all help relieve joint pain to varying degrees, Dr. McCormick said.

Not every option works for everyone, he added, so it’s important to explore and find what helps you to stay active.

Similarly, dietary supplements such as glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate — or herbal remedies such as Boswellia (an herbal extract made from the bark of the Boswellia tree) — may help relieve symptoms for some people. But there isn’t much scientific evidence to support their use, Dr. Allen said.

“There have been a fair number of clinical trials, but really mixed evidence on their effects,” she said.

But Dr. McCormick said that, in his experience, it’s “very unusual for these supplements to be harmful,” so they could be worth trying — or stopping if they don’t seem to help.

Ultimately, finding ways to live a pain-free, active and healthy lifestyle is the best way to reduce your risk of developing arthritis later in life, Dr. Allen said.

Many of the actions that reduce the risk for other chronic conditions such as diabetes or heart disease “are really powerful tools” for lowering age-related joint disease risk too, Dr. Allen said.

“Somebody who’s trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle will already be doing the things that are most important for reducing arthritis risk,” she said.

Jyoti Madhusoodanan is an independent journalist based in Portland, Ore.

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India's decennial census - scheduled to be held in 2021 - has been delayed, so there's no official population data. China's most recent - and seventh census - was conducted in 2020.

To estimate and project populations of both India and China, the UN relies on information about levels and trends in fertility, mortality and migration acquired from records, surveys and administrative data.

What is clear is that both India and China have more than 1.4 billion people each, and for over 70 years have accounted for more than a third of the global population.

China's population is likely to begin shrinking next year. Last year, 10.6 million people were born, a little more than the number of deaths, thanks to a rapid drop in fertility rate. According to the UN, the Chinese population will continue to fall and could drop to below a billion before the end of the century.

India's fertility rate has also fallen substantially in recent decades - from 5.7 births per woman in 1950 to two births per woman today - but the rate of decline has been slower. India's population is virtually certain to continue to grow for several decades - the UN expects the population to peak around 2064, and then decline gradually.

So what does India overtaking China as the most populous country in the world mean?

China reduced its population faster than India

China reduced its population growth rate by about half from 2% in 1973 to 1.1% in 1983.

Demographers say much of this was achieved by riding roughshod over human rights - two separate campaigns promoting just one child and then later marriages, longer gaps between children and fewer of them - in what was a predominantly rural and overwhelmingly uneducated and poor country.

Investments in public health and increased education for women and their participation in the workforce, among other things, also contributed to the decline in fertility.

India's population more than trebled in the six decades after independence - from 361 million people in 1951 to more than 1.2 billion in 2011.

India saw rapid population growth - almost 2% annually - for much of the second half of the last century. Over time, death rates fell, life expectancy rose and incomes went up. More people - especially those living in cities - accessed clean drinking water and modern sewerage. "Yet the birth rate remained high," says Tim Dyson, a demographer at the London School of Economics.

India launched a family planning programme in 1952 and laid out a national population policy for the first time only in 1976, about the time China was busy reducing its birth rate.

But forced sterilisations of millions of poor people in an overzealous family planning programme during the 1975 Emergency - when civil liberties were suspended - led to a social backlash against family planning. "Fertility decline would have been faster for India if the Emergency hadn't happened and if politicians had been more proactive. It also meant that all subsequent governments treaded cautiously when it came to family planning," Prof Dyson says.

East Asian countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand, which launched population programmes much later than India, achieved lower fertility levels, cut infant and maternal mortality rates, raised incomes and improved human development earlier than India.

India no longer fears a population explosion

India has added more than a billion people since independence in 1947, and its population is expected to grow for another 40 years.

But its population growth rate has been declining for decades now, and the country has defied dire predictions about a "demographic disaster".

So India having more people than China is no longer significant in a "concerning" way, say demographers.

Rising incomes and improved access to health and education have helped Indian women have fewer children than before, effectively flattening the growth curve.

Fertility rates have dipped below replacement levels - two births per woman - in 17 out of 22 states and federally administered territories. (A replacement level is one at which new births are sufficient to maintain a steady population.)

According to Pew Research Center, all religious groups in India have shown major declines in fertility rates, based on data available in India's decennial census and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).

As a result there have been only "modest changes" in the religious make-up of the people since 1951.

Fertility rates among all religious groups have declined, according to official data.

The decline in birth rates has been faster in southern India than in the more populous north. "It is a pity that more of India could not have been like south India," says Prof Dyson. "All things being equal, rapid population growth in parts of north India have depressed living standards".

However, overtaking China could be significant

It could, for example, strengthen India's claim to a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, which has five permanent members, including China.

India is a founding member of the UN and has always insisted that its claim to a permanent seat is just. "I think you have certain claims on things [by being the country with largest population]," says John Wilmoth, director of the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

The way India's demography is changing is also significant, according to KS James, director of the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences.

Despite drawbacks, India deserves some credit for managing a "healthy demographic transition", by using family planning in a democracy which was both poor and largely uneducated, says Prof James. "Most countries did this after they had achieved higher literacy and living standards."

More good news: one in five people below 25 years in the world is from India and 47% of Indians are below the age of 25. Two-thirds of Indians were born after India liberalised its economy in the early 1990s.

This group of young Indians have some unique characteristics, says Shruti Rajagopalan, an economist, in a new paper. "This generation of young Indians will be the largest consumer and labour source in the knowledge and network goods economy. Indians will be the largest pool of global talent," she says.

But there are serious challenges

India needs to create enough jobs for its young working age population to reap a demographic dividend. Only 40% of India's working-age population works or wants to work, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

More women would need jobs as they spend less time in their working age giving birth and looking after children. The picture here is bleaker - only 10% of working-age women were participating in the labour force in October, according to CMIE, compared with 69% in China.

Then there's migration. Some 200 million Indians have migrated within the country - between states and districts - and their numbers are bound to grow. Most are workers who leave villages for cities to find work.

"Our cities will grow as migration increases because of lack of jobs and low wages in villages. Can they provide migrants a reasonable living standard? Otherwise, we will end up with more slums and disease," says S Irudaya Rajan, a migration expert at Kerala's International Institute of Migration and Development.

Demographers say India also needs to stop child marriages, prevent early marriages and properly register births and deaths. A skewed sex ratio at birth - meaning more boys are born than girls - remains a worry.

Political rhetoric about "population control" appears to be targeted at Muslims, the country's largest minority when, in reality, "gaps in childbearing between India's religious groups are generally much smaller than they used to be", according to a study from Pew Research Center.

Ageing deserves more attention

Demographers say the ageing of India receives little attention.

In 1947, India's median age was 21. A paltry 5% of people were above the age of 60.

Today, the median age is over 28, and more than 10% of Indians are over 60 years. Southern states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu achieved replacement levels at least 20 years ago.

In Kerala, for example, the rise in population between 2001 and 2011 was lowest (4.9%) among states. A newborn in the state can expect to live for 75 years, against the national average of 69. Smaller families here ensure that children are educated well. This leads to the young migrating quickly within and outside the country for opportunities, leaving their parents at home.

The UN estimates that between 2023 and 2050, the number of people aged 65 and above is expected to nearly double in China, and to more than double in India, "posing significant challenges to the capacity of healthcare and social insurance systems".

"As the working-age population declines, supporting an older population will become a growing burden on the government's resources," says Rukmini S, author of Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India.

"Family structures will have to be recast and elderly persons living alone will become an increasing source of concern," she says.

Charts by Shadab Nazmi

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The top-10 listing was released Thursday in the journal Circulationand is the first time the association has ranked popular diets. In a news release, it said it hoped the list would help the public and medical professionals wade through misinformation about dieting that has surged on social media.

The keto and paleo diets may help people lose weight in the short term, but both “are high in fat without limiting saturated fat. Consuming high levels of saturated fat and low levels of fiber are both linked to the development of cardiovascular disease,” the Heart Association said.

“They are highly restrictive and difficult for most people to stick with long term,” said Christopher D. Gardner, PhD, chair of the writing committee for the report and a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “While there will likely be short-term benefits and substantial weight loss, it isn’t sustainable. A diet that’s effective at helping an individual maintain weight loss goals, from a practical perspective, needs to be sustainable.”

The list was based on how closely the diets line up to the Heart Association's guidelines for heart-healthy eating.

The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) racked up 100 points and was ranked the best diet for heart health, based on those guidelines. Also ranking in the association's top tier were the pescatarian diet (92 points), the Mediterranean diet (89 points), and the vegetarian diet (86 points). The news release noted that the Mediterranean diet lost a few points because it doesn’t address added salt and allows moderate alcohol consumption.

Vegan and low-fat diets were placed in the Heart Association's second tier, with very low-fat and low-carb diets in the third tier. In the fourth and bottom tier were the paleo and keto/very low-carb diets, including the Atkins diet.

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The head of the Pentagon office that is reviewing reported unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP – commonly known as UFOs, unidentified flying objects) told the US Congress this week that his office is now reviewing more than 650 incidents, but so far, none exhibited anything that was evidence of extraterrestrial activity or defied the known laws of physics.

Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), gave testimony to the US Senate’s Committee on Armed Services on April 19, 2023, providing an update on their investigations into UAP that have been reported by military personnel.

Two new videos that were released at the open congressional hearing were shown to highlight how the recently established AARO can explain some incidents but not others.

"I want to underscore today that only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as 'anomalous,'" Kirkpatrick said told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. "The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO demonstrate mundane characteristics of balloons, unmanned aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomena, or other readily explainable sources."

    “If you squint, it looks like an aircraft because it actually turns out to be an aircraft.”

One video, available on the Pentagon's website, shows an incident that occurred in the Middle East on July 12, 2022, where a ball-shaped object flew over what appears to be a military base and was captured on aerial footage by an MQ-9 drone. This object is still under investigation and remains unidentified.

The other video showed a view of an incident the Pentagon said occurred over South Asia on Jan. 15, 2023. In this instance, an MQ-9 drone captured infrared video showing another MQ-9 while another object flew through the field of view. In this case, after analysis and review of additional footage and information, the object was determined to be a commercial aircraft.

“If you squint, it looks like an aircraft because it actually turns out to be an aircraft,” he said.

Kirkpatrick said the 650 UAP incidents reported by military personnel is an increase from the 510 the U.S. intelligence community reported in its previous UAP report released in January of this year.

Kirkpatrick noted that most of the UAP reports from the military follow similar trendlines, with most occurring between 15,000 to 25,000 feet in altitude which is the controlled airspace for military aircraft. For the unresolved sightings, the AARO experts feel the likely explanation is that the sightings are of technology created by U.S. adversaries, not aliens.

What is needed, Kirkpatrick said, is due to a lack of available data that could help investigators conduct more thorough reviews.

“Without sufficient data, we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution, and I will not close a case that we cannot defend the conclusions of,” he said.

Fifty-two percent of the reports involve objects described as “round or spheres.” Most of the round objects range in size from one-to-four meters and are described as being “white, silver, or translucent metallic,” with apparent velocities ranging from stationary to twice the speed of sound.

Kirkpatrick emphasized that his team has still not found any off-Earth explanations for the sightings.

“I should also state clearly for the record that in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics,” he said. “In the event sufficient scientific data were ever obtained that a UAP encountered can only be explained by extraterrestrial origin, we are committed to working with our interagency partners at NASA to appropriately inform the U.S. Government’s leadership of its findings.”

While UFO enthusiasts expressed skepticism of Kirkpatrick’s testimony, saying that he and AARO are downplaying truly anomalous phenomena, a group of scientists who study UAP said they applaud this first public release of some factual data on reported UAP, such as their shapes and altitudes.

“The hearing described a rigorous approach toward collecting and resolving military UAP reports,” said the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) in a press release. “It also contained the first public release by the U.S. government of a set of factual data on shapes, altitudes, and hotspots, as well as radar, radio, and thermal I.R. characteristics, of UAP, reported between 1996-2023. Encouragingly, the listed attributes from these classified military reports are consistent with typical characteristics gleaned from large, non-classified databases of UAP witness reports.”

The SCU describes itself as a “data-driven organization of scientists, engineers, academics, and research professionals dedicated to conducting and supporting open scientific research into UAP.”

“SCU’s subject matter experts see Dr. Kirkpatrick and his team taking the proper steps in three essential areas of the endeavor,” the press release continues: “careful UAP case triage methods, the skillful use of both intelligence and scientific teams, and technically detailed case study, as presented in the video analysis during the open hearing. This approach is critical to resolving UAP reports into the categories of insufficient data, prosaic phenomena, potential adversary craft, and the truly unknown.”

But Kirkpatrick did not downplay the importance of the public also submitting unexplained sightings, as that allows the AARO and scientists to also analyze the UAP incidents.

“That is how science works, not by blog or social media,” he said.

This article was originally published on Universe Today by Nancy Atkinson. Read the original article here.

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“I’m not worried, because Israel is a fount of technology, is a fount of innovation,” Netanyahu said in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” broadcast Sunday. “Some of them who said they’d moved the money out lost the money.”

While Netanyahu didn’t say whom he had in mind, investors and leaders of Israel’s technology industry have expressed concern that the government’s plans to weaken the judiciary will threaten democracy and the country’s business environment.

Netanyahu previously defended the strength of Israel’s democracy after Moody’s lowered the country’s credit outlook because of the planned judicial overhaul, which has prompted mass protests. On CNN, he said the Israeli tech industry’s future is secure and suggested doubters would be making the wrong bet.

“If the herd moves one way, and I don’t think it is, but if it moves one way, then people who go with the herd actually lose money,” Netanyahu said. “The smart money will come into Israel in even greater numbers.”

Public opposition to the initial overhaul prompted Netanyahu’s far-right government to put a hold on the plan, which would curtail the power of the Supreme Court to choose new judges and cancel laws approved by parliament.

Whatever shape the judiciary reform ultimately takes, the “freedom to innovate, the freedom to make money” in Israel will be upheld, Netanyahu told CNN.

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

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Information last updated on 27 March 2023

Number of rocket launches since the start of the space age in 1957
    About 6380 (excluding failures)

Number of satellites these rocket launches have placed into Earth orbit
    About 15430

Number of these still in space
    About 10290

Number of these still functioning
    About 7500

Number of debris objects regularly tracked by Space Surveillance Networks and maintained in their catalogue
    About 33080

Estimated number of break-ups, explosions, collisions, or anomalous events resulting in fragmentation
    More than 640

Total mass of all space objects in Earth orbit

    More than 10800 tonnes

Not all objects are tracked and catalogued. The number of debris objects estimated based on statistical models to be in orbit (MASTER-8, future population 2021)

    36500 space debris objects greater than 10 cm
    1000000 space debris objects from greater than 1 cm to 10 cm
    130 million space debris objects from greater than 1 mm to 1 cm

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The inspector general of the Transportation Department said in a new report that FAA officials wanted to sort out raw data about the two crashes, and held off grounding the plane despite growing international pressure.

The inspector general’s office said that it reviewed emails and interviewed FAA officials. The investigation “revealed that individual engineers at the Seattle (office) recommended grounding the airplane while the accident was being investigated based on what they perceived as similarities between the accidents.”

One engineer made a preliminary estimate that the chance of another Max crash was more than 13 times greater than FAA risk guidelines allow.

An FAA official said the analysis “suggested that there was a 25% chance of an accident in 60 days” if no changes were made to the planes.

“However, this document was not completed and did not go through managerial review due to lack of detailed flight data,” the report said.

FAA officials at headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the agency’s Seattle office opted not to ground the plane. “Instead, they waited for more detailed data to arrive,” the watchdog said in the report, which was made public Friday.

The first Max crash occurred in October 2018 in Indonesia and was followed by the second in March 2019 in Ethiopia. In all, 346 people died.

The FAA was the last major aviation regulator to ground the Max — three days after the second crash.

The FAA did not let the planes fly again until late 2020, after Boeing altered a flight-control system that autonomously pointed the plane’s nose down before both crashes.

The inspector general’s office said the FAA’s caution on grounding the Max fit with its tendency of waiting for detailed data – an explanation that agency officials offered at the time.

Still, the watchdog recommended that FAA document how key and urgent safety decisions are made and make several other changes in how it analyzes crashes.

The FAA said in a response attached to the inspector general’s report that it is committed to measures that will improve safety and has started to update procedures based on the Max tragedies.

In a statement to The Associated Press, the FAA said it concurs with the inspector general’s recommendations and had already identified the issues outlined in the report.

Safety advocates and lawmakers have harshly criticized the FAA for its decision to certify the Max — FAA officials did not fully understand the flight-control system implicated in both crashes. Congress passed legislation to reform the process of reviewing new aircraft.

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And we mean a lot longer – in the case of chili peppers, some 50 million years in North America, rather than the 15 million years indicated by previous studies. They now appear to date back to the Eocene, which covers 56 to 34 million years ago.

This latest study was sparked off by a fresh look at fossils uncovered in museum collections, which hadn't been identified as chili peppers but which bore the tell-tale signs of coming from that family: little spikes sticking out from the end of a fruiting stem. To the trained eye, that marks them out as Solanaceae plants.

"At first, I thought 'No way! This can't be true,'" says evolutionary biologist Rocío Deanna from the University of Colorado Boulder. "But it was so characteristic of the chili pepper. The family is way older than we thought."

Two newly identified fossils, an ancient chili and tomato, had their ages compared with other nightshade fossils from Colombia and Argentina, backing up the idea that at the time of the Eocene, these plants were spread across both North and South America.

Our world would've looked very different back then though: no ice anywhere, much higher sea levels, and twice as much carbon dioxide in the air. Chili peppers would have been more like fruit we commonly think of as berries back then, the researchers say, though probably still as spicy.

The most likely mode of distribution for the seeds of these plants would've been via the guts or feathers of birds – but the new research raises the question of whether chili peppers started in the north and then went south, or the other way around.

One of the fossils included in the study. (S. Manchester)

"These chili peppers, a species that we thought arose in an evolutionary blink of an eye, have been around for a super long time," says evolutionary biologist Stacey Smith, from the University of Colorado Boulder. "We're still coming to grips with this new timeline."

The nightshade family is mostly found in the tropics today, where the atmosphere is warmer. Now experts have got tens of millions of extra years to weigh up, it could teach us more about how plants adapt and survive as the planet's climate shifts.

Fossils of this type are very rare, so being able to properly classify the two ancient berries gives scientists some very valuable new data to work with. That applies to both where these plants first evolved, and how they spread out from there.

A fossil from Colorado identified as a chili pepper was originally discovered in the 1990s, but remained unidentified until recently due to the specialized knowledge needed to identify nightshade plants – which cover around 3,000 species and almost 100 different genera.

"A lot of discoveries happen decades after the specimens have been collected," says Smith. "Who knows how many other new fossil species are sitting in any of these museums? They're just waiting for the right eyes to look at them."

The research has been published in New Phytologist.

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The 819-day calendar used by ancient Mayans has long stumped researchers, but anthropologists from Tulane University may have finally deciphered its secrets.

Researchers long suspected the calendar followed astronomical events, specifically how long it takes a planet to appear in the same place in the night sky as seen from Earth, known as the synodic periods of planets. But, according to the study published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, the cycles in the Maya calendar cover a much larger timeframe than scholars previously thought.

“Although prior research has sought to show planetary connections for the 819-day count, its four-part, color-directional scheme is too short to fit well with the synodic periods of the visible planets,” wrote anthropologists John Linden, a Tulane alumnus, and Victoria Bricker, PhD, professor emerita at Tulane University School of Liberal Arts. “By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819 days, a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar.”

Previously, researchers thought the calendar referred to four cycles of 819, but that time span didn’t sync neatly with the synodic periods of all the planets that can be seen with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The researchers discovered it takes 20 cycles of 819 days, which is about 45 years, to align with the synodic periods of all visible planets.

Within 20 cycles, each planet goes through some number of synodic periods a whole number of times: Mercury every cycle, Venus every 5 cycles, Saturn every 6 cycles, Jupiter every 19 cycles, and Mars every 20 cycles.

Each synodic period is less than 819 days, but only Mercury has one that happens a whole number of times within a single cycle. Combining the cycles allows for prediction of the placement of the planets, which Linden and Bricker say is also connected to important dates and celebrations.

“Rather than limit their focus to any one planet, the Maya astronomers who created the 819-day count envisioned it as a larger calendar system that could be used for predictions of all the visible planet’s synodic periods,” the authors wrote.

This research is a key part of understanding how the ancient Maya studied astronomy and is part of a decades-long quest to understand the complexity of ancient Maya calendars.

Source

None of the models used for the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have elaborated the details of the plastic industry. Therefore, the researchers developed a new model to investigate four scenarios for the global plastic sector.

These showed that a high price for greenhouse gas emissions, meeting the Paris Climate Accord’s two-degree goal, is not enough in itself to encourage the plastic sector to switch from fossil feedstocks to bio-based raw materials and a circular economy. Climate policy may even lead to more plastic landfilling, as it avoids CO2 emissions and is cheaper than other forms of waste treatment.

The limits of circular strategies

A scenario with more policies geared towards a circular plastic sector (including stricter requirements for product design and standardization of plastic types) would greatly increase the recycling of plastic waste, lower resource consumption, and further reduce the CO2 emissions of the plastic sector until 2050, while preventing large-scale disposal in landfills. However, solely aiming for circularity would limit further emission reductions in the second half of the century, because the role of plastic for biogenic (and therefore non-fossil) carbon storage is underutilized. Moreover, there is not enough plastic waste available to meet the growing plastic demand via recycling. Therefore, a fully circular plastic sector is only possible if demand for plastics is curbed.

Carbon storage by a circular bioeconomy

A circular plastic sector that also uses bio-based raw materials presents significant opportunities for achieving negative emissions via biogenic carbon storage. A combination of bio-based raw materials with emissions-free electricity, high-quality recycling, and a minimization of waste incineration could potentially turn the sector into a carbon sink. By 2050, 13% of the biomass currently used to generate energy could be utilized as a raw material for plastics. Plastics with a long service life, such as building materials,

represent the largest stock of plastic on earth. Producing these materials from bio-based raw materials would result in net negative emissions. If all plastics cumulatively produced until 2100 were bio-based, with a lifetime of decades, or even centuries, then in theory we could capture the equivalent of nine times the current annual energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Requirements for high-quality recycling

To achieve a high share of recycling, we will need improved waste collection and sorting processes and a circular product design. Moreover, the industry will also have to make greater use of chemical recycling to continue the supply of high-quality plastic. In that process, the contaminants are removed, providing high-quality raw materials for new plastics. In mechanical recycling plastics are ground into particles for re-processing, reducing the plastic quality and potentially leaving contaminants, which makes mechanically recycled plastic unsuitable for applications such as food packaging.

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Atmospheric rivers, which are long, narrow bands of water vapor, are becoming more intense and frequent with climate change. A new study demonstrates that a recently developed scale for atmospheric river intensity (akin to the hurricane scale) can be used to rank atmospheric rivers and identify hotspots of the most intense atmospheric rivers not only along the U.S. West Coast but also worldwide.

Atmospheric rivers typically form when warm temperatures create moist packets of air, which strong winds then transport across the ocean; some make landfall. The intensity scale ranks these atmospheric rivers from AR-1 to AR-5 (with AR-5 being the most intense) based on how long they last and how much moisture they transport.

In part because some West Coast weather outlets are using the intensity scale, “atmospheric river” is no longer an obscure meteorological term but brings sharply to mind unending rain and dangerous flooding, the authors said. The string of atmospheric rivers that hit California in December and January, for instance, at times reached AR-4. Earlier in 2022, the atmospheric river that contributed to disastrous flooding in Pakistan was an AR-5, the most damaging, most intense atmospheric river rating.

The intensity of an atmospheric river depends on how long it lasts (typically 24 to 72 hours; horizontal axis) and how much moisture it moves over one meter each second (measured in kilograms per meter per second; vertical axis). While weaker atmospheric rivers can deliver much-needed rain, more intense storms are more damaging and dangerous than helpful. Credit: AGU, after Ralph et al. (2019).

 

The scale helps communities know whether an atmospheric river will bring benefit or cause chaos: The storms can deliver much-needed rain or snow, but if they’re too intense, they can cause flooding, landslides, and power outages, as California and Pakistan experienced. The most severe atmospheric rivers can cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in days in the western U.S.; damage in other regions has yet to be comprehensively assessed.

“Atmospheric rivers are the hurricanes of the West Coast when it comes to the public’s situational awareness,” said F. Martin Ralph, an atmospheric scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and a co-author on the new study. People need to know when they’re coming, have a sense for how extreme the storm will be, and know how to prepare, he said. “This scale is designed to help answer all those questions.”

Ralph and his colleagues originally developed the scale for the U.S. West Coast. The new study demonstrates that atmospheric river events can be directly compared globally using the intensity scale, which is how the researchers identified where the most intense events (AR-5) form and fizzle out, and how many of those make landfall.

The researchers used climate data and their previously developed algorithm for identifying and tracking atmospheric rivers to build a database of intensity-ranked atmospheric river events around the globe over 40 years (1979/1980 to 2019/2020). The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, which publishes research that advances understanding of Earth’s atmosphere and its interaction with other components of the Earth system.

“This study is a first step toward making the atmospheric river scale a globally useful tool for meteorologists and city planners,” said Bin Guan, an atmospheric scientist at the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, a collaboration between the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who led the study. “By mapping out the footprints of each atmospheric river rank globally, we can start to better understand the societal impacts of these events in many different regions.”

The authors also found that more intense atmospheric rivers (AR-4 and AR-5) are less common than weaker events, with AR-5 events occurring only once every two to three years when globally averaged. The most intense atmospheric rivers are also less likely to make landfall, and when they do, they are unlikely to maintain their strength for long and penetrate farther inland. “They tend to dissipate soon after landfall, leaving their impacts most felt in coastal areas,” said Guan.

The study found four “centers,” or hotspots, of where AR-5s tend to die, in the extratropical North Pacific and Atlantic, Southeast Pacific, and Southeast Atlantic. Cities on the coasts within these hotspots, such as San Francisco and Lisbon, are most likely to see intense AR-5s make landfall. Midlatitudes in general are the most likely regions to have atmospheric rivers of any rank.

Strong El Niño years are more likely to have more atmospheric rivers, and stronger ones at that, which is noteworthy because NOAA recently forecasted that an El Niño condition is likely to develop by the end of the summer this year.

While local meteorologists, news outlets, and other West Coasters may have incorporated “atmospheric river” and the intensity scale into their lives, adoption has been slower elsewhere, Ralph said. He hopes to see, within five years or so, meteorologists on TV around the world incorporating the atmospheric river intensity scale into their forecasts, telling people whether the atmospheric river will be beneficial or if they need to prepare for a serious storm.

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On Call  Many a middle aged man knows that hair today is gone tomorrow, but every Friday you can count on The Register bringing you a new instalment of On-Call, our reader-contributed tales of tech support tasks that required tact in the face of trying truculence.

This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Monty" because in the 1990s he worked as a computer tech British Columbia – lumberjack country.

"The company had a pulp mill in the town of Prince George and several sawmills around Northern BC," Monty told us. Its HQ was in Prince George, a significant timber town in BC, which was where Monty went about his business.

"One cold winter week, we started to get calls from the vice president of Forestry that his computer was acting up," he told On-Call. "It would randomly restart. And at one point, his keyboard completely failed, and had to be replaced."

Bosses are bosses, even when they work in small towns. So the VP of Forestry Monty was trying to help had a shiny new '386 machine while the rest of the company made do with a 286.

The more recent machine's unreliability was therefore a puzzler.

Monty made several trips to the boss's office to check things out and, of course, "as a VP, he was too important to just sit there and watch me try to troubleshoot things, so he always had me come up when he was out of his office," Monty recalled. "I was really puzzled because I just could not find anything that could be causing the problem, and the computer really was very new."

The veep was good humored about the mystery, but one day his machine crashed for the umpteenth time, and he decided it was time to let the tech team interrupt his busy schedule.

Monty strode into his office and immediately spotted the problem.

"Northern British Columbia gets very dry in the middle of winter, and there draped over the back of his chair was a beautiful – and probably very expensive – mohair sweater," Monty told On Call.

That jumper was positioned exactly where the boss would rub his back against it.

At this point readers will probably have had a spark of understanding. Very dry air, very long fibers, lots of rubbing – a perfect scenario to generate static electricity!

Monty's hypothesis was that merely by sitting on his chair, rubbing against mohair, and typing, the veep could be discharging a decent quantity of Coulombs into his keyboard.

The veep scoffed at the suggestion his furry garment could be causing PC problems.

So Monty performed a demo.

"I asked him if I could sit down, then vigorously rubbed my back on his sweater, reached for the keyboard, and a huge static ZZzzzzap! went from my hand to the keyboard, immediately causing his computer to shut down."

Vindication.

"He was very sheepish about it," Monty said – presumably because there isn't a goat-related metaphor to describe the situation. "And he vowed to never wear that sweater to work again. We parted on the best of terms."

Have the forces of nature ever caused crashes you were called upon to correct? C'mon you lot – click here to send On-Call an email so we can feature your story here on a future Friday. The On Call mailbag is a little threadbare so we could use your stories. ®

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Sunday, April 30

The first launch this week comes from SpaceX. It will launch the Falcon Heavy carrying the ViaSat 3 Americas and Arcturus communications satellites. It was meant to launch on April 26 but experienced delays. According to the new schedule, it will launch between 11:29 p.m. and 12:26 a.m. UTC from Florida. The event will be streamed on SpaceX’s website.

Tuesday, May 2

The second and final launch of the week takes place on Tuesday at 8:20 a.m. UTC. SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying around 56 Starlink satellites to a low Earth orbit. Starlink satellites make up an expansive constellation that provides internet connectivity on Earth where customers can get connected with special receivers.

Recap

The first notable event last week was the attempted landing of the HAKUTO-R M1 Lunar Lander. Unfortunately, the team lost connection to it which suggests it could have crashed.

Next up, we got a foggy launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites to orbit. The first stage of the rocket also performed a landing so it can be reused.

The third and final launch was also a Falcon 9 but was carrying the SES O3b mPOWER 3 and 4 satellites. There was also another landing of the first stage.

That’s all for this week, be sure to check in next time!

TWIRL 112: SpaceX to try again with Falcon Heavy launch after delays

Over the last forty years or so, the number of people with diabetes has jumped from around 100 million to more than 500 million, with matching rises in associated health problems like obesity and cardiovascular disease risk.

It's a significant health problem that is getting worse, which is why researchers are investigating the underlying issues behind the trend.

One of those issues is likely to be diet, according to a new study into type 2 diabetes – which accounts for 95 percent of overall cases.

Researchers analyzed data from 184 countries collected between 1990 and 2018, pulling in statistics from public health databases, previous studies, and population demographic records. A poor diet could account for up to 14.1 million type 2 diabetes cases identified in 2018, the team found, which is around 70 percent of new diagnoses globally.

Of the 11 different dietary factors considered, three were shown to be most significant: insufficient whole grains, too much refined rice and wheat, and too much processed meat. Other factors, such as not eating enough nuts or non-starchy vegetables, seemed to have less of an impact.

"Our study suggests poor carbohydrate quality is a leading driver of diet-attributable type 2 diabetes globally, and with important variation by nation and over time," says Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of nutrition at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Poor diet was more clearly linked to diabetes cases in men compared to women, the researchers found, and seems to be having more of an impact in younger people compared to older people, and urban areas rather than rural areas.

Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia were the regions with most type 2 diabetes cases linked to diet, possibly because of the prevalence of red meat and processed meat in the average diet. Numbers were high in Latin America and the Caribbean too.

"These new findings reveal critical areas for national and global focus to improve nutrition and reduce devastating burdens of diabetes," says Mozaffarian.

All 184 countries included in the research saw a rise in diabetes cases over the study period, indicating this is a global problem with few, if any nations successfully curbing the rising incidence of diabetes across their population.

The researchers suggest that different approaches – from a greater emphasis on healthy dieting from educators to improved nutritional labeling on food – are going to be required in different countries to start making a difference here.

While previous studies have also linked less healthy diets to more cases of diabetes, this is by far the strongest association to date, and for the highest percentage of cases. Without serious intervention, it's a problem that's only going to get worse.

"Left unchecked and with incidence only projected to rise, type 2 diabetes will continue to impact population health, economic productivity, health care system capacity, and drive health inequities worldwide," says nutrition epidemiologist Meghan O'Hearn, from the Food Systems for the Future Institute in Illinois.

"These findings can help inform nutritional priorities for clinicians, policymakers, and private sector actors as they encourage healthier dietary choices that address this global epidemic."

The research has been published in Nature Medicine.

Source

"These bacteria usually live on the surface of vegetation like leaves, or in soil," lead author Florent Rossi said in a telephone interview Friday.

"We found that they are carried by the wind into the atmosphere and can travel long distances—around the world—at high altitudes in clouds," he told AFP.

The discovery was published in last month's edition of the journal Science of The Total Environment.

The researchers from Laval University in Quebec City and Clermont Auvergne University in central France searched for antibiotic-resistant genes from bacteria found in cloud samples.

The samples were taken from an atmospheric research station perched 1,465 meters (4,806 feet) above sea level atop the Puy de Dome summit, a dormant volcano in central France between September 2019 and October 2021.

An analysis of the retrieved mist revealed that they contained between 330 to more than 30,000 bacteria per milliliter of cloud water, for an average of around 8,000 bacteria er milliliter.

They also identified 29 subtypes of antibiotic-resistant genes in the bacteria.

Drug resistance occurs when bacteria are exposed to antibiotics and develop an immunity to them over generations.

Health authorities have repeatedly warned these adaptations are becoming what the study described as a "major sanitary concern worldwide," making it harder—in some cases impossible—to treat certain bacterial infections as antibiotics use continues to rise in health care and agriculture.

The study offered no conclusions on the potential health effects of the spread in the atmosphere of antibiotic resistant bacteria—estimating that only five percent to 50 percent of the organisms could be alive and potentially active.

But Rossi suggested the risks are likely low.

"The atmosphere is very stressful for bacteria, and most of those we found were environmental bacteria," which are less likely to be harmful to humans, he explained. "So people shouldn't be afraid to go for a walk in the rain."

"It's unclear if those genes would be transmitted to other bacteria," Rossi added.

Atmospheric monitoring, however, could help pinpoint the sources of drug-resistant bacteria—similar to wastewater tests for COVID-19 and other pathogens—"in order to limit their dispersal," he said.

Source

The powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 killed almost 50,000 people, most of whom died under rubble.

The tragedy falls in a decades-long history of outsized death and destruction from recent earthquakes: The 1999 İzmit earthquake near Istanbul killed at least 17,000 people; the 2001 Gujarat earthquake in India killed upward of 20,000; and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan killed more than 87,000 and left some 3.5 million people unhoused. The immediate cause of the human tragedies was not the shaking ground itself, but the buildings people were in, most of which were constructed of reinforced cement concrete, a relatively quick and cheap building method.

BUILDING ON TRADITION: A worker examines a wooden beam in a traditional Indian kath kuni  building. These earthquake-resistant structures lack metal and mortar, allowing them to flex as needed during a tremor. Photo by Jay Thakkar.

Earthquakes don’t have to be so deadly, say scholars who study this issue.1 Many traditional buildings have stood the test of time in regions that have endured high seismic activity for centuries.

In Japan, people had long built earthquake-resistant structures mostly from wood. But a different tradition shows that even stone buildings can withstand vigorous shaking—if they are built with clever physics and architectural adaptations, honed over the centuries.

In the mountainous region of Himachal Pradesh in India, near where the Indian Plate is colliding with the Eurasian Plate, many structures built in the kath kuni style have survived at least a century of earthquakes. In this traditional building method, the name, which translates to “wood corner,” in part explains the method: Wood is laced with layers of stone, resulting in improbably sturdy multi-story buildings.

    The gravitational force of the structure itself holds the stones in place.

It is one of several ancient techniques that trace fault lines across Asia. The foundations for the timber lacing system of architecture may have originally been laid in Istanbul around the fifth century. Stone masonry and wood-beam construction can still be seen in Nepal as well as in the traditions of Kashmiri Taq and Dhajji Dewari and Pakistani Bhatar. Even Turkey has a long tradition of similar construction methods. Despite their ancient origins, this model of construction has mostly fared better over centuries than much of the contemporary building across the continent’s many active seismic zones.

Built along the natural contours of the hills, kath kuni buildings typically get their signature corners from giant deodar cedars, which grow upward of 150 feet tall and 9 feet across in the Himalayas. These wooden beams layer between dry stones, which create walls. A single wooden “nail” joins the beams where they come together.

A MOVEABLE FEAT: Many traditional architecture practices in some of Asia’s seismically active areas have relied for centuries on the advantage of movement. Buildings in the kath kuni  method in northern India (left) rely on gravity to help create their stability, and a layered pattern of loose stone and wooden beams (right) give the buildings flexibility that concrete lacks. Credit: (Left) Photo by Jay Thakkar; (right) Nagajyotsna / Wikkimedia Commons.

As the ponderous-looking structures rise vertically, usually up to two to three stories, the heavy stone masonry reduces, giving way to more wood. The overhanging roof typically has slate shingles resting on wooden beams. “The structure is like a body with heavy base, the projecting wooden balconies are limbs, and the heavy slate roof is like a head adding stability to the structure,” says Jay Thakkar, a faculty member at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University in Ahmedabad, India, who co-authored the book Prathaa: Kath-kuni Architecture of Himachal Pradesh.

The buildings stand free of any mortar or metal, which makes them more capable of shifting and flexing along with torques in the ground. This brilliance of mobility even continues underground. They are built over a trench at least a few feet deep filled with loose stone pieces that works as a flexible plinth. While a building constructed out of what seems almost like rubble to begin with might seem a strange defense against earthquake damage, it works. The gravitational force of the structure itself holds the stones in place.

“Unlike the cement brick wall, which becomes a single solid mass, the dry stone masonry is flexible,” Thakkar says. “Staggered joints allow the external forces like tremors of earthquakes to be dispersed through the masonry thus preventing cracks in walls.” He adds, “The wooden pin at the corner joint of two beams also allows movement. So when an earthquake hits, the structure sways and shakes but doesn’t collapse.”

Despite centuries of visible evidence of these traditional structures’ soundness, people have turned more and more to reinforced concrete construction. By the early and mid-20th century, reinforced concrete was taking hold across Asia and quickly gained popularity because of its substantially lower labor costs. As such, it became the default method for much new construction, including any government-funded buildings.

But “for reinforced concrete construction, poor quality construction in this material has so often produced buildings that are more dangerous than the traditional unreinforced masonry buildings they replaced, despite the promises made about concrete buildings,” wrote a team of researchers studying traditional timber and masonry buildings in Turkey.1

Indian architect Rahul Bhushan, who works toward reviving traditional construction methods in the Himachal Pradesh region, says, “the kath kuni style of architecture, while being still used in temple construction, had kind of paused for other structures due to the advent of reinforced concrete as building material. As a result, gradually, the traditional expertise declined.”

Bhushan’s group, which is called NORTH, has been training masons and construction laborers in traditional methods. Their workshops are generating renewed attention for earthquake resistant architecture rooted in these ancient techniques. He is hopeful this momentum will continue. “People are gradually showing interest toward kath kuni and other traditional constructions like dhajji dewari again.”

The onus now lies on practicing architects and researchers to convince government agencies to support the traditional system of construction, which could help contain destruction the next time an earthquake rocks the region, which, as the geologic plates continue to collide, is only a matter of time.

Shoma Abhyankar is an independent writer based in India. She writes on travel, culture, environment, and architecture. She is on Twitter at @throbbingmind.

References

1. Gülkan, P. & Langenbach, R. The earthquake resistance of timber and masonry dwellings in Turkey. 13th World Conference on Earthquakes Engineering (2004).

Lead photo by Jay Thakkar

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There has been widespread speculation about how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) assistants like ChatGPT could be used in medicine.

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine led by John W. Ayers, Ph.D., from the Qualcomm Institute at University of California San Diego provides an early glimpse into the role that AI assistants could play in medicine. The study compared written responses from physicians and those from ChatGPT to real-world health questions. A panel of licensed healthcare professionals preferred ChatGPT’s responses 79% of the time and rated ChatGPT’s responses as higher quality and more empathetic.

“The opportunities for improving healthcare with AI are massive,” said Ayers, who is also vice chief of innovation in the UC San Diego School of Medicine Division of Infectious Disease and Global Public Health. “AI-augmented care is the future of medicine.”

Is ChatGPT Ready for Healthcare?

In the new study, the research team set out to answer the question: Can ChatGPT respond accurately to questions patients send to their doctors? If yes, AI models could be integrated into health systems to improve physician responses to questions sent by patients and ease the ever-increasing burden on physicians.

“ChatGPT might be able to pass a medical licensing exam," said study co-author Davey Smith, M.D., M.A.S., a physician-scientist, co-director of the UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute and professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, “but directly answering patient questions accurately and empathetically is a different ballgame.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated virtual healthcare adoption,” added study co-author Eric Leas, Ph.D., M.P.H., a Qualcomm Institute affiliate and assistant professor in the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. “While this made accessing care easier for patients, physicians are burdened by a barrage of electronic patient messages seeking medical advice that have contributed to record-breaking levels of physician burnout.”

Designing a Study to Test ChatGPT in a Healthcare Setting

To obtain a large and diverse sample of healthcare questions and physician answers that did not contain identifiable personal information, the team turned to social media where millions of patients publicly post medical questions to which doctors respond: Reddit’s AskDocs.

r/AskDocs is a subreddit with approximately 452,000 members who post medical questions and verified healthcare professionals submit answers. While anyone can respond to a question, moderators verify healthcare professionals’ credentials and responses display the respondent’s level of credentials. The result is a large and diverse set of patient medical questions and accompanying answers from licensed medical professionals.

While some may wonder if question-answer exchanges on social media are a fair test, team members noted that the exchanges were reflective of their clinical experience.

The team randomly sampled 195 exchanges from AskDocs where a verified physician responded to a public question. The team provided the original question to ChatGPT and asked it to author a response. A panel of three licensed healthcare professionals assessed each question and the corresponding responses and were blinded to whether the response originated from a physician or ChatGPT. They compared responses based on information quality and empathy, noting which one they preferred.

The panel of healthcare professional evaluators preferred ChatGPT responses to physician responses 79% of the time.

“ChatGPT messages responded with nuanced and accurate information that often addressed more aspects of the patient’s questions than physician responses,” said Jessica Kelley, M.S.N, a nurse practitioner with San Diego firm Human Longevity and study co-author.   

Additionally, ChatGPT responses were rated significantly higher in quality than physician responses: good or very good quality responses were 3.6 times higher for ChatGPT than physicians (physicians 22.1% versus ChatGPT 78.5%). The responses were also more empathic: empathetic or very empathetic responses were 9.8 times higher for ChatGPT than for physicians (physicians 4.6% versus ChatGPT 45.1%).

“I never imagined saying this,” added Aaron Goodman, M.D., an associate clinical professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and study coauthor, “but ChatGPT is a prescription I’d like to give to my inbox. The tool will transform the way I support my patients.”

Harnessing AI Assistants for Patient Messages  

“While our study pitted ChatGPT against physicians, the ultimate solution isn’t throwing your doctor out altogether,” said Adam Poliak, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Computer Science at Bryn Mawr College and study co-author. “Instead, a physician harnessing ChatGPT is the answer for better and empathetic care.”

“Our study is among the first to show how AI assistants can potentially solve real world healthcare delivery problems,” said Christopher Longhurst, M.D., M.S., Chief Medical Officer and Chief Digital Officer at UC San Diego Health. “These results suggest that tools like ChatGPT can efficiently draft high quality, personalized medical advice for review by clinicians, and we are beginning that process at UCSD Health.”

Mike Hogarth, M.D., a physician-bioinformatician, co-director of the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute at UC San Diego, professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine and study co-author, added, “It is important that integrating AI assistants into healthcare messaging be done in the context of a randomized controlled trial to judge how the use of AI assistants impact outcomes for both physicians and patients.”  

In addition to improving workflow, investments into AI assistant messaging could impact patient health and physician performance.

Mark Dredze, Ph.D., the John C Malone Associate Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins and study co-author, noted: “We could use these technologies to train doctors in patient-centered communication, eliminate health disparities suffered by minority populations who often seek healthcare via messaging, build new medical safety systems, and assist doctors by delivering higher quality and more efficient care.”

In addition to Ayers, Poliak, Dredze, Leas, Kelley, Goodman, Longhurst, Hogarth and Smith, authors of the JAMA Internal Medicine paper, “Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum” (JAMA Intern Med. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.1838), are Zechariah Zhu, B.S., of UC San Diego and Dr. Dennis J. Faix, M.D., M.P.H., of the Naval Health Research Center. 

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Europe’s major new interplanetary spacecraft has a slight problem

To call what’s happening in the oceans right now an anomaly is a bit of an understatement. Since March, average sea surface temperatures have been climbing to record highs, as shown in the dark line in the graph below. 

Illustration: Sean Birkel/University of Maine

Since this record-keeping began in the early 1980s—the other squiggly lines are previous years—the global average for the world’s ocean surfaces has oscillated seasonally between 19.7 and 21 degrees Celsius (67.5 and 69.8 Fahrenheit). Toward the end of March, the average shot above the 21-degree mark and stayed there for a month. (The most recent reading, for April 26, was just a hair under 21 degrees.) This temperature spike is not just unprecedented, but extreme.

“It’s surprising to me that we’re this far off the trajectory,” says Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit that gathers climate data. “Usually when you have a particular warming event, we’re beating the previous record by a little bit. Right now we’re sitting well above the past records for this time of year, for a considerable period of time.” 

Rhode points out that temperatures this week were just under two-tenths of a degree warmer than the previous record. “Two-tenths doesn’t sound like a lot—but in ocean terms two-tenths is actually a lot because it doesn’t warm as quickly as the land,” he says.

As you can see from the chart’s record of past years, March is normally when average sea surface temperatures start declining. That’s because the Southern Hemisphere has transitioned from summer to autumn—and that hemisphere has more ocean covering it than the Northern Hemisphere, which has more bulky land masses. As southern oceans cool, they bring down the average global sea surface temperature.

But at the moment, temperature anomalies are widespread around the world’s oceans. (That near-real-time data comes from a network of satellites, buoys, and other ocean instruments.) “It’s above-average temperatures nearly everywhere,” says Rohde. “And there’s a significant heat wave in the North Pacific, which has been going on for many months.”

Warming in the Atlantic may be contributing to the extreme heat that’s hitting Spain right now, and it shows the broader problem caused by high ocean temperatures: What happens in the sea doesn’t stay in the sea. The oceans have absorbed something like 90 percent of the excess heat humans have put into the atmosphere, but the oceans are also capable of handing that heat back to the atmosphere, which in turn heats the land. “Both the atmosphere and oceans are becoming warmer and warmer,” says Boyin Huang, a physical scientist and oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “If the atmosphere pushes the ocean, then the ocean will push back into the atmosphere.” 

Last year, researchers reported that climate change has made extreme heat events in the ocean the new normal. Thanks to historical data collected from ships all over the world, they determined the highest surface temperatures between the years 1870 to 1919—essentially setting a baseline for extremes. They found that in the 19th century, 2 percent of the ocean was hitting these extremes, but because of climate change it’s now 57 percent. In other words, extreme heat events in the ocean are now typical. (These differ from an overall increase in heat, in that temperatures come down from extreme peaks, but the general upward trend isn’t reversing itself.)

Illustration: MBARI

Scientists haven’t yet worked out what contribution climate change has made to the current surface temperature anomaly. But they can say that the longer-term trend since the early 1900s, averaged globally, shows a rise in the intensity of sea surface temperature anomalies, as you can see in the graph above. 

That warmer water is already causing problems across the world’s oceans. Not only are higher ocean temperatures rapidly eating away at Antarctica’s massive ice shelves, but hotter water actually expands to take up more space, raising sea levels. 

Illustration: MBARI

The dark red areas on the map above show that the Pacific waters off of South America are currently very warm. This is an unusual “coastal El Niño” that is not linked to the larger El Niño with global climate implications, says biological oceanographer Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. A classical El Niño is a band of warm water that develops across the Pacific. That’s in contrast to the La Niña we’ve had the past few years, which is a band of cold water in the Pacific.

Models suggest there’s a 62 percent chance of a classical El Niño developing by June or July, with a four in 10 chance of a strong El Niño. But it’s not a sure thing because El Niño is a consequence of complex atmospheric dynamics—basically, wind blowing warm water over from Asia. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty,” says Chavez. “Forecasting the real El Niño is difficult because the atmosphere is chaotic.”

Whenever El Niño does arrive, it’ll have consequences. On the upside, there tends to be less hurricane activity over in the Atlantic when El Niño is active in the Pacific. But the outcomes for precipitation are mixed: For Peru, El Niño tends to create more rainfall, but to the east in the Amazon rainforest, it can lead to devastating drought. And all that extra heat in the Pacific could significantly raise global temperatures. “There’s a chance for 2023 to be the record warmest year,” says Rohde. “If an El Niño develops, as we now think is likely, 2024 will probably be warmer than 2023.”

In the ocean itself, warmer waters—due to El Niño or just overall long-term heating—can become less biologically productive. Some organisms that reach their thermal limit can migrate to colder waters, transforming both the ecosystems they leave and the new ones where they take shelter. But others, like corals, are stuck in place. These animals are particularly sensitive to heat, and bleach in response, releasing their symbiotic algae that provide them energy.

The ocean food chain also depends on the natural circulation of water, which is influenced in part by temperature. When cold water in the depths upwells to the surface, it brings up nutrients that fertilize phytoplankton. These microscopic plants grow in the sunlight, becoming a critical food source for tiny animals called zooplankton. But when water heats up at the surface, it stratifies, turning into a sort of cap that sits on top of colder waters below. “The bigger the cap, the harder it is to break. By heating the ocean, you’re going to basically decrease the amount of nutrients that come up,” says Chavez. “A longer-term concern is: How much is this overall heating going to change the natural fertilization processes, like upwelling? Will the ocean become more of a desert over time?”

An Ominous Heating Event Is Unfolding in the Oceans

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Federal agency tallies damage from Starship. SpaceX’s Starship launch scattered debris over hundreds of acres and created a small brush fire but did not kill any wildlife, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency documented impacts from the April 20 Starship integrated test flight that lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas, to the neighboring Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Space News reports. The biggest impact was debris from the launch pad that was damaged by the thrust from the Super Heavy booster.

Still some regulatory work to do ... "Impacts from the launch include numerous large concrete chunks, stainless steel sheets, metal, and other objects hurled thousands of feet away" from the pad, the Fish and Wildlife Service said. It also cited “a plume cloud of pulverized concrete that deposited material up to 6.5 miles northwest of the pad site.” Residents of Port Isabel, Texas, a town northwest of the launch site, reported finding a fine layer of sand-like material after the launch. SpaceX is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to review the launch and address outstanding issues before receiving its next launch license. (submitted by brianrhurley)

China wants to build a Starship, too. OK, the Chinese government isn't exactly saying that. Rather, China says it plans to develop a fully reusable version of a large rocket for deep space missions, Space News reports. However, the latest revised design of the Long March 9 rocket looks staggeringly like SpaceX's two-stage Starship vehicle. The country aims to develop a rocket capable of carrying 100 tons of payload to low-Earth orbit with a reusable first stage. A fully reusable, 80-tons-to-LEO variant is the ultimate objective in the 2040s.

An interim step ... China had previously aimed to debut an expendable Long March 9 rocket using 500-ton-thrust kerosene-liquid oxygen engines by the end of this decade. However, China is now targeting 2033 for first flights of a three-stage Long March 9 rocket powered by numerous full-flow staged combustion methane engines on the first stage. It will be capable of carrying 50 tons to lunar transfer orbit, or 35 tons when the first stage is recovered. The fully reusable two-stage version, which looks nearly identical to Starship, would follow later on. (submitted by Ken the Bin, brianrhurley and EllPeaTea)

Epic views of the Starship launch. If you were unlucky enough to have missed the launch of SpaceX's Starship vehicle on April 20 in person, a new video posted on YouTube by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, is the next best thing to being there.

Smoke, fire, and debris ... The 15-minute video includes 4K slow-motion footage as well as incredible sound. No need for any more words from me—just go and watch it.

Astrobotic purchases Falcon Heavy launch. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy will launch Astrobotic's third robotic lunar landing mission in 2026, the Pittsburgh-based company announced on Tuesday. The "commercial" mission will touch down at the Moon's south pole, which is an area of great interest due to its perceived stores of water ice, Space.com reports. Astrobotic hasn't reached the lunar surface yet, but it may do so as soon as this year. Its Peregrine lunar lander is ready for launch aboard United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket.

Not clear if this will be CLPS as well ... The second Astrobotic mission will use a larger lander, known as Griffin, that will also launch atop a Falcon Heavy. Griffin will deliver NASA's water-hunting Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover to the lunar south pole in 2024 or so. Both NASA deliveries on Peregrine and Griffin were funded under the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to help small companies reach the moon to support Artemis. Specifics on the third mission to the Moon were not immediately available. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

April 28: Falcon 9 | O3b mPOWER 3 & 4 | Cape Canaveral, Fla. | 21:12 UTC

April 28: Falcon Heavy | Viasat-3 Americas | Kennedy Space Center, Fla. | 23:29 UTC

May 1: Electron | TROPICS Flight 2 | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 01:00 UTC

Rocket Report: Feds assess Starship fallout; Sweden accidentally bombs Norway

Curtin University researchers have uncovered the time frame of when the Nullarbor Plain in Australia became arid using a novel method, illuminating the impact of ancient climate change on some of the Earth’s driest regions.

Researchers used the formation of iron-rich strata in ancient sediment to pinpoint the time when a region underwent aridification as a result of changes in the climate, such as the significant drop in groundwater levels in southern Australia.

These ‘relics of drying’ suggest the Nullarbor drastically shifted to dry conditions between 2.4 and 2.7 million years ago, uncovering how these environmental changes were key in shaping Australia’s diverse flora and fauna.

Lead author Dr. Maximilian Dröllner, from the Timescales of Mineral Systems Group in Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said defining the timing of climate change in ancient landscapes had proved challenging for geoscientists around the world.

“Almost half of the Earth’s land surfaces are considered drylands, and they host about three billion people,” Dr. Dröllner said.

“Changes to these arid areas can impact both our society and regional biodiversity in profound ways and aridification has been instrumental in shaping the landscapes and ecosystems we see today.”

Determining when climate events occurred in arid areas has been a difficult task for geoscientists, with researchers relying on indirect observations, such as marine sediments in neighboring areas.

Co-author Associate Professor Milo Barham, also from Curtin’s Timescales of Mineral Systems Group, said directly measuring products of the drying of landscapes can provide a much clearer timeframe.

“The amount of helium trapped in these iron-rich horizons can be used to determine when they were formed,” Associate Professor Barham said.

“Exposing these ‘relics’ of drying to a tiny laser releases helium, which we can measure to constrain the timing of these dramatic environmental responses to Earth’s climate history.”

Determining when these events occurred can help explain how they impacted the biodiversity of the area and, particularly in the case of southern Australia, provides a timeframe for the evolution of several native species.

“The drying of Australia’s interior separated the common ancestors of many species that once roamed freely across Australia,” Dr. Dröllner said.

“This separation led to the independent evolution of these isolated populations on the east and west coasts, eventually resulting in distinct species or sister species.”

“Today we observe many examples of sister species of birds, insects, and plants that have common ancestors but now live thousands of kilometers apart, separated by environmental barriers created through ancient climate change.”

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A new paper in FEMS Yeast Research, published by Oxford University Press, reveals the possible origin story of lager beers. Using historical records and contemporary phylogenomics research, investigators here show where lagers likely first originated: at the court brewery (Hofbräuhaus) of Maximilian the Great, elector of Bavaria, in Munich in 1602.

Beer has been made since ancient times. Recent archaeology shows evidence of brewing in the eastern Mediterranean some 13,000 years ago. Although from the origins of brewing until the early 20th century, ale was the typical beer produced, lager now accounts for approximately 90% of the beer consumed annually.

The beginnings of this shift from ale to yeast occurred when a new yeast species, Saccharomyces pastorianus or “lager yeast,” appeared in Germany around the end of the middle ages. This is a hybrid species that arose from mating the top-fermenting ale yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the cold-tolerant Saccharomyces eubayanus around the start of the 17th century. But until now no one has figured out how the combination lager yeast S. pastorianus came about.

Pilsner-style lager. Credit: John Morrissey/ FEMS Yeast Research

 

The general assumption was that the hybrid arose when a traditional S. cerevisiae ale fermentation became contaminated with wild yeasts including S. eubayanus. But the researchers here believe this is doubtful. Using a detailed analysis of Central European historical brewing records, they discovered that “lager-style” bottom fermentation was happening in Bavaria from at least two hundred years earlier.

They propose an alternative hypothesis that it was S. cerevisiae that contaminated a batch of beer brewed with S. eubayanus, rather than the other way around. And in an intriguing piece of detective work, they identified what they believe to be the source of the contaminating S. cerevisiae – a wheat brewery in the small Bavarian town of Schwarzach.

Beer was always a valuable commodity and its production was regulated carefully. In Bavaria a brewing ordnance from 1516 (the famous “reinheitsgebot”) permitted only bottom fermentation and brewing of “lager-style” beer.  But in neighboring Bohemia, excellent wheat beer made with S. cerevisiae was produced and vast quantities were imported into Bavaria. To limit the economic damage from these imports, in 1548 the Bavarian ruler, Wilhelm IV gave Baron Hans VI von Degenberg a special privilege to brew and sell wheat beer in the border regions to Bohemia.

When the grandson of Hans von Degenberg failed to produce an heir, the family finally died out and, in 1602, the new Bavarian ruler, Maximilian the Great, seized the special wheat beer privilege himself and took over the over the von Degenbergs’ Schwarzach breweries. In October of that year, the yeast from the wheat brewery was brought to the Duke’s court brewery in Munich, where the researchers propose the famous hybridization took place and S. pastorianus was born. After that, the researchers here show, S. pastorianus strains from Bavaria spread all over Europe and are the source of all modern lager yeast strains.

The results of the researchers’ investigation of the historical record, together with published phylogenomic (evolution and genomics) data, suggest that the dominance of S. pastorianus lager yeast developed in three stages. First, the yeast strain S. cerevisiae came to Munich from Bohemia, where brewers had made wheat beer since at least the 14th century. Second, the S. cerevisiae that was introduced into the Munich brewery in 1602 mated with S, eubayanus, which was already involved in making Munich-style beer, to give rise to S. pastorianus. And finally, the new S. pastorianus yeast was distributed around Munich breweries first, and then throughout Europe and the world. The researchers here note that the co-occurrence of S. pastorianus with the technologically advanced brewing methods in Munich, and the willingness of Munich brewers to share knowledge (and actual yeast) may have contributed to the strain’s dominance.

“There is a certain irony that the inability of Hans VIII von Degenberg to produce a son triggered the events that led to the creation of creation of lager yeast, said Mathias Hutzler, one of the paper’s lead authors. “As one lineage died out, another began. No heir – but what a legacy he left for the world!”

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The OPERA (Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis) project, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, aims to provide users with free and timely access to satellite-based observations of Earth’s dynamic surface water and land. By leveraging cloud computing, OPERA turns massive amounts of satellite data into analysis-ready products for federal agencies, facilitating more informed decision-making. The first round of OPERA products will be available in April 2023, combining data from various satellites, such as the ESA Sentinel-2 A/B, Landsat 8, and the recently launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite. OPERA’s product suite includes comprehensive monitoring of lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and streams, as well as mapping changes in vegetation cover and measuring North American surface displacement.

Where are flood waters flowing after major storms? Where are the changes in tree and plant cover after droughts, wildfires, deforestation, or mining? How much did the land move during an earthquake or volcanic eruption? Scientists routinely rely on data-intensive analysis and visualization of satellite observations to track Earth’s ever-changing surface. A new project will make it possible for anyone with an internet connection to begin to answer these questions and more about changes to our dynamic planet.

The OPERA (Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis) project is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with partners from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the University of Maryland, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Southern Methodist University. Scientists conceived OPERA in 2020 to address satellite data needs across different federal agencies and to enable better access to information on everything from water management to wildfire monitoring. The goal is to make specific satellite-based observations free and timely for users. The first offerings will be available in April 2023, with more to follow.

As a series of atmospheric river events deluged parts of California this winter, OPERA’s surface water maps recorded the potential overflow of several dams in a region that is home to millions of people. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

“Quite often satellite missions are driven by science, applications, or technology demonstration. In OPERA, we focus on fulfilling the operational needs identified by federal agencies who rely on our work,” said David Bekaert, OPERA project manager based at JPL. “We leverage cloud computing to turn massive amounts of satellite observations into analysis-ready products relevant to our federal stakeholders. Shortening the path from satellite observation to stakeholder decision is a key driver behind the overall implementation and execution of OPERA.”

OPERA is aggregating a unique combination of user-friendly data about Earth’s dynamic surface water and land, noted John Jones, a USGS scientist and OPERA project partner.

“The magic of OPERA is that it transcends any one space mission,” said Gerald Bawden, program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, who helped envision the project as part of the interagency Satellite Needs Working Group. Created by the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Group on Earth Observations, the Satellite Needs Working Group seeks to identify the satellite needs of U.S. federal agencies and develop new remote sensing products that fulfill their observational gaps.

The OPERA Land Surface Disturbance Alert provisional product showed vegetation loss west of Lake Tahoe following California’s largest fire of 2022. The red and purple colors indicate significant loss. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

The first round of OPERA products ties together visible and infrared measurements from the ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-2 A/B satellites and from Landsat 8, built by NASA and operated by the USGS. These instruments will soon be augmented by data from the cloud-penetrating radars on ESA’s Sentinel-1 A/B satellites and the recently launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, a partnership between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales).

OPERA will eventually ingest satellite radar data from the NASA-Indian Space Research Organisation Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, planned for launch in 2024.

Mapping Surface Water

OPERA’s Dynamic Surface Water eXtent product suite offers what may be the most comprehensive data source for monitoring lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and streams. The first phase relies on Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) optical data to generate near-global surface water mapping every few days at a 30-meter spatial resolution. Subsequent phases will use Sentinel-1, SWOT, and NISAR radar observations to map surface water more often (because radar can penetrate cloud cover).

For example, when a series of nine atmospheric river events brought heavy rain and snow to California in the winter of 2022-23, several flood-control dams faced risks of overflowing. OPERA’s surface water maps chronicled the dramatic filling of these reservoirs.

Monitoring Surface Disturbance

OPERA’s products offer new insights into both environmental and geological processes taking place on Earth’s land surfaces. Complementing its water product suite, OPERA’s Surface Disturbance product uses HLS data to map changes in vegetation cover. It could be used to observe the scars and regrowth after wildfires, track growing cities, or even discover insect infestations in forests.

“We are very excited to employ integrated Landsat and Sentinel-2 data,” said Matt Hansen, a professor at the University of Maryland and OPERA project partner. “The combined observations provide an unprecedented capability and, we expect, an unprecedented record of global land change.”

For example, the Mosquito Fire was detected on September 6, 2022, and burned predominantly in the Tahoe and Eldorado National Forests. OPERA’s surface disturbance data product shows vegetation losses due to the fire – California’s largest of the year – which covered some 76,788 acres and lasted for 50 days.

Measuring North America Surface Displacement

OPERA’s third product, slated for release in late 2024, will provide a history of how much land surfaces in North America have moved, or deformed, due to geologic and human activities. The surface displacement product will map surface motion that is otherwise imperceptible without a vast network of GPS instruments.

“This is a transformative product for detecting landslides, sinkholes, earthquakes, volcanoes – anything that is changing the land surface,” said Bawden. “Using these satellites, we’re able to measure motions on the ground surface less than an inch. And we can begin to explore how those motions are impacting everything living there.”

All OPERA products are publicly accessible. The surface water and surface disturbance products are currently available through NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers, Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center, and Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center, respectively.

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