A solar tsunami observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Japanese Hinode spacecraft has been used to provide the first accurate estimates of the Sun’s magnetic field.
Solar tsunamis are produced by enormous explosions in the Sun’s atmosphere called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). As the CME travels out into space, the tsunami travels across the Sun at speeds of up to 1000 kilometres per second.
Similar to tsunamis on Earth, the shape of solar tsunamis is changed by the environment through which they move. Just as sound travels faster in water than in air, solar tsunamis have a higher speed in regions of stronger magnetic field. This unique feature allowed the team, led by researchers from UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, to measure the Sun’s magnetic field. The results are outlined in a paper soon to be published in the journal Solar Physics. (more…)
VANCOUVER, Wash. – Scientists and technicians who work at volcano observatories in nine countries are visiting Mount St. Helens and the U.S. Geological Survey Volcano Science Center’s Cascades Volcano Observatory this week to learn techniques for monitoring active volcanoes. Organized by the Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes at the University of Hawaiʻi, Hilo, with support from the VSC-managed joint USGS-USAID Volcano Disaster Assistance Program, the annual program has been training foreign scientists for 22 years. This year’s class includes volcano scientists from Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Canada, Indonesia, Italy, and Papua New Guinea.
The International Training Program in Volcano Hazards Monitoring is designed to assist other nations in attaining self-sufficiency in monitoring volcanoes and reducing the risks from eruptions. Through in-class instruction at two USGS volcano observatories, and field exercises in Hawaiʻi and at Mount St. Helens, U.S. scientists are providing training on monitoring methods, data analysis and interpretation, and volcanic hazard assessment, and participants are taught about the use and maintenance of volcano monitoring instruments. Additionally, participants learn about focusing on forecasting and rapid response during volcanic crises, and how to work with governing officials and the news media to save lives and property. (more…)
Ultrasound vibrations applied to the brain may affect mood, UA researchers have discovered. The finding potentially could lead to new treatments for psychological and psychiatric disorders.
University of Arizona researchers have found in a recent study that ultrasound waves applied to specific areas of the brain appear able to alter patients’ moods. The discovery has led the scientists to conduct further investigations with the hope that this technique could one day be used to treat conditions such as depression and anxiety.
US Cyber Challenge puts UD student on fast track to outwitting hackers
“Cryptography enables you to send secret code and hide information within a network to keep it secure,” Billy Bednar, a University of Delaware senior, told U.S. Sen. Tom Carper during a conference call Wednesday, July 18.
Carper, who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is working to help safeguard the nation’s cyber space. To accomplish this he will need to rely on today’s leading experts, but also ensure that future cyber sleuths currently in the pipeline have the proper training to meet emerging cyber challenges. (more…)
There is only one planet we know of, so far, that is drenched with life. That planet is Earth, as you may have guessed, and it has all the right conditions for critters to thrive on its surface. Do other planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, also host life forms?
Astronomers still don’t know the answer, but they search for potentially habitable planets using a handful of criteria. Ideally, they want to find planets just like Earth, since we know without a doubt that life took root here. The hunt is on for planets about the size of Earth that orbit at just the right distance from their star – in a region termed the habitable zone. (more…)
Pollination, essential to much of life on earth, requires the explosive death of the male pollen tube in the female ovule. In new research, Brown University scientists describe the genetic and regulatory factors that compel the male’s role in the process. Finding a way to tweak that performance could expand crop cross-breeding possibilities.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Millions of times on a spring day there is a dramatic biomolecular tango where the flower, rather than adorning a dancer’s teeth, is the performer. In this dance, the female pistil leads, the male pollen tubes follow, and at the finish, the tubes explode and die. A new paper in Current Biology describes the genetically prescribed dance steps of the pollen tube and how their expression destines the tube for self-sacrifice, allowing flowering plants to reproduce. (more…)
Even as the dinosaurs were becoming extinct 66 million years ago, the ancient ancestor of spiny-rayed fishes flourished, eventually giving rise to tens of thousands of species that can now be found in home aquariums or on dinner plates. Using modern genetic tools and information from the fossil record, a team led by researchers at Yale University, University of Oxford, and University of California-Davis have constructed a detailed evolutionary history of the 18,000 species of spiny-rayed fishes existing today, a diverse group that includes basses, pufferfishes, and cichlids, and that comprises a large portion of the vertebrate tree of life.
The findings published the week of July 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show surprisingly close evolutionary relationships between lineages of fish species such as tunas and seahorses, and suggest some fish lineages — like cichlids, the tiny gobies, and little-studied snailfishes — are experiencing high rates of new species origination. (more…)
