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Mary Anne Hitt: Working Families Shouldn't Have to Pay for Coal Mine Clean-Up
Over the past 30 years, coal companies have been playing fast and loose with our land, water, and pocketbooks by using a loophole in our federal laws...

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Coral Reefs In Trouble - The Canaries In The Coal Mine

It felt like we had stepped into a scene from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as we glided along the Great Barrier Reef in a ten person submersible. Outside the window, gigantic clumps of taupe brain coral, Elkhorn and Stag coral slipped past. Lavender and lettuce-green sea fans waved gently in the current. Plump pink and purple anemones raised their tentacles to trap their next meal. And all around and through the coral forms, a rainbow of tropical fish wandered blue and yellow Tang fish, yellow grunts, orange and white striped clownfish, and so many others I couldn't identify.

It was February 2002 and we were on the adventure of a lifetime with our four kids, then ranging in age from twelve to five. “Wow!” a collective intake of breath swept through our little pod as a sea turtle big enough for one of them to ride floated silently by on the other side of the glass. And as we moved past a shadowed opening in the reef, high-pitched shrieks erupted when an enormous olive-green moray eel whose mouth was all teeth emerged, on the hunt for its next meal. Our scheduled dive of the reef had fallen on a day with chop that made the sea too rough for snorkeling with small children, but in the submersible we were able to motor to the best viewing spots of the incredible variety of plants and creatures.

As longtime residents of Florida, we'd enjoyed snorkeling in the Keys and the Bahamas, but the scale of what we were seeing here was completely different. The Great Barrier Reef appears to be a rocky structure upon which things grow and swim, but the reef itself is actually made up of the accumulated exoskeletons of innumerable individual living organisms stacked upon each other, the marine equivalent of a high-rise apartment building. It is the largest living structure on earth, visible from the moon. We felt blessed to have the opportunity to visit it, and the thousands of plant and animal species that call it home.

Coral reefs are critically important to the planet's health. More than 90% of all marine species are directly or indirectly dependent on the coral reefs, even though they make up less than 5% of the ocean floor. These places are the rain forests of the sea; according to NOAA, they provide habitat to more species of fish, hard corals and other organisms per unit area than any other marine environment. And NOAA estimates there may be as many as eight million species within the coral reef ecosystem that have not yet been discovered. Who knows how many medically useful substances might be waiting for discovery there, as in the tropical rainforests on land?

Fast forward a decade and a half from that submersible ride to May 2015, when CNN reported that as much as 93% of the Great Barrier Reef had recently suffered bleach damage.

Headlines like these are becoming commonplace:

We're now in the third straight year of elevated ocean temperatures causing the worst worldwide reef destruction in history. Analyzing cumulative data, scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Science project the demise of all the reefs by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue.

When I read these reports I want to weep. I think of our experience there just fourteen years ago the submersible ride through an underwater wonderland of strange and beautiful fish, mammals and plant life and it's hard to imagine that in this short time parts of that place, then teeming with life, are now a white skeletal structure devoid of color, animals or plants.

Coral bleaching occurs when ocean temperatures rise so high that the corals become stressed and expel the algae that live in symbiosis inside them. Without its algae the coral turns white and starves, and if temperatures remain elevated for too long they die. But the elevated water temperatures create other problems as well.

Warmer water is more acidic and makes reef regeneration after damage more difficult. It also holds less dissolved oxygen, which affects not just the reefs but other fish and animals in the ocean. Marlin and sailfish have already been curtailing deep water diving in search of prey. As deoxygenation becomes more severe, affected waters will no longer support life at all for some fish and crustaceans; populations of large fish such as tuna, cod, swordfish and marlin have already declined; some scientists report by as much as 90% over the last century. And areas of warming are increasing in size. An April 2016 study showed a devastating decline in oxygen levels in many areas of the Pacific Ocean, which by 2030 to 2040 will wipe out populations of marine life dependent on oxygenated water.

The fate of the Great Barrier Reef, and coral reefs worldwide, should be an urgent wake up call for all of humanity. Our planet surface is 70% water, and the health of its water is critical to the survival of life on the planet. The reefs are a barometer of that health, and they are failing. Human-driven climate change might steer us off the cliff of existence if we don't change direction, and change it immediately.

What will the world look like if we don't? In areas where colorful and vital coral reefs exist today, stark white boulders and skeletal branched antler-like forms will be all that remain to remind us of what we've lost. The stench of rotting animals will saturate the waters around these graveyards. Those periodic algal blooms and red tides along coastal waters? They will become commonplace, the sulfurous smell of rotting vegetation, the sickly sweet odor of dead and decaying fish and mammals, and the respiratory difficulties in susceptible people in beach towns all will define a new normal. As many as five hundred million people will starve or become climate refugees.

The sad truth is that we aren't taking very good care of what we've been entrusted with. My Christian faith forms my own views on this; we are called to be stewards of God's creation. But even if you feel no particular religious or philosophical urge to care for this most vulnerable piece of earth, you would do well to be motivated by survival instincts. The reefs are the canaries in the planetary coal mine; their death presages conditions hostile to life in the ocean, and by extension, the planet.

There are some recent glimmers of hope. Efforts like Sweden's pledge to become one of the first countries to end its dependence on fossil fuel entirely, and the sharp uptick in renewable energy production in countries like Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany, Scotland and Ireland, are encouraging signals that humanity might yet recognize the crucial role the oceans play in the health of the planet, and the devastating effects the last hundred and fifty years' explosion of carbon emissions have had on them. The business world, too, is beginning to see that there is money, and lots of it, to be had in developing renewable energy and non-petroleum based products.

As individuals, there are many actions we can take to spur the corporate world to move in more planet-healthy directions. Some of these actions are ridiculously simple. Turn out lights when you leave a room, use canvas bags for shopping instead of plastic ones made from petrochemicals, recycle paper, plastics, clothing. So many easy changes can be steps to free us from our addiction to petrochemicals and fossil fuels.

We will not stop global warming by switching out incandescent light bulbs for LED ones. But changed habits change people's paradigms, and changed paradigms are what changes the world. The most influential player in the capitalist system is the consumer who drives it you and me. If we don't buy it, they won't make it. Of course I recognize that I am less than a drop of water in the grand scheme of things. I am one molecule, maybe less. But imagine what we might do if each of us took simple and easy steps like these. Collectively we would unleash a tsunami of change.

Perhaps the current plight of the reefs will force us to wake up to the danger of unchecked planetary abuse. By all means, let us hope and pray that it is so. But let us also act.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Anger in Cleveland

If there's one thing everyone can agree on at the Republican National Convention, it's how they feel about Hillary Clinton. The Atlantic's Alex Wagner is on the ground, asking attendees about their opinions—and the vitriol towards Clinton feels especially high. “Donald Trump is going to win,” shouts one protester. “And Hillary Clinton is going to jail!”

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Snell's law for spin waves measured at long last
Law deviates from that governing light and could lead to "magnonic" devices of the future

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New research gleans climate change insight from lizard genome
Using genomic data from three lizard species, researchers gleaned insights not available before on the impact of climate change on the distribution of animal populations in South American forests. The findings improve ways of modeling the distribution of biodiversity in the past and future.
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Sunrise 21 July 2016

Sculptor Lil posted a photo:

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Bathing in Budapest (18 photos)

The hot springs at the Lukacs Bathhouse have been in use, in one way or another, since the 12th century. According to Reuters, locals and visitors alike attribute the mineral-rich waters with a special healing power. Bathers flock to the Hungarian spa for its steam rooms, saunas, pools, and special treatments.

A man gets hydrotherapy at the Lukacs Bath in Budapest, Hungary June 23, 2016. (Bernadett Szabo / Reuters)

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Untitled by johnny theophilus

johnny theophilus: Photos

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How Wild Birds Team Up With Humans To Guide Them To Honey

It sounds like a fairy tale but it's real. A study shows how wild birds and people communicate to find bees' nests and share the sweet honeycomb. The teamwork may date back thousands of years or more.

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Researchers find first direct evidence that A. aegypti mosquito transmits Zika virus
Researchers have now directly connected the Aedes aegypti mosquito with Zika transmission in the Americas, during an outbreak in southern Mexico. The findings will help scientists to better target efforts for controlling the population of mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus.
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2016-07-18_Thames2

Ungry Young Man posted a photo:

Evening walk along the Thames

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NASA's Hubble Looks to the Final Frontier
This view of a massive cluster of galaxies unveils a very cluttered-looking universe filled with galaxies near and far. Some are distorted like a funhouse mirror through a "space warp" phenomenon first predicted by Einstein a century ago.
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As a Heat Wave Builds, Obama Wisely Presses for Community Cohesion
With a heat wave building, President Obama uses Twitter to press communities to check for vulnerable neighbors.
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Sunset Reflected in the Shard

Daniel Coyle posted a photo:

The sunset reflected in the Shard, looking out over South London. Halfway to the horizon you can see Strata SE1, the Oval cricket ground, and to the right One St George's Wharf. What else can you spot?

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Sunset Sky & London Eye ...

aquanandy posted a photo:

A Beautiful Evening in London .

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Fear not, humanity Saint Elon has finished part two of his world-saving 'master plan'

Sustainability and sharing isn't just some 'silly, hippy thing,' says Musk

Solar-panel roofs on cars, compact SUVs, and high-passenger-density urban transport are all part of Elon Musk's self-titled "master plan, part deux" for the world.…

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Facebook completes first test flight of its massive ‘Aquila' internet delivery drone

After several months testing smaller scale models, Facebook has successfully completed its first full-scale test flight of the massive Aquila drone. With a wingspan rivaling that of a Boeing 737, only weighing much less due to a carbon fiber composite design, the team reached a major milestone by launching, and flying, the drone for more than 90 minutes — more than three times the planned test run. Intending to provide internet to the 1.6 billion people worldwide that don't have access to it, Facebook plans to use the solar-powered drone to beam coverage to 60-mile-wide areas on the ground while staying…

This story continues at The Next Web
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"40 Light Years from Earth" --Hubble Reveals Three New Potentially Habitable Earthlike Planets

On May 2, scientists from MIT, the University of Liège, and elsewhere announced they had discovered a planetary system, a mere 40 light years from Earth, that hosts three potentially habitable, Earth-sized worlds. Judging from the size and temperature of the planets, the researchers determined that regions of each planet may be suitable for life.

Now, in a paper published today in Nature, that same group reports that the two innermost planets in the system are primarily rocky, unlike gas giants such as Jupiter. The findings further strengthen the case that these planets may indeed be habitable. The researchers also determined that the atmospheres of both planets are likely not large and diffuse, like that of the Jupiter, but instead compact, similar to the atmospheres of Earth, Venus, and Mars.

The scientists, led by first author Julien de Wit, a postdoc in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, came to their conclusion after making a preliminary screening of the planets' atmospheres, just days after announcing the discovery of the planetary system.

On May 4, the team commandeered NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and pointed it at the system's star, TRAPPIST-1, to catch a rare event: a double transit, the moment when two planets almost simultaneously pass in front of their star. The researchers realized the planets would transit just two weeks before the event, thanks to refined estimates of the planets' orbital configuration, made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which had already started to observe the TRAPPIST-1 system.

"We thought, maybe we could see if people at Hubble would give us time to do this observation, so we wrote the proposal in less than 24 hours, sent it out, and it was reviewed immediately," de Wit recalls. "Now for the first time we have spectroscopic observations of a double transit, which allows us to get insight on the atmosphere of both planets at the same time."

Using Hubble, the team recorded a combined transmission spectrum of TRAPPIST-1b and c, meaning that as first one planet then the other crossed in front of the star, they were able to measure the changes in wavelength as the amount of starlight dipped with each transit.

"The data turned out to be pristine, absolutely perfect, and the observations were the best that we could have expected," de Wit says. "The force was certainly with us."

The dips in starlight were observed over a narrow range of wavelengths that turned out not to vary much over that range. If the dips had varied significantly, de Wit says, such a signal would have demonstrated the planets have light, large, and puffy atmospheres, similar to that of the gas giant Jupiter.

But that's not the case. Instead, the data suggest that both transiting planets have more compact atmospheres, similar to those of rocky planets such as Earth, Venus, and Mars.

"Now we can say that these planets are rocky. Now the question is, what kind of atmosphere do they have?" de Wit says. "The plausible scenarios include something like Venus, where the atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide, or an Earth-like atmosphere with heavy clouds, or even something like Mars with a depleted atmosphere. The next step is to try to disentangle all these possible scenarios that exist for these terrestrial planets."

The scientists are now working to establish more telescopes on the ground to probe this planetary system further, as well as to discover other similar systems. The planetary system's star, TRAPPIST-1, is known as an ultracool dwarf star, a type of star that is typically much cooler than the sun, emitting radiation in the infrared rather than the visible spectrum.

De Wit's colleagues from the University of Liège came up with the idea to look for planets around such stars, as they are much fainter than typical stars and their starlight would not overpower the signal from planets themselves.

The researchers discovered the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system using TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope), a new kind of ground telescope designed to survey the sky in infrared. TRAPPIST was built as a 60-centimeter prototype to monitor the 70 brightest dwarf stars in the southern sky. Now, the researchers have formed a consortium, called SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets Eclipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), and are building four larger versions of the telescope in Chile, to focus on the brightest ultracool dwarf stars in the skies over the southern hemisphere. The researchers are also trying to raise money to build telescopes in the northern sky.

"Each telescope is about $400,000 -- about the price of an apartment in Cambridge," de Wit says.

If the scientists can train more TRAPPIST-like telescopes on the skies, de Wit says, the telescopes may serve as relatively affordable "prescreening tools." That is, scientists may use them to identify candidate planets that just might be habitable, then follow up with more detailed observations using powerful telescopes such as Hubble and NASA's James Webb Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in October 2018.

"With more observations using Hubble, and further down the road with James Webb, we can know not only what kind of atmosphere planets like TRAPPIST-1 have, but also what is within these atmospheres," de Wit says. "And that's very exciting."

The Daily Galaxy via MIT

Today's 'Galaxy' Insight --"The Universe's Existence"

Image of the Day: An Exploding Light Show in a Milky Way Satellite Galaxy

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"Hiroshima Will Look Like Child's Play" --Ancient Series of Eruptions of the Yellowstone Supervolcano Discovered

"While it is well-know that Yellowstone has erupted catastrophically in recent times, perhaps less widely appreciated is that these were just the latest in a protracted history of numerous catastrophic super-eruptions that have burned a track along the Snake River eastwards from Oregon to Yellowstone from eight million years ago to present," said Tom Knott with the University of Leicester's Volcanology Group.

"The size and magnitude of this newly defined eruption is as large, if not larger, than better known eruptions at Yellowstone, and it is just the first in an emerging record of newly discovered super-eruptions during a period of intense magmatic activity between 8 and 12 million years ago."

Six hundred thousand years ago there was a colossal explosion from a cauldron of magma, the most massive known supervolcano, the 2.2 million acre Yellowstone caldera that forms the world's highest plateau capping a seething magma chamber forty-five miles across-the size of Rhode Island- and eight miles thick of hot molten rock that rises up from 125 miles from the Earth's core. When Yellowstone explodes, and it will again, someday, Hiroshima will look like child's play. What no one knows for sure is, when.

The ancient Yellowstone caldera exploded with such violence that it left an ash layer almost ten feet deep a thousand miles away in eastern Nebraska killing all plant life and covering almost all of the United States west of the Mississippi. Modern geological surveys have shown that this supervolcano erupts approximately every 600,000 years. The Blackfoot Indians called it the land of evil spirits -what we call today, Yellowstone National Park.

Researchers, led by a team from the University of Leicester, reorted this March, 2016 that they discovered that a number of giant super-eruptions between 8 and 12 million years ago could be larger than the colossal eruptions known to have taken place at Yellowstone have been identified through research

The international research team suggests that while the number of volcanic eruptions thought to have originated from the central Snake River Plain in Idaho, USA is less than previously believed, the 12 recorded giant eruptions were likely 'significantly larger' than research has previously suggested.

Tom Knott, along with Mike Branney and Dr Marc Reichow, from the University of Leicester's Department of Geology's Volcanology Group, conducted the research with a team of international collaborators from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Idaho State University.

Using a multi-technique approach, including whole-rock and mineral chemistries, palaeomagnetic data, and radio-isotopic dates, the team has been able to 'fingerprint' individual eruption deposits and correlate these over vast regions (e.g., 1000's km2).

In establishing widespread correlations, the team drastically reduced the number of eruptions previously thought to have originated from the central Snake River Plain by more than half.

The researchers have reported that one of the super-eruptions from the Yellowstone hotspot-track, defined as the Castleford Crossing eruption, occurred about 8.1 million years ago and estimate the eruption volume to have exceeded 1,900 km3. The single volcanic sheet covers an area over 14,000 km2 in southern Idaho, and is more than 1.3 km thick in the caldera of the super-volcano.

This is just one of 12 giant eruptions reported from the area by the Leicester team, who show that intense hotspot magmatism caused major crustal subsidence, forming the 100 kilometer-wide Snake River Basin. The team also demonstrates that these eruptions were in fact significantly larger than previously thought and may rival those better known at Yellowstone.

The Daily Galaxy via University of Leicester

Today's Most Popular

Image credit: with thanks to Natural News and haikudeck.com

"Our Early Solar System Harbored SuperEarths" (Weekend Feature)

Holiday 'Galaxy' Insight --"Why the Cosmos, Why the Quantum, Why Existence"

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Mars navigation

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Operations image of the week:

In order to precisely deliver the Schiaparelli landing demonstrator module to the martian surface and then insert ExoMars/TGO into orbit around the Red Planet, it's necessary to pin down the spacecraft's location to within just a few hundred metres at a distance of more than 150 million km.

To achieve this amazing level of accuracy, ESA experts are making use of ‘quasars' the most luminous objects in the Universe as ‘calibrators' in a technique known as Delta-Differential One-Way Ranging, or delta-DOR.

Until recently, quasars were only poorly understood. These objects can emit 1000 times the energy of our entire Milky Way galaxy from a volume that it not much bigger than our Solar System, making them fearfully powerful.

They are fuelled by supermassive black holes which are many, many times more massive than our Sun feeding on matter at the centre of their host galaxies. In addition to their extreme luminosity, their extreme distance means that, seen from Earth, they appear to be fixed in the sky and their positions can be mapped with high precision, making them very useful as reference points for spacecraft navigation.

In the delta-DOR technique, radio signals from ExoMars/TGO are being received by two widely separated deep-space ground stations, one, say, at New Norcia, Western Australia, and one at Cebreros, Spain, and the difference in the times of signal arrival is precisely measured.

Next, errors due to current conditions in Earth's atmosphere (which affect all radio signals passing through) are derived by simultaneously tracking radio signals from a quasar. Engineers can apply these as corrections to the signal received from ExoMars/TGO, delivering a significantly more accurate fix on its position.

On Wednesday this week, ESA ground stations began the first of many delta-DOR observations that will be used to precisely locate ExoMars/TGO, using quasar P1514-24, seen inset in an image of ESA's deep-space tracking station at Malargüe, Argentina, above.

Delta-DOR observations will be increasingly performed as the journey to Mars enters the crucial phases, enabling flight dynamics teams to generate precise instructions for thruster burns and separation timing and to assess manoeuvre performance.

“In October, in the final critical week before Mars arrival, teams will be conducting two delta-DOR observations daily,” says Mattia Mercolino, responsible for delta-DOR activities at ESOC, ESA's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

“It's an excellent example of critical, real-time teamwork between the flight dynamics experts, the ground station operators, the ExoMars mission controllers and our delta-DOR team, and it would be much more difficult to get to Mars without this expertise.”

How precisely will we know ExoMars/TGO's location?

“The current set of delta-DOR observations will enable us to locate the spacecraft to less than 1000 m when it's near Mars, a distance of slightly more than 150 million km from Earth,” says Mattia.

“This is comparable to detecting from the location of an object in Singapore from Darmstadt, to about 5 cm precision.”

“In future, with currently planned technology improvements, we should be able to get the accuracy down to just 150 m at 150 million km.”

Credit: Estrack image: ESA/D. Pazos Quasar P1514-24 inset image: Rami Rekola, Univerity of Turku, 2001

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"Planet 9 Enigma" --Astronomers Determine Why It Has Yet to Be Detected by Telescopes (A 'Galaxy' Insight)

Swiss astronomers have determined why planet 9 hasn't been detected by telescopes so far. They calculated the brightness of smaller and bigger planets on various orbits. They conclude that the sky surveys performed in the past had only a small chance to detect an object with a mass of 20 Earth masses or less, especially if it is near the farthest point of its orbit around the Sun.

But NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer may have spotted a planet with a mass equal to 50 Earth masses or more. "This puts an interesting upper mass limit for the planet," syas Esther Linder at the University of Bern. According to the scientists, future telescopes like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope under construction near Cerro Tololo in Chile or dedicated surveys should be able to find or rule out candidate Planet 9. "That is an exciting perspective," says Christoph Mordasini currently at Bern and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

How big and how bright is Planet 9 if it really exists? What is its temperature and which telescope could find it? These were the questions that Mordasini and colleague Esther Linder wanted to answer when they heard about the possible additional planet in the solar system suggested by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology.

This artistic rendering above shows the distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side.

The Swiss scientists are experts in modelling the evolution of planets. They usually study the formation of young exoplanets in disks around other stars light years away and the possible direct imaging of these objects with future instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope. They estimate that the object has a present-day radius equal to 3.7 Earth radii and a temperature of minus 226 degrees Celsius.

The six most distant known objects in the solar system shown below with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Also, when viewed in three dimensions, they tilt nearly identically away from the plane of the solar system. Batygin and Brown show that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration [Diagram created using WorldWide Telescope].

"For me candidate Planet 9 is a close object, although it is about 700 times further away as the distance between the Earth and the Sun," says Esther Linder. The astrophysicists assume that Planet 9 is a smaller version of Uranus and Neptune -- a small ice giant with an envelope of hydrogen and helium. With their planet evolution model they calculated how parameters like the planetary radius or the brightness evolved over time since the solar system has formed 4.6 billion of years ago.

In their paper accepted by the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics the scientists conclude that a planet with the projected mass equal to 10 Earth masses has a present-day radius of 3.7 Earth radii. Its temperature is minus 226 degrees Celsius or 47 Kelvin.

"This means that the planet's emission is dominated by the cooling of its core, otherwise the temperature would only be 10 Kelvin," explains Esther Linder: "Its intrinsic power is about 1000 times bigger than its absorbed power." Therefore, the reflected sunlight contributes only a minor part to the total radiation that could be detected. This also means that the planet is much brighter in the infrared than in the visual. "With our study candidate Planet 9 is now more than a simple point mass, it takes shape having physical properties," says Christoph Mordasini.

The study was financed by the research project of the Swiss National Science Foundation PlanetsInTime and the National Center for Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS.

The Daily Galaxy via University of Bern

NASA: "Rejuvenated Planets Can Survive a Stars' Red-Giant Death Cycle"

"Extreme Exoplanets" --Yield Clues to Search for Earthlike Habitats

"Cosmic Variance" --Are There Fewer Faint, Distant Galaxies in the Universe?

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One Year on Earth Seen From 1 Million Miles

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a video:

On July 20, 2015, NASA released to the world the first image of the sunlit side of Earth captured by the space agency's EPIC camera on NOAA's DSCOVR satellite. The camera has now recorded a full year of life on Earth from its orbit at Lagrange point 1, approximately 1 million miles from Earth, where it is balanced between the gravity of our home planet and the sun.

EPIC takes a new picture every two hours, revealing how the planet would look to human eyes, capturing the ever-changing motion of clouds and weather systems and the fixed features of Earth such as deserts, forests and the distinct blues of different seas. EPIC will allow scientists to monitor ozone and aerosol levels in Earth's atmosphere, cloud height, vegetation properties and the ultraviolet reflectivity of Earth.

The primary objective of DSCOVR, a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force, is to maintain the nation's real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of space weather alerts and forecasts from NOAA.

For more information about DSCOVR, visit: go.nasa.gov/29Pqm15

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Map designs baby monitor that can help control children's sleep

Map has collaborated with a start-up tech company to design a connected home baby monitor that doubles up as a night light and sleeping aid.

SuzySnooze has been designed by Map, which has worked with company BleepBleeps and has already hit its crowdfunding target after a short campaign.

The device has been engineered so that children can learn sleep routines from an early age. After a child is put to bed, SuzySnooze's hat (the top part) is pushed down so that it covers its face and activates a night light. The brightness of the light can be changed by twisting the hat.

Soft light and sound emitted

A sleep sequence function means that patterns of light and sound can be introduced to aid sleep by creating a consistent and calm environment.

The idea is that while this is still active it is time to sleep and when the hat is raised and the night light is off, only then is it time to get up.

An accompanying app allows parents to monitor their child's sleep remotely, schedule and record sleep routines as well as ask advice about sleep patterns based on the age of the child.

Physical interaction

Map and BleepBleeps found that most internet of things products are controlled entirely through a smartphone meaning the intuitiveness of the accompanying hardware product can be lost.

In light of this Suzy Snooze has been designed with just enough physical interaction to control its key features, while the smartphone app controls the more complicated features.

The base of the physical product has been designed covered with felt to give it a softer look and feel. The hat has been made from 1mm thick ABS plastic which is thin enough to emit light through and thick enough so that inner working components cannot be seen.

Crowdfunding backers will get their SuzySnooze from December before the product is introduced to the mass market next year.

The post Map designs baby monitor that can help control children's sleep appeared first on Design Week.

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-july-2016/peter-saville-designs-artwork-tates-switch-house-pale-ale/
Peter Saville designs artwork for Tate's Switch House pale ale

Peter Saville has teamed up with Tate to create the artwork for its new beer, Switch House, celebrating the opening of the new Tate Modern Switch House extension.

The 4.8% pale has been brewed and canned by Fourpure Brewing Co based two miles from the Tate Modern in Bermondsey in collaboration with the gallery.

Tate wanted to create a modern style pale ale to fit with the aesthetic of the newly opened Tate Modern Bar, according to Fourpure Brewing Co.

Switch House comes in a limited run silver can, featuring a brightly coloured geometric design by Saville. It is designed to represent the shape of the extension, helping visitors to understand the gallery's new layout and how the spaces are used.

The beer will be available at all Tate Galleries including Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, Tate Modern and Tate Britain. It can also be bought off trade through We Brought Beer.

The post Peter Saville designs artwork for Tate's Switch House pale ale appeared first on Design Week.

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technology

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160721073012.htm
Light-bulb moment for stock market behavior
Physicists have discovered that the timing of electronic orders on the stock market can be mathematically described in the same way as the lifetime of a light bulb.
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