PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

This week from AGU: Cell tower rain gauges, lightning channels, North Sea storm surge

2014-07-29
(Press-News.org) This Week From AGU: Cell phone tower rain gauges, lightning channels, North Sea storm surge

From AGU's blogs: Dropped cell phone calls become rain gauges in West Africa

A shaky cell phone connection during a rainstorm can be an annoying nuisance. But now scientists are showing that these weakened signals can be used to monitor rainfall in West Africa, a technique that could help cities in the region better prepare for floods and combat weather-related diseases, according to a new study accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

From AGU's journals: Lightning channel current persists between strokes

The usual cloud-to-ground lightning occurs when a large negative charge contained in a "stepped leader" travels down toward the Earth's surface. It then meets a positive charge that comes up tens of meters from the ground, resulting in a powerful neutralizing explosion that begins the first return stroke of the lightning flash. The entire flash lasts only a few hundred milliseconds, but during that time, multiple subsequent stroke/return stroke sequences usually occur.

Some researchers have proposed that a residual current must flow through the ionized channel of air left by the first stroke to allow the propagation of the next stroke, called a dart leader, but the prevailing—though unproven—view today is that the current decays to zero amperes before subsequent dart leaders and their following return strokes occur.

To test the zero-current hypothesis, Ngin et al. triggered lightning strikes using rockets and wires. The authors find that rather than decaying to zero, residual currents between 2-8 milliamps remained prior to dart leaders. However, aspects of the residual current remain unknown, including its source. The authors note that the sensitivity of their measurements is unprecedented and may help to improve models describing the evolution of the ionized lightning channels and the process known as current cutoff.

From this week's Eos: Where Local Matters: Impacts of a Major North Sea Storm Surge

Storm surge impacts on low-lying coasts threaten vulnerable human communities on a global scale. On 5-6 December 2013, the margins of the southern North Sea experienced the most significant storm surge in 60 years. Detailed ground surveys immediately following the surge documented considerable variability in inundation levels, with implications for surge forecasting and societal responses to extreme coastal floods.

Click here for the online version of This Week From AGU.

Click here to register for access to AGU journal papers and Eos, the newspaper of the Earth and space sciences.

INFORMATION: The American Geophysical Union is dedicated to advancing the Earth and space sciences for the benefit of humanity through its scholarly publications, conferences, and outreach programs. AGU is a not-for-profit, professional, scientific organization representing more than 62,000 members in 144 countries. Join our conversation on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media channels.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Penn team makes cancer glow to improve surgical outcomes

Penn team makes cancer glow to improve surgical outcomes
2014-07-29
The best way to cure most cases of cancer is to surgically remove the tumor. The Achilles heel of this approach, however, is that the surgeon may fail to extract the entire tumor, leading to a local recurrence. With a new technique, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have established a new strategy to help surgeons see the entire tumor in the patient, increasing the likelihood of a positive outcome. This approach relies on an injectable dye that accumulates in cancerous tissues much more so than normal tissues. When the surgeon shines an infrared light on the ...

Huge waves measured for first time in Arctic Ocean

2014-07-29
As the climate warms and sea ice retreats, the North is changing. An ice-covered expanse now has a season of increasingly open water which is predicted to extend across the whole Arctic Ocean before the middle of this century. Storms thus have the potential to create Arctic swell – huge waves that could add a new and unpredictable element to the region. A University of Washington researcher made the first study of waves in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and detected house-sized waves during a September 2012 storm. The results were recently published in Geophysical Research ...

Underwater elephants

Underwater elephants
2014-07-29
In the high-tech world of science, researchers sometimes need to get back to basics. UC Santa Barbara's Douglas McCauley did just that to study the impacts of the bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) on coral reef ecosystems at two remote locations in the central Pacific Ocean. Using direct observation, animal tracking and computer simulation, McCauley, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, and his colleagues sought to understand whether the world's largest parrotfish is necessary for positively shaping the structure ...

Vision-correcting display makes reading glasses so yesterday

Vision-correcting display makes reading glasses so yesterday
2014-07-29
BERKELEY — What if computer screens had glasses instead of the people staring at the monitors? That concept is not too far afield from technology being developed by computer and vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. The researchers are developing computer algorithms to compensate for an individual's visual impairment, and creating vision-correcting displays that enable users to see text and images clearly without wearing eyeglasses or contact lenses. The technology could potentially help hundreds of millions of people who currently need corrective ...

Researchers take steps toward development of a vaccine against tick-transmitted disease

2014-07-29
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have made an important advancement toward developing a vaccine against the debilitating and potentially deadly tick-transmitted disease, human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA). During the past several years, experts have seen a steady rise in the incidence of human infections caused by tick-transmitted bacterial pathogens — making the need for a vaccine critical. Successful vaccine development hinges on knowing what to target to prevent disease, and the VCU team has identified three such proteins on the surface ...

Brainwaves can predict audience reaction for television programming

2014-07-29
Media and marketing experts have long sought a reliable method of forecasting responses from the general population to future products and messages. According to a study conducted at the City College of New York (CCNY) in partnership with Georgia Tech, it appears that the brain responses of just a few individuals are a remarkably strong predictor. By analyzing the brainwaves of 16 individuals as they watched mainstream television content, researchers were able to accurately predict the preferences of large TV audiences, up to 90 percent in the case of Super Bowl commercials. ...

Socialization relative strength in fragile X longitudinal study

2014-07-29
Standard scores measuring "adaptive behavior" in boys with fragile X syndrome tend to decline during childhood and adolescence, the largest longitudinal study of the inherited disorder to date has found. Adaptive behavior covers a range of everyday social and practical skills, including communication, socialization, and completing tasks of daily living such as getting dressed. In this study, socialization emerged as a relative strength in boys with fragile X, in that it did not decline as much as the other two domains of adaptive behavior measured: communication and daily ...

Brand-specific television alcohol ads predict brand consumption among underage youth

2014-07-29
Underage drinkers are three times more likely to drink alcohol brands that advertise on television programs they watch compared to other alcohol brands, providing new and compelling evidence of a strong association between alcohol advertising and youth drinking behavior. This is the conclusion of a new study from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Boston University School of Public Health that examined whether exposure to brand-specific alcohol advertising on 20 television shows popular with ...

$15 billion annual public funding system for doctor training needs overhaul, says IOM

2014-07-29
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. should significantly reform the federal system for financing physician training and residency programs to ensure that the public's $15 billion annual investment is producing the doctors that the nation needs, says a new report by the Institute of Medicine. Current financing -- provided largely through Medicare -- requires little accountability, allocates funds independent of workforce needs or educational outcomes, and offers insufficient opportunities to train physicians in the health care settings used by most Americans, the report says. All ...

A new way to make microstructured surfaces

2014-07-29
A team of researchers has created a new way of manufacturing microstructured surfaces that have novel three-dimensional textures. These surfaces, made by self-assembly of carbon nanotubes, could exhibit a variety of useful properties — including controllable mechanical stiffness and strength, or the ability to repel water in a certain direction. "We have demonstrated that mechanical forces can be used to direct nanostructures to form complex three-dimensional microstructures, and that we can independently control … the mechanical properties of the microstructures," says ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

QUT scientists create material to turn waste heat into clean power

Major new report sets out how to tackle the ‘profound and lasting impact’ of COVID-19 on cardiovascular health

Cosmic crime scene: White dwarf found devouring Pluto-like icy world

Major report tackles Covid’s cardiovascular crisis head-on

A third of licensed GPs in England not working in NHS general practice

ChatGPT “thought on the fly” when put through Ancient Greek maths puzzle

Engineers uncover why tiny particles form clusters in turbulent air

GLP-1RA drugs dramatically reduce death and cardiovascular risk in psoriasis patients

Psoriasis linked to increased risk of vision-threatening eye disease, study finds

Reprogramming obesity: New drug from Italian biotech aims to treat the underlying causes of obesity

Type 2 diabetes may accelerate development of multiple chronic diseases, particularly in the early stages, UK Biobank study suggests

Resistance training may improve nerve health, slow aging process, study shows

Common and inexpensive medicine halves the risk of recurrence in patients with colorectal cancer

SwRI-built instruments to monitor, provide advanced warning of space weather events

Breakthrough advances sodium-based battery design

New targeted radiation therapy shows near-complete response in rare sarcoma patients

Does physical frailty contribute to dementia?

Soccer headers and brain health: Study finds changes within folds of the brain

Decoding plants’ language of light

UNC Greensboro study finds ticks carrying Lyme disease moving into western NC

New implant restores blood pressure balance after spinal cord injury

New York City's medical specialist advantage may be an illusion, new NYU Tandon research shows

Could a local anesthetic that doesn’t impair motor function be within reach?

1 in 8 Italian cetacean strandings show evidence of fishery interactions, with bottlenose and striped dolphins most commonly affected, according to analysis across four decades of data and more than 5

In the wild, chimpanzees likely ingest the equivalent of several alcoholic drinks every day

Warming of 2°C intensifies Arctic carbon sink but weakens Alpine sink, study finds

Bronze and Iron Age cultures in the Middle East were committed to wine production

Indian adolescents are mostly starting their periods at an earlier age than 25 years ago

Temporary medical centers in Gaza known as "Medical Points" (MPs) treat an average of 117 people daily with only about 7 staff per MP

Rates of alcohol-induced deaths among the general population nearly doubled from 1999 to 2024

[Press-News.org] This week from AGU: Cell tower rain gauges, lightning channels, North Sea storm surge