Lifeboat Foundation

Icelandic authorities have declared a state of emergency after a series of powerful earthquakes rocked the country’s southwestern Reykjanes peninsula, signalling the increased likelihood of a volcanic eruption in the region.

“The National police chief … declares a state of emergency for civil defence due to the intense earthquake (activity) at Sundhnjukagigar, north of Grindavik,” the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said in a statement.

How they can prevent life in other planetary systems. Giant gas planets can be agents of chaos, ensuring nothing lives on their Earth-like neighbors around other stars. New studies show, in some planetary systems, the giants tend to kick smaller planets out of orbit and wreak havoc on their climates.

Jupiter, by far the biggest planet in our solar system, plays an important protective role. Its enormous gravitational field deflects comets and asteroids that might otherwise hit Earth, helping create a stable environment for life. However, giant planets elsewhere in the universe do not necessarily protect life on their smaller, rocky planet neighbors.

A new Astronomical Journal paper details how the pull of massive planets in a nearby star system are likely to toss their Earth-like neighbors out of the “habitable zone.” This zone is defined as the range of distances from a star that are warm enough for liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface, making life possible.

The technology that makes it possible, called semantic hearing, could pave the way for smarter hearing aids and earphones, allowing the wearer to filter out some sounds while boosting others.

The system, which is still in prototype, works by connecting off-the-shelf noise-canceling headphones to a smartphone app. The microphones embedded in these headphones, which are used to cancel out noise, are repurposed to also detect the sounds in the world around the wearer. These sounds are then played back to a neural network, which is running on the smartphone; then certain sounds are boosted or suppressed in real time, depending on the user’s preferences. It was developed by researchers from the University of Washington, who presented the research at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) last week.

The team trained the network on thousands of audio samples from online data sets and sounds collected from various noisy environments. Then they taught it to recognize 20 everyday sounds, such as a thunderstorm, a toilet flushing, or glass breaking.

A recent study published in AGU Advances examines how the conservation and protection of two Alaskan forests, Tongass and Chugach, are essential in fighting the effects of climate change due to their expanse for wildlife habitats, abundant carbon stocks, and landscape integrity. This study was led by researchers from Oregon State University and holds the potential to help scientists better understand the steps that need to be taken to mitigate the long-term effects of climate change by preserving the resources of today.

Tongass National Forest (Credit: Logan Berner)

“More thoroughly safeguarding those forests from industrial development would contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and species adaptation in the face of the severe ecological disruption that’s expected to occur over the next few decades as the climate rapidly gets warmer,” said Dr. Beverly Law, who is a Professor Emeritus of Global Change Biology & Terrestrial Systems Science at Oregon State University and lead author of the study.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a climate phenomenon occurring every 2–7 years in the tropical Pacific Ocean, associated with changes in air pressure east to west.

During El Niño events equatorial trade winds blowing west weaken, causing changes in air pressure and wind speed that move warm surface water eastward from the western Pacific to coastal South America. This results in a deeper thermocline (the depth at which sea temperature rapidly changes) that prevents the normal upwelling of cooler, nutrient-rich waters, having devastating impacts on marine food chains, as well as local communities reliant upon the fishing industry.

It also brings heavier and prolonged rainfall to South America, increasing the threat of flooding, while in Australia and Indonesia there is drought, posing hazards for water supply and irrigation for agriculture. During La Niña events, all off these conditions reverse.

A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets examines the 39th drilling sample collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars from a rock named “Sequoia”, which comes shortly after the pioneering robot passed its 4,000th sol, or Martian day, exploring the Red Planet. This sample was found to contain starkeyite, which is a magnesium sulfate mineral analogous to extremely dry climates such as Mars and holds the potential to help researchers better understand the climate of the Red Planet, specifically pertaining to how it got so dry.

Image of the drill hole made by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover collect a sample on Oct. 17, 2023, the 3,980th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

“The types of sulfate and carbonate minerals that Curiosity’s instruments have identified in the last year help us understand what Mars was like so long ago. We’ve been anticipating these results for decades, and now Sequoia will tell us even more,” said Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, who is a project scientist on the Curiosity mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL) and one of almost three dozen co-authors on the study.

A new study shows how some species might be able to persevere during a drastically changing climate.

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on patterns of infectious disease spillover. Climate and land-use changes are predicted to increase the frequency of zoonotic spillover events, which have been the cause of most modern epidemics. Characterising historical trends in zoonotic spillover can provide insights into the expected frequency and severity of future epidemics, but historical epidemiological data remains largely fragmented and difficult to analyse. We utilised our extensive epidemiological database to analyse a specific subset of high-consequence zoonotic spillover events for trends in the annual frequency and severity of outbreaks. Our analysis, which excludes the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, shows that the number of spillover events and reported deaths have been increasing by 4.98% (confidence interval [CI]95% [3.22%; 6.76%]) and 8.7% (CI 95% [4.06%; 13.62%]) annually, respectively. This trend can be altered by concerted global efforts to improve our capacity to prevent and contain outbreaks. Such efforts are needed to address this large and growing risk to global health.

Batteries are regarded as crucial technologies in the battle against climate change, particularly for electric vehicles and storing energy from renewable sources. Anthro Energy’s novel flexible batteries are presently available to wearable manufacturers and could be employed in a variety of areas, including electric cars and laptops.

The innovative batteries score well in fire safety, thanks to new materials and design features that eliminate internal and external mechanical safety risks like explosions. Many of today’s batteries, such as lithium-ion batteries, contain a flammable liquid as an electrolyte.

Anthro Energy’s David Mackaniac and his team have created a flexible polymer electrolyte that is malleable like rubber. The new technology provides increased design flexibility for use across a range of devices, with adaptable shapes and sizes to suit specific applications.