Satellite Views Storm System Affecting Southern California

An almost continuous onshore flow is expected to bring storms to California and portions of the Pacific Northwest in a very active, wet pattern over the next couple of days, according to the National Weather Service.

Looking for the next leap in rechargeable batteries

USC researchers may have just found a solution for one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the next wave of rechargeable batteries — small enough for cellphones and powerful enough for cars.

NASA Examines Ex-Tropical Cyclone Dineo's Rainfall

Late on Feb. 15, Dineo made landfall in southern Mozambique. By Feb. 17 the storm weakened to a remnant low pressure area when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard Terra captured a visible image that showed the center of the low pressure area over Zimbabwe and clouds extended over found Dineo's clouds stretched over southern Mozambique, Swaziland, eastern Botswana and northeastern South Africa.

Why a Southern California Refinery Explosion Could Kill Thousands

One morning in February 2015, I felt a rumble. Was it an earthquake? No. It was an explosion at the ExxonMobil oil refinery a few miles away. The refinery is located in the middle of a residential area of Torrance, Calif.

It's More than Just Climate Change

A new scientific paper by a University of Maryland-led international team of distinguished scientists, including five members of the National Academies, argues that there are critical two-way feedbacks missing from current climate models that are used to inform environmental, climate, and economic policies. The most important inadequately-modeled variables are inequality, consumption, and population.

Fish affected by Deepwater Horizon spill give clues to air pollution heart disease

A study by Manchester and Stanford scientists into the effects on fish of a 2010 oil disaster could shed new light on how air pollution affects humans’ hearts.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted in a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an area of water which is heavily populated with fish species. In a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, the team analysed the effects of individual components of crude oil on the hearts of fish.

Wearing Your Brain on Your Sleeve

One BU researcher uses wearable devices to look for clues to early dementia and Alzheimer’s

Quality of life with those with advanced cancer improved through walking

Walking for just 30 minutes three times per week could improve the quality of life for those with advanced cancer, a new study published in the BMJ Open journal has found.

River Rapids Boost Species Diversity

Museum researchers working in the lower Congo River have long been impressed by the remarkable biodiversity of the region—and curious as to what drives it.

Drones Are Turning Civilians Into an Air Force of Citizen Scientists

Last winter, as meteorologists warned of a monster El Niño, researchers at the Nature Conservancy in California prepared to mobilize. El Niño promised to bring in king tides that would raise the sea level by as much as one foot above normal during high tide, causing flooding along the coastline that researchers could study as a preview of climate change-induced sea level rise. But when a king tide arrives, it floods lots of pockets along the coastline at once. So they decided to try a new, distributed surveillance strategy: commercial drones, co-opted from a gung-ho statewide network of citizen scientists.