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Farmers and insurance companies may soon get more accurate estimates of weather-related crop damage thanks to a University of Alberta researcher working with existing drone technology.

Plastic is famous for its unyielding durability, making it perfect for consumer products but a unique and persistent menace to the natural environment.

For the loggerhead sea turtles that nest on the once-pristine beaches bounding the Gulf of Mexico, millimeters-thick pieces of broken down plastic — called microplastics — pose a particularly urgent threat.

Strong vertical wind shear had taken its toll on Tropical Cyclone Flamboyan when NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean. Flamboyan, now a subtropical cyclone, had been stretched out and its only precipitation pushed southeast of the center.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image of Flamboyan on May 2 at 3:50 a.m. EDT (0750 UTC). The storm was devoid of rainfall with the exception of the southeastern quadrant. Wind shear has pushed all the storm southeast of the center.

The intensity and frequency of strong tropical cyclones, as well as cyclone landfalls, have increased in recent decades in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, raising speculation about the root cause of the surge in destructive Category 4 and 5 storms.

Now atmospheric researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa‘s International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) have published a study in Scientific Reports showing a strong connection between sea surface temperature patterns associated with the Global Warming Hiatus phenomenon and changes in cyclone activity over the northwest Pacific Ocean, particularly increasing intensities in coastal regions of East Asia.

Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the University of Dundee and the Wellcome Sanger Institute have used human and worm data to explore the mutational causes of cancer. Their study, published today in Genome Research, also shows that results from controlled experiments on a model organism – the nematode worm C. elegans – are relevant to humans, helping researchers refine what they know about cancer.