Malaria affected 219 million people around the globe in 2010, according to the World Health Organization. This life-threatening disease, caused by plasmodium parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes, killed about 660,000 people in 2010 – mostly African children under the age of five.
The Arctic is in the midst of rapidly escalating change with pronounced increases in surface air temperature over subarctic land areas, as well as over the Arctic Ocean.
Animals are in constant movement across the surface of the earth, and climate affects their movements, especially for migrating and flying animals. Understanding animal movement is pivotal to predicting and ensuring the survival of populations in the face of rapid global changes to climate, land-use and habitats.
College geoscience students with mobility impairments soon will be able to explore a computer simulation of a large cave system to meet degree requirements of field-based learning experiences.
Slated for launch in 2019-20, the Surface Water and Ocean Topo-graphy (SWOT) satellite mission is a collaborative project of NASA and the French space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales. SWOT features a swath-mapping radar interferometer that will provide data on inland bodies of water, as well as mapping ocean circulation at high spatial resolution.
School children learn that nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, in the form of oceans, ice, rivers and lakes. However, even our brightest scientists know little about the distribution of water beneath the planet’s surface or even how much total water the planet contains.
With more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface covered in water, studying ocean topography is vital to researchers who produce atmospheric models for forecasting hurricanes, optimizing commercial shipping routes, tracking floating debris and helping manage marine animal populations.
Renewable energy is increasingly important with rising energy demands, finite fossil fuel supplies and growing environmental concerns.
When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the Louisiana coast in April, it caused the first major deepsea oil spill and became the first spill where chemical dispersants were used far below the water’s surface. Researchers have detected toxic microdroplets spreading in concentrations that may be lethal to wildlife.
David Bromwich, Ph.D., and his research team are leveraging the computing and storage resources of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) to synthesize historical weather data from a region of nearly 29-million square miles – everything north of Minneapolis, Minn.; Turin, Italy; and the Black Sea. The team is integrating multiple enormous databases containing eleven years of satellite readings and
