May 30, 2012

Good Morning,

Here's a really neat story; the European Space agency launched a satellite two years ago that was designed to measure ocean ice thickness, but they have found that the satellite is a great tool for mapping the contours of the ocean floor. Check out the first article for more details on this story.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Satellite maps ocean floor

PARIS - A European satellite launched in 2010 to measure sea-ice thickness in the arctic is also yielding high-resolution mapping of the ocean floor, scientists say. While the main objective of the polar-orbiting CryoSat is to measure the thickness of polar sea ice and ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica, its radar altimeter can also measure tiny changes in sea level, the European Space Agency reported Monday. Variation in sea level mimics the rises and dips of the ocean floor beneath due to the pull of gravity, as areas of greater mass such as underwater mountains have a stronger pull, attracting more water and producing a minor increase in ocean-surface height, researchers said. The CryoSat data combined with ongoing ocean mapping will result in global seafloor topography -- bathymetry -- two to four times more accurate than measurements currently available, they said. "We know more about the surfaces of Venus and Mars than we do about the bathymetry of deep oceans," David Sandwell from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California said. "This new mapping from CryoSat will revolutionize our understanding of ocean floor tectonics and reveal, perhaps, 10,000 previously uncharted undersea volcanoes."


New smartphone display to do HD video

SEOUL - South Korea's LG Display says its newly announced 5-inch 1080p HD mobile display with a 16:9 aspect ratio is designed with HD content in mind. A technology dubbed Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching will provide wide viewing angles, fast response times and improved brightness efficiency, the company said Monday in a release. The new display could leapfrog Apple's highly regarded Retina Display when it debuts in smartphones during the second half of this year, Engadget.com reported. "As smartphones become increasingly valued for how well they do multimedia and with the rapid growth of LTE enabling faster large file transfers, our new 5-inch Full HD LCD panel is certain to prove a significant asset to the mobile market," said Sang-Deok Yeo, chief technology officer and executive vice president of LG
Display.


Space telescope instrument heads to U.S.

LONDON - A European contribution to the James Webb Space Telescope left London Heathrow airport Tuesday bound for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, officials said. The Mid Infra-Red Instrument (Miri) was flown on a British Airways jet bound for Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, the BBC reported. The Webb telescope will be the successor to the Hubble orbiting observatory and aims to track down the very first stars to shine in the Universe with Miri, built by a pan-European consortium, playing a central role in the quest to identify that "first light," officials said. Miri will be taken to Goddard where it will be unpacked Wednesday and integrated into the telescope structure prior to further testing. For the flight to Washington the instrument was placed in an air-freight container -- with a few extras features. "Miri's box is a standard environment-controlled air-freight container, but we built a special structure inside to hold this incredibly valuable instrument," Piyal Samara-Ratna, a mechanical engineer from Leicester University overseeing the transfer, said. "It's impossible to insure something like Miri, which represents the time and effort of so many people in Europe and the United States."


Climate change opinions not about science

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - U.S. public apathy over climate change is unrelated to any lack of science literacy about the subject, a study by Yale University researchers found. In fact, as members of the public become more science literate, individuals belonging to opposing cultural groups become even more divided on the risks climate change poses, researchers at Yale University reported. "The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses," study member Dan Kahan said. "The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public's limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values. "The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first," he said. That's the result of "cultural cognition," the researchers said, the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong. "In effect," Kahan said, "ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values." The study suggests the need for science communication strategies based on an understanding of cultural values, Kahan said. "More information can help solve the climate change conflict," he said, "but that information has to do more than communicate the scientific evidence. It also has to create a climate of deliberations in which no group perceives that accepting any piece of evidence is akin to betrayal of their cultural group."

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