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Global Storms on Mars Launch Dust Towers Into the Sky

Photograph of side by side images of Mars atmosphere
Side-by-side movies shows how the 2018 global dust storm enveloped the Red Planet, courtesy of the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This global dust storm caused NASA's Opportunity rover to lose contact with Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Republished from an article on JPL.NASA.gov – 11/26/2019

Dust storms are common on Mars. But every decade or so, something unpredictable happens: A series of runaway storms breaks out, covering the entire planet in a dusty haze.

Last year, a fleet of NASA spacecraft got a detailed look at the life cycle of the 2018 global dust storm that ended the Opportunity rover’s mission. And while scientists are still puzzling over the data, two papers recently shed new light on a phenomenon observed within the storm: dust towers, or concentrated clouds of dust that warm in sunlight and rise high into the air. Scientists think that dust-trapped water vapor may be riding them like an elevator to space, where solar radiation breaks apart their molecules. This might help explain how Mars’ water disappeared over billions of years.

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Permanent hair dye and straighteners may increase breast cancer risk

The study found that women who use permanent hair dye and chemical hair straighteners have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who don’t use these products. NIEHS

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health found that women who use permanent hair dye and chemical hair straighteners have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who don’t use these products. The study published online Dec. 4 in the International Journal of Cancer and suggests that breast cancer risk increased with more frequent use of these chemical hair products.

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SpaceX Dragon Heads to Space Station with NASA Science, Cargo

Photo of SpaceX-Dragon Rocket Launch
SpaceX launches its 19th cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station at 12:29 p.m. EST Dec. 5, 2019, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Credits: NASA TV

Article Originally Published at NASA.gov 12/05/19

A SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station after launching at 12:29 p.m. EST Thursday. Dragon will deliver more than 5,700 pounds of NASA cargo and science investigations, including studies of malting barley in microgravity, the spread of fire, and bone and muscle loss.

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Newly identified flu antibodies could improve vaccines and treatments

Illustration of a whole influenza virus
Illustration of a whole influenza virus with a light grey surface membrane and the virus’ surface proteins HA (light blue) and NA (dark blue). HA is comprised of three subunits, while NA is comprised of four. CDC / Dan Higgins

Original Publication: 11/05/2019 – National Institutes of Health

Each year, millions of people get influenza, or flu. During the 2017-2018 flu season, 959,000 people in the U.S. were hospitalized and 79,000 people died after catching the flu. The annual seasonal flu vaccine is currently the best way to protect against the viruses that cause flu.

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You can join the effort to expose Twitter bots

maxuser/Shutterstock.com

Pik-Mai Hui, Indiana University and Christopher Torres-Lugo, Indiana University

In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, more than 10,000 automated Twitter accounts got caught conducting a coordinated campaign of tweets to discourage people from voting. These automated accounts may seem authentic to some, but a tool called Botometer was able to identify them while they pretentiously argued and agreed, for example, that “democratic men who vote drown out the voice of women.” We are part of the team that developed this tool that detects the bot accounts on social media.

Our next effort, called BotSlayer, is aimed at helping journalists and the general public spot these automated social media campaigns while they are happening.

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NASA Study Shows Human Activities Are Drying Out the Amazon

Photo of deforestation
Image by Rosario Xavier from Pixabay

Re-Published from JPL.NASA.gov – 12/5/2019

A new NASA study shows that over the last 20 years, the atmosphere above the Amazon rainforest has been drying out, increasing the demand for water and leaving ecosystems vulnerable to fires and drought. It also shows that this increase in dryness is primarily the result of human activities.

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New Satellite Will Track Rising Oceans Into 2030

Picture of NASA's new Satellite Jason-CS-Sentinel-6
Image Credit: IABG

This article is re-printed from an article on NASA.gov

Earth’s climate is changing, and the study of oceans is vital to understanding the effects of those changes on our future. For the first time, U.S and European agencies are preparing to launch a 10-year satellite mission to continue to study the clearest sign of global warming – rising sea levels. The Sentinel-6/Jason-CS mission (short for Jason-Continuity of Service), will be the longest-running mission dedicated to answering the question: How much will Earth’s oceans rise by 2030?

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A new chemistry innovation could reduce air pollution.

A new chemistry innovation could reduce smog, acid-rain and asthma-inducing pollution

Anton Alexandrovich Toutov, Virginia Commonwealth University

If humans created an emissions hall of shame, which pollutants would you nominate?

Carbon dioxide and methane would probably be fan favorites. But take a moment and consider my dark horse candidate: sulfur dioxide. Unlike its carbon-based counterparts, sulfur dioxide is not considered a major greenhouse gas and doesn’t get as much attention in the media. Instead, it does its dirty work in other ways.

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NASA’s TESS spacecraft is finding hundreds of exoplanets

Image by CharlVera from Pixabay

Daniel Apai, University of Arizona and Benjamin Rackham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

NASA’s TESS spacecraft is finding hundreds of exoplanets – and is poised to find thousands more. Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets – known as exoplanets – may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earth’s. Some may even harbor life. Over 99% of these alien worlds remain undiscovered — but this is about to change.

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Climate change poses lifelong threat to children’s health

Photo of smoke stack pollution
Image by JuergenPM from Pixabay

By Fatima Arkin

[MANILA] Climate change is already damaging the health of the world’s children and threatens a lifelong impact unless countries meet the Paris Agreement targets to limit warming to well below 2˚C, according to a new study published in The Lancet.

The study, which involves 35 global institutions, notes that children are more likely to develop respiratory diseases or asthma due to fine particulate air pollution that is principally driven by fossil fuels and “exacerbated by climate change”.

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