Two remarkable objects orbiting low-mass stars have been detected in our cosmic vicinity. This fascinating discovery was confirmed through observations from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft.



Gaia’s primary mission is mapping stars, so its ability to detect these unusual star companions highlights its unexpected contributions to exoplanet research. 



The newly confirmed objects, Gaia-4b and Gaia-5b, challenge existing models of planet formation around low-mass stars.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-stars-with-hefty-companions">Stars with hefty companions</h2>



Gaia-4b, classified as a “<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/super-jupiter-discovered-in-the-great-bear-constellation/">Super-Jupiter</a>,” orbits the star Gaia-4 roughly 244 light-years away. Gaia-5b - considered a brown dwarf - travels around Gaia-5, located about 134 light-years from Earth.



“Gaia-4b is about twelve times more massive than Jupiter. With an orbital period of 570 days, it is a relatively cold gas giant planet,” explained Guðmundur Stefánsson, an astronomer at the University of Amsterdam.



“With a mass of around 21 Jupiters, Gaia-5b is a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/brown-dwarfs-detected-outside-the-milky-way-for-the-first-time/">brown dwarf</a>, more massive than a planet but too light to sustain nuclear fusion to be a star.”



Typically, such hefty objects are rarely found around low-mass stars, prompting astronomers to question traditional theories of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/planet-formation-new-insights-mechanics-physics/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">planet formation</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-mapping-the-wobbling-stars">Mapping the wobbling stars</h2>



Since its 2013 launch, <a href="https://earth.esa.int/eogateway">ESA</a>’s Gaia spacecraft has been constructing the largest and most detailed three-dimensional map of our Milky Way, charting the positions and movements of over two billion celestial objects. 



Central to these recent findings is Gaia’s specialty: astrometry, the precise tracking of stellar motion. By repeatedly scanning the sky with dual optical telescopes, Gaia detects the minute “wobble” a star exhibits if it’s influenced by an orbiting companion. 



In contrast to the transit method - which spots planets crossing in front of a star - astrometry is best suited to identifying massive objects in wide orbits, including Super-Jupiters and brown dwarfs that might otherwise be missed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-power-of-multiple-detection-methods">Power of multiple detection methods </h2>



“Gaia was repeatedly scanning these stars, building up an increasingly detailed picture over time,” Stefánsson said.&nbsp;



“In 2022, Gaia Data Release 3 included a list of stars that appear to be moving as though pulled by an exoplanet. Using ground-based spectroscopic data and the radial velocity technique to investigate these stars, we confirmed our first planet and our first brown dwarf.”



The research highlights how multiple detection methods can together reveal new celestial bodies and clarify their nature.



<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="cgpihgb49C-4304237-12187" type="single"]</div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-intriguing-companions-to-modest-stars">Intriguing companions to modest stars</h2>



In the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/two-enormous-fermi-bubbles-discovered-towering-above-and-below-our-milky-way-galaxy/">Milky Way</a>, 75% of stars fall into the low-mass category, ranging from about 10% to 65% of the Sun’s mass. It's been considered unlikely for huge gas giants or brown dwarfs to form around such stars, as smaller stars possess less material in their protoplanetary disks - material from which planets coalesce.



“About 75% of the stars in the Milky Way are low-mass stars, and when massive planets do occur around them, they cause a larger wobble and therefore a stronger astrometric signature that is easier to detect,” noted Stefánsson.



Finding Gaia-4b and Gaia-5b orbiting stars of modest mass challenges this assumption, illustrating that even limited-mass stellar environments can produce exceptionally large companions.&nbsp;



This discovery encourages astronomers to refine or reconsider current models of how planets and brown dwarfs take shape, potentially exploring alternate scenarios - like disk instability or other yet-unknown processes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-milestone-in-exoplanet-studies">A milestone in exoplanet studies</h2>



Gaia-4b’s detection marks a milestone in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/exoplanet-discovery-nasa-identifies-over-5500-distant-worlds/">exoplanet</a> studies, as it was confirmed using Gaia data exclusively.&nbsp;



Historically, exoplanet candidates emerged from a combination of Gaia findings and data from its predecessor, Hipparcos. Gaia’s increasing precision, however, allows researchers to spot these signal “wobbles” without additional satellite missions.



“Gaia has seen the telltale signs of known exoplanets before, but this time Gaia revealed an entirely new extrasolar world,” said Johannes Sahlmann, Gaia Project Scientist at ESA.



This accomplishment foreshadows the impact of future Gaia data releases, particularly in 2026, when a more extensive set of observations (spanning 5.5 years) is expected.&nbsp;



Astronomers anticipate hundreds or even thousands of discoveries, including not only gas giants and brown dwarfs but also smaller, rocky planets that challenge the limits of observational methods.



“This discovery is an exciting tip-of-the-iceberg for the exoplanet discoveries we can expect from Gaia in the future,” said ESA research fellow Matthew Standing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-new-era-in-exoplanetary-science">A new era in exoplanetary science</h2>



As the Gaia spacecraft continues its sky-mapping mission, astronomers stand on the cusp of a golden age in exoplanet research.&nbsp;



Upcoming data releases promise to unveil a broader spectrum of planetary systems, shedding light on how giant bodies form in environments once assumed too resource-poor to support them.



By providing continuous, highly accurate measurements of stars across the galaxy, Gaia is enabling scientists to piece together the puzzle of planetary system architectures - from small, dim red dwarfs to stars much larger than our Sun.&nbsp;



The mission is bound to disrupt long-standing theories, opening the door to new questions about how diverse exoplanetary systems can be and how nature assembles them.



Ultimately, these findings serve as a reminder that our universe remains brimming with surprises.&nbsp;



Image/ Video Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC/M. Marcussen



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Wobbling stars reveal giant companions

Two remarkable objects orbiting low-mass stars have been detected in our cosmic vicinity. This fascinating discovery was confirmed through observations from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. Gaia’s primary mission is mapping stars, so its ability to detect these unusual star companions highlights its unexpected contributions to exoplanet research. The newly confirmed objects, Gaia-4b and Gaia-5b, challenge existing models of planet formation around low-mass stars. Stars with hefty companions Gaia-4b, classified as a “Super-Jupiter,” orbits the star Gaia-4 roughly 244 light-years away. Gaia-5b - considered a brown dwarf - travels around...

Study Tracks The Fate Of Melting Arctic Permafrost. New study traces the fate of carbon stored in thawing Arctic soils

As temperatures rise, some of the organic carbon stored in Arctic permafrost meets an unexpected fate--burial at sea. As many as 2.2 million metric tons of organic carbon per year are swept along by a single river system into Arctic Ocean sediment, according to a new study an international team of researchers published today in Nature. This process locks away carbon dioxide (CO2) - a greenhouse gas - and helps stabilize the earth's CO2 levels over time, and it may help scientists better predict how the natural carbon cycle will interplay with the surge of CO2 emissions due to human activities.

"The erosion of permafrost carbon is very significant," says Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Associate Scientist Valier Galy, a co-author of the study. "Over thousands of years, this process is locking CO2 away from the atmosphere in a way that amounts to fairly large carbon stocks. If we can understand how this process works, we can predict how it will respond as the climate changes."Study Tracks The Fate Of Melting Arctic Permafrost

Permafrost--frozen ground found in the Arctic and in some alpine regions--is known to hold billions of tons of organic material. Amid concerns about rising Arctic temperatures and their impact on permafrost, many researchers have directed their efforts to studying the permafrost carbon cycle--the processes through which carbon circulates between the atmosphere, the soil and plants (the biosphere), and the sea. Yet how this cycle works and how it responds to the warming, changing climate remains poorly understood.

Galy and his colleagues from Durham University, the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, the NERC Radiocarbon Facility, Stockholm University, and the Universite Paris-Sud set out to characterize the carbon cycle in one particular piece of the Arctic landscape--northern Canada's Mackenzie River, the largest river flowing into the Arctic Ocean from North America and that ocean's greatest source of sediment. The researchers hypothesized that the Mackenzie's muddy water might erode soils along its path, some from places where permafrost is melting, and wash that biosphere-derived material and the organic carbon within it into the ocean, preventing the degradation of organic carbon and associated release of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The researchers collected samples at various depths and locations along the river system, lowering a specially-designed device to take samples of the water and suspended sediments carried by the river. To take into consideration the river's seasonal variation--its flow increases sharply during the spring, when warm temperatures melt the snowpack and raise water levels, and drops during the frozen winter months--they sampled it during different seasons across three years starting in 2009.

Then the researchers sifted through the samples to isolate the carbon they contained. They used the presence of one specific isotope of carbon that decays over time, carbon-14, to determine how old the carbon was. This was important because it revealed the carbon's origin- rock or biosphere.

"The carbon that comes from the rocks has been there for hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of years," Galy says. "The other <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=carbon&amp;cvid=a66e1c1f72e94a3cb4b72dac1fbbea18&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">carbon</a> can come from a tree that fell into the river two days before we sampled or from the permafrost and be thousands years old."

The carbon from rocks has been stored away from the atmosphere for a long time, and exists in a form that makes it less likely to react with its environment and enter the atmosphere. But the newer, biosphere-based carbon is more labile and likely to react, potentially entering the atmosphere and raising CO2 levels.

"If you bury the biosphere-based carbon, you have an actual carbon sink--you're taking carbon that could be out in the atmosphere and locking it away," Galy says.

The researchers compared what they found along the river to a sediment core obtained from the Arctic Ocean seabed at the Mackenzie delta, tracing the rock and biosphere carbon to the sediment deposits there. They found that a significant amount of the biosphere carbon--more than that carried by all the major Eurasian Arctic rivers combined--is swept into storage offshore. Using carbon-14 they further determined that this biosphere-derived carbon is up to 9000 years old, a clearly indication of its permafrost origin.

"That carbon is not returning to the atmosphere for a long time," says Robert Hilton, associate professor at Durham University who worked on the study. "Over geological timescales, warming conditions lead to the sequestration of that carbon at sea."

This sequestration likely kept naturally-occurring CO2 levels in check. But the researchers emphasize that this natural process is 10 to 20 times too slow to keep pace with CO2 emissions from human activities, such as the burning of <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/fossil-fuels-lower-energy-return/">fossil fuels.</a>

"River transfer is not going to solve the problem--it's not going to make the CO2 we inject into the atmosphere go away," Galy says. But the findings do reveal a more complex picture of the relationships between warming temperatures, thawing permafrost and carbon emission--a picture that Galy and his international colleagues hope to further investigate with future studies.

---

<a href="http://www.whoi.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute</a>

Study Tracks The Fate Of Melting Arctic Permafrost

Study Tracks The Fate Of Melting Arctic Permafrost. New study...

Adult Corals Give Their Offspring Skills Necessary To Survive. A new study from scientists at the University of Hawai'i - Mānoa's (UHM) Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) reveals that preconditioning adult corals to increased temperature and ocean acidification resulted in offspring that may be better able to handle those future environmental stressors. This rapid trans-generational acclimatization may be able to "buy time" for corals in the race against climate change.

Hollie Putnam, lead author of the Journal of Experimental Biology-featured study and HIMB assistant researcher; and Ruth Gates, co-author and HIMB senior researcher, exposed two groups of parental corals to either ambient ocean conditions or IPCC-predicted future ocean conditions - warmer and more acidic water. As expected, the harsher future conditions negatively affected the health of the parental coral - lowering photosynthesis and production to consumption ratios. Surprisingly, however, the offspring of parents who were exposed to future conditions appeared healthier when re-exposed to the harsher environment.

"By preconditioning the corals while the offspring are being brooded it may be possible to increase the offspring's potential to perform under stressful environmental conditions," said Putnam.

Corals have been suffering huge losses in diversity and abundance on reefs worldwide due to local stressors such as overfishing, coastal development, pollution, and sedimentation, for example. Further, global stressors such as increased temperature result in coral bleaching - a breakdown in the symbiosis between the cnidarian host and the symbiotic algae - which can cause mass coral mortality. Additionally, corals exposed to ocean acidification can struggle to build their skeletons and reefs are undergoing bioerosion and dissolution.

"Together these local and global stressors are placing an unprecedented strain on coral reef ecosystems. It has even been predicted that some corals may go extinct and the reefs will not provide the same biological diversity and provisioning - goods and services valued at hundreds of billions of dollars annually," said Putnam. Adult Corals Give Their Offspring Skills Necessary To Survive

It is thought genetic adaption is the primary option for corals to respond to climate change. With the rapid rate of environmental change, however, genetic adaptation may not be able to keep pace. Putnam and Gates were interested in the potential for other more rapid response mechanisms like the acclimatization provided when adults provision their offspring based on their environmental experience. The researchers think epigenetics, or a change in the quantity and product of a gene without a change in DNA sequence, may be one such acclimatory mechanism that allows the organism to rapidly adjust to environmental change. Epigenetics and parental effects, they say, may help to buffer corals against the rapidly changing climate.

"Our work suggests that when we consider multiple life stages in connection and their environmental history, corals have resources to respond to climate change that we have not yet considered fully," said Putnam. "This may be good news for corals of the future."

In a new series of experiments, the researchers are expanding their analysis to more coral life stages by tracking the coral larvae from preconditioning in their parents until they settle and grow into juveniles. Their goal is to assess the "grandchildren" after 3-4 years, when the first offspring become reproductive. They are also comparing the response to temperature and ocean acidification simultaneously and separately to determine if one factor is more influential than another.

---

<a href="http://manoa.hawaii.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">University of Hawaii Manoa</a>

Adult Corals Give Their Offspring Skills Necessary To Survive

Adult Corals Give Their Offspring Skills Necessary To Survive. A...

NOAA researchers cite the heavy rains that pounded the middle of the country in July as reason for this summer's enlarged gulf dead zone.

The low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico has grown larger than normal, NOAA scientists say. At last count, the hypoxic blob covered 6,474 square miles.

A dead zone is an area of low to no oxygen water that can kill marine life, should fish or other marine mammals find themselves trapped in depleted waters. While fish and mammals can usually avoid dead zones, slow-moving shellfish and crustaceans are more vulnerable to suffocation.

Last year's dead zone measured 5,052 square miles. The latest measurements reveal a growing dead zone that is both bigger than average and larger than NOAA's yearly prediction.

Of the more than 550 dead zones found in lakes and oceans around the world, the Gulf's is the second-largest manmade hypoxic zone. The suffocating water is the result of oxygen-depleting phytoplankton blooms encouraged by high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous -- agricultural and sewage treatment runoff delivered by the mighty Mississippi River.

As phytoplankton die and sink to the bottom, bacteria feast upon them, sucking more oxygen from the water. The oxygen-deprived water remains in place until storms churn up the water layers and help replenish the dead zone with fresh oxygen.

NOAA researchers cite the heavy rains that pounded the middle of the country in July as reason for this summer's enlarged dead zone. The latest numbers are the result of a survey undertaken by NOAA scientists.

"An average area was expected because the Mississippi River discharge levels and associated nutrient data from May indicated an average delivery of nutrients during this critical month which stimulates the fuel for the mid-summer dead zone," Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), <a class="tpstyle" href="http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/080415-gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-above-average.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said in a press release</a>.

Rabalais led the recent scientific survey that mapped the fish-killing blob in the Gulf.

"Since the models are based largely on the May nitrogen loads from the Mississippi River, the heavy rains that came in June with additional nitrogen and even higher river discharges in July are the possible explanations for the larger size," she said.

In addition to rainfall totals, wind, temperature and currents affect the size and movement of the Gulf's dead zone.

"It would have been even larger without winds out of the west pushing some of the low-oxygen water back to the east," <a class="tpstyle" href="http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/08/2015_gulf_dead_zone_larger_tha.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rabalais told The Times-Picayune</a>.

Previous research has shown that hypoxic conditions in the Gulf result in habitat loss, species displacement and diminished reproductive abilities for many fish.

---

Credit: UPI

2015 Gulf Dead Zone Bigger Than Normal

NOAA researchers cite the heavy rains that pounded the middle...

2015 Gulf Dead Zone Bigger Than Normal. NOAA researchers cite the heavy rains that pounded the middle of the country in July as reason for this summer's enlarged gulf dead zone.

The low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf of <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/experts-track-the-flow-of-nutrients-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/">Mexico</a> has grown larger than normal, NOAA scientists say. At last count, the hypoxic blob covered 6,474 square miles.

A dead zone is an area of low to no oxygen water that can kill marine life, should fish or other marine mammals find themselves trapped in depleted waters. While fish and mammals can usually avoid dead zones, slow-moving shellfish and crustaceans are more vulnerable to suffocation.2015 Gulf Dead Zone Bigger Than Normal

Last year's dead zone measured 5,052 square miles. The latest measurements reveal a growing dead zone that is both bigger than average and larger than NOAA's yearly prediction.

Of the more than 550 dead zones found in lakes and oceans around the world, the Gulf's is the second-largest manmade hypoxic zone. The suffocating water is the result of oxygen-depleting phytoplankton blooms encouraged by high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous -- agricultural and sewage treatment runoff delivered by the mighty Mississippi River.

As phytoplankton die and sink to the bottom, bacteria feast upon them, sucking more oxygen from the water. The oxygen-deprived water remains in place until storms churn up the water layers and help replenish the dead zone with fresh oxygen.

NOAA researchers cite the heavy rains that pounded the middle of the country in July as reason for this summer's enlarged dead zone. The latest numbers are the result of a survey undertaken by NOAA scientists.

"An average area was expected because the Mississippi River discharge levels and associated nutrient data from May indicated an average delivery of nutrients during this critical month which stimulates the fuel for the mid-summer dead zone," Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), <a class="tpstyle" href="http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/080415-gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-above-average.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">said in a press release</a>.

Rabalais led the recent scientific survey that mapped the fish-killing blob in the Gulf.

"Since the models are based largely on the May nitrogen loads from the Mississippi River, the heavy rains that came in June with additional nitrogen and even higher river discharges in July are the possible explanations for the larger size," she said.

In addition to rainfall totals, wind, temperature and currents affect the size and movement of the Gulf's dead zone.

"It would have been even larger without winds out of the west pushing some of the low-oxygen water back to the east," <a class="tpstyle" href="http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/08/2015_gulf_dead_zone_larger_tha.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rabalais told The Times-Picayune</a>.

Previous research has shown that hypoxic conditions in the Gulf result in habitat loss, species displacement and diminished reproductive abilities for many fish.

---

Credit: UPI

2015 Gulf Dead Zone Bigger Than Normal. NOAA researchers cite...

http://www.forestwander.com

US Raises Concerns About Natural Gas Pipeline Through Forests. The <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=us&amp;cvid=732500fc37ab49d8abc261e81de2c304&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">U.S.</a> Forest Service has raised hundreds of concerns about a proposed natural gas pipeline that would carve a 30-mile swath through national forests in Virginia and West Virginia.
The written comments to federal regulators question why the proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline has to go through the George <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/mount-rainier-in-washington/">Washington</a> and Monongahela national forests and raises similar worries cited by residents along the path of the 550-mile energy project. US Raises Concerns About Natural Gas Pipeline Through Forests
The 335 questions, comments and corrections were submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in late July by H. Thomas Speaks Jr., forest supervisor. The Forest Service already has given the builders of the proposed pipeline the green light to survey the forests.
The pipeline is proposed by Dominion Resources Inc., Duke Energy and two energy partners. It would carry natural gas from Marcellus shale drilling in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia to the Southeast. It would run from Harrison County, West Virginia, southeast to Greensville County, Virginia, and into North Carolina.
The $5 billion pipeline is intended to deliver cleaner burning natural gas to the Southeast as utilities move away from coal-burning power plants amid tighter federal rules on pollution that contributes to climate change.
The Forest Service filing was in response to a draft report filed in May by Dominion. Forest surveys of wetlands and wildlife, among other resources, are nearing completion, said Frank Mack, a spokesman for Dominion Transmission, a subsidiary that would build the pipeline.
"Much of what we have completed since May will address many of the comments the National Forest Service sent to the FERC, and which we plan to make public when we file our Resource Reports with our application to the FERC later this summer," Mack wrote in an email.
The Forest Service said Speaks' comments are intended to guide Dominion as it develops its final report with the agency on the national forest routes. The Forest Service will make the final decision whether the pipeline is a "suitable use" for the national forests, said Jennifer Adams, special project coordinator for the Forest Service.
Adams said a similar report was filed by the Forest Service on another interstate pipeline project, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, but those comments have not been released. The Mountain Valley project would go through a section of the Jefferson National Forest.
The 300-mile pipeline is a joint venture between EQT Corp. and NextEra Energy Inc. It would run from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to another pipeline in Pittsylvania County.
On the Atlantic Pipeline, one Forest Service comment questions the "necessity to cross" forestlands in building the pipeline. Speaks wrote that the Forest Service policy does not authorize the use of U.S. forests "solely because it affords the applicant a lower cost or less restrictive location when compared to non-NFS lands."
The Forest Service filing also questions whether hazardous materials such as blasting materials would be stored on forestland, the impact on streams and fish, and the restoration of habitat after the pipeline is built, among others.
While politically popular, the proposed pipeline has found opposition among its planned route by residents who object to a pipeline dissecting their land or on environmental grounds. The pipeline has spawned at least two groups opposed to its construction and several lawsuits.
---
Steve Szkotak can be reached on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/sszkotakap" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://twitter.com/sszkotakap</a> .
---
Online:
Atlantic Coast Pipeline: <a href="https://www.dom.com/corporate/what-we-do/natural-gas/atlantic-coast-pipeline" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.dom.com/corporate/what-we-do/natural-gas/atlantic-coast-pipeline</a>
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

US Raises Concerns About Natural Gas Pipeline

US Raises Concerns About Natural Gas Pipeline Through Forests. The...

Carbon Dioxide

Carbon Pollution From US Power Plants Hits 27-Year Low. Heat-trapping carbon pollution from U.S. power plants hit a 27-year low in April, the Department of <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/earth-could-be-powered-entirely-by-renewable-energy/">Energy</a> announced Wednesday.
A big factor was the long-term shift from coal to cleaner and cheaper natural gas, said Energy Department economist Allen McFarland. Outside experts also credit more renewable fuel use and energy efficiency.
Carbon dioxide - from the burning of coal, oil and gas - is the chief greenhouse gas responsible for man-made global warming. Carbon Pollution From US Power Plants Hits 27-Year Low
"While good news for the environment, we certainly would not want to assume that this trend will continue and that we can simply relax," said John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
Electric power plants spewed 141 million tons of carbon dioxide in April, the lowest for any month since April 1988, according to Energy Department figures. The power plants are responsible for about one-third of the country's heat-trapping emissions.
April emissions peaked at 192 million tons in 2008 and dropped by 26 percent in seven years.
Carbon pollution from power plants hit their peak in August 2007 with 273 million tons; summer emissions are higher because air conditioning requires more power.
In past years, experts said the U.S. reduction in carbon dioxide pollution was more a function of a sluggish economy, but McFarland said that's no longer the case.
"You don't have a 27-year low because of an economic blip," McFarland said. "There are more things happening than that."
The price of natural gas has dropped 39 percent in the past year, he said. Federal analysts predict that this year the amount of electricity from natural gas will increase 3 percent compared to last year while the power from coal will go down 10 percent.
Those reductions were calculated before this week's announcements of new power plant rules. The new rules aim to cut carbon pollution from electricity generators another 20 percent from current levels by 2030.
The pollution cuts in April are because efficiency has cut electricity demand and energy from non-hydropower renewable sources has more than doubled, said Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer.
"A factor behind all these trends is that the writing is on the wall about the future of coal and thus the future of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions," Oppenheimer said in an email. "The regulatory noose is tightening and companies are anticipating a future with lower and lower dependence on fossil fuels and lower and lower carbon dioxide emissions."
---
Online:
U.S. Energy Information Administration on April emissions: <a href="http://1.usa.gov/1IXTCCG" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://1.usa.gov/1IXTCCG</a>
---
Seth Borenstein can be followed at <a href="http://twitter.com/borenbears" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://twitter.com/borenbears</a>
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Carbon Pollution From US Power Plants Hits 27-Year Low

Carbon Pollution From US Power Plants Hits 27-Year Low. Heat-trapping...

Puerto Rico Drought

Puerto Ricans Face Severe Drought And Economic Slump. Puerto Ricans are learning to live without water on an island that already was suffering an economic crisis.
A severe drought is forcing businesses to temporarily close, public schools to cancel breakfast service and people to find creative ways to stay clean amid sweltering temperatures.
Rationing rules that had meant water coming through the pipes only one day out of three will increase the cutoff to one day out of four starting next week, government officials say.
"I've grown fearful of the weather report," said Cornelio Vegazo, owner of a roof-repair company. "There's no light at the end of the tunnel."Puerto Ricans Face Severe Drought And Economic Slump
The drought is one of the worst in the U.S. territory's history. July was the fourth driest month in the capital of San Juan since 1898, the year Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States. Only 1.60 inches (4 centimeters) of rain fell last month, and forecasters predict several more weeks and possibly months of dry conditions.
Nearly 13 percent of Puerto Rico is in extreme drought and an additional 38 percent is in a severe one, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center, which says 2.5 million people are affected.
The situation has grown so dire that Puerto Rico's water and sewer company announced Wednesday that it would spend about $200,000 over three months on a pilot project to use "cloud seeding" in hopes of creating rain clouds over three of the island's main reservoirs.
If Puerto Rico does not receive significant rainfall this week, tens of thousands of clients who depend on the Carraizo reservoir will get water only every fourth day starting next week, said Alberto Lazaro, executive director of the water and sewer company.
"We are doing everything within our reach to address the situation at the reservoirs," he said. "We will not stop looking for alternatives to deal with a situation that, without a doubt, is one of the island's biggest concerns."
Forecasters blame the lack of rain on El Nino, a warming of the tropical Pacific that affects global weather and has led to a quiet Atlantic hurricane season, which began in June and ends in November.
So far this year, it has rained as much as 12 inches (31 centimeters) less than usual in San Juan and as much as 20 inches (51 centimeters) less in some areas around the Carraizo reservoir, said Carlos Anselmi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack has declared 20 of the island's 78 municipalities as disaster zones, with farmers reporting an increase in crops shriveling and cattle dying.
The drought comes as Puerto Rico struggles in a nearly decade-long economic slump that has hit the government's coffers and led authorities to raise the sales tax, even on bottled water. Puerto Ricans also are grumbling about having to pay high water rates amid severe rationing measures.
"It's not fair," said Hector Linares, a car wash worker. But he is resigned. "You can't fight <a href="http://www.earth.com/video/puerto-rico-after-hurricane-maria/">Puerto Rico'</a>s bureaucracy."
The government has set up water trucks throughout the San Juan metropolitan area and beyond, including one at a public housing complex in a working class community in Rio Piedras.
As the truck rumbles through the Gardens of Paradise complex, Alexander Cabrera says that one of his fellow residents there has taken to yelling: "The water is here! The water is here!"
"That's when everybody comes out running. They look like ants," Cabrera said.
The drought has forced people to change their routine, with many seeking help from friends and family in places where water service has not been affected.
Jose Bonilla, a retired power company worker, said he moved in with a female friend after his service was cut. If the situation worsens, Bonilla said he would leave.
"I'm on the first flight out, to Santo Domingo or <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=new+york+times&amp;cvid=eb94a288ea4c4041aa6df1a34e9e22d6&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">New York</a>," he said.
But other Caribbean spots also are struggling with drought, including the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and St. Lucia. It is the region's worst drought in five years.
Vegazo, who has the roof-repair company, said he and his family are not thinking of leaving. They have attended a free course at their church on how to live with a minimum amount of water.
"We'll just get another barrel of water and keep on going," he said. "We're depending on God."
---
Danica Coto on Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/danicacoto" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.twitter.com/danicacoto</a>
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Puerto Ricans Face Severe Drought And Economic Slump

Puerto Ricans Face Severe Drought And Economic Slump. Puerto Ricans...

Puerto Ricans are learning to live without water on an island that already was suffering an economic crisis.
A severe drought is forcing businesses to temporarily close, public schools to cancel breakfast service and people to find creative ways to stay clean amid sweltering temperatures.
Rationing rules that had meant water coming through the pipes only one day out of three will increase the cutoff to one day out of four starting next week, government officials say.
"I've grown fearful of the weather report," said Cornelio Vegazo, owner of a roof-repair company. "There's no light at the end of the tunnel."
The drought is one of the worst in the U.S. territory's history. July was the fourth driest month in the capital of San Juan since 1898, the year Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States. Only 1.60 inches (4 centimeters) of rain fell last month, and forecasters predict several more weeks and possibly months of dry conditions.
Nearly 13 percent of Puerto Rico is in extreme drought and an additional 38 percent is in a severe one, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center, which says 2.5 million people are affected.
The situation has grown so dire that Puerto Rico's water and sewer company announced Wednesday that it would spend about $200,000 over three months on a pilot project to use "cloud seeding" in hopes of creating rain clouds over three of the island's main reservoirs.
If Puerto Rico does not receive significant rainfall this week, tens of thousands of clients who depend on the Carraizo reservoir will get water only every fourth day starting next week, said Alberto Lazaro, executive director of the water and sewer company.
"We are doing everything within our reach to address the situation at the reservoirs," he said. "We will not stop looking for alternatives to deal with a situation that, without a doubt, is one of the island's biggest concerns."
Forecasters blame the lack of rain on El Nino, a warming of the tropical Pacific that affects global weather and has led to a quiet Atlantic hurricane season, which began in June and ends in November.
So far this year, it has rained as much as 12 inches (31 centimeters) less than usual in San Juan and as much as 20 inches (51 centimeters) less in some areas around the Carraizo reservoir, said Carlos Anselmi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack has declared 20 of the island's 78 municipalities as disaster zones, with farmers reporting an increase in crops shriveling and cattle dying.
The drought comes as Puerto Rico struggles in a nearly decade-long economic slump that has hit the government's coffers and led authorities to raise the sales tax, even on bottled water. Puerto Ricans also are grumbling about having to pay high water rates amid severe rationing measures.
"It's not fair," said Hector Linares, a car wash worker. But he is resigned. "You can't fight Puerto Rico's bureaucracy."
The government has set up water trucks throughout the San Juan metropolitan area and beyond, including one at a public housing complex in a working class community in Rio Piedras.
As the truck rumbles through the Gardens of Paradise complex, Alexander Cabrera says that one of his fellow residents there has taken to yelling: "The water is here! The water is here!"
"That's when everybody comes out running. They look like ants," Cabrera said.
The drought has forced people to change their routine, with many seeking help from friends and family in places where water service has not been affected.
Jose Bonilla, a retired power company worker, said he moved in with a female friend after his service was cut. If the situation worsens, Bonilla said he would leave.
"I'm on the first flight out, to Santo Domingo or New York," he said.
But other Caribbean spots also are struggling with drought, including the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and St. Lucia. It is the region's worst drought in five years.
Vegazo, who has the roof-repair company, said he and his family are not thinking of leaving. They have attended a free course at their church on how to live with a minimum amount of water.
"We'll just get another barrel of water and keep on going," he said. "We're depending on God."
---
Danica Coto on Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/danicacoto" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.twitter.com/danicacoto</a>
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Puerto Ricans are learning to live without water on an...

16 States Ask Obama To Put New Power Plant Rules On Hold. The campaign to stop President Barack Obama's sweeping emissions limits on power plants began taking shape Wednesday, as 16 states asked the government to put the power plant rules on hold while a Senate panel moved to block them.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is leading the charge against the rules, banded together with 15 other state attorneys general in a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Gina McCarthy requesting that the agency temporarily suspend the rules while they challenge their legality in court. The letter called for the EPA to respond by Friday. 16 States Ask Obama To Put New Power Plant Rules On Hold
The EPA and the White House both said they believe the limits are legal and have no plans to put them on hold. But by submitting the formal request anyway, the attorneys general are laying the groundwork to ask the courts to suspend the emissions limits instead.
"These regulations, if allowed to proceed, will do serious harm to West Virginia and the U.S. economy," Morrisey said. "That is why we are taking quick action to bring this process to a halt."
The 16 states and a handful of others are preparing to sue the Obama administration to block the rules permanently by arguing they exceed Obama's authority. Bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling against the administration's mercury limits, opponents argued that states shouldn't have to start preparing to comply with a rule that may eventually get thrown out by the courts.
The speedy opposition from the states came two days after Obama unveiled the final version of the rules, which mark the first time the U.S. has ever limited carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. Obama's revised plan mandates a 32 percent cut in emissions nationwide by 2030, compared to 2005 levels - a steeper cut than in his earlier proposal.
Most of the attorneys general signing the letter Wednesday are Republicans. Yet they were joined by Jack Conway of the coal-producing state of Kentucky. Conway and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear are both Democrats, but have joined the state's Republican leaders in denouncing Obama's power plant limits, which form the centerpiece of his plan to fight climate change.
Although the most serious threat to Obama's power plant rules is in the courts, lawmakers in Congress are also pursuing legislative means to stop them. The first vote came Wednesday in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where a bill blocking the rules passed the GOP-controlled panel by a voice vote - but not without a bit of drama.
Over the protests of boycotting Democrats, the Senate GOP-controlled panel approved legislation designed to block the Obama administration from implementing the tough new standards.
Democrats walked out of the committee meeting in protest of a separate bill about pesticides, arguing it should have been the subject of a fact-finding hearing. Lacking the necessary quorum for a vote, Republican Chairman Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma reconvened the meeting in a lunchroom just off the Senate floor, where the aroma of a just-completed GOP lunch was still wafting in the air.
The voice vote approving the bill sends it to the full Senate, where a filibuster battle awaits. Obama has vowed to veto any such legislation, and Republicans have yet to prove they can muster the votes to override his veto.
---
Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.
---
Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP</a>
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16 States Ask Obama To Put New Power Plant Rules On Hold

16 States Ask Obama To Put New Power Plant Rules...

Global Warming Is Pushing Walrus Habitat North. Anna Oxereok grew up eating walrus in the western <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=alaska&amp;cvid=b778e663a2c9415bb77b92fcf041bb75&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Alaska</a> village of Wales. Today it's such a rare treat she can't bring herself to part with the plastic gallon bag of meat in her freezer.
"I have to save it for something special," she says.
Her brother caught two animals this spring and shared the meat and fat, but it didn't go very far in the village of 150. She's thankful for what she got, though. It's become increasingly difficult to land a walrus. Global Warming Is Pushing Walrus Habitat North.
Other remote communities at the edge of the Bering Sea also are seeing a steep decline in <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/global-warming-is-pushing-walrus-habitat-north-2/">walrus</a> harvested the past several years. Walrus, described by some as having a taste between veal and beef, is highly prized by Alaska Natives as a subsistence food to store for winter, with the adult male animals averaging 2,700 pounds. The sale of carved ivory from the tusks, legal only for Alaska Natives, also brings in supplemental income to communities with high unemployment rates.
Hunters and scientists say walrus habitat migration patterns are veering from historical hunting grounds as temperatures warm and the ocean ice used by the animals to dive and rest recedes farther north. Village elders also tell biologists the wind is blowing in new directions. In 2013, a late-season icepack clustered around St. Lawrence Island, blocking hunters from the sea.
"I think one of the biggest issues is that things have gotten so variable. It's hard to really predict what's going to happen," said Jim MacCracken, Alaska walrus program supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Iver Campbell and other Yup'ik Eskimo hunters from two St. Lawrence Island communities harvested more than 1,100 walrus in 2003. But a decade later, hunters managed to take only 555 - a fraction of the ideal of one walrus per resident, per year. Things still aren't looking any better for the 1,430 residents of the villages of Gambell and Savoonga. The recent spring take was 233 walrus, according to preliminary Fish and Wildlife figures.
The shore ice once served to block the wind for hunters but that's no longer the case, said Campbell, who's lived all 64 years in Gambell, population 713.
"The ice goes out real fast, melts real fast," he said. "We don't have anything to counter the wind and the rough water."
Science backs that observation. According to the Office of Naval Research, the past eight years have had the eight lowest amounts of summer sea ice on record.
Far from the state's limited road system, costly store-bought food is not an affordable solution. At village stores, pantry staples quickly add up - nearly $7 for a dozen eggs, $15 for a gallon of milk and $6.25 for a loaf of basic white bread. People rely on the region's resources for up to 80 percent of their diets.
Their hunting practices are closely monitored by federal authorities to ensure the animals that are killed are not going to waste. Generally, such hunts don't cause a public outcry in Alaska.
In these communities, a subsistence lifestyle is a necessity. In fact, the low harvest this year recently prompted a donation of 10,000 pounds of frozen halibut to four affected villages.
"A decline in the subsistence harvest really creates an economic disaster that threatens the health and welfare of the people in the communities," said Vera Metcalf, director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission. "So we are concerned about the impacts of climate change and the ability for our hunters to harvest marine mammals."
Some Native communities can search for other animals, like domestic reindeer or caribou. But opportunities aren't as bountiful for Diomede on the western coast of Little Diomede Island, only a few miles from Russia. The community of 120 harvested one walrus in 2014, prompting city and Native leaders to seek assistance from the state.
This year, 10 walrus were harvested, according to Diomede hunter Robert Soolook. There's no shortage of walrus, he said, but they're migrating sooner. No one has initiated any long-range planning to address the shift, but Soolook believes hunters eventually will need to change their practices, even going out earlier.
"Now that we've seen this, we have to start adapting," he said.
No federal assistance is available, and state aid is minimal, at best. State Sen. Sen. Donny Olson, D-Golovin, said he might introduce legislation to allow failed subsistence hunts to qualify for state disaster funds.
Moving from her ancestral lands is not an option, according to Oxereok, an Inupiat Eskimo. Relocating would mean displacing everything she knows.
"It's not that simple because your roots are here," she said.
---
Follow Rachel D'Oro at <a href="https://twitter.com/rdoro" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://twitter.com/rdoro</a>
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Global Warming Is Pushing Walrus Habitat North

Global Warming Is Pushing Walrus Habitat North. Anna Oxereok grew...

Western Drought Prompting Fears Of Huge Klamath River . The drought in the West could be creating conditions in the Klamath River straddling Oregon and California for a repeat of a 2002 salmon kill that claimed tens of thousands of adult <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=salmon+recipes&amp;cvid=eeabf429775949aaaf598e9ad73b8b0f&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">salmon</a>, biologists said.
Low water and warm temperatures have slowed the upriver migration of spring chinook, allowing infections by parasites as the salmon crowd together in cool water pools.
A similar fate is expected for fall chinook that will start arriving in coming weeks.
"The risk factors this year are piling up," Mike Belchick, biologist for the Yurok Tribe, said Wednesday. The tribe depends on Klamath River salmon for food and ceremonies. Western Drought Prompting Fears Of Huge Klamath River
The deadly parasite has been detected at high levels in salmon earlier in the year than usual. The parasite thrives in warm water, infesting the gills of fish and suffocating them.
Warm water has left fish too lethargic to swim upstream, so they congregate in pools fed by cool springs, where the crowding contributes to the spread of the disease.
The river is running slightly higher than it was in 2002 but this year's projected return of 120,000 chinook is lower than average.
The Yurok and Hoopa Valley tribes have called on the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to send extra water down the Klamath and Trinity rivers for the fish.
But there is little available in the drought and any releases are being saved for the most effective times.
"At this point, we are just really watching the situation," said bureau spokeswoman Erin Curtis. "It is the fourth year of severe drought. Water supplies are very limited and the situation is not good."
The water in the rivers is tightly split between fish and irrigation projects.
Conditions were similar last year, but the bureau was able to release extra water down both rivers. While some fish died of disease, the numbers were not great, said Wade Sinnen, senior environmental scientist for the<a href="http://www.earth.com/image/tule-fog-across-californias-central-valley/"> California</a> Department of Fish and Wildlife.
However, no one really knows how much water is needed to avert a major fish kill, given the variables of how many fish return and how hot the weather gets.
"Every time we've done flow augmentations, there has been litigation associated with it," Sinnen said.
In 2001, water was shut off to the Klamath Reclamation Project to leave water in the Klamath River for protected salmon, setting off bitter confrontations between farmers and federal marshals.
The next year, the Bush administration restored irrigation to the Klamath project, creating conditions in the river for disease that killed as many as 62,000 salmon.
Farmers, tribes, salmon fishermen and states later hammered out agreements to remove three dams on the Klamath River, restore the river and give farmers more predictability about water, But the plan remains stalled in Congress, opposed by House Republicans.
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Western Drought Prompting Fears Of Huge Klamath River

Western Drought Prompting Fears Of Huge Klamath River . The...

Scientists: Fish Are Retreating To Deeper Water . A James Cook University study shows fish are retreating to deeper water to escape the heat, a finding that throws light on what to expect if predictions of ocean warming come to pass.

JCU scientists tagged 60 redthroat emperor fish at Heron Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef. The fish were equipped with transmitters that identified them individually and signaled their depth to an array of receivers around the island. Scientists: <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/fish-fossils-provide-new-insight-into-the-origins-of-teeth/">Fish</a> Are Retreating To Deeper Water

The experiment monitored fish for up to a year and found the fish were less likely to be found on the reef slope on warmer days. Scientists think the species probably head for deeper water in response to warmer temperatures.

The research team considered temperature, air pressure rainfall, wind and moon phases as reasons for the shift, but discovered the only significant correlation was with temperature - the redthroat emperor were consistently monitored when water was less than 24 degrees Celsius.

Lead researcher Dr Leanne Currey said most studies looked at the effect ocean warming would have on fish biology, not on how they would distribute themselves to compensate for higher temperatures. "This is a commercially important fish and we are looking at a significant depth shift," she said.

Dr Currey said the species are caught by commercial and recreational anglers near coral reefs and was the second most favoured fish for the reef line fishery behind the coral trout.

"If it's not around in the shallows in the future then fishers will have to redirect their efforts and it may be significantly harder to catch them," she said. The fish has been known to tolerate depths of up to 160 metres.

Dr Currey said instead of diving deeper, the species may instead shift south in search of cooler water at the same depth. She said some redthroat emperor had recently been caught off Perth, far from their normal habitat further up the West Australian coast.

Dr Currey said the next logical phase of the research was to investigate whether the fish could adapt physiologically to warmer sea temperatures, as it appeared other species could.

---

<a href="http://www.jcu.edu.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">James Cook University</a>

Scientists: Fish Are Retreating To Deeper Water

Scientists: Fish Are Retreating To Deeper Water . A James...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



---



By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



---



By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Kainji Lake, a reservoir on the Niger River.



In 1968, Kainji Lake was created by the construction of the Kainji Dam. The Niger River, the third longest in Africa, enters the lake in the north.&nbsp;



According to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rivers-in-the-american-west-are-a-lifesaving-resource-for-birds/">ESA</a>, the creation of the lake submerged Foge Island and the town of Bussa and permanently flooded other riverine settlements, leaving around 50,000 people displaced.&nbsp;



Large parts of Foge Island are temporarily exposed during low water tides, and the land is often used by migrating fishermen. Kainji Dam is a dam across the Niger River in Niger State of Central Nigeria. 



Wild mammals occur at relatively low densities due to illegal hunting. Lake Kainji has suffered a dramatic decline as a fishery due to the high numbers of artisanal and subsistence fisherfolk using the lake. It has been suggested that a period of closure, together with controlled fishing rights may help improve fish stocks.



Kainji Lake National Park is the oldest of its kind in Nigeria. The park contains three distinct areas: a part of the Kainji Lake, the Borgu Game Reserve to the west of the lake, and the Zugurma Game Reserve to the southeast. The park is home to around 65 mammal species, 350 bird species, and 30 species of reptiles and amphibians. 



Video/ Image Credit: European Space Agency&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Kainji Lake in north central Nigeria

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.igb.illinois.edu/">Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology</a> reveals how scientists can modify common crops like soybean, rice, and wheat to protect them from heat stress.



“We need to double crop production by 2050 to feed a growing global population, and not only are we not on track to do that, but climate change is further complicating things,” said Amanda Cavanagh, a lecturer at the University of Essex. 



The study is part of Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), an international research project that aims to develop food crops that turn the sun’s energy into food more efficiently.



“Using an engineering approach we designed multiple alternative metabolic pathways to photorespiration. Testing them in the field showed increases in productivity which led Amanda to significantly move the project forward by showing our engineered plants can withstand pretty extreme temperature stress,” said study co-author and RIPE researcher Paul South.&nbsp;



“As the climate changes and temperature stresses increase the pressure on our global food supply, farmers will need every tool available including engineering approaches like the synthetic biology used here to maintain safe and productive harvests.”



The experts tested plants modified to have more efficient photorespiration to see if they were better adapted to warmer temperatures.&nbsp;



The team found that the engineered plants produced 26 percent more biomass than the wild-type plants exposed to the same temperatures, and had 15 percent less yield loss under the higher temperatures.



Video Credit: Amanda Nguyen/University of Illinois



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Designing crops that can beat the heat

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

How does salt makes things taste better?

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Santiago, Chile in South America

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Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

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Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

[sendtonews key="e4ZG0Jawp3-2374785-12187" type="single"] Astronomers at Johns Hopkins University have created...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes the first comprehensive estimate of carbon density in the Saharan, Sahel, and Sudanian zones of Africa. In an effort to measure the amount of carbon stored across these drylands, a team of scientists used high-resolution satellite images and artificial intelligence to map nearly 10 billion individual trees. 



"The high spatial resolution (50 cm) combined with AI and field measurements used in this study is key to improving tree inventories in drylands," said Pierre Hiernaux, a French researcher working for NASA. "The ever-increasing availability of very high-resolution satellite imagery will make it possible to assess carbon pools and their dynamics at the individual tree level on a global scale."



"This study is exceptional because it is pioneering a type of approach that will revolutionize the monitoring of trees and forests on a global scale: in the short term, it will be possible to map the world's trees from the centre of the Amazon to our schoolyards," said <a href="https://www.inrae.fr/en">INRAE</a> researcher Jean-Pierre Wigneron.



"Many fields of application will become much more efficient and accurate, such as tracking carbon stocks, biodiversity, monitoring logging and protection against illegal forest degradation, in near real time.”



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Remote sensing will revolutionize the way we monitor trees

[sendtonews key="EjmSP20gQK-2593093-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> features a visual dataset of.methane emissions from wetlands across the globe. Atmospheric methane levels have reached record highs in recent years, and wetlands are a major source of these emissions.&nbsp;



"Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes substantially to global warming. On a molecule by molecule basis, methane is much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the main driver of warming," says NASA.



"Though human activities, including agriculture, oil and natural gas production and use, and waste disposal, collectively contribute the majority of methane to the atmosphere, about a third of total methane emissions comes from wetlands."&nbsp;



According to NASA, understanding methane emissions from wetlands and other natural sources is critically important for scientists and policymakers who are working to combat climate change by reducing emissions from human activities.



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

[sendtonews key="f8fukm28Vz-2491833-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

[sendtonews key="0879czfG3k-1785905-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.stowers.org/">Stowers Institute for Medical Research</a> describes why experts are studying zebrafish to gain a better understanding of how the immune system responds to injury. Zebrafish have the ability to repair and regenerate organs.



“Organ regeneration offers an exciting opportunity for studying the immune system and to inquire why some species can regenerate organs like the heart or missing limbs while others like humans cannot,” explained Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski.



Zebrafish sensory organ hair cells are an ideal system to investigate the pathways and cell types involved in regeneration since they are easily destroyed with antibiotics and begin regenerating within five hours. This enabled the researchers to identify the exact timing and genetic programs for each anti-inflammatory macrophage activation state.&nbsp;



“Our hypothesis is that human macrophages do not receive the proper chemical activation 'cocktail' to instruct pro-regenerative processes,” said Dr. Nicolas Denans. “Identifying the molecular recipe of macrophage activation in zebrafish may one day enable us to design regenerative immunotherapies in humans.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The new evidence is a valuable resource for comparative studies on the genetic programs involved in macrophage-mediated repair and regeneration. In other words, different types of injuries may induce different kinds of inflammatory responses. We want to decipher whether this 'language' is universal or if there are a variety of dialects."



Video Credit: Stowers Institute for Medical Research&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

How the immune system responds to injury

[sendtonews key="0dEcERCq61-2283382-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Stowers...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes how record-breaking heat expressed itself around the world in 2022.



Scientists have determined that 2022 was the 5th warmest year since 1880. Furthermore, the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest on record.



From devastating floods and wildfires to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, 2022 showed us yet again how a warming climate affects people across the globe.&nbsp;



"As we look back at 20:22 and years past, we see that each year we better understand the challenges we face and how important it is to meet them," says NASA.



Video/ Image Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

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Earth,Like,Exoplanet,3d,Render

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

[sendtonews key="QIoVYJqRBi-2434608-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes Earth’s interconnected systems, and how this network is affected by rising temperatures.&nbsp;



During 2020, average global temperatures matched the hottest year on record. The hurricane season was also record-breaking, with many of the storms intensifying at extraordinary speeds. Hot water in the ocean is fuel for hurricanes. The satellite data shows that it's all one interconnected system showing how Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected.



According to NASA, dust swept up from Northern Africa plays a major role in the formation of hurricanes, and is also a key source of fertilization in the Amazon rainforest. As a result of<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seagrass-wasting-disease-is-fueled-by-climate-change/"> climate</a> change, dust plumes are expected to decline, which will have an effect on vegetation far away.&nbsp;



Images from Earth-observing satellites show how the world’s plant life is affected by natural disasters, fires, and deforestation. Satellites also reveal how widespread changes in vegetation impact waterways,&nbsp; the climate, air quality. Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the antennas on the Earth. "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. 



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected

[sendtonews key="JbW4VsY53O-1632195-12187" type="single"] Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected...

Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://welcome.miami.edu/">University of Miami</a> Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science explores how changes in water temperatures have affected tiger shark habitats and movements in the North Atlantic Ocean. The study reveals that rising temperatures have caused the sharks to shift toward the poles over the past 40 years.



“Tiger shark annual migrations have expanded poleward, paralleling rising water temperatures,” explained study lead author Neil Hammerschlag. “These results have consequences for tiger shark conservation, since shifts in their movements outside of marine protected areas may leave them more vulnerable to commercial fishing.”



The researchers analyzed nine years of tracking data from satellite-tagged tiger sharks, combined with four decades of conventional tag and recapture data provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Shark Tagging Program.



The experts found that during the last decade of record heat, for every one-degree Celsius increase in water temperatures, tiger sharks migrated further poleward by over 400 kilometers. They also migrated two weeks earlier than usual to waters off the northeastern coast of the United States.



“Given their role as apex predators, these changes to tiger shark movements may alter predator-prey interactions, leading to ecological imbalances, and more frequent encounters with humans,” concluded Professor Hammerschlag.



Video Credit: University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Tiger sharks are shifting poleward as temperatures rise

Today’s Video of the Day from the University of Miami...