The biggest dust storm ever seen over Greenland has been revealed in a series of stunning satellite images.  The unusual event is caused by 'glacial flour', a fine-grained silt formed by glaciers grinding and pulverizing rock.  Scientists have never been able to study the phenomenon in large storms until last month, when satellite images captured a storm.

'This is by far the biggest event detected and reported by satellites that I know about,' said Santiago Gassó, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.  He first noticed the storm on October 3.

Joanna Bullard of Loughborough University said: 'We have seen a few examples of small dust events before this one, but they are quite difficult to spot with satellites because of cloud cover.  When dust events do happen, field data from Iceland and West Greenland indicate that they rarely last longer than two days.'

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite and a sensor on the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 collected the first imagery of the storm on September 29, 2018, showing a sizable silt plume streaming from Greenland's east coast.  The source was a braided stream valley about 130 kilometers northwest of Ittoqqortoomiit, a village at a latitude of 73 degrees North.  That puts the village north of the northern coast of Alaska.

The series of Landsat and Sentinel 2 images show the floodplain where the stream flows into Scoresby Sound.  As the soil on the floodplain dried out, the floodplain became increasingly gray.  Northwesterly winds on September 29 were strong enough to lift glacial flour into the air.  The glacial flour was likely made by several glaciers farther up the valley, then carried south by meltwater streams and deposited in the floodplain.  As stream water levels dropped in autumn, the floodplain dried out and became susceptible to scouring by the wind.

In this case, Bullard noted, the winds were triggered by the combination of a low-pressure system crossing the Greenland ice sheet followed closely by a ridge of high pressure.  Since high-latitude dust events are poorly understood, they are typically not included in atmospheric and climate models.  Gasso hopes that eventually they will be included because they could have effects on air quality, the reflectivity of snow, and even marine biology.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

A Silicon Valley-based firm has released a futuristic smartphone that can fold up.  The FlexPai is billed as the world's first foldable smartphone by its developer Royole and has a super flexible screen which can be bent from the middle.

With a thickness of just 7.6mm, the duel-camera handset was launched in China this week and is now available for pre-order online.  When the phone's 19.8cm screen is fully bent back from both sides, it provides three display screens - instead of two - for the user.   In addition to the front and back displays, the spine will become a third albeit small screen showing incoming calls, messages or emails when they are received.

Depending on the specifications, the phone's price ranges from 8,999 yuan to 12,999 yuan in China for either a consumer model or a developer model.  However, only the developer model has been released outside of China at 10,825 yuan for a 128G edition and 12,080 yuan for a 256G edition.  The phone weighs just 320g and has two cameras at the top.

The cutting-edge handset was unveiled in Beijing on 31 October by Bill Liu, the 35-year-old founder and CEO of Royole.  Liu is a Chinese entrepreneur with a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.  He established his company six years ago with offices in the United States and China.

Liu has given the screen a poetic name, Cicada's Wings, to highlight its light weight, flexibility and durability.  According to Liu, the screen was developed solely by his team and contains more than 20 million flexible high-precision devices, bendy integrated circuits and nearly 100 micro and nano structured thin film materials.  Liu said his team had run tests on the screen for around three years and owned more than 2,000 intellectual property rights.

Experts previously told Wire that flexible screens were more resilient and durable than glass-fronted touchscreen displays used in most current smartphones.  Foldable screens cannot be broken when they are dropped and are also lighter and cheaper to produce.

The launch of FlexPai has caught many industry observers by surprise.  It had been widely speculated that Samsung or Huawei would be the first company to launch a foldable phone.

DJ Koh, Samsung's mobile CEO, previously told CNBC that such a device was in the works, adding that the company was trying to differentiate the experience from a tablet once it is unfolded.  The Korean tech giant is expected to hold a developer conference in San Francisco on 7 November that could give the public a preview of the technology.

Huawei CEO Richard Yu said in September that the Chinese company was working on developing a phone with a foldable display, adding that it would be out within the following year.  The new phone would also support super-fast 5G network speeds.

FlexPai was also released as Chinese smartphone users switch their focus from cheap prices to high quality and more eye-catching designs.

According to a new report released by Internet Data Centre, around 105 million smartphones were sold in China in the second quarter of this year.  Although the figure is a 5.9 per cent decrease from the same period last year, consumers expressed desire to buy handsets with newer technology they had not seen before.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

A study of the bacterial slime in showerheads across the world has found US cities are hotspots for potentially harmful bacteria.

Researchers found that mycobacteria is the most common bacteria in showerheads.  They found it is far more prevalent in the United States than in Europe, thrives more in municipal tap water than in well water, and is especially common in geographical 'hot spots' where certain types of lung disease caused by mycobacteria are also common.

CU Boulder's Noah Fierer said: 'There is a fascinating microbial world thriving in your showerhead and you can be exposed every time you shower.  Most of those microbes are harmless, but a few are not, and this kind of research is helping us understand how our own actions-from the kinds of water treatment systems we use to the materials in our plumbing-can change the makeup of those microbial communities.'

The team analyzed DNA collected from 656 household showers in the United States and 13 countries in Europe.  Citizen scientists swabbed the inside of their showerheads with specialized kits, and mailed the 'biofilm' samples to Boulder.  By harnessing DNA sequencing technology, the researchers were able to identify which bacterial species that lived in showerhead slime, and how abundant they were.

When the researchers mapped out where potentially pathogenic mycobacteria thrived, the maps revealed 'hot spots' that roughly match regions where a nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) lung disease is most prevalent - parts of Southern California, Florida, and New York, highlighting the potentially important role of these showerhead bacteria in disease transmission.

Mycobacteria were far more abundant in showerheads receiving municipal tap water than in those receiving well water, as well as more abundant in U.S. households versus European.

These patterns are probably driven in part by differences in the use of chlorine disinfectants, the team reported this week in the American Society for Microbiology's journal mBio.  Mycobacteria tend to be somewhat resistant to the chlorine-based disinfectants used more heavily in the United States than in Europe - so in Europe, other bacterial species may be better able to thrive and outcompete the disease-causing strains.

Showerhead materials seemed to matter, too, the team says.  They found more mycobacteria in metal showerheads than in plastic ones.  Plastic leaches some chemicals that support diverse bacterial communities, possibly preventing the mycobacteria from becoming too abundant.

'In terms of what's next, we're hoping to begin to explore, beyond identification and abundance, what is causing this striking geographic variation within the genus Mycobacterium, and what is potentially driving these 'hot spots'.  And don't worry.  There is definitely no reason to fear showering ,' said Gebert.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

Mona Lisa may not be as pretty as many art lovers like to think, according to research pioneered by the ancient Greeks.  Her enigmatic smile may have bewitched critics and fans alike since 1517 but she is only third on the list of the most beautiful women in art.

The woman in Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece was found to be only 86.6 per cent accurate to the Golden Ratio - the Greeks' interpretation of physical perfection.  The guide marks her down for her wide 'manly' face, poor shaping of her eyes, slight double chin, and the small gap between her lips and nose. 

The Mona Lisa is the world's most valuable work of art worth £600 million ($775m) and on permanent display at The Louvre in Paris.  The painting was beaten to first place in the beauty stakes by other well-known female portraits such as Warhol's Marilyn Monroe (89.1 per cent) and The Birth Of Venus by Sandro Botticelli (89 per cent).

The masterpieces were tested with the latest facial mapping techniques by cosmetic surgeon Dr Julian De Silva, who uses the technology in his work.  Dr De Silva, who runs the Centre For Advanced Facial Cosmetic & Plastic Surgery in Harley Street, London, said: 'This new research confirms what many people have thought for centuries - the Mona Lisa is a beautiful painting but she falls short of what the Greeks viewed as physical perfection.  She misses out on perfection for a number of reasons - her wide 'manly' face, poor shaping of her eyes, slight double chin, and the small gap between her lips and nose.  The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world by a considerable distance and there is no doubt it changed the whole face of modern art.  But while we may all love her enigmatic smile and admire the brilliance of da Vinci's brushstrokes, other works of art come far closer to matching what the Greeks considered physical perfection'.

The golden ratio was a mathematical equation devised by the Greeks in an attempt to measure beauty.  While the ratio can be applied to anything, and was used by Leonardo Da Vinci for the perfect human male body in his famous work the Virtruvian Man, it is also applied to the human face.  The premise behind this is that the closer the ratios of a face, body or room are to the number 1.62, the more beautiful it becomes.

Andy Warhol's screen print of Marilyn Monroe from 1967 had a score of 89.1 per cent - with high marks for her nose shape, lips and eye position.

Dr De Silva said: 'Marilyn was the greatest Hollywood female star of her day and that is because she was incredibly beautiful.'

The Birth Of Venus by Sandro Botticelli in the 1480s came second on 89 per cent - scoring highly for her chin, face shape and forehead.  However, Dr De Silva said she had the lowest scores for her eyebrows and chin.

'Venus has been beguiling art lovers since she was painted by the Italian master Sandro Botticelli way back in 1480.  She scores highly for her chin, face shape and forehead and is let down by her eye position and a poor brow area', he said.

In fourth place was the 1665 Girl With A Pearl Earring by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer with 86.3 per cent - scoring well for her eyebrows and the shape of her nose and face.  She is beautiful girl who scores highly for her eyebrows, nose and face shape but does less well for eye position and her brow area', said Dr De Silva.

Fifth place went to the reclining woman in the 1863 work Olympia by Edouard Manet with 85.4 per cent.  She scored well for her lips and brow area.

'Manet's famous nude of a woman being bought flowers by her servant is one of the famous works of art on display in Paris.  She scores well for her lips and brow area but does less well for her forehead and face shape.'

According to the research the most beautiful female celebrity is Johnny Depp's former wife Amber Heard who was found to be 91.8 per cent accurate to the Greek Golden Ratio of Beauty.

The most handsome male celebrity was George Clooney with his rating of 91.9 per cent.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

It is the beginning of the San Andreas fault, where experts fear 'The Big One' could begin.  But a small, bubbling pool of mud that stinks of rotting eggs near the Salton Sea is causing concern.  Dubbed 'the slow one', experts studying the phenomenon say it is similar to a 'moving sinkhole' - and is speeding up, destroying everything in its path.

Imperial County officials studying the muddy spring say it has been increasing in speed through - first 60 feet over a few months, and then 60 feet in a single day.

This natural-occurring geyser has been in existence since 1953, but recently began moving.  It is releasing water and carbon dioxide.  However, was only in the last six months that it picked up enough speed that it began to pose a threat to man-made infrastructure.

Earlier this year, local officials declared it an emergency as it approached railroad tracks.

'It's a slow-moving disaster,' Alfredo Estrada, Imperial County's fire chief and emergency services coordinator, told the LA Times.

'In the past 11 years, the geyser has moved slowly however recently the rate of movement has increased and has been encroaching on the railroad,' the County of Imperial said in a statement.  The County of Imperial made the first emergency declaration on June 26 as it began moving towards the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) railroad tracks, SR -111, and buried utilities in the area.  It has already forced Union Pacific Railroads to move their trains to alternate tracks.

Union Pacific initially built a 100-foot long wall of large boulders and steel more than 75 feet deep in the earth in an effort to protect the railroad.

'It was necessary to declare an emergency by the Board of Supervisors in order to assure that the efforts are expedited so that the geyser does not affect critical transportation and utility infrastructure,' the County said.

'UPRR has moved their trains to the alternate track (Shoofly) which they had constructed as a contingency plan, in the event that the geyser migrated from its original location,' county officials said.

Officials say there is no threat to the public's health as a result of this release of ground water from the geyser.

Union Pacific Railroad is trying to move the fluid out of the area and is working closely with officials from the County of Imperial, Cal OES, Caltrans, and the Colorado River Basin Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Caltrans is also prepared to shut down a portion of Highway 111 if the mud spring approaches the roadway, and has already planned a set of detours, said agency spokesman Ed Joyce.

'Caltrans will have to close state route 111 if that mudpot advances to a point where it impacts the state road, he said. 'We obviously have to divert traffic.

District Supervisor, Ryan Kelley told local station KMYA the county may need to declare a state emergency: 'We are using the system that's in place that allows us to have mutual aid resources are available.  We can call upon those to be able to bring in technical assistance when needed. '

The geyser could emit a dangerous gas but officials said residents shouldn't worry.  'As long as you are well away from any of its release, it's not posing a direct threat to anybody,' said Kelley.

U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ken Hudnut, who visited the moving spring in July, said there is no evidence suggesting this is an immediate precursor to a large earthquake, the LA Times said.  He told the paper the spring has been traveling much like a moving sinkhole, with carbon dioxide bubbling up from a pool in a ditch, with the mud about 30 feet and 40 feet below the desert surface.  As the spring moves through a soft sedimentary rock called mudstone, it leaves behind a sunken, sodden trail below the desert surface.  The spring in question is actually only about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but bubbles form from the CO2 released.  The bubbling is believed to be caused by historic earthquake activity that caused cracks, allowing gases produced deep underground to reach the earth's surface.

The area is close to the Salton Sea, which was accidentally created when in 1905 the Colorado River swelled, breached its levees and flooded into the Salton Sink desert valley.  For two years the water flowed, creating the Salton Sea – a 15-mile by 35-mile freshwater lake 45 miles outside of Palm Springs.  By the 1970s it was in decline due to there being almost no rainfall, no way for the lake to drain and runoff water contaminated with pesticides from nearby farms flowed into it.  Salt levels increased making it saltier than the Pacific Ocean, depleting oxygen levels in the water.  Thousands of fish died annually and washed onto the shore where they shriveled up and decayed in the extreme heat.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

A Chinese firm has claimed to successfully develop a quantum radar which could detect stealth fighter jets from great distances.

The mobile quantum radar is able to spot and track targets more than 100 kilometres away in the daylight and over the sea, according to Chinese media.  The cutting-edge equipment is expected to be a powerful weapon against U.S. stealth warplanes, such as the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning.

Stealth craft are equipped with systems to 'jam' detectors with artificial noise, in addition to using special paint and designs to thwart detection by radio waves.

The quantum radar can spot objects that are invisible to traditional radio wave-based systems by a principle called quantum entanglement, in which two photons form a connected pair even over great distances.  The system would send out one of the photons, while the other in the pair would stay behind.  According to the researchers, it could vastly improve the accuracy in environments with a lot of background noise.

China's quantum radar is based on the single-photon detecting technology and is developed by the 14th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation based in Nanjing.  A prototype was built in 2016 and researchers have been running experiments with it in the past two years.

According to China's Science and Technology Daily, the research team recently completed a long-range experiment with the radar prototype on a plateau in north-west China, marking a major breakthrough of the project.

The radar is undergoing further tests and will have better anti-stealth features in the future, Sun Jun, a senior engineer at the research institute, told China Daily.  Sun said in the interview that the quantum radar was highly reliable, accurate and viable in 'sophisticated electromagnetic environments'.  It can also be mounted onto different kinds of carriers, according to Sun.

Some experts have in the past cast doubt on China's quantum radar project.  Commenting on the subject to South China Morning Post, Chinese physicist Ma Xiaosong voiced skepticism over the claim that the quantum radar would be able to detect stealth planes as far as 100 kilometers away.  The physicist also questioned whether the quantum radar would function in non-laboratory, real-life environments.

Just in April, Canada announced it would develop a quantum radar system.  The project is funded by Canada's Department of National Defence and is expected to cost $2.7 million.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

Your face gets wonkier as you age, research suggests.

Scientists have found the structure of your facial features deviate by 0.06mm with each decade of life.  Researchers at Mount Auburn Hospital, Massachusetts, used three-dimensional digital imaging techniques to make the conclusion.

The changes were subtle but significant, especially in the lower two-thirds of the face - from the eyebrows to nose and from the nose to chin.

Dr Helena Taylor performed detailed scans of 191 volunteers who ranged in age from four months to 88 years.  This digital imaging approach enabled the investigators to distinguish very subtle levels of asymmetry - within a fraction of a millimeter.  They then calculated the 'root mean square deviation' (RMSD) to quantify the degree of asymmetry between the two sides of each face.

Published in the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery journal, the findings could have significant impact on aesthetic procedures.

The team of researchers wrote: 'We found a highly significant positive correlation between increasing age and facial asymmetry.  This finding suggests that the middle and lower features contribute more to overall asymmetry over time.  Ultimately, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of how asymmetry evolves with time and use this data to improve outcomes in both reconstructive and aesthetic surgery.'

Across age groups, RMSD calculations of facial symmetry clustered between 0.4 and 1.3 mm.  The measurements showed a small but predictable increase in RMSD: by 0.06 mm for each decade of life.  Facial asymmetry did not vary significantly based on race or gender.

While some degree of asymmetry is considered attractive and inherent in the human face, achieving facial symmetry is a fundamental goal of plastic surgery.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

China has released a new propaganda video of its deadly unmanned fighter jet, which shows the aircraft striking still and moving targets.

CH-5, also known as Rainbow-5, was unveiled in 2016 and is said to be China's largest and most powerful drone bomber.  The aircraft can carry 16 missiles and strike targets while flying at an altitude of 6,000 metres, Chinese media have claimed.  It can fly up to 60 hours without refuelling with a maximum flight altitude of 8,000 metres and a maximum range of 10,000 kilometres.

The propaganda film, shared by Chinese state media People's Daily on its social media account, was released ahead of China's largest airshow which will take place from November 6 to 11 in Zhuhai.  The clip includes a recent live-fire drill during which CH-5, billed as an 'air bomb truck', successfully blew up moving targets.

It also shows the footage of the aircraft's flight test in May on the Tibetan Plateau.  During the test, the warplane successfully took off and landed at an airport 3,500 metres above sea level.

CH-5 is developed and manufactured by the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics.  It's the latest member of the country's Rainbow Drone Project.  The drone bomber has reported entered a mass-producing stage.

The mass-produced model has a wingspan of 21 meters and a maximum external load of 1,000 kilograms, said China Central Television Station.

'Because of its external load, its reconnaissance and attacking capabilities has made a qualitative leap compared to the previous models,' Ou Zhongming, the General Director of the Rainbow Drone Project, told China Central Television Station.

The plane's maximum take-off load is 3,300 kilograms.  A redundancy system has been fitted into its flight control, which would enable the drone to carry on with its task even if one component breaks down, Mr Ou added.

The CH-5 is also capable of carrying high-definition radar systems which would allow the aircraft to conduct surveys at different altitudes.

When the CH-5 debuted in 2016, Chinese media said it was the country's equivalent to the American military drone, General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper.  CH-5 is said to be twice as big as China's other drone fighter jet CH-4 and can carry 2.5 times more external load than CH-4.

The head engineer, Shi Wen, said in a previous interview with Global Times that CH-5 would be able to fly 120 hours without refuelling in the future.  The original CH-5 made its maiden flight in August 2015 in China's Gansu Province.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

A meticulous re-creation of a 3-decade-old study of birds on a mountainside in Peru has given scientists a rare chance to prove how the changing climate is pushing species out of the places they are best adapted to.

Surveys of more than 400 species of birds in 1985 and then in 2017 have found that populations of almost all had declined, as many as eight had disappeared completely, and nearly all had moved to higher elevations in what scientists call 'an escalator to extinction.'

'Once you move up as far as you can go, there's nowhere else left.  On this particular mountain, some ridgetop bird populations were literally wiped out,' said John W. Fitzpatrick, a study author and director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

It's not certain whether the birds shifted ranges because of temperature changes, or indirect impacts, such as shifts in the ranges of insects or seeds that they feed on.

These findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirm what biologists had long suspected, but had few opportunities to confirm.   The existence of a 1985 survey of birds on the same mountain gave scientists a rare and useful baseline.

Past research has documented habitats of birds and other species moving up in elevation or latitude in response to warming temperatures.   But Mark Urban, director of the Center of Biological Risk at the University of Connecticut, who was not involved in the study said it was the first to prove what climate change models predicted: that rising temperatures will lead to local extinctions.

Urban said: 'A study like this where you have historical data you can go back to and compare is very rare.  As long as the species can disperse, you will see species marching up the mountain, until that escalator becomes a stairway to heaven.'

In 1985, Fitzpatrick established a basecamp alongside a river running down a mountain slope in southeastern Peru, aiming to catalog the habitat ranges of tropical bird species that lived there.   His team spent several weeks trekking up and down the Cerro de Pantiacolla, using fine nets called mist nets to catch and release birds, and keeping detailed journals of birds they caught, spotted or heard chirping in the forests.

Two years ago, Fitzpatrick passed his journals, photos and other records to Benjamin Freeman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia.   Freeman, who has been researching tropical birds for more than a decade, set out to recreate the journey in August and September of 2017.   Using old photos of mountain views, his team located the same basecamp.

Freeman largely recreated Fitzpatrick's path and methodology to see what had happened in the intervening years, a period when average mean temperatures on the mountain rose 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit (0.42 degrees Celsius).

Because the mountain lies at the edge of a national park, the area hadn't been disturbed.  In addition to unfurling 40-foot (12-meter) mist nets on the slopes, Freeman's team placed 20 microphone boxes on the mountain to record the chirps of birds that might not easily be seen.

'We found that the bird communities were moving up the slope to reach the climate conditions to which they were originally adapted,' said Freeman, the lead author of the study.   Near the top of the mountain the bird species moved higher by 321 feet (98 meters), on average.

'We think temperature is the master-switch in explaining why species live where they do on mountain slopes   A huge majority of species in our study were doing the same thing,' said Freeman.'

Birds adapted to live within narrow temperature bands - in regions without wide seasonal variations - may be particularly vulnerable to climate change, Fitzpatrick said.

'We should expect that what's happening on this mountaintop is happening more generally in the Andes, and other tropical mountain ranges,' he said.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

It may look horribly dangerous, and fly for less than half an hour a time, but Russian firm Hoversurf has revealed preorders for its Scorpion hoverbike are now open.

The craft, which has already been sold to the Dubai Police force, has been redesigned with a new battery and carbon fiber frame.  It will fly 5m above the ground, reaching a top speed of 96 km - although this will be limited to the legal speed in each country.  The craft has also been updated with a hybrid lithium-manganese-nickel battery, which has a flight time of between 10 and 25 minutes depending on the weather and pilot weight.  There is also a remote-controlled drone mode that reportedly offers up to 40 minutes flight time.

'The dimensions of the hoverbike allow it to be rolled in a standard doorway while also having ability to take-off and land from an ordinary parking space,' the firm says.

Buyers can preorder a Hoverbike S3 2019 with a US$10,000 deposit, and the full price is set at $150,000, and deliveries are slated to take place within two to six months from your time of reservation.

The firm said: 'The weight of the hoverbike is 114 kg limited by law, but by reducing the weight of the frame it allowed us to install a more capacious battery.  Our safe flight altitude is 5 meters above the ground, but the pilot himself can adjust the limit to their comfortability.'

The craft recently passed the US Federal Aviation Administration requirements to be classified as a legal ultralight vehicle, allowing the hoverbike to be operable with no pilot's license.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk