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Modeling rainfall drop by drop

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Using a network of a newly introduced type of rain gauge that can measure rainfall with drop-by-drop precision, KAUST researchers have developed a high-frequency rainfall model to improve understanding of rainfall/runoff dynamics, such as flash flooding and hydrodynamics in small watersheds.

Rainfall modeling is one of the core aspects of weather forecasting and is often used to predict other weather parameters, such as wind and solar irradiance. Yet the power and insight of such models are limited by the data used to construct them.

When it comes to precipitation, this means that modelers have to rely on sparse recordings of rainfall at 6-15-minute intervals at best, but more often hourly intervals. [Read more…] about Modeling rainfall drop by drop

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  • Fossil trees on Peru's Central Andean Plateau tell a tale of dramatic environmental change
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Scientists claim controversial results of comets observations are consistent

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Astrophysicists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) joined the international research team for explaining the difference in the results of observation of the comet 41P/ Tuttle – Giacobini – Kresak.

Researchers believe that data obtained by three independent teams are complementary and its complex analysis helps to unravel the mystery of dust chemical composition of comet 41P and other conundrums of the Universe. A related article appears in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The activity of comets is more complex than it appeared to be, one of the research outcomes says. The chemical composition of a cometary coma (gas-dusty environment of the nucleus) is able to change very rapidly, literally during the day. That is because of the Sun affects the nucleus of a comet approaching. [Read more…] about Scientists claim controversial results of comets observations are consistent

A neural network learns when it should not be trusted

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Increasingly, artificial intelligence systems known as deep learning neural networks are used to inform decisions vital to human health and safety, such as in autonomous driving or medical diagnosis.

These networks are good at recognizing patterns in large, complex datasets to aid in decision-making. But how do we know they’re correct? Alexander Amini and his colleagues at MIT and Harvard University wanted to find out.

They’ve developed a quick way for a neural network to crunch data, and output not just a prediction but also the model’s confidence level based on the quality of the available data. The advance might save lives, as deep learning is already being deployed in the real world today. [Read more…] about A neural network learns when it should not be trusted

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College students are less food insecure than non-students

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College students are significantly less likely to be food insecure than non-students in the same age group, according to a new study from the University of Illinois.

“College hunger” has been widely reported in the media, and several studies found very high food insecurity rates among college students, sometimes up to 50 or 60 percent. That did not make sense to those of us doing research on food insecurity, so I wanted to check those findings,” says Craig Gundersen, agricultural economist at U of I.

Gundersen, who conducts research on food insecurity measures, notes many of those studies used small, non-representative samples with low response rates. [Read more…] about College students are less food insecure than non-students

Study: Countering hate on social media

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The rise of online hate speech is a disturbing, growing trend in countries around the world, with serious psychological consequences and the potential to impact, and even contribute to, real-world violence.

Citizen-generated counter speech may help discourage hateful online rhetoric, but it has been difficult to quantify and study. Until recently, studies have been limited to small-scale, hand-labeled endeavors.

A new paper published in the proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) offers a framework for studying the dynamics of online hate and counter speech. [Read more…] about Study: Countering hate on social media

Time to rethink predicting pandemic infection rates?

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During the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Joseph Lee McCauley, a physics professor at the University of Houston, was watching the daily data for six countries and wondered if infections were really growing exponentially. By extracting the doubling times from the data, he became convinced they were.

Doubling times and exponential growth go hand in hand, so it became clear to him that modeling based on past infections is impossible, because the rate changes unforeseeably from day to day due to social distancing and lockdown efforts. And the rate changes differ for each country based on the extent of their social distancing.

In AIP Advances, from AIP Publishing, McCauley explains how he combined math in the form of Tchebychev’s inequality with a statistical ensemble to understand how macroscopic exponential growth with different daily rates arise from person-to-person disease infection. [Read more…] about Time to rethink predicting pandemic infection rates?

The long and complex history of cereal cuisine in ancient China

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Changing cuisines in ancient China were driven by multiple environmental and cultural practices over thousands of years, according to a study published November 4, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Xinyi Liu of Washington University in St. Louis and Rachel E. B. Reid of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Virginia.

Cereal grains – including wheat, rice, barley, millet and more – are the most important food sources in the world today. But understanding how these foods originated and spread across the world requires a global effort.

In this study, Liu and Reid focus on the ancient history of staple cereals across China, a country well-known for its diverse food products and early adoption of many domesticated plants. [Read more…] about The long and complex history of cereal cuisine in ancient China

Forecasting elections with a model of infectious diseases

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Forecasting elections is a high-stakes problem. Politicians and voters alike are often desperate to know the outcome of a close race, but providing them with incomplete or inaccurate predictions can be misleading.

And election forecasting is already an innately challenging endeavor – the modeling process is rife with uncertainty, incomplete information, and subjective choices, all of which must be deftly handled.

Political pundits and researchers have implemented a number of successful approaches for forecasting election outcomes, with varying degrees of transparency and complexity. However, election forecasts can be difficult to interpret and may leave many questions unanswered after close races unfold. [Read more…] about Forecasting elections with a model of infectious diseases

Early results from DETECT study suggest fitness trackers can predict Covid-19 infections

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Examining data from the first six weeks of their landmark DETECT study, a team of scientists from the Scripps Research Translational Institute sees encouraging signs that wearable fitness devices can improve public health efforts to control Covid-19.

The DETECT study, launched on March 25, uses a mobile app to collect smartwatch and activity tracker data from consenting participants, and also gathers their self-reported symptoms and diagnostic test results. Any adult living in the United States is eligible to participate in the study by downloading the research app, MyDataHelps.

In a study that appears today in Nature Medicine, the Scripps Research team reports that wearable devices like Fitbit are capable of identifying cases of COVID-19 by evaluating changes in heart rate, sleep and activity levels, along with self-reported symptom data – and can identify cases with greater success than looking at symptoms alone. [Read more…] about Early results from DETECT study suggest fitness trackers can predict Covid-19 infections

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Undersea earthquakes shake up climate science

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Despite climate change being most obvious to people as unseasonably warm winter days or melting glaciers, as much as 95 percent of the extra heat trapped on Earth by greenhouse gases is held in the world’s oceans.

For that reason, monitoring the temperature of ocean waters has been a priority for climate scientists, and now Caltech researchers have discovered that seismic rumblings on the seafloor can provide them with another tool for doing that.

In a new paper publishing in Science, the researchers show how they are able to make use of existing seismic monitoring equipment, as well as historic seismic data, to determine how much the temperature of the earth’s oceans has changed and continues changing, even at depths that are normally out of the reach of conventional tools. [Read more…] about Undersea earthquakes shake up climate science