Tagged: Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • richardmitnick 9:38 am on March 30, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Fieldwork class examines signs of climate change in Hawai'i", , , , , Climate change impacts on forests, Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, Deadly threats to native plants, , , Invasive and endangered species, , , ,   

    From The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering In The School of Engineering At The Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “Fieldwork class examines signs of climate change in Hawai’i” 

    2

    From The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

    In

    The School of Engineering

    At

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    3.28.23
    Stephanie Martinovich | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

    1
    Students hike up Mauna Loa Forest to observe climate change’s impact on native Hawai’ian plants. Photo: David Des Marais.

    2
    Students explore a recent volcanic eruption in Kilauea’s East Rift Zone. Photo: David Des Marais.

    When Joy Domingo-Kameenui spent two weeks in her native Hawai’i as part of MIT class 1.091 (Traveling Research Environmental eXperiences), she was surprised to learn about the number of invasive and endangered species. “I knew about Hawaiian ecology from middle and high school but wasn’t fully aware to the extent of how invasive species and diseases have resulted in many of Hawaii’s endemic species becoming threatened,” says Domingo-Kameenui.

    Domingo-Kameenui was part of a group of MIT students who conducted field research on the Big Island of Hawai’i in the Traveling Research Environmental eXperiences (TREX) class offered by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The class provides undergraduates an opportunity to gain hands-on environmental fieldwork experience using Hawai’i’s geology, chemistry, and biology to address two main topics of climate change concern: sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions and forest health.

    “Hawai’i is this great system for studying the effects of climate change,” says David Des Marais, the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and lead instructor of TREX. “Historically, Hawai’i has had occasional mild droughts that are related to El Niño, but the droughts are getting stronger and more frequent. And we know these types of extreme weather events are going to happen worldwide.”

    Climate change impacts on forests

    The frequency and intensity of extreme events are also becoming more of a problem for forests and plant life. Forests have a certain distribution of vegetation and as you get higher in elevation, the trees gradually turn into shrubs, and then rock. Trees don’t grow above the timberline, where the temperature and precipitation changes dramatically at the high elevations. “But unlike the Sierra Nevada or the Rockies, where the trees gradually change as you go up the mountains, in Hawaii, they gradually change, and then they just stop,” says Des Marais.

    “Why this is an interesting model for climate change,” explains Des Marais, “is that line where trees stop [growing] is going to move, and it’s going to become more unstable as the trade winds are affected by global patterns of air circulation, which are changing because of climate change.”

    The research question that Des Marais asks students to explore — How is the Hawai’ian forest going to be affected by climate change? — uses Hawai’i as a model for broader patterns in climate change for forests.

    To dive deeper into this question, students trekked up the mountain taking ground-level measurements of canopy cover with a camera app on their cellphones, estimating how much tree coverage blankets the sky when looking up, and observing how the canopy cover thins until they see no tree coverage at all as they go further up the mountain. Drones also flew above the forest to measure chlorophyll and how much plant matter remains. And then satellite data products from NASA and the European Space Agency were used to measure the distribution of chlorophyll, climate, and precipitation data from space.

    They also worked directly with community stakeholders at three locations around the island to access the forests and use technology to assess the ecology and biodiversity challenges. One of those stakeholders was the Kamehameha Schools Natural and Cultural Ecosystems Division, whose mission is to preserve the land and manage it in a sustainable way. Students worked with their plant biologists to help address and think about what management decisions will support the future health of their forests.

    “Across the island, rising temperatures and abnormal precipitation patterns are the main drivers of drought, which really has significant impacts on biodiversity, and overall human health,” says Ava Gillikin, a senior in civil and environmental engineering.

    Gillikin adds that “a good proportion of the island’s water system relies on rainwater catchment, exposing vulnerabilities to fluctuations in rain patterns that impact many people’s lives.”

    Deadly threats to native plants

    The other threats to Hawaii’s forests are invasive species causing ecological harm, from the prevalence of non-indigenous mosquitoes leading to increases in avian malaria and native bird death that threaten the native ecosystem, to a plant called strawberry guava.

    Strawberry guava is taking over Hawai’i’s native ōhiʻa trees, which Domingo-Kameenui says is also contributing to Hawai’i’s water production. “The plants absorb water quickly so there’s less water runoff for groundwater systems.”

    A fungal pathogen is also infecting native ōhiʻa trees. The disease, called rapid ʻohiʻa death (ROD), kills the tree within a few days to weeks. The pathogen was identified by researchers on the island in 2014 from the fungal genus, Ceratocystis. The fungal pathogen was likely carried into the forests by humans on their shoes, or contaminated tools, gear, and vehicles traveling from one location to another. The fungal disease is also transmitted by beetles that bore into trees and create a fine powder-like dust. This dust from an infected tree is then mixed with the fungal spores and can easily spread to other trees by wind, or contaminated soil.

    For Gillikin, seeing the effects of ROD in the field highlighted the impact improper care and preparation can have on native forests. “The ‘ohi’a tree is one of the most prominent native trees, and ROD can kill the trees very rapidly by putting a strain on its vascular system and preventing water from reaching all parts of the tree,” says Gillikin.

    Before entering the forests, students sprayed their shoes and gear with ethanol frequently to prevent the spread.

    Uncovering chemical and particle formation

    A second research project in TREX studied volcanic smog (vog) that plagues the air, making visibility problematic at times and causing a lot of health problems for people in Hawai’i. The active Kilauea volcano releases SO2 into the atmosphere.

    When the SO2 mixes with other gasses emitted from the volcano and interacts with sunlight and the atmosphere, particulate matter forms.

    Students in the Kroll Group, led by Jesse Kroll, professor of civil and environmental engineering and chemical engineering, have been studying SO2 and particulate matter over the years, but not the chemistry directly in how those chemical transformations occur.

    “There’s a hypothesis that there is a functional connection between the SO2 and particular matter, but that’s never been directly demonstrated,” says Des Marais.

    Testing that hypothesis, the students were able to measure two different sizes of particulate matter formed from the SO2 and develop a model to show how much vog is generated downstream of the volcano.

    They spent five days at two sites from sunrise to late morning measuring particulate matter formation as the sun comes up and starts creating new particles. Using a combination of data sources for meteorology, such as UV index, wind speed, and humidity, the students built a model that demonstrates all the pieces of an equation that can calculate when new particles are formed.

    “You can build what you think that equation is based on first-principle understanding of the chemical composition, but what they did was measured it in real time with measurements of the chemical reagents,” says Des Marias.

    The students measured what was going to catalyze the chemical reaction of particulate matter — for instance, things like sunlight and ozone — and then calculated numbers to the outputs.

    “What they found, and what seems to be happening, is that the chemical reagents are accumulating overnight,” says Des Marais. “Then as soon as the sun rises in the morning all the transformation happens in the atmosphere. A lot of the reagents are used up and the wind blows everything away, leaving the other side of the island with polluted air,” adds Des Marais.

    “I found the vog particle formation fieldwork a surprising research learning,” adds Domingo-Kameenui who did some atmospheric chemistry research in the Kroll Group. “I just thought particle formation happened in the air, but we found wind direction and wind speed at a certain time of the day was extremely important to particle formation. It’s not just chemistry you need to look at, but meteorology and sunlight,” she adds.

    Both Domingo-Kameenui and Gillikin found the fieldwork class an important and memorable experience with new insight that they will carry with them beyond MIT.

    How Gillikin approaches fieldwork or any type of community engagement in another culture is what she will remember most. “When entering another country or culture, you are getting the privilege to be on their land, to learn about their history and experiences, and to connect with so many brilliant people,” says Gillikin. “Everyone we met in Hawai’i had so much passion for their work, and approaching those environments with respect and openness to learn is what I experienced firsthand and will take with me throughout my career.”

    See the full article here .

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.


    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    Our Mission

    In The MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, we are driven by a simple truth: we only have one Earth to call home. Our intellectual focus is on the human-built environment and the complex infrastructure systems that it entails, as well as the man-made effect on the natural world. We seek to foster an inclusive community that pushes the boundaries of what is possible to shape the future of civil and environmental engineering. Our goal is to educate and train the next generation of researchers and engineers, driven by a passion to positively impact our society, economy, and our planet.

    Our faculty and students work in tandem to develop and apply pioneering approaches that range from basic scientific principles to complex engineering design, with a focus on translating fundamental advances to real-world impact. We offer undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the broad areas of infrastructure and environment, in order to advance the frontiers of knowledge for a sustainable civilization.

    Our Vision

    Bold solutions for sustainability across scales.

    MIT CEE is creating a new era of sustainable and resilient infrastructure and systems from the nanoscale to the global scale.

    We are pioneering a bold transformation of civil and environmental engineering as a field, fostering collaboration across disciplines to drive meaningful change. Our research and educational programs challenge the status quo, advance the frontier of knowledge and expand the limit of what is possible.

    The MIT School of Engineering

    The MIT School of Engineering is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The School of Engineering has eight academic departments and two interdisciplinary institutes. The School grants SB, MEng, SM, engineer’s degrees, and PhD or ScD degrees. The school is the largest at MIT as measured by undergraduate and graduate enrollments and faculty members.

    Departments and initiatives:

    Departments:

    Aeronautics and Astronautics (Course 16)
    Biological Engineering (Course 20)
    Chemical Engineering (Course 10)
    Civil and Environmental Engineering (Course 1)
    Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course 6, joint department with MIT Schwarzman College of Computing)
    Materials Science and Engineering (Course 3)
    Mechanical Engineering (Course 2)
    Nuclear Science and Engineering (Course 22)

    Institutes:

    Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
    Health Sciences and Technology program (joint MIT-Harvard, “HST” in the course catalog)

    (Departments and degree programs are commonly referred to by course catalog numbers on campus.)

    Laboratories and research centers

    Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab
    Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems
    Center for Computational Engineering
    Center for Materials Science and Engineering
    Center for Ocean Engineering
    Center for Transportation and Logistics
    Industrial Performance Center
    Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies
    Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
    Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
    Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity
    Materials Processing Center
    Microsystems Technology Laboratories
    MIT Lincoln Laboratory Beaver Works Center
    Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing
    Ocean Engineering Design Laboratory
    Research Laboratory of Electronics
    SMART Center
    Sociotechnical Systems Research Center
    Tata Center for Technology and Design

    MIT Seal

    USPS “Forever” postage stamps celebrating Innovation at MIT.

    MIT Campus

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The institute has an urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the Charles River. The institute also encompasses a number of major off-campus facilities such as the MIT Lincoln Laboratory , the MIT Bates Research and Engineering Center , and the Haystack Observatory , as well as affiliated laboratories such as the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Whitehead Institute.

    Massachusettes Institute of Technology-Haystack Observatory Westford, Massachusetts, USA, Altitude 131 m (430 ft).

    4

    The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

    The Kavli Institute For Astrophysics and Space Research

    MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    The MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science

    The MIT Media Lab

    The MIT Sloan School of Management

    Spectrum

    MIT.nano

    Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, Massachusetts Institute of Technology adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. It has since played a key role in the development of many aspects of modern science, engineering, mathematics, and technology, and is widely known for its innovation and academic strength. It is frequently regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

    As of December 2020, 97 Nobel laureates, 26 Turing Award winners, and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. In addition, 58 National Medal of Science recipients, 29 National Medals of Technology and Innovation recipients, 50 MacArthur Fellows, 80 Marshall Scholars, 3 Mitchell Scholars, 22 Schwarzman Scholars, 41 astronauts, and 16 Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force have been affiliated with The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The university also has a strong entrepreneurial culture and MIT alumni have founded or co-founded many notable companies. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU).

    Foundation and vision

    In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to use newly filled lands in Back Bay, Boston for a “Conservatory of Art and Science”, but the proposal failed. A charter for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed by William Barton Rogers, was signed by John Albion Andrew, the governor of Massachusetts, on April 10, 1861.

    Rogers, a professor from the University of Virginia , wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances. He did not wish to found a professional school, but a combination with elements of both professional and liberal education, proposing that:

    “The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.”

    The Rogers Plan reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories.

    Early developments

    Two days after The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was chartered, the first battle of the Civil War broke out. After a long delay through the war years, MIT’s first classes were held in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865. The new institute was founded as part of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes” and was a land-grant school. In 1863 under the same act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Agricultural College, which developed as the University of Massachusetts Amherst ). In 1866, the proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in the Back Bay.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was informally called “Boston Tech”. The institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Despite chronic financial problems, the institute saw growth in the last two decades of the 19th century under President Francis Amasa Walker. Programs in electrical, chemical, marine, and sanitary engineering were introduced, new buildings were built, and the size of the student body increased to more than one thousand.

    The curriculum drifted to a vocational emphasis, with less focus on theoretical science. The fledgling school still suffered from chronic financial shortages which diverted the attention of the MIT leadership. During these “Boston Tech” years, Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty and alumni rebuffed Harvard University president (and former MIT faculty) Charles W. Eliot’s repeated attempts to merge MIT with Harvard College’s Lawrence Scientific School. There would be at least six attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard. In its cramped Back Bay location, MIT could not afford to expand its overcrowded facilities, driving a desperate search for a new campus and funding. Eventually, the MIT Corporation approved a formal agreement to merge with Harvard, over the vehement objections of MIT faculty, students, and alumni. However, a 1917 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court effectively put an end to the merger scheme.

    In 1916, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology administration and the MIT charter crossed the Charles River on the ceremonial barge Bucentaur built for the occasion, to signify MIT’s move to a spacious new campus largely consisting of filled land on a one-mile-long (1.6 km) tract along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. The neoclassical “New Technology” campus was designed by William W. Bosworth and had been funded largely by anonymous donations from a mysterious “Mr. Smith”, starting in 1912. In January 1920, the donor was revealed to be the industrialist George Eastman of Rochester, New York, who had invented methods of film production and processing, and founded Eastman Kodak. Between 1912 and 1920, Eastman donated $20 million ($236.6 million in 2015 dollars) in cash and Kodak stock to MIT.

    Curricular reforms

    In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost) Vannevar Bush emphasized the importance of pure sciences like physics and chemistry and reduced the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios. The Compton reforms “renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering”. Unlike Ivy League schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants for its funding. The school was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934.

    Still, as late as 1949, the Lewis Committee lamented in its report on the state of education at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology that “the Institute is widely conceived as basically a vocational school”, a “partly unjustified” perception the committee sought to change. The report comprehensively reviewed the undergraduate curriculum, recommended offering a broader education, and warned against letting engineering and government-sponsored research detract from the sciences and humanities. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the MIT Sloan School of Management were formed in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors and launching competitive graduate programs. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences continued to develop under the successive terms of the more humanistically oriented presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s involvement in military science surged during World War II. In 1941, Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. Engineers and scientists from across the country gathered at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ‘s Radiation Laboratory, established in 1940 to assist the British military in developing microwave radar. The work done there significantly affected both the war and subsequent research in the area. Other defense projects included gyroscope-based and other complex control systems for gunsight, bombsight, and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper’s Instrumentation Laboratory; the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind; and high-speed and high-altitude photography under Harold Edgerton. By the end of the war, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the nation’s largest wartime R&D contractor (attracting some criticism of Bush), employing nearly 4000 in the Radiation Laboratory alone and receiving in excess of $100 million ($1.2 billion in 2015 dollars) before 1946. Work on defense projects continued even after then. Post-war government-sponsored research at MIT included SAGE and guidance systems for ballistic missiles and Project Apollo.

    These activities affected The Massachusetts Institute of Technology profoundly. A 1949 report noted the lack of “any great slackening in the pace of life at the Institute” to match the return to peacetime, remembering the “academic tranquility of the prewar years”, though acknowledging the significant contributions of military research to the increased emphasis on graduate education and rapid growth of personnel and facilities. The faculty doubled and the graduate student body quintupled during the terms of Karl Taylor Compton, president of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1930 and 1948; James Rhyne Killian, president from 1948 to 1957; and Julius Adams Stratton, chancellor from 1952 to 1957, whose institution-building strategies shaped the expanding university. By the 1950s, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology no longer simply benefited the industries with which it had worked for three decades, and it had developed closer working relationships with new patrons, philanthropic foundations and the federal government.

    In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ‘s defense research. In this period Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s various departments were researching helicopters, smart bombs and counterinsurgency techniques for the war in Vietnam as well as guidance systems for nuclear missiles. The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research toward environmental and social problems. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to the protests. The student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during what was a tumultuous time for many other universities. Johnson was seen to be highly successful in leading his institution to “greater strength and unity” after these times of turmoil. However, six Massachusetts Institute of Technology students were sentenced to prison terms at this time and some former student leaders, such as Michael Albert and George Katsiaficas, are still indignant about MIT’s role in military research and its suppression of these protests. (Richard Leacock’s film, November Actions, records some of these tumultuous events.)

    In the 1980s, there was more controversy at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology over its involvement in SDI (space weaponry) and CBW (chemical and biological warfare) research. More recently, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research for the military has included work on robots, drones and ‘battle suits’.

    Recent history

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has kept pace with and helped to advance the digital age. In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies, students, staff, and faculty members at Project MAC, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and the Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive computer video games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang and culture. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s: Richard Stallman’s GNU Project and the subsequent Free Software Foundation were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI Lab; the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology; the World Wide Web Consortium standards organization was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee; the MIT OpenCourseWare project has made course materials for over 2,000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology classes available online free of charge since 2002; and the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs. Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several successful development campaigns to significantly expand the campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus; the Tang Center for Management Education; several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into biology, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics, biotechnology, and cancer research; and a number of new “backlot” buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center. Construction on campus in the 2000s included expansions of the Media Lab, the Sloan School’s eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest. In 2006, President Hockfield launched the MIT Energy Research Council to investigate the interdisciplinary challenges posed by increasing global energy consumption.

    In 2001, inspired by the open source and open access movements, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched OpenCourseWare to make the lecture notes, problem sets, syllabi, exams, and lectures from the great majority of its courses available online for no charge, though without any formal accreditation for coursework completed. While the cost of supporting and hosting the project is high, OCW expanded in 2005 to include other universities as a part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which currently includes more than 250 academic institutions with content available in at least six languages. In 2011, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced it would offer formal certification (but not credits or degrees) to online participants completing coursework in its “MITx” program, for a modest fee. The “edX” online platform supporting MITx was initially developed in partnership with Harvard and its analogous “Harvardx” initiative. The courseware platform is open source, and other universities have already joined and added their own course content. In March 2009 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty adopted an open-access policy to make its scholarship publicly accessible online.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has its own police force. Three days after the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, MIT Police patrol officer Sean Collier was fatally shot by the suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, setting off a violent manhunt that shut down the campus and much of the Boston metropolitan area for a day. One week later, Collier’s memorial service was attended by more than 10,000 people, in a ceremony hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology community with thousands of police officers from the New England region and Canada. On November 25, 2013, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced the creation of the Collier Medal, to be awarded annually to “an individual or group that embodies the character and qualities that Officer Collier exhibited as a member of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology community and in all aspects of his life”. The announcement further stated that “Future recipients of the award will include those whose contributions exceed the boundaries of their profession, those who have contributed to building bridges across the community, and those who consistently and selflessly perform acts of kindness”.

    In September 2017, the school announced the creation of an artificial intelligence research lab called the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. IBM will spend $240 million over the next decade, and the lab will be staffed by MIT and IBM scientists. In October 2018 MIT announced that it would open a new Schwarzman College of Computing dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, named after lead donor and The Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman. The focus of the new college is to study not just AI, but interdisciplinary AI education, and how AI can be used in fields as diverse as history and biology. The cost of buildings and new faculty for the new college is expected to be $1 billion upon completion.

    The Caltech/MIT Advanced aLIGO was designed and constructed by a team of scientists from California Institute of Technology , Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and industrial contractors, and funded by the National Science Foundation .

    Caltech /MIT Advanced aLigo

    It was designed to open the field of gravitational-wave astronomy through the detection of gravitational waves predicted by general relativity. Gravitational waves were detected for the first time by the LIGO detector in 2015. For contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves, two Caltech physicists, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Rainer Weiss won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017. Weiss, who is also a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, designed the laser interferometric technique, which served as the essential blueprint for the LIGO.

    The mission of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the twenty-first century. We seek to develop in each member of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.

     
  • richardmitnick 10:45 am on March 29, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Michael Howland gives wind energy a lift", , , , Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, , Existing utility-scale turbines are controlled “greedily” which means that every turbine in the wind farm automatically turns into the wind to maximize its own power production., If a 1.2 percent energy increase was applied to the world’s existing wind farms it would be the equivalent of adding more than 3600 new wind turbines — enough to power about 3 million homes., MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), , , , The global wind power market is one of the most cost-competitive and resilient power sources across the world., , , Wind farms are often sited and designed based on short-term historical climate records., Wind power needs to grow three times faster in the coming decade to address the worst impacts of climate change and achieve federal and state climate goals.   

    From The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering In The School of Engineering At The Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “Michael Howland gives wind energy a lift” 

    2

    From The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

    In

    The School of Engineering

    At

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    3.24.23
    Deborah Halber | MIT Energy Initiative

    1
    Assistant professor civil and environmental engineering Michael Howland aims to get more electricity out of renewable energy systems — and to prepare young scientists and engineers with the training and tools they need to tackle climate change mitigation. Photo: Gretchen Ertl.

    2
    This famously windy slot between the San Jacinto and San Bernardino mountains is a perfect place for harvesting wind. No wonder this spot is covered with turbines of all kinds and ages. On a windy day such as this, it’s fun to see all the turbines going at full speed (except for the broken ones), and I am always wondering how much of the wind’s energy this really extracts. It cannot be much, given the windy area and the size of the turbines.
    15 January 2016
    Harvesting wind

    Michael Howland was in his office at MIT, watching real-time data from a wind farm 7,000 miles away in northwest India, when he noticed something odd: Some of the turbines weren’t producing the expected amount of electricity.

    Howland, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, studies the physics of the Earth’s atmosphere and how that information can optimize renewable energy systems. To accomplish this, he and his team develop and use predictive models, supercomputer simulations, and real-life data from wind farms, such as the one in India.

    The global wind power market is one of the most cost-competitive and resilient power sources across the world, the Global Wind Energy Council reported last year. The year 2020 saw record growth in wind power capacity, thanks to a surge of installations in China and the United States. Yet wind power needs to grow three times faster in the coming decade to address the worst impacts of climate change and achieve federal and state climate goals, the report says.

    “Optimal wind farm design and the resulting cost of energy are dependent on the wind,” Howland says. “But wind farms are often sited and designed based on short-term historical climate records.”

    In October 2021, Howland received a Seed Fund grant from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) to account for how climate change might affect the wind of the future. “Our initial results suggest that considering the uncertainty in the winds in the design and operation of wind farms can lead to more reliable energy production,” he says.

    Most recently, Howland and his team came up with a model that predicts the power produced by each individual turbine based on the physics of the wind farm as a whole. The model can inform decisions that may boost a farm’s overall output.

    The state of the planet

    Growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia, the son of neuroscientists, Howland’s childhood wasn’t especially outdoorsy. Later, he’d become an avid hiker with a deep appreciation for nature, but a ninth-grade class assignment made him think about the state of the planet, perhaps for the first time.

    A history teacher had asked the class to write a report on climate change. “I remember arguing with my high school classmates about whether humans were the leading cause of climate change, but the teacher didn’t want to get into that debate,” Howland recalls. “He said climate change was happening, whether or not you accept that it’s anthropogenic, and he wanted us to think about the impacts of global warming, and solutions. I was one of his vigorous defenders.”

    As part of a research internship after his first year of college, Howland visited a wind farm in Iowa, where wind produces more than half of the state’s electricity. “The turbines look tall from the highway, but when you’re underneath them, you’re really struck by their scale,” he says. “That’s where you get a sense of how colossal they really are.” (Not a fan of heights, Howland opted not to climb the turbine’s internal ladder to snap a photo from the top.)

    After receiving an undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and master’s and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, he joined MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering to focus on the intersection of fluid mechanics, weather, climate, and energy modeling. His goal is to enhance renewable energy systems.

    An added bonus to being at MIT is the opportunity to inspire the next generation, much like his ninth-grade history teacher did for him. Howland’s graduate-level introduction to the atmospheric boundary layer is geared primarily to engineers and physicists, but as he sees it, climate change is such a multidisciplinary and complex challenge that “every skill set that exists in human society can be relevant to mitigating it.”

    “There are the physics and engineering questions that our lab primarily works on, but there are also questions related to social sciences, public acceptance, policymaking, and implementation,” he says. “Careers in renewable energy are rapidly growing. There are far more job openings than we can hire for right now. In many areas, we don’t yet have enough people to address the challenges in renewable energy and climate change mitigation that need to be solved.

    “I encourage my students — really, everyone I interact with — to find a way to impact the climate change problem,” he says.

    Unusual conditions

    In fall 2021, Howland was trying to explain the odd data coming in from India.

    Based on sensor feedback, wind turbines’ software-driven control systems constantly tweak the speed and the angle of the blades, and what’s known as yaw — the orientation of the giant blades in relation to the wind direction.

    Existing utility-scale turbines are controlled “greedily,” which means that every turbine in the farm automatically turns into the wind to maximize its own power production.

    Though the turbines in the front row of the Indian wind farm were reacting appropriately to the wind direction, their power output was all over the place. “Not what we would expect based on the existing models,” Howland says.

    These massive turbine towers stood at 100 meters, about the length of a football field, with blades the length of an Olympic swimming pool. At their highest point, the blade tips lunged almost 200 meters into the sky.

    Then there’s the speed of the blades themselves: The tips move many times faster than the wind, around 80 to 100 meters per second — up to a quarter or a third of the speed of sound.

    Using a state-of-the-art sensor that measures the speed of incoming wind before it interacts with the massive rotors, Howland’s team saw an unexpectedly complex airflow effect. He covers the phenomenon in his class. The data coming in from India, he says, displayed “quite remarkable wind conditions stemming from the effects of Earth’s rotation and the physics of buoyancy 
that you don’t always see.”

    Traditionally, wind turbines operate in the lowest 10 percent of the atmospheric boundary layer — the so-called surface layer — which is affected primarily by ground conditions. The Indian turbines, Howland realized, were operating in regions of the atmosphere that turbines haven’t historically accessed.

    Trending taller

    Howland knew that airflow interactions can persist for kilometers. The interaction of high winds with the front-row turbines was generating wakes in the air similar to the way boats generate wakes in the water.

    To address this, Howland’s model trades off the efficiency of upwind turbines to benefit downwind ones. By misaligning some of the upwind turbines in certain conditions, the downwind units experience less wake turbulence, increasing the overall energy output of the wind farm by as much as 1 percent to 3 percent, without requiring additional costs. If a 1.2 percent energy increase was applied to the world’s existing wind farms, it would be the equivalent of adding more than 3,600 new wind turbines — enough to power about 3 million homes.

    Even a modest boost could mean fewer turbines generating the same output, or the ability to place more units into a smaller space, because negative interactions between the turbines can be diminished.

    Howland says the model can predict potential benefits in a variety of scenarios at different types of wind farms. “The part that’s important and exciting is that it’s not just particular to this wind farm. We can apply the collective control method across the wind farm fleet,” he says, which is growing taller and wider.

    By 2035, the average hub height for offshore turbines in the United States is projected to grow from 100 meters to around 150 meters — the height of the Washington Monument.

    “As we continue to build larger wind turbines and larger wind farms, we need to revisit the existing practice for their design and control,” Howland says. “We can use our predictive models to ensure that we build and operate the most efficient renewable generators possible.”

    Looking to the future

    Howland and other climate watchers have reason for optimism with the passage in August 2022 of the Inflation Reduction Act, which calls for a significant investment in domestic energy production and for reducing carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030.

    But Howland says the act itself isn’t sufficient. “We need to continue pushing the envelope in research and development as well as deployment,” he says. The model he created with his team can help, especially for offshore wind farms experiencing low wind turbulence and larger wake interactions.

    Offshore wind can face challenges of public acceptance. Howland believes that researchers, policymakers, and the energy industry need to do more to get the public on board by addressing concerns through open public dialogue, outreach, and education.

    Howland once wrote and illustrated a children’s book, inspired by Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax,” that focused on renewable energy. Howland recalls his “really terrible illustrations,” but he believes he was onto something. “I was having some fun helping people interact with alternative energy in a more natural way at an earlier age,” he says, “and recognize that these are not nefarious technologies, but remarkable feats of human ingenuity.”

    See the full article here .

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.


    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    Our Mission

    In The MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, we are driven by a simple truth: we only have one Earth to call home. Our intellectual focus is on the human-built environment and the complex infrastructure systems that it entails, as well as the man-made effect on the natural world. We seek to foster an inclusive community that pushes the boundaries of what is possible to shape the future of civil and environmental engineering. Our goal is to educate and train the next generation of researchers and engineers, driven by a passion to positively impact our society, economy, and our planet.

    Our faculty and students work in tandem to develop and apply pioneering approaches that range from basic scientific principles to complex engineering design, with a focus on translating fundamental advances to real-world impact. We offer undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the broad areas of infrastructure and environment, in order to advance the frontiers of knowledge for a sustainable civilization.

    Our Vision

    Bold solutions for sustainability across scales.

    MIT CEE is creating a new era of sustainable and resilient infrastructure and systems from the nanoscale to the global scale.

    We are pioneering a bold transformation of civil and environmental engineering as a field, fostering collaboration across disciplines to drive meaningful change. Our research and educational programs challenge the status quo, advance the frontier of knowledge and expand the limit of what is possible.

    The MIT School of Engineering

    The MIT School of Engineering is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The School of Engineering has eight academic departments and two interdisciplinary institutes. The School grants SB, MEng, SM, engineer’s degrees, and PhD or ScD degrees. The school is the largest at MIT as measured by undergraduate and graduate enrollments and faculty members.

    Departments and initiatives:

    Departments:

    Aeronautics and Astronautics (Course 16)
    Biological Engineering (Course 20)
    Chemical Engineering (Course 10)
    Civil and Environmental Engineering (Course 1)
    Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course 6, joint department with MIT Schwarzman College of Computing)
    Materials Science and Engineering (Course 3)
    Mechanical Engineering (Course 2)
    Nuclear Science and Engineering (Course 22)

    Institutes:

    Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
    Health Sciences and Technology program (joint MIT-Harvard, “HST” in the course catalog)

    (Departments and degree programs are commonly referred to by course catalog numbers on campus.)

    Laboratories and research centers

    Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab
    Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems
    Center for Computational Engineering
    Center for Materials Science and Engineering
    Center for Ocean Engineering
    Center for Transportation and Logistics
    Industrial Performance Center
    Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies
    Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
    Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
    Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity
    Materials Processing Center
    Microsystems Technology Laboratories
    MIT Lincoln Laboratory Beaver Works Center
    Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing
    Ocean Engineering Design Laboratory
    Research Laboratory of Electronics
    SMART Center
    Sociotechnical Systems Research Center
    Tata Center for Technology and Design

    MIT Seal

    USPS “Forever” postage stamps celebrating Innovation at MIT.

    MIT Campus

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The institute has an urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the Charles River. The institute also encompasses a number of major off-campus facilities such as the MIT Lincoln Laboratory , the MIT Bates Research and Engineering Center , and the Haystack Observatory , as well as affiliated laboratories such as the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Whitehead Institute.

    Massachusettes Institute of Technology-Haystack Observatory Westford, Massachusetts, USA, Altitude 131 m (430 ft).

    4

    The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

    The Kavli Institute For Astrophysics and Space Research

    MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    The MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science

    The MIT Media Lab

    The MIT Sloan School of Management

    Spectrum

    MIT.nano

    Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, Massachusetts Institute of Technology adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. It has since played a key role in the development of many aspects of modern science, engineering, mathematics, and technology, and is widely known for its innovation and academic strength. It is frequently regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

    As of December 2020, 97 Nobel laureates, 26 Turing Award winners, and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. In addition, 58 National Medal of Science recipients, 29 National Medals of Technology and Innovation recipients, 50 MacArthur Fellows, 80 Marshall Scholars, 3 Mitchell Scholars, 22 Schwarzman Scholars, 41 astronauts, and 16 Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force have been affiliated with The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The university also has a strong entrepreneurial culture and MIT alumni have founded or co-founded many notable companies. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU).

    Foundation and vision

    In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to use newly filled lands in Back Bay, Boston for a “Conservatory of Art and Science”, but the proposal failed. A charter for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed by William Barton Rogers, was signed by John Albion Andrew, the governor of Massachusetts, on April 10, 1861.

    Rogers, a professor from the University of Virginia , wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances. He did not wish to found a professional school, but a combination with elements of both professional and liberal education, proposing that:

    “The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.”

    The Rogers Plan reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories.

    Early developments

    Two days after The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was chartered, the first battle of the Civil War broke out. After a long delay through the war years, MIT’s first classes were held in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865. The new institute was founded as part of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes” and was a land-grant school. In 1863 under the same act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Agricultural College, which developed as the University of Massachusetts Amherst ). In 1866, the proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in the Back Bay.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was informally called “Boston Tech”. The institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Despite chronic financial problems, the institute saw growth in the last two decades of the 19th century under President Francis Amasa Walker. Programs in electrical, chemical, marine, and sanitary engineering were introduced, new buildings were built, and the size of the student body increased to more than one thousand.

    The curriculum drifted to a vocational emphasis, with less focus on theoretical science. The fledgling school still suffered from chronic financial shortages which diverted the attention of the MIT leadership. During these “Boston Tech” years, Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty and alumni rebuffed Harvard University president (and former MIT faculty) Charles W. Eliot’s repeated attempts to merge MIT with Harvard College’s Lawrence Scientific School. There would be at least six attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard. In its cramped Back Bay location, MIT could not afford to expand its overcrowded facilities, driving a desperate search for a new campus and funding. Eventually, the MIT Corporation approved a formal agreement to merge with Harvard, over the vehement objections of MIT faculty, students, and alumni. However, a 1917 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court effectively put an end to the merger scheme.

    In 1916, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology administration and the MIT charter crossed the Charles River on the ceremonial barge Bucentaur built for the occasion, to signify MIT’s move to a spacious new campus largely consisting of filled land on a one-mile-long (1.6 km) tract along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. The neoclassical “New Technology” campus was designed by William W. Bosworth and had been funded largely by anonymous donations from a mysterious “Mr. Smith”, starting in 1912. In January 1920, the donor was revealed to be the industrialist George Eastman of Rochester, New York, who had invented methods of film production and processing, and founded Eastman Kodak. Between 1912 and 1920, Eastman donated $20 million ($236.6 million in 2015 dollars) in cash and Kodak stock to MIT.

    Curricular reforms

    In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost) Vannevar Bush emphasized the importance of pure sciences like physics and chemistry and reduced the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios. The Compton reforms “renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering”. Unlike Ivy League schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants for its funding. The school was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934.

    Still, as late as 1949, the Lewis Committee lamented in its report on the state of education at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology that “the Institute is widely conceived as basically a vocational school”, a “partly unjustified” perception the committee sought to change. The report comprehensively reviewed the undergraduate curriculum, recommended offering a broader education, and warned against letting engineering and government-sponsored research detract from the sciences and humanities. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the MIT Sloan School of Management were formed in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors and launching competitive graduate programs. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences continued to develop under the successive terms of the more humanistically oriented presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s involvement in military science surged during World War II. In 1941, Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. Engineers and scientists from across the country gathered at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ‘s Radiation Laboratory, established in 1940 to assist the British military in developing microwave radar. The work done there significantly affected both the war and subsequent research in the area. Other defense projects included gyroscope-based and other complex control systems for gunsight, bombsight, and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper’s Instrumentation Laboratory; the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind; and high-speed and high-altitude photography under Harold Edgerton. By the end of the war, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the nation’s largest wartime R&D contractor (attracting some criticism of Bush), employing nearly 4000 in the Radiation Laboratory alone and receiving in excess of $100 million ($1.2 billion in 2015 dollars) before 1946. Work on defense projects continued even after then. Post-war government-sponsored research at MIT included SAGE and guidance systems for ballistic missiles and Project Apollo.

    These activities affected The Massachusetts Institute of Technology profoundly. A 1949 report noted the lack of “any great slackening in the pace of life at the Institute” to match the return to peacetime, remembering the “academic tranquility of the prewar years”, though acknowledging the significant contributions of military research to the increased emphasis on graduate education and rapid growth of personnel and facilities. The faculty doubled and the graduate student body quintupled during the terms of Karl Taylor Compton, president of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1930 and 1948; James Rhyne Killian, president from 1948 to 1957; and Julius Adams Stratton, chancellor from 1952 to 1957, whose institution-building strategies shaped the expanding university. By the 1950s, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology no longer simply benefited the industries with which it had worked for three decades, and it had developed closer working relationships with new patrons, philanthropic foundations and the federal government.

    In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ‘s defense research. In this period Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s various departments were researching helicopters, smart bombs and counterinsurgency techniques for the war in Vietnam as well as guidance systems for nuclear missiles. The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research toward environmental and social problems. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to the protests. The student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during what was a tumultuous time for many other universities. Johnson was seen to be highly successful in leading his institution to “greater strength and unity” after these times of turmoil. However, six Massachusetts Institute of Technology students were sentenced to prison terms at this time and some former student leaders, such as Michael Albert and George Katsiaficas, are still indignant about MIT’s role in military research and its suppression of these protests. (Richard Leacock’s film, November Actions, records some of these tumultuous events.)

    In the 1980s, there was more controversy at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology over its involvement in SDI (space weaponry) and CBW (chemical and biological warfare) research. More recently, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research for the military has included work on robots, drones and ‘battle suits’.

    Recent history

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has kept pace with and helped to advance the digital age. In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies, students, staff, and faculty members at Project MAC, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and the Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive computer video games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang and culture. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s: Richard Stallman’s GNU Project and the subsequent Free Software Foundation were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI Lab; the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology; the World Wide Web Consortium standards organization was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee; the MIT OpenCourseWare project has made course materials for over 2,000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology classes available online free of charge since 2002; and the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs. Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several successful development campaigns to significantly expand the campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus; the Tang Center for Management Education; several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into biology, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics, biotechnology, and cancer research; and a number of new “backlot” buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center. Construction on campus in the 2000s included expansions of the Media Lab, the Sloan School’s eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest. In 2006, President Hockfield launched the MIT Energy Research Council to investigate the interdisciplinary challenges posed by increasing global energy consumption.

    In 2001, inspired by the open source and open access movements, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched OpenCourseWare to make the lecture notes, problem sets, syllabi, exams, and lectures from the great majority of its courses available online for no charge, though without any formal accreditation for coursework completed. While the cost of supporting and hosting the project is high, OCW expanded in 2005 to include other universities as a part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which currently includes more than 250 academic institutions with content available in at least six languages. In 2011, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced it would offer formal certification (but not credits or degrees) to online participants completing coursework in its “MITx” program, for a modest fee. The “edX” online platform supporting MITx was initially developed in partnership with Harvard and its analogous “Harvardx” initiative. The courseware platform is open source, and other universities have already joined and added their own course content. In March 2009 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty adopted an open-access policy to make its scholarship publicly accessible online.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has its own police force. Three days after the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, MIT Police patrol officer Sean Collier was fatally shot by the suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, setting off a violent manhunt that shut down the campus and much of the Boston metropolitan area for a day. One week later, Collier’s memorial service was attended by more than 10,000 people, in a ceremony hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology community with thousands of police officers from the New England region and Canada. On November 25, 2013, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced the creation of the Collier Medal, to be awarded annually to “an individual or group that embodies the character and qualities that Officer Collier exhibited as a member of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology community and in all aspects of his life”. The announcement further stated that “Future recipients of the award will include those whose contributions exceed the boundaries of their profession, those who have contributed to building bridges across the community, and those who consistently and selflessly perform acts of kindness”.

    In September 2017, the school announced the creation of an artificial intelligence research lab called the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. IBM will spend $240 million over the next decade, and the lab will be staffed by MIT and IBM scientists. In October 2018 MIT announced that it would open a new Schwarzman College of Computing dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, named after lead donor and The Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman. The focus of the new college is to study not just AI, but interdisciplinary AI education, and how AI can be used in fields as diverse as history and biology. The cost of buildings and new faculty for the new college is expected to be $1 billion upon completion.

    The Caltech/MIT Advanced aLIGO was designed and constructed by a team of scientists from California Institute of Technology , Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and industrial contractors, and funded by the National Science Foundation .

    Caltech /MIT Advanced aLigo

    It was designed to open the field of gravitational-wave astronomy through the detection of gravitational waves predicted by general relativity. Gravitational waves were detected for the first time by the LIGO detector in 2015. For contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves, two Caltech physicists, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Rainer Weiss won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017. Weiss, who is also a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, designed the laser interferometric technique, which served as the essential blueprint for the LIGO.

    The mission of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the twenty-first century. We seek to develop in each member of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.

     
  • richardmitnick 9:23 pm on March 28, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Mighty oceans and humble ponds play key roles in biodiversity", , Biodiversity protection has received fresh impetus as a result of a United Nations summit in Canada in December 2022., , By monitoring oceans and peering into ponds European projects seek to protect an array of animal and plant life., Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, Copernicus satellite network, , Healthy ponds act as “carbon sinks” that store greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide., , , PONDERFUL is evaluating future “pondscapes” at eight demonstration sites that include a total of more than 500 ponds., Ponds are the richest freshwater habitats. They are more abundant than lakes or rivers or wetlands., Ponds make a greater contribution to biodiversity than many larger bodies of water by supporting more plants and animals many of which are endangered., Ponds so far have been largely neglected by policymakers., Runoff from agricultural fields is one of the main threats to the health of ponds., Scientists and authorities need projections on how changes that result from global warming and pollution and overfishing could affect the marine system as a whole., Scientists want to provide better simulations and projections of the state of marine ecosystems and of their ability to support diverse fish communities., The Copernicus marine service monitors all the European regional seas and the world’s oceans., The EU is stepping up efforts to improve marine health., We know less about the ocean floor than we do about the surface of the moon., When efforts are made to enhance pond wildlife as a whole the researchers found that not only do populations of endangered frogs and toads and newts increase but also flora benefits.   

    From “Horizon” The EU Research and Innovation Magazine : “Mighty oceans and humble ponds play key roles in biodiversity” 

    From “Horizon” The EU Research and Innovation Magazine

    3.27.23
    Sofia Strodt

    By monitoring oceans and peering into ponds European projects seek to protect an array of animal and plant life.

    1
    Satellite data can help show whether marine conditions are right for certain species to thrive. Image credit: CC0 via Unsplash.

    In January, word emerged that scientists had discovered a new colony of penguins in Antarctica using images from Europe’s flagship Copernicus satellite network. By coincidence, the same month marked the start of an initiative that will rely on the same Earth-observation system for different purposes.

    The EU-funded NECCTON project is gearing up to help Europe protect endangered fish and whales. It will harness the European Copernicus Marine Service – or CMEMS – to collect more detailed data on species threatened by habitat loss, unsustainable fishing and industrial pollution.

    From satellites to seabeds

    ‘This is going to be particularly helpful for policymakers, marine managers and fisheries,’ said Stefano Ciavatta, coordinator of the project running through 2026. ‘We want to provide better simulations and projections of the state of marine ecosystems and of their ability to support diverse fish communities.’

    While earth-observation satellites including Europe’s flagship Copernicus number in the many hundreds, it’s often claimed that we know less about the ocean floor than we do about the surface of the moon.


    Biodiversity protection has received fresh impetus as a result of a United Nations summit in Canada in December 2022 and a landmark UN agreement in March this year on a High Seas Treaty to protect oceans. And with 68 000 kilometres of coastline – more than the US and Russia combined –the EU is stepping up efforts to improve marine health.

    CMEMS, one of six Copernicus services, provides analyses and forecasts of marine environments for all kinds of users ranging from fishing hobbyists to the navies of EU Member States. It is run by France-based Mercator Ocean International, a non-profit entity in the process of becoming an intergovernmental organization.

    The Copernicus marine service monitors all the European regional seas and the world’s oceans. Its models forecast things like sea temperatures, tides and currents, making it easier to anticipate developments such as fish migration patterns.

    NECCTON plans to provide a more complete picture of the environmental state of these waters by gathering data on fish, pollution and the seabed conditions for marine life.

    ‘We will develop new tools to share the modelling capabilities of the Copernicus Marine Service across the different centres in Europe, optimise scientific efforts and boost collaboration,’ said Ciavatta, an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean International.

    Clearer views

    The ultimate aim is to help users of the service make better-informed decisions about the sustainable use of marine resources.

    The Copernicus marine service could, for instance, deliver information on where tuna populations are located or whether marine habitats have the right conditions for dolphins.

    To make sound policy decisions, scientists and authorities need projections on how changes that result from global warming, pollution and overfishing could affect the marine system as a whole.

    NECCTON plans to simulate changes in organisms within the food web using climate scenarios. This activity could, for example, enable researchers to get a clearer picture of the impact of declining fish stocks on the marine system over the coming decades.

    Pond treasures

    When it comes to protecting biodiversity, it’s not just the mighty oceans that have researchers’ attention. So do humble duck ponds.

    The EU-funded PONDERFUL project is examining the relationship between ponds and their surrounding environment. The initiative is focusing on the wide range of living organisms to which ponds are home.

    Fish, toads, snails, dragonflies and leeches are just some of the creatures making up a vast, balanced web that, if disrupted, could result in the ecosystem’s collapse.

    ‘Collectively, ponds are the richest freshwater habitats,’ said project coordinator Sandra Brucet, a biologist and researcher on aquatic ecology at the University of Vic in Spain. ‘They are more abundant than lakes, rivers and wetlands.’

    Research suggests that ponds make a greater contribution to biodiversity than many larger bodies of water by supporting more plants and animals, many of which are endangered.

    Nonetheless, ponds so far have been largely neglected by policymakers. For example, a major piece of EU legislation in 2000 on cleaning up water bodies excludes for the most part those smaller than 50 hectares. Also, research on ponds has long been overlooked.

    ‘Two decades ago, researchers mainly focused on lakes and rivers,’ said Brucet, who came up with the idea of PONDERFUL.

    Home stretch

    Now things are changing as the project, which began in late 2020, enters its final two years.

    With more than 80 researchers from 11 countries – Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK and Uruguay – the initiative is deepening knowledge about how best to manage and restore ponds in a changing climate.

    PONDERFUL is evaluating future “pondscapes” at eight demonstration sites that include a total of more than 500 ponds. Testing will help develop a guide for reducing pollution in ponds, creating new ones and helping them serve broader environmental goals such as the preservation of biodiversity.

    Runoff from agricultural fields is one of the main threats to the health of ponds. Nutrients in such runoff can cause harmful algal blooms, a lack of oxygen and dead zones as fish die off.

    Key lessons

    Brucet and her team have already drawn some important lessons.

    An accumulation of debris and an increase in sediment loads, which result mainly from agricultural-field erosion and are usually rich in nutrients from fertilizer runoff, can have a harmful effect on the overall state of ponds.

    Sediment increases are accelerated by erosion of ponds’ edges and seasonal buildup of organic material such as dead plants and tree leaves, for instance. The nutrients in this material in turn often feed algal blooms that can produce toxins and kill fish, mammals and birds.

    Dredging and removing sediments help prevent such buildup.

    Separately, reshaping the edges of ponds that are artificially drained for agriculture can prevent too much water from escaping.

    When efforts are made to enhance pond wildlife as a whole, the researchers found that not only do populations of endangered frogs, toads and newts increase but also flora benefits.

    ‘Biodiversity of aquatic plants increases significantly after cleaning up ponds,’ Brucet said.

    Healthy ponds even play a role on another important environmental front: fighting climate change. That’s because they act as “carbon sinks” that store greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide.

    Brucet’s project runs through November 2024 and signals that ponds, after long being disregarded by researchers and policymakers, are finally joining oceans and seas as a focus of Europe’s green ambitions.

    See the full article here .

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.


    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.


    Stem Education Coalition
    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct.

     
  • richardmitnick 8:55 am on March 28, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Stanford research highlights an overlooked accelerant of ice loss from Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier", A new study suggests Thwaites Glacier’s main trunk is poised to widen in a way that could speed up ice loss within 20 years., , Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, , Monitoring Thwaites like a coming storm, ,   

    From The Doerr School of Sustainability At Stanford University: “Stanford research highlights an overlooked accelerant of ice loss from Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier” 

    From The Doerr School of Sustainability

    At

    Stanford University Name

    Stanford University

    3.27.23
    By Josie Garthwaite,
    Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
    (650) 497-0947
    josieg@stanford.edu

    Paul Summers
    Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
    psummers@stanford.edu

    Jenny Suckale
    Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
    jsuckale@stanford.edu

    A new study suggests Thwaites Glacier’s main trunk is poised to widen in a way that could speed up ice loss within 20 years. The results underscore the importance of monitoring the glacier more closely to understand how much it will contribute to global sea-level rise.

    1
    Thwaites Glacier is often called the “doomsday glacier” because of its massive size and potential to dramatically raise global sea levels as the world warms. (Image credit: NASA)

    In West Antarctica, the 80-mile-wide stream of sliding ice at the heart of Thwaites Glacier is likely to creep outward over the next 20 years, a change that could speed up ice loss, new research finds.

    “It’s like a torrential river eating away at the riverbanks and widening in the process,” said senior study author Jenny Suckale, an assistant professor of geophysics at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

    Thwaites Glacier is often called the “doomsday glacier” because of its massive size and potential to dramatically raise global sea levels. As the world warms, it could drop billions of tons of ice into the Amundsen Sea and open a path for more inland ice to flow freely to the coast.

    Many previous studies have examined how the glacier’s speed and thickness are likely to evolve over centuries. Less research has focused on the glacier’s width, which influences how much ice collapses into the sea in any given timeframe. Widening of the main ice stream, or trunk, could exacerbate instability, while narrowing could effectively hit the brakes on ice loss by allowing a new balance of forces.

    The new research, published March 7 in Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface [below], uses numerical modeling to show how Thwaites Glacier’s rapid but uneven thinning could affect the eastern and western margins of its main trunk.

    “Relative stability” remains possible

    Led by geophysics PhD student Paul Summers, the researchers found that the observed thinning of Thwaites Glacier, together with changes in the slope of its surface and the conditions at its base, makes both sides prone to move a few miles outward over the next 20 years.

    3
    (From left to right:) Paul Summers, Kirah Moon, and Mike Roberts use a snow probe to locate buried seismic sensors and equipment on Thwaites Glacier in late December 2021. (Image credit: Danny May)

    “We are considering relatively small changes in driving stress as would realistically occur in the coming two decades,” Summers and colleagues write. Yet even this subtle widening – only about 2 percent of the glacier’s overall width – could speed up ongoing ice loss.

    “If the widening trend were to continue and were to accelerate, then we’d better know. It would mean that we would have to prepare for higher sea levels,” said Suckale, who is one of dozens of scientists working to understand the glacier and its response to climate change as part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration.

    For some places, existing models predict sea levels may rise only an inch or two, or as much as a few feet in the coming decades. “The policy actions you would have to consider from one extreme to the other are completely different,” Suckale said, ranging from improving flood management and drainage for infrastructure near shorelines to relocating entire coastal communities.

    The “doomsday” scenario, however, is only one of “many, many possibilities,” said Suckale. “Stability is still well within the possibilities for Thwaites Glacier – at least, relative stability.”

    Determining just how much Thwaites’ disintegration may accelerate as a result of its widening ice stream would require scientists to update existing ice-loss models, which generally simplify the processes captured in the new research. “We are trying to get at something more basic, which is the nature of the trend: widening, neutral, narrowing,” Suckale said.

    Monitoring Thwaites like a coming storm

    Summers said the research team had expected their modeling to show the glacier’s eastern shear margin to be most susceptible to migrating away from the main trunk. They were surprised to find that, in some scenarios, the western boundary appears prone to widening as well.

    This discovery underscores the importance of expanding research efforts on the western margin, in addition to work already focused on the eastern side, where Summers spent several weeks last year digging up seismic sensors and GPS systems and surveying the ice with ground penetrating radar as part of a team deployed by the U.S. Antarctic Program.

    3
    Paul Summers collects ice penetrating radar data on the McMurdo Ice Shelf in Antarctica in November 2021. (Image credit: TJ Young)

    4
    A science team prepares to start digging to recover seismic equipment on Thwaites Glacier in late December 2021. (Image credit: Paul Summers)

    Previous models have sought to predict global sea levels hundreds of years into the future or capture the ice dynamics at Thwaites Glacier in its entirety. Modeling ice sheet evolution and global sea level rise over these longer time scales produces dramatic predictions, Suckale said, but also huge barriers to testing against real-world data because scientists have been able to collect so few direct measures of how ice sheets are changing in the face of global warming.

    “We are very intentionally focusing on the next two decades to enable testability and continued model development,” said Suckale. Next steps include testing the model results against geophysical measures of ongoing changes at two field sites along the eastern shear margin, and a third field site focused on what’s happening below the main trunk.

    “It’s kind of like weather predictions. You monitor the storms as they come in, and then you update your predictions and pass that information on. I think we need to monitor Thwaites and make sure we have ways to get that information into planners’ hands,” Suckale said. “We don’t need to hit the panic button, but we also can’t ignore this.”

    Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
    See the science paper for instructive material with images.

    See the full article here .

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.


    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability draws on a deep understanding of Earth, climate, and society to create solutions at a global scale, in collaboration with partners worldwide. Together, we strive to create a future where humans and nature thrive in concert and in perpetuity.

    The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability is a school at Stanford University focusing on climate change and sustainability.

    It opened on September 1, 2022, as Stanford’s first new school since the School of Humanities and Sciences in 1948. It will be one of the largest climate change–related schools in the United States.

    Arun Majumdar will be the school’s first dean. Initially, the school will have 90 faculty members. It has plans to add 60 more faculty members over 10 years and construct two new buildings adjacent to the existing Green Earth Sciences and Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy buildings. It will incorporate the academic departments and interdisciplinary programs of the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, Woods Institute for the Environment, and Precourt Institute for Energy and will award both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The school will also include the Hopkins Marine Station and a startup accelerator. Despite being Stanford’s newest school, it will include the university’s oldest academic department, geology. The Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering will be a joint department within the School of Sustainability and the School of Engineering.

    Stanford has raised $1.69 billion for the establishment of the school, including $1.1 billion from venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife Ann, after whom the school is named. The Doerrs’ gift was the largest ever given to a university for the establishment of a new school and the second largest gift to an academic institution; it makes the Doerrs the top funders of climate change research and scholarship. Other donors include Yahoo! cofounders Jerry Yang and David Filo and their spouses, Akiko Yamazaki and Angela Filo. The Doerr School has also received funding from ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, Shell, Saudi Aramco, Petrobras, and many other oil and gas companies via the Doerr School’s industry affiliates program and the Precourt Institute. Dean Majumdar has indicated that the Doerr School is open to continuing to accept funding from and to work with fossil fuel companies, drawing criticism from Stanford students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

    Stanford University campus

    Leland and Jane Stanford founded Stanford University to “promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization.” Stanford opened its doors in 1891, and more than a century later, it remains dedicated to finding solutions to the great challenges of the day and to preparing our students for leadership in today’s complex world. Stanford, is an American private research university located in Stanford, California on an 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus near Palo Alto. Since 1952, more than 54 Stanford faculty, staff, and alumni have won the Nobel Prize, including 19 current faculty members.

    Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university located in Stanford, California. Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford is consistently ranked as among the most prestigious and top universities in the world by major education publications. It is also one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.

    Leland Stanford was a U.S. senator and former governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates’ entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley.

    The university is organized around seven schools: three schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate level as well as four professional schools that focus on graduate programs in law, medicine, education, and business. All schools are on the same campus. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference. It has gained 126 NCAA team championships, and Stanford has won the NACDA Directors’ Cup for 24 consecutive years, beginning in 1994–1995. In addition, Stanford students and alumni have won 270 Olympic medals including 139 gold medals.

    As of October 2020, 84 Nobel laureates, 28 Turing Award laureates, and eight Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, faculty, or staff. In addition, Stanford is particularly noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for start-ups. Stanford alumni have founded numerous companies, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, roughly equivalent to the 7th largest economy in the world (as of 2020). Stanford is the alma mater of one president of the United States (Herbert Hoover), 74 living billionaires, and 17 astronauts. It is also one of the leading producers of Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Rhodes Scholars, and members of the United States Congress.

    Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanford’s previous Palo Alto farm.

    Jane and Leland Stanford modeled their university after the great eastern universities, most specifically Cornell University. Stanford opened being called the “Cornell of the West” in 1891 due to faculty being former Cornell affiliates (either professors, alumni, or both) including its first president, David Starr Jordan, and second president, John Casper Branner. Both Cornell and Stanford were among the first to have higher education be accessible, nonsectarian, and open to women as well as to men. Cornell is credited as one of the first American universities to adopt this radical departure from traditional education, and Stanford became an early adopter as well.

    Despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I. The Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), established in 1962, performs research in particle physics.

    Land

    Most of Stanford is on an 8,180-acre (12.8 sq mi; 33.1 km^2) campus, one of the largest in the United States. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley) approximately 37 miles (60 km) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles (30 km) northwest of San Jose. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped.

    Stanford’s main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land (such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park) is within the city limits of Palo Alto. The campus also includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County (including the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve), as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park (Stanford Hills neighborhood), Woodside, and Portola Valley.

    Non-central campus

    Stanford currently operates in various locations outside of its central campus.

    On the founding grant:

    Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a 1,200-acre (490 ha) natural reserve south of the central campus owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research.

    SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a facility west of the central campus operated by the university for the Department of Energy. It contains the longest linear particle accelerator in the world, 2 miles (3.2 km) on 426 acres (172 ha) of land. Golf course and a seasonal lake: The university also has its own golf course and a seasonal lake (Lake Lagunita, actually an irrigation reservoir), both home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander. As of 2012 Lake Lagunita was often dry and the university had no plans to artificially fill it.

    Off the founding grant:

    Hopkins Marine Station, in Pacific Grove, California, is a marine biology research center owned by the university since 1892., in Pacific Grove, California, is a marine biology research center owned by the university since 1892.
    Study abroad locations: unlike typical study abroad programs, Stanford itself operates in several locations around the world; thus, each location has Stanford faculty-in-residence and staff in addition to students, creating a “mini-Stanford”.

    Redwood City campus for many of the university’s administrative offices located in Redwood City, California, a few miles north of the main campus. In 2005, the university purchased a small, 35-acre (14 ha) campus in Midpoint Technology Park intended for staff offices; development was delayed by The Great Recession. In 2015 the university announced a development plan and the Redwood City campus opened in March 2019.

    The Bass Center in Washington, DC provides a base, including housing, for the Stanford in Washington program for undergraduates. It includes a small art gallery open to the public.

    China: Stanford Center at Peking University, housed in the Lee Jung Sen Building, is a small center for researchers and students in collaboration with Beijing University [北京大学](CN) (Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University(CN) (KIAA-PKU).

    Administration and organization

    Stanford is a private, non-profit university that is administered as a corporate trust governed by a privately appointed board of trustees with a maximum membership of 38. Trustees serve five-year terms (not more than two consecutive terms) and meet five times annually.[83] A new trustee is chosen by the current trustees by ballot. The Stanford trustees also oversee the Stanford Research Park, the Stanford Shopping Center, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University Medical Center, and many associated medical facilities (including the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital).

    The board appoints a president to serve as the chief executive officer of the university, to prescribe the duties of professors and course of study, to manage financial and business affairs, and to appoint nine vice presidents. The provost is the chief academic and budget officer, to whom the deans of each of the seven schools report. Persis Drell became the 13th provost in February 2017.

    As of 2018, the university was organized into seven academic schools. The schools of Humanities and Sciences (27 departments), Engineering (nine departments), and Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (four departments) have both graduate and undergraduate programs while the Schools of Law, Medicine, Education and Business have graduate programs only. The powers and authority of the faculty are vested in the Academic Council, which is made up of tenure and non-tenure line faculty, research faculty, senior fellows in some policy centers and institutes, the president of the university, and some other academic administrators, but most matters are handled by the Faculty Senate, made up of 55 elected representatives of the faculty.

    The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is the student government for Stanford and all registered students are members. Its elected leadership consists of the Undergraduate Senate elected by the undergraduate students, the Graduate Student Council elected by the graduate students, and the President and Vice President elected as a ticket by the entire student body.

    Stanford is the beneficiary of a special clause in the California Constitution, which explicitly exempts Stanford property from taxation so long as the property is used for educational purposes.

    Endowment and donations

    The university’s endowment, managed by the Stanford Management Company, was valued at $27.7 billion as of August 31, 2019. Payouts from the Stanford endowment covered approximately 21.8% of university expenses in the 2019 fiscal year. In the 2018 NACUBO-TIAA survey of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, only Harvard University, the University of Texas System, and Yale University had larger endowments than Stanford.

    In 2006, President John L. Hennessy launched a five-year campaign called the Stanford Challenge, which reached its $4.3 billion fundraising goal in 2009, two years ahead of time, but continued fundraising for the duration of the campaign. It concluded on December 31, 2011, having raised a total of $6.23 billion and breaking the previous campaign fundraising record of $3.88 billion held by Yale. Specifically, the campaign raised $253.7 million for undergraduate financial aid, as well as $2.33 billion for its initiative in “Seeking Solutions” to global problems, $1.61 billion for “Educating Leaders” by improving K-12 education, and $2.11 billion for “Foundation of Excellence” aimed at providing academic support for Stanford students and faculty. Funds supported 366 new fellowships for graduate students, 139 new endowed chairs for faculty, and 38 new or renovated buildings. The new funding also enabled the construction of a facility for stem cell research; a new campus for the business school; an expansion of the law school; a new Engineering Quad; a new art and art history building; an on-campus concert hall; a new art museum; and a planned expansion of the medical school, among other things. In 2012, the university raised $1.035 billion, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.

    Research centers and institutes

    DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
    Stanford Research Institute, a center of innovation to support economic development in the region.
    Hoover Institution, a conservative American public policy institution and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and limited government.
    Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, a multidisciplinary design school in cooperation with the Hasso Plattner Institute of University of Potsdam [Universität Potsdam](DE) that integrates product design, engineering, and business management education).
    Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, which grew out of and still contains the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project.
    John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists
    Center for Ocean Solutions
    Together with UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, Stanford is part of the Biohub, a new medical science research center founded in 2016 by a $600 million commitment from Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and pediatrician Priscilla Chan.

    Discoveries and innovation

    Natural sciences

    Biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) – Arthur Kornberg synthesized DNA material and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his work at Stanford.
    First Transgenic organism – Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to transplant genes from one living organism to another, a fundamental discovery for genetic engineering. Thousands of products have been developed on the basis of their work, including human growth hormone and hepatitis B vaccine.
    Laser – Arthur Leonard Schawlow shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for his work on lasers.
    Nuclear magnetic resonance – Felix Bloch developed new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements, which are the underlying principles of the MRI.

    Computer and applied sciences

    ARPANETStanford Research Institute, formerly part of Stanford but on a separate campus, was the site of one of the four original ARPANET nodes.

    Internet—Stanford was the site where the original design of the Internet was undertaken. Vint Cerf led a research group to elaborate the design of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP) that he originally co-created with Robert E. Kahn (Bob Kahn) in 1973 and which formed the basis for the architecture of the Internet.

    Frequency modulation synthesis – John Chowning of the Music department invented the FM music synthesis algorithm in 1967, and Stanford later licensed it to Yamaha Corporation.

    Google – Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford. They were working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP). The SDLP’s goal was “to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library” and it was funded through the National Science Foundation, among other federal agencies.

    Klystron tube – invented by the brothers Russell and Sigurd Varian at Stanford. Their prototype was completed and demonstrated successfully on August 30, 1937. Upon publication in 1939, news of the klystron immediately influenced the work of U.S. and UK researchers working on radar equipment.

    RISCARPA funded VLSI project of microprocessor design. Stanford and University of California- Berkeley are most associated with the popularization of this concept. The Stanford MIPS would go on to be commercialized as the successful MIPS architecture, while Berkeley RISC gave its name to the entire concept, commercialized as the SPARC. Another success from this era were IBM’s efforts that eventually led to the IBM POWER instruction set architecture, PowerPC, and Power ISA. As these projects matured, a wide variety of similar designs flourished in the late 1980s and especially the early 1990s, representing a major force in the Unix workstation market as well as embedded processors in laser printers, routers and similar products.
    SUN workstation – Andy Bechtolsheim designed the SUN workstation for the Stanford University Network communications project as a personal CAD workstation, which led to Sun Microsystems.

    Businesses and entrepreneurship

    Stanford is one of the most successful universities in creating companies and licensing its inventions to existing companies; it is often held up as a model for technology transfer. Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing is responsible for commercializing university research, intellectual property, and university-developed projects.

    The university is described as having a strong venture culture in which students are encouraged, and often funded, to launch their own companies.

    Companies founded by Stanford alumni generate more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, equivalent to the 10th-largest economy in the world.

    Some companies closely associated with Stanford and their connections include:

    Hewlett-Packard, 1939, co-founders William R. Hewlett (B.S, PhD) and David Packard (M.S).
    Silicon Graphics, 1981, co-founders James H. Clark (Associate Professor) and several of his grad students.
    Sun Microsystems, 1982, co-founders Vinod Khosla (M.B.A), Andy Bechtolsheim (PhD) and Scott McNealy (M.B.A).
    Cisco, 1984, founders Leonard Bosack (M.S) and Sandy Lerner (M.S) who were in charge of Stanford Computer Science and Graduate School of Business computer operations groups respectively when the hardware was developed.[163]
    Yahoo!, 1994, co-founders Jerry Yang (B.S, M.S) and David Filo (M.S).
    Google, 1998, co-founders Larry Page (M.S) and Sergey Brin (M.S).
    LinkedIn, 2002, co-founders Reid Hoffman (B.S), Konstantin Guericke (B.S, M.S), Eric Lee (B.S), and Alan Liu (B.S).
    Instagram, 2010, co-founders Kevin Systrom (B.S) and Mike Krieger (B.S).
    Snapchat, 2011, co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy (B.S).
    Coursera, 2012, co-founders Andrew Ng (Associate Professor) and Daphne Koller (Professor, PhD).

    Student body

    Stanford enrolled 6,996 undergraduate and 10,253 graduate students as of the 2019–2020 school year. Women comprised 50.4% of undergraduates and 41.5% of graduate students. In the same academic year, the freshman retention rate was 99%.

    Stanford awarded 1,819 undergraduate degrees, 2,393 master’s degrees, 770 doctoral degrees, and 3270 professional degrees in the 2018–2019 school year. The four-year graduation rate for the class of 2017 cohort was 72.9%, and the six-year rate was 94.4%. The relatively low four-year graduation rate is a function of the university’s coterminal degree (or “coterm”) program, which allows students to earn a master’s degree as a 1-to-2-year extension of their undergraduate program.

    As of 2010, fifteen percent of undergraduates were first-generation students.

    Athletics

    As of 2016 Stanford had 16 male varsity sports and 20 female varsity sports, 19 club sports and about 27 intramural sports. In 1930, following a unanimous vote by the Executive Committee for the Associated Students, the athletic department adopted the mascot “Indian.” The Indian symbol and name were dropped by President Richard Lyman in 1972, after objections from Native American students and a vote by the student senate. The sports teams are now officially referred to as the “Stanford Cardinal,” referring to the deep red color, not the cardinal bird. Stanford is a member of the Pac-12 Conference in most sports, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in several other sports, and the America East Conference in field hockey with the participation in the inter-collegiate NCAA’s Division I FBS.

    Its traditional sports rival is the University of California, Berkeley, the neighbor to the north in the East Bay. The winner of the annual “Big Game” between the Cal and Cardinal football teams gains custody of the Stanford Axe.

    Stanford has had at least one NCAA team champion every year since the 1976–77 school year and has earned 126 NCAA national team titles since its establishment, the most among universities, and Stanford has won 522 individual national championships, the most by any university. Stanford has won the award for the top-ranked Division 1 athletic program—the NACDA Directors’ Cup, formerly known as the Sears Cup—annually for the past twenty-four straight years. Stanford athletes have won medals in every Olympic Games since 1912, winning 270 Olympic medals total, 139 of them gold. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, and 2016 Summer Olympics, Stanford won more Olympic medals than any other university in the United States. Stanford athletes won 16 medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics (12 gold, two silver and two bronze), and 27 medals at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

    Traditions

    The unofficial motto of Stanford, selected by President Jordan, is Die Luft der Freiheit weht. Translated from the German language, this quotation from Ulrich von Hutten means, “The wind of freedom blows.” The motto was controversial during World War I, when anything in German was suspect; at that time the university disavowed that this motto was official.
    Hail, Stanford, Hail! is the Stanford Hymn sometimes sung at ceremonies or adapted by the various University singing groups. It was written in 1892 by mechanical engineering professor Albert W. Smith and his wife, Mary Roberts Smith (in 1896 she earned the first Stanford doctorate in Economics and later became associate professor of Sociology), but was not officially adopted until after a performance on campus in March 1902 by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
    “Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman”: Stanford does not award honorary degrees, but in 1953 the degree of “Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman” was created to recognize individuals who give rare and extraordinary service to the University. Technically, this degree is awarded by the Stanford Associates, a voluntary group that is part of the university’s alumni association. As Stanford’s highest honor, it is not conferred at prescribed intervals, but only when appropriate to recognize extraordinary service. Recipients include Herbert Hoover, Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard, Lucile Packard, and John Gardner.
    Big Game events: The events in the week leading up to the Big Game vs. UC Berkeley, including Gaieties (a musical written, composed, produced, and performed by the students of Ram’s Head Theatrical Society).
    “Viennese Ball”: a formal ball with waltzes that was initially started in the 1970s by students returning from the now-closed Stanford in Vienna overseas program. It is now open to all students.
    “Full Moon on the Quad”: An annual event at Main Quad, where students gather to kiss one another starting at midnight. Typically organized by the Junior class cabinet, the festivities include live entertainment, such as music and dance performances.
    “Band Run”: An annual festivity at the beginning of the school year, where the band picks up freshmen from dorms across campus while stopping to perform at each location, culminating in a finale performance at Main Quad.
    “Mausoleum Party”: An annual Halloween Party at the Stanford Mausoleum, the final resting place of Leland Stanford Jr. and his parents. A 20-year tradition, the “Mausoleum Party” was on hiatus from 2002 to 2005 due to a lack of funding, but was revived in 2006. In 2008, it was hosted in Old Union rather than at the actual Mausoleum, because rain prohibited generators from being rented. In 2009, after fundraising efforts by the Junior Class Presidents and the ASSU Executive, the event was able to return to the Mausoleum despite facing budget cuts earlier in the year.
    Former campus traditions include the “Big Game bonfire” on Lake Lagunita (a seasonal lake usually dry in the fall), which was formally ended in 1997 because of the presence of endangered salamanders in the lake bed.

    Award laureates and scholars

    Stanford’s current community of scholars includes:

    19 Nobel Prize laureates (as of October 2020, 85 affiliates in total)
    171 members of the National Academy of Sciences
    109 members of National Academy of Engineering
    76 members of National Academy of Medicine
    288 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
    19 recipients of the National Medal of Science
    1 recipient of the National Medal of Technology
    4 recipients of the National Humanities Medal
    49 members of American Philosophical Society
    56 fellows of the American Physics Society (since 1995)
    4 Pulitzer Prize winners
    31 MacArthur Fellows
    4 Wolf Foundation Prize winners
    2 ACL Lifetime Achievement Award winners
    14 AAAI fellows
    2 Presidential Medal of Freedom winners

    Stanford University Seal

     
  • richardmitnick 9:27 pm on March 27, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Joint NASA - CNES Water-Tracking Satellite Reveals First Stunning Views", , Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, , , Our ability to measure freshwater resources on a global scale through satellite data is of prime importance as we seek to adjust to a changing climate., SWOT will measure the elevation of nearly all the water on Earth’s surface and provide one of the most comprehensive surveys yet of our planet’s surface water., The National Centre for Space Studies [Centre national d'études spatiales][CNES](FR), The spatial resolution of SWOT ocean measurements is 10 times greater than the composite of sea surface height data gathered over the same area by seven other satellites., The SWOT [Surface Water and Ocean Topography] mission – led by NASA/JPL-Caltech and the French space agency CNES – has sent back some of its first glimpses of water on the planet’s surface.   

    From NASA JPL-Caltech: “Joint NASA – CNES Water-Tracking Satellite Reveals First Stunning Views” 

    From NASA JPL-Caltech

    3.24.23
    Jane J. Lee /
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
    818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
    jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov /

    Andrew Wang
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
    626-379-6874
    andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov

    The Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission offers the first taste of the detailed perspectives of Earth’s surface water that its cutting-edge instruments will be able to capture.

    1

    2
    Sea level data gathered Jan. 21 in the Gulf Stream by SWOT’s KaRIn instrument, visualized in the upper image, has 10 times the spatial resolution of data taken over the same area by altimeters on seven other satellites, visualized in the lower. Red represents sea levels higher than the global average, while blue is lower.
    Credits: Upper image- NASA/JPL-Caltech; Lower image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Copernicus Marine Service of ESA

    The international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission – led by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) – has sent back some of its first glimpses of water on the planet’s surface, showing ocean currents like the Gulf Stream in unprecedented detail. SWOT is also capturing views of freshwater features such as lakes, rivers, and other water bodies down to about 300 feet (100 meters) wide.

    The satellite will measure the elevation of nearly all the water on Earth’s surface and provide one of the most comprehensive surveys yet of our planet’s surface water. SWOT’s measurements of freshwater bodies and the ocean will provide insights into how the ocean influences climate change and the water cycle; how a warming world affects water storage in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs; and how communities can better manage their water resources and prepare for floods and other disasters.

    “SWOT’s advanced imagery will empower researchers and advance the way we manage fresh water and the effects of sea level rise across the globe,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Water is one of our planet’s most important resources – and it’s proven to be vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. SWOT will provide critical information that communities can use to prepare for the impacts of a warming climate.”

    A Whole New View

    As seen in these early images, on Jan. 21, 2023, SWOT measured sea level in a part of the Gulf Stream off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia. The two antennas of SWOT’s Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument acquired data that was mapped as a pair of wide, colored strips spanning a total of 75 miles (120 kilometers) across. Red and orange areas in the images represent sea levels that are higher than the global average, while the shades of blue represent sea levels that are lower than average.

    For comparison, the new data is shown alongside sea surface height data taken by space-based instruments called altimeters. The instruments – widely used to measure sea level – also bounce radar signals off of Earth’s surface to collect their measurements. But traditional altimeters are able to look only at a narrow beam of Earth directly beneath them, unlike KaRIn’s two wide-swath strips that observe sea level as a two-dimensional map.

    The spatial resolution of SWOT ocean measurements is 10 times greater than the composite of sea surface height data gathered over the same area by seven other satellites: Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, Jason-3, Sentinel-3A and 3B, Cryosat-2, Altika, and Hai Yang 2B. The composite image was created using information from the Copernicus Marine Service of ESA (European Space Agency) and shows the same day as the SWOT data.

    KaRIn also measured the elevation of water features on Long Island – shown as bright pink splotches nestled within the landscape. (Purple, yellow, green, and blue shades represent different land elevations.)

    3
    This visualization shows water features on New York’s Long Island – shown as bright pink splotches. Purple, yellow, green, and dark blue shades represent different land elevations, while the surrounding ocean is a lighter blue. The data was collected on Jan. 21, 2023, by SWOT’s KaRIn instrument. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

    “Our ability to measure freshwater resources on a global scale through satellite data is of prime importance as we seek to adjust to a changing climate,” said CNES Chairman and CEO Philippe Baptiste. “In this respect, the first views from SWOT give us a clearer picture than ever before. These data will prove highly valuable for the international scientific community in the fields of hydrology, oceanography, and coastal studies.”

    This initial inland image is a tantalizing indication of how SWOT can measure details of smaller lakes, ponds, and rivers in ways that satellites could not before. Such data will be used to produce an extraordinary accounting of the freshwater on Earth’s surface in ways useful to researchers, policymakers, and water resource managers.

    “The KaRIn instrument took years to develop and build, and it will collect information on bodies of water across the globe – data that will be freely and openly available to everybody who needs it,” said Parag Vaze, SWOT project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

    See the full article here .

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    NASA JPL-Caltech Campus

    NASA JPL-Caltech is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although the facility has a Pasadena postal address, it is actually headquartered in the city of La Cañada Flintridge, on the northwest border of Pasadena. JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Laboratory’s primary function is the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASA’s Deep Space Network.

    NASA Deep Space Network. Credit: NASA.

    NASA Deep Space Network Station 56 Madrid Spain added in early 2021.

    NASA Deep Space Network Station 14 at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California

    NASA Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, AU, Deep Space Network. Credit: NASA

    NASA Deep Space Network Madrid Spain. Credit: NASA.

    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.

    President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

    Since that time, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. Most recently, NASA announced a new Space Launch System that it said would take the agency’s astronauts farther into space than ever before and lay the cornerstone for future human space exploration efforts by the U.S.

    NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories [Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, and associated programs.] NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from the[JAXA]Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.

     
  • richardmitnick 8:33 am on March 27, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Digital Innovation Harnesses Power of Real-time Weather Data", A given country may have many types of automated networks each built by a different company and each requiring different parts and processes to maintain and repair., ADT’s capability to process data from automatic weather stations makes it a powerful tool for managing data for East Africa., , Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, , Higher-resolution data creates more robust historical climate datasets that ultimately lead to improved climate predictions and forecasts for a country., , Problem: There is a lack of coordination among the various initiatives., Scientists at Columbia Climate School developed the “Automatic Weather Station Data Tool”. Use of the new tool has increased significantly among African national meteorological services., , The "Automatic Weather Station Data Tool" is a free application that enables users from national meteorological services to access different automated networks in one place., The different networks can’t ‘talk’ to each other., The rapid expansion of automated weather-monitoring networks is addressing critical data gaps across Africa.   

    From State of the Planet At Columbia University: “Digital Innovation Harnesses Power of Real-time Weather Data” 

    From State of the Planet

    At

    Columbia U bloc

    Columbia University

    2.6.23 [Just today in social media.]
    Amanda Grossi
    Francesco Fiondella

    National meteorological services play a central role in their country’s efforts to anticipate and manage climate-related risks, and to develop effective policies for resilience and adaptation.

    1
    Automatic weather stations such as this one in Togo make important measurements of rainfall, temperature, and other parameters in near real-time. But national meteorological services need to be able to efficiently integrate this flood of information into their database in order to be of use to decision makers.

    The real-time monitoring of floods, droughts and other climate hazards—as well the various climate and weather forecasts the national meteorological services provide—help agencies make critical decisions about agriculture, public health, energy, transportation, and other fundamental components of society.

    However, these operations require vast amounts of reliable and timely climate and weather data. This is something that, historically, many African countries have lacked.

    Recent initiatives backed by the UN Development Program, the World Bank and other international partners have worked to increase the availability and quality of climate data on the continent, particularly by investing in networks of automated weather stations. These stations demand far less human involvement than traditional ones, which require staff visits to collect data — multiple times a day in some cases. Automated stations can take measurements every 15 minutes and automatically transmit the data to a meteorological office. They can also be set up in places where continuous weather data has been more difficult to collect, such as in remote rural communities.

    This higher-resolution data creates more robust historical climate datasets that ultimately lead to improved climate predictions and forecasts for a country.

    When it comes to responding to—and mitigating—climate emergencies, having these real-time data networks can make all the difference.

    A new data challenge

    The rapid expansion of automated weather-monitoring networks is addressing critical data gaps across Africa. But they’ve also created a new problem, one caused by a lack of coordination among the various initiatives, programs, and donors who have funded the building of these networks.

    The result is that a given country may have many types of automated networks, each built by a different company, and each requiring different parts and processes to maintain and repair.

    Also, these companies don’t format and store their automated weather station data in the same way — some use proprietary formats. So while automated stations do provide national meteorological services with a lot of critical weather data (good), the different networks can’t ‘talk’ to each other. If a national meteorological service cannot efficiently combine, synchronize, and analyze its datasets, then a significant amount of data will be left out of decision making.

    Scaling a transformative solution

    Scientists at Columbia Climate School’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) saw this challenge and the frustration it was causing among its many national met service partners. In response, they developed the Automatic Weather Station Data Tool (ADT). And thanks to support from the projects Accelerating Impact of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) and Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow (ACToday), which held technical trainings and workshops, use of the new tool has increased significantly among African national meteorological services.

    The Automatic Weather Station Data Tool is a free web-based application with an easy-to-use graphic interface that enables users from national meteorological services to access, process, perform quality control, and visualize data from different automated networks in one place. It also enables real-time monitoring of stations to see which ones are working and which ones are offline to more easily understand where the data is coming from and address any interruptions in transmission sooner. ADT emerged from the broader climate services delivered under the Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initiative, which recognized that the availability of high-quality climate data does not automatically translate to ease of access or effective use.

    2
    The ADT web interface for Kenya, showing seven different networks of automatic weather stations.

    In less than a year, IRI has trained dozens of staff from the national meteorological services in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and Zambia to use ADT to help synchronize their data streams. Mali’s meteorological service is hoping to receive similar trainings in the near future.

    In Kenya, where the national meteorological department has faced considerable challenges trying to manage seven different automatic weather station networks, the tool has greatly simplified the analysis and viewing of weather data.

    “The data visualization capabilities of ADT will go a long way in supporting our mandate of providing quality and timely climate information to the users. Its ability to aggregate different data types is a game changer,” said Onesmus Ruirie, principal meteorologist at the Kenya Meteorological Department.

    The functionality to aggregate data at hourly, daily, 10-day, and monthly intervals has many meteorological staff excited, especially when complemented by the ability to display and download maps, graphs, and tables of this data for reports or advisories for decision makers.

    IRI is a key partner in the AICCRA project, whose theory of change states that if national meteorological agencies can efficiently aggregate, analyze, and visualize climate data using state-of-the-art practices and tools, then relevant national institutions and stakeholders can better monitor, prepare and respond to climate-driven disasters in more timely and effective fashion. These same stakeholders can also inform long-term national strategies for adapting to climate change with more robust evidence.

    Regional climate centers such as East Africa’s IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) have also recognized the role ADT can play in helping the met services develop improved climate services. ICPAC is enthusiastic about raising awareness about the tool and building capacity for its use in the region. In addition to Ethiopia and Kenya, IGAD member states include Djibouti, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.

    “[ADT’s] capability to process data from automatic weather stations, its visualization functionalities, and its provision of a unified database for the different networks makes it a powerful tool for managing data for East Africa,” said Herbert Misiani, a data management expert at ICPAC.

    ICPAC, another important AICCRA partner, has also helped the project scale other critical and in-demand IRI innovations in climate services to support the agricultural sector.

    See the full article here .

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    The Earth Institute is a research institute at Columbia University that was established in 1995. Its stated mission is to address complex issues facing the planet and its inhabitants, with a focus on sustainable development. With an interdisciplinary approach, this includes research in climate change, geology, global health, economics, management, agriculture, ecosystems, urbanization, energy, hazards, and water. The Earth Institute’s activities are guided by the idea that science and technological tools that already exist could be applied to greatly improve conditions for the world’s poor, while preserving the natural systems that support life on Earth.

    The Earth Institute supports pioneering projects in the biological, engineering, social, and health sciences, while actively encouraging interdisciplinary projects—often combining natural and social sciences—in pursuit of solutions to real world problems and a sustainable planet. In its work, the Earth Institute remains mindful of the staggering disparities between rich and poor nations, and the tremendous impact that global-scale problems—such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, climate change and extreme poverty—have on all nations.

    Columbia U Campus
    Columbia University was founded in 1754 as King’s College by royal charter of King George II of England. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.

    University Mission Statement

    Columbia University is one of the world’s most important centers of research and at the same time a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. The University recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the University to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.

    Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. Columbia is ranked among the top universities in the world by major education publications.

    Columbia was established as King’s College by royal charter from King George II of Great Britain in reaction to the founding of Princeton College. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University.

    Columbia scientists and scholars have played an important role in scientific breakthroughs including brain-computer interface; the laser and maser; nuclear magnetic resonance; the first nuclear pile; the first nuclear fission reaction in the Americas; the first evidence for plate tectonics and continental drift; and much of the initial research and planning for the Manhattan Project during World War II. Columbia is organized into twenty schools, including four undergraduate schools and 15 graduate schools. The university’s research efforts include the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and accelerator laboratories with major technology firms such as IBM. Columbia is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree. With over 14 million volumes, Columbia University Library is the third largest private research library in the United States.

    The university’s endowment stands at $11.26 billion in 2020, among the largest of any academic institution. As of October 2020, Columbia’s alumni, faculty, and staff have included: five Founding Fathers of the United States—among them a co-author of the United States Constitution and a co-author of the Declaration of Independence; three U.S. presidents; 29 foreign heads of state; ten justices of the United States Supreme Court, one of whom currently serves; 96 Nobel laureates; five Fields Medalists; 122 National Academy of Sciencesmembers; 53 living billionaires; eleven Olympic medalists; 33 Academy Award winners; and 125 Pulitzer Prize recipients.

     
  • richardmitnick 10:07 am on March 24, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Detailed images from space offer clearer picture of drought effects on plants", "J-WAFS": the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, , , Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, , ,   

    From The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering At The Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “Detailed images from space offer clearer picture of drought effects on plants” 

    2

    From The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

    At

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    3.20.23
    Carolyn Blais | Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab

    J-WAFS researchers are using remote sensing observations to build high-resolution systems to monitor drought.

    1
    Two views of cropland affected by a 2022 drought in northeastern Oklahoma City, one on June 14 (left) and the other on July 20. “This image shows a compelling story that the Oklahoma City drought destroyed crops in just around 35 days,” says MIT postdoc Wenzhe Jiao. Image courtesy of the researchers.

    2
    César Terrer is an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Photo: Gretchen Ertl.

    “MIT is a place where dreams come true,” says César Terrer, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Here at MIT, Terrer says he’s given the resources needed to explore ideas he finds most exciting, and at the top of his list is climate science. In particular, he is interested in plant-soil interactions, and how the two can mitigate impacts of climate change. In 2022, Terrer received seed grant funding from the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) to produce drought monitoring systems for farmers. The project is leveraging a new generation of remote sensing devices to provide high-resolution plant water stress at regional to global scales.

    Growing up in Granada, Spain, Terrer always had an aptitude and passion for science. He studied environmental science at the University of Murcia, where he interned in the Department of Ecology. Using computational analysis tools, he worked on modeling species distribution in response to human development. Early on in his undergraduate experience, Terrer says he regarded his professors as “superheroes” with a kind of scholarly prowess. He knew he wanted to follow in their footsteps by one day working as a faculty member in academia. Of course, there would be many steps along the way before achieving that dream.

    Upon completing his undergraduate studies, Terrer set his sights on exciting and adventurous research roles. He thought perhaps he would conduct field work in the Amazon, engaging with native communities. But when the opportunity arose to work in Australia on a state-of-the-art climate change experiment that simulates future levels of carbon dioxide, he headed south to study how plants react to CO2 in a biome of native Australian eucalyptus trees. It was during this experience that Terrer started to take a keen interest in the carbon cycle and the capacity of ecosystems to buffer rising levels of CO2 caused by human activity.

    Around 2014, he began to delve deeper into the carbon cycle as he began his doctoral studies at Imperial College London. The primary question Terrer sought to answer during his PhD was “will plants be able to absorb predicted future levels of CO2 in the atmosphere?” To answer the question, Terrer became an early adopter of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and remote sensing to analyze data from real-life, global climate change experiments. His findings from these “ground truth” values and observations resulted in a paper in the journal Science. In it, he claimed that climate models most likely overestimated how much carbon plants will be able to absorb by the end of the century, by a factor of three.

    After postdoctoral positions at Stanford University and the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, followed by a prestigious Lawrence Fellowship, Terrer says he had “too many ideas and not enough time to accomplish all those ideas.” He knew it was time to lead his own group. Not long after applying for faculty positions, he landed at MIT.

    New ways to monitor drought

    Terrer is employing similar methods to those he used during his PhD to analyze data from all over the world for his J-WAFS project. He and postdoc Wenzhe Jiao collect data from remote sensing satellites and field experiments and use machine learning to come up with new ways to monitor drought. Terrer says Jiao is a “remote sensing wizard,” who fuses data from different satellite products to understand the water cycle. With Jiao’s hydrology expertise and Terrer’s knowledge of plants, soil, and the carbon cycle, the duo is a formidable team to tackle this project.

    According to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, the number and duration of droughts has increased by 29 percent since 2000, as compared to the two previous decades. From the Horn of Africa to the Western United States, drought is devastating vegetation and severely stressing water supplies, compromising food production and spiking food insecurity. Drought monitoring can offer fundamental information on drought location, frequency, and severity, but assessing the impact of drought on vegetation is extremely challenging. This is because plants’ sensitivity to water deficits varies across species and ecosystems.

    Terrer and Jiao are able to obtain a clearer picture of how drought is affecting plants by employing the latest generation of remote sensing observations, which offer images of the planet with incredible spatial and temporal resolution. Satellite products such as Sentinel, Landsat, and Planet can provide daily images from space with such high resolution that individual trees can be discerned. Along with the images and datasets from satellites, the team is using ground-based observations from meteorological data. They are also using the MIT SuperCloud at MIT Lincoln Laboratory to process and analyze all of the data sets. The J-WAFS project is among one of the first to leverage high-resolution data to quantitatively measure plant drought impacts in the United States with the hopes of expanding to a global assessment in the future.

    Assisting farmers and resource managers

    Every week, the U.S. Drought Monitor provides a map of drought conditions in the United States. The map has zero resolution and is more of a drought recap or summary, unable to predict future drought scenarios. The lack of a comprehensive spatiotemporal evaluation of historic and future drought impacts on global vegetation productivity is detrimental to farmers both in the United States and worldwide.

    Terrer and Jiao plan to generate metrics for plant water stress at an unprecedented resolution of 10-30 meters. This means that they will be able to provide drought monitoring maps at the scale of a typical U.S. farm, giving farmers more precise, useful data every one to two days. The team will use the information from the satellites to monitor plant growth and soil moisture, as well as the time lag of plant growth response to soil moisture. In this way, Terrer and Jiao say they will eventually be able to create a kind of “plant water stress forecast” that may be able to predict adverse impacts of drought four weeks in advance. “According to the current soil moisture and lagged response time, we hope to predict plant water stress in the future,” says Jiao.

    The expected outcomes of this project will give farmers, land and water resource managers, and decision-makers more accurate data at the farm-specific level, allowing for better drought preparation, mitigation, and adaptation. “We expect to make our data open-access online, after we finish the project, so that farmers and other stakeholders can use the maps as tools,” says Jiao.

    Terrer adds that the project “has the potential to help us better understand the future states of climate systems, and also identify the regional hot spots more likely to experience water crises at the national, state, local, and tribal government scales.” He also expects the project will enhance our understanding of global carbon-water-energy cycle responses to drought, with applications in determining climate change impacts on natural ecosystems as a whole.

    See the full article here .


    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    Our Mission

    In The MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, we are driven by a simple truth: we only have one Earth to call home. Our intellectual focus is on the human-built environment and the complex infrastructure systems that it entails, as well as the man-made effect on the natural world. We seek to foster an inclusive community that pushes the boundaries of what is possible to shape the future of civil and environmental engineering. Our goal is to educate and train the next generation of researchers and engineers, driven by a passion to positively impact our society, economy, and our planet.

    Our faculty and students work in tandem to develop and apply pioneering approaches that range from basic scientific principles to complex engineering design, with a focus on translating fundamental advances to real-world impact. We offer undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the broad areas of infrastructure and environment, in order to advance the frontiers of knowledge for a sustainable civilization.

    Our Vision

    Bold solutions for sustainability across scales.

    MIT CEE is creating a new era of sustainable and resilient infrastructure and systems from the nanoscale to the global scale.

    We are pioneering a bold transformation of civil and environmental engineering as a field, fostering collaboration across disciplines to drive meaningful change. Our research and educational programs challenge the status quo, advance the frontier of knowledge and expand the limit of what is possible.

    MIT Seal

    USPS “Forever” postage stamps celebrating Innovation at MIT.

    MIT Campus

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The institute has an urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the Charles River. The institute also encompasses a number of major off-campus facilities such as the MIT Lincoln Laboratory , the MIT Bates Research and Engineering Center , and the Haystack Observatory , as well as affiliated laboratories such as the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Whitehead Institute.

    Massachusettes Institute of Technology-Haystack Observatory Westford, Massachusetts, USA, Altitude 131 m (430 ft).

    4

    The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

    The Kavli Institute For Astrophysics and Space Research

    MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    The MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science

    The MIT Media Lab

    The MIT School of Engineering

    The MIT Sloan School of Management

    Spectrum

    MIT.nano

    Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, Massachusetts Institute of Technology adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. It has since played a key role in the development of many aspects of modern science, engineering, mathematics, and technology, and is widely known for its innovation and academic strength. It is frequently regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

    As of December 2020, 97 Nobel laureates, 26 Turing Award winners, and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. In addition, 58 National Medal of Science recipients, 29 National Medals of Technology and Innovation recipients, 50 MacArthur Fellows, 80 Marshall Scholars, 3 Mitchell Scholars, 22 Schwarzman Scholars, 41 astronauts, and 16 Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force have been affiliated with The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The university also has a strong entrepreneurial culture and MIT alumni have founded or co-founded many notable companies. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU).

    Foundation and vision

    In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to use newly filled lands in Back Bay, Boston for a “Conservatory of Art and Science”, but the proposal failed. A charter for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed by William Barton Rogers, was signed by John Albion Andrew, the governor of Massachusetts, on April 10, 1861.

    Rogers, a professor from the University of Virginia , wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances. He did not wish to found a professional school, but a combination with elements of both professional and liberal education, proposing that:

    “The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.”

    The Rogers Plan reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories.

    Early developments

    Two days after The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was chartered, the first battle of the Civil War broke out. After a long delay through the war years, MIT’s first classes were held in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865. The new institute was founded as part of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes” and was a land-grant school. In 1863 under the same act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Agricultural College, which developed as the University of Massachusetts Amherst ). In 1866, the proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in the Back Bay.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was informally called “Boston Tech”. The institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Despite chronic financial problems, the institute saw growth in the last two decades of the 19th century under President Francis Amasa Walker. Programs in electrical, chemical, marine, and sanitary engineering were introduced, new buildings were built, and the size of the student body increased to more than one thousand.

    The curriculum drifted to a vocational emphasis, with less focus on theoretical science. The fledgling school still suffered from chronic financial shortages which diverted the attention of the MIT leadership. During these “Boston Tech” years, Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty and alumni rebuffed Harvard University president (and former MIT faculty) Charles W. Eliot’s repeated attempts to merge MIT with Harvard College’s Lawrence Scientific School. There would be at least six attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard. In its cramped Back Bay location, MIT could not afford to expand its overcrowded facilities, driving a desperate search for a new campus and funding. Eventually, the MIT Corporation approved a formal agreement to merge with Harvard, over the vehement objections of MIT faculty, students, and alumni. However, a 1917 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court effectively put an end to the merger scheme.

    In 1916, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology administration and the MIT charter crossed the Charles River on the ceremonial barge Bucentaur built for the occasion, to signify MIT’s move to a spacious new campus largely consisting of filled land on a one-mile-long (1.6 km) tract along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. The neoclassical “New Technology” campus was designed by William W. Bosworth and had been funded largely by anonymous donations from a mysterious “Mr. Smith”, starting in 1912. In January 1920, the donor was revealed to be the industrialist George Eastman of Rochester, New York, who had invented methods of film production and processing, and founded Eastman Kodak. Between 1912 and 1920, Eastman donated $20 million ($236.6 million in 2015 dollars) in cash and Kodak stock to MIT.

    Curricular reforms

    In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost) Vannevar Bush emphasized the importance of pure sciences like physics and chemistry and reduced the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios. The Compton reforms “renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering”. Unlike Ivy League schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants for its funding. The school was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934.

    Still, as late as 1949, the Lewis Committee lamented in its report on the state of education at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology that “the Institute is widely conceived as basically a vocational school”, a “partly unjustified” perception the committee sought to change. The report comprehensively reviewed the undergraduate curriculum, recommended offering a broader education, and warned against letting engineering and government-sponsored research detract from the sciences and humanities. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the MIT Sloan School of Management were formed in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors and launching competitive graduate programs. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences continued to develop under the successive terms of the more humanistically oriented presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s involvement in military science surged during World War II. In 1941, Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. Engineers and scientists from across the country gathered at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ‘s Radiation Laboratory, established in 1940 to assist the British military in developing microwave radar. The work done there significantly affected both the war and subsequent research in the area. Other defense projects included gyroscope-based and other complex control systems for gunsight, bombsight, and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper’s Instrumentation Laboratory; the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind; and high-speed and high-altitude photography under Harold Edgerton. By the end of the war, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the nation’s largest wartime R&D contractor (attracting some criticism of Bush), employing nearly 4000 in the Radiation Laboratory alone and receiving in excess of $100 million ($1.2 billion in 2015 dollars) before 1946. Work on defense projects continued even after then. Post-war government-sponsored research at MIT included SAGE and guidance systems for ballistic missiles and Project Apollo.

    These activities affected The Massachusetts Institute of Technology profoundly. A 1949 report noted the lack of “any great slackening in the pace of life at the Institute” to match the return to peacetime, remembering the “academic tranquility of the prewar years”, though acknowledging the significant contributions of military research to the increased emphasis on graduate education and rapid growth of personnel and facilities. The faculty doubled and the graduate student body quintupled during the terms of Karl Taylor Compton, president of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1930 and 1948; James Rhyne Killian, president from 1948 to 1957; and Julius Adams Stratton, chancellor from 1952 to 1957, whose institution-building strategies shaped the expanding university. By the 1950s, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology no longer simply benefited the industries with which it had worked for three decades, and it had developed closer working relationships with new patrons, philanthropic foundations and the federal government.

    In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ‘s defense research. In this period Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s various departments were researching helicopters, smart bombs and counterinsurgency techniques for the war in Vietnam as well as guidance systems for nuclear missiles. The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research toward environmental and social problems. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to the protests. The student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during what was a tumultuous time for many other universities. Johnson was seen to be highly successful in leading his institution to “greater strength and unity” after these times of turmoil. However, six Massachusetts Institute of Technology students were sentenced to prison terms at this time and some former student leaders, such as Michael Albert and George Katsiaficas, are still indignant about MIT’s role in military research and its suppression of these protests. (Richard Leacock’s film, November Actions, records some of these tumultuous events.)

    In the 1980s, there was more controversy at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology over its involvement in SDI (space weaponry) and CBW (chemical and biological warfare) research. More recently, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research for the military has included work on robots, drones and ‘battle suits’.

    Recent history

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has kept pace with and helped to advance the digital age. In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies, students, staff, and faculty members at Project MAC, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and the Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive computer video games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang and culture. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s: Richard Stallman’s GNU Project and the subsequent Free Software Foundation were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI Lab; the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology; the World Wide Web Consortium standards organization was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee; the MIT OpenCourseWare project has made course materials for over 2,000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology classes available online free of charge since 2002; and the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs. Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several successful development campaigns to significantly expand the campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus; the Tang Center for Management Education; several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into biology, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics, biotechnology, and cancer research; and a number of new “backlot” buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center. Construction on campus in the 2000s included expansions of the Media Lab, the Sloan School’s eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest. In 2006, President Hockfield launched the MIT Energy Research Council to investigate the interdisciplinary challenges posed by increasing global energy consumption.

    In 2001, inspired by the open source and open access movements, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched OpenCourseWare to make the lecture notes, problem sets, syllabi, exams, and lectures from the great majority of its courses available online for no charge, though without any formal accreditation for coursework completed. While the cost of supporting and hosting the project is high, OCW expanded in 2005 to include other universities as a part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which currently includes more than 250 academic institutions with content available in at least six languages. In 2011, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced it would offer formal certification (but not credits or degrees) to online participants completing coursework in its “MITx” program, for a modest fee. The “edX” online platform supporting MITx was initially developed in partnership with Harvard and its analogous “Harvardx” initiative. The courseware platform is open source, and other universities have already joined and added their own course content. In March 2009 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty adopted an open-access policy to make its scholarship publicly accessible online.

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has its own police force. Three days after the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, MIT Police patrol officer Sean Collier was fatally shot by the suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, setting off a violent manhunt that shut down the campus and much of the Boston metropolitan area for a day. One week later, Collier’s memorial service was attended by more than 10,000 people, in a ceremony hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology community with thousands of police officers from the New England region and Canada. On November 25, 2013, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced the creation of the Collier Medal, to be awarded annually to “an individual or group that embodies the character and qualities that Officer Collier exhibited as a member of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology community and in all aspects of his life”. The announcement further stated that “Future recipients of the award will include those whose contributions exceed the boundaries of their profession, those who have contributed to building bridges across the community, and those who consistently and selflessly perform acts of kindness”.

    In September 2017, the school announced the creation of an artificial intelligence research lab called the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. IBM will spend $240 million over the next decade, and the lab will be staffed by MIT and IBM scientists. In October 2018 MIT announced that it would open a new Schwarzman College of Computing dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, named after lead donor and The Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman. The focus of the new college is to study not just AI, but interdisciplinary AI education, and how AI can be used in fields as diverse as history and biology. The cost of buildings and new faculty for the new college is expected to be $1 billion upon completion.

    The Caltech/MIT Advanced aLIGO was designed and constructed by a team of scientists from California Institute of Technology , Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and industrial contractors, and funded by the National Science Foundation .

    Caltech /MIT Advanced aLigo

    It was designed to open the field of gravitational-wave astronomy through the detection of gravitational waves predicted by general relativity. Gravitational waves were detected for the first time by the LIGO detector in 2015. For contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves, two Caltech physicists, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Rainer Weiss won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017. Weiss, who is also a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, designed the laser interferometric technique, which served as the essential blueprint for the LIGO.

    The mission of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the twenty-first century. We seek to develop in each member of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.

     
  • richardmitnick 9:06 pm on March 21, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Billions of tonnes of ice lost from Antarctic Ice sheet", , Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, , , Scientists have calculated that the fastest changing Antarctic region - the Amundsen Sea Embayment - has lost more than 3000 billion tonnes of ice over a 25-year period.,   

    From The University of Leeds (UK): “Billions of tonnes of ice lost from Antarctic Ice sheet” 

    U Leeds bloc

    From The University of Leeds (UK)

    3.20.23
    David Lewis
    d.lewis@leeds.ac.uk

    1

    Scientists have calculated that the fastest changing Antarctic region - the Amundsen Sea Embayment - has lost more than 3000 billion tonnes of ice over a 25-year period.  

    If all the lost ice was piled on London, it would stand over 2 km tall - or 7.4 times the height of the Shard. If it were to cover Manhattan, it would stand at 61 km – or 137 Empire State Buildings placed on top of one another. 

    Twenty major glaciers form the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica, which is more than four times the size of the UK, and they play a key role in contributing to the level of the world’s oceans.  

     So much water is held in the snow and ice, that if it were to all to drain into the sea, global sea levels could increase by more than one metre.  

    The research, led by Dr Benjamin Davison at the University of Leeds, calculated the “mass balance” of the Amundsen Sea Embayment. This describes the balance between mass of snow and ice gain due to snowfall and mass lost through calving, where icebergs form at the end of a glacier and drift out to sea.

    When calving happens faster than the ice is replaced by snowfall, then the Embayment loses mass overall and contributes to global sea level rise. Similarly, when snowfall supply drops, the Embayment can lose mass overall and contribute to sea level rise.

    The results show that West Antarctica saw a net decline of 3,331 billion tonnes of ice between 1996 and 2021, contributing over nine millimetres to global sea levels.  Changes in ocean temperature and currents are thought to have been the most important factors driving the loss of ice. 

    Dr Davison, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science at Leeds, said: “The 20 glaciers in West Antarctica have lost an awful lot of ice over the last quarter of a century and there is no sign that the process is going to reverse anytime soon although there were periods where the rate of mass loss did ease slightly. 

    “Scientists are monitoring what is happening in the Amundsen Sea Embayment because of the crucial role it plays in sea-level rise. If ocean levels were to rise significantly in future years, there are communities around the world who would experience extreme flooding.” 

    The research has been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications [below].

    2
    Iceberg floating from the Amundsen Sea Embayment. ULeeds.

    Extreme snowfall events 

    Using climate models that show how air currents move around the world, the scientists identified that the Amundsen Sea Embayment had experienced several extreme snowfall events over the 25-year study period. 

    These would have resulted in periods of heavy snowfall and periods of very little snowfall or a “snow drought”. 

    The researchers factored these extreme events into their calculations. Surprisingly, they found that these events contributed up to half of the ice change at certain times, and therefore played a key role in the contribution the Amundsen Sea Embayment was making to sea level rise during certain time periods.  

    For example, between 2009 and 2013, the models revealed a period of a persistent snow drought. The lack of snowfall starved the ice sheet and caused it to lose ice, therefore contributing about 25% more to sea level rise than in years of average snowfall. 

    In contrast, during the winters of 2019 and 2020 there was very heavy snowfall. The scientists estimated that this heavy snowfall mitigated the sea level contribution from the Amundsen Sea Embayment, reducing it to about half of what it would have been in an average year.  

    Dr Davison said: “Changes in ocean temperature and circulation appear to be driving the long-term, large-scale changes in West Antarctica ice sheet mass.  We absolutely need to research those more because they are likely to control the overall sea level contribution from West Antarctica.  

    “However, we were really surprised to see just how much periods of extremely low or high snowfall could affect the ice sheet over two to five-year periods – so much so that we think they could play an important, albeit secondary role, in controlling rates of West Antarctic ice loss.” 

    Dr Pierre Dutrieux, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey and co-author of the study, added: “Ocean temperature changes and glacial dynamics appear strongly connected in this part of the world, but this work highlights the large variability and unexpected processes by which snowfall also plays a direct role in modulating glacier mass.”

    New glacier named

    The ice loss from the region over the past 25 years has seen the retreat of the Pine Island Glacier,  also known as PIG.

    As it retreated, one of its tributary glaciers became detached from the main glacier and rapidly accelerated. As a result, the tributary glacier has now been named by the UK Antarctic Place-names Committee, Piglet Glacier, so that it can be unambiguously located and identified by future studies.  

    Dr Anna Hogg, one of the authors of the paper and Associate Professor at the Institute of Climate and Atmospheric Science at Leeds, said: “As well as shedding new light on the role of extreme snowfall variability on ice sheet mass changes, this research also provides new estimates of how quickly this important region of Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise.  

    “Satellite observations have showed that the newly named Piglet Glacier accelerated its ice speed by 40%, as the larger PIG retreated to its smallest extent since records began.”  

    Satellites such as the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite, which uses sensors that ‘see’ through cloud even during the long Polar night, have transformed our ability to monitor remote regions. 

    It is essential to have frequent measurements of change in ice speed and iceberg calving, so that we can monitor the incredibly rapid change taking place in Antarctica. 

    Nature Communications
    See the science paper for instructive material with images.

    See the full article here.

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    U Leeds Campus

    The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884 it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Yorkshire College. It became part of the federal Victoria University in 1887, joining Owens College (which became The University of Manchester (UK)) and University College Liverpool (which became The University of Liverpool (UK)). In 1904 a royal charter was granted to the University of Leeds by King Edward VII.

    The university has 36,330 students, the 5th largest university in the UK (out of 169). From 2006 to present, the university has consistently been ranked within the top 5 (alongside the University of Manchester, The Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), The University of Nottingham (UK) and The University of Edinburgh (SCT)) in the United Kingdom for the number of applications received. Leeds had an income of £751.7 million in 2020/21, of which £130.1 million was from research grants and contracts. The university has financial endowments of £90.5 million (2020–21), ranking outside the top ten British universities by financial endowment.

    Notable alumni include current Leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer, former Secretary of State Jack Straw, former co-chairman of the Conservative Party Sayeeda Warsi, Piers Sellers (NASA astronaut) and six Nobel laureates.

    The university’s history is linked to the development of Leeds as an international centre for the textile industry and clothing manufacture in the United Kingdom during the Victorian era. The university’s roots can be traced back to the formation of schools of medicine in English cities to serve the general public.

    Before 1900, only six universities had been established in England and Wales: The University of Oxford (UK) (founded c. 1096–1201), The University of Cambridge (UK) (c. 1201), The University of London (UK) (1836), The University of Durham (UK) (1837), Victoria University (UK) (1880), and The University of Wales Trinity Saint David[ Prifysgol Cymru Y Drindod Dewi Sant](WLS) (1893).

    The Victoria University was established in Manchester in 1880 as a federal university in the North of England, instead of the government elevating Owens College to a university and grant it a royal charter. Owens College was the sole college of Victoria University from 1880 to 1884; in 1887 Yorkshire College was the third to join the university.

    Leeds was given its first university in 1887 when the Yorkshire College joined the federal Victoria University on 3 November. The Victoria University had been established by royal charter in 1880; Owens College being at first the only member college. Leeds now found itself in an educational union with close social cousins from Manchester and Liverpool.

    Unlike Owens College, the Leeds campus of the Victoria University had never barred women from its courses. However, it was not until special facilities were provided at the Day Training College in 1896 that women began enrolling in significant numbers. The first female student to begin a course at the university was Lilias Annie Clark, who studied Modern Literature and Education.

    The Victoria (Leeds) University was a short-lived concept, as the multiple university locations in Manchester and Liverpool were keen to establish themselves as separate, independent universities. This was partially due to the benefits a university had for the cities of Liverpool and Manchester whilst the institutions were also unhappy with the practical difficulties posed by maintaining a federal arrangement across broad distances. The interests of the universities and respective cities in creating independent institutions was further spurred by the granting of a charter to the University of Birmingham in 1900 after lobbying from Joseph Chamberlain.

    Following a Royal Charter and Act of Parliament in 1903, the then newly formed University of Liverpool began the fragmentation of the Victoria University by being the first member to gain independence. The University of Leeds soon followed suit and had been granted a royal charter as an independent body by King Edward VII by 1904.

    The Victoria University continued after the break-up of the group, with an amended constitution and renamed as the Victoria University of Manchester (though “Victoria” was usually omitted from its name except in formal usage) until September 2004. On 1 October 2004 a merger with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology was enacted to form The University of Manchester.

    In December 2004, financial pressures forced the university’s governing body (the Council) to decide to close the Bretton campus. Activities at Bretton were moved to the main university campus in the summer of 2007 (allowing all Bretton-based students to complete their studies there). There was substantial opposition to the closure by the Bretton students. The university’s other satellite site, Manygates in Wakefield, also closed, but Lifelong Learning and Healthcare programmes are continuing on a new site next to Wakefield College.

    In May 2006, the university began re-branding itself to consolidate its visual identity to promote one consistent image. A new logo was produced, based on that used during the centenary celebrations in 2004, to replace the combined use of the modified university arms and the Parkinson Building, which has been in use since 2004. The university arms will still be used in its original form for ceremonial purposes only. Four university colours were also specified as being green, red, black and beige.

    Leeds provides the local community with over 2,000 university student volunteers. With 8,700 staff employed in 2019-20, the university is the third largest employer in Leeds and contributes around £1.23bn a year to the local economy – students add a further £211m through rents and living costs.

    The university’s educational partnerships have included providing formal accreditation of degree awards to The Leeds Arts University (UK) and The Leeds Trinity University (UK), although the latter now has the power to award its own degrees. The College of the Resurrection, an Anglican theological college in Mirfield with monastic roots, has, since its inception in 1904, been affiliated to the university, and ties remain close. The university is also a founding member of The Northern Consortium (UK).

    In August 2010, the university was one of the most targeted institutions by students entering the UCAS clearing process for 2010 admission, which matches undersubscribed courses to students who did not meet their firm or insurance choices. The university was one of nine The Russell Group Association(UK) universities offering extremely limited places to “exceptional” students after the universities in Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford declared they would not enter the process due to courses being full to capacity.

    On 12 October 2010, The Refectory of the Leeds University Union hosted a live edition of the Channel 4 News, with students, academics and economists expressing their reaction to the Browne Review, an independent review of Higher Education funding and student finance conducted by John Browne, Baron Browne of Madingley. University of Leeds Vice-Chancellor and Russell Group chairman Michael Arthur participated, giving an academic perspective alongside current vice-chancellor of The Kingston University (UK) and former Pro Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Education at the University of Leeds, Sir Peter Scott. Midway through the broadcast a small group of protesters against the potential rise of student debt entered the building before being restrained and evacuated.

    In 2016, The University of Leeds became University of the Year 2017 in The Times and The Sunday Times’ Good University Guide. The university has risen to 13th place overall, which reflects impressive results in student experience, high entry standards, services and facilities, and graduate prospects.

    In 2018, the global world ranking of the University of Leeds is No.93. There are currently 30,842 students are studying in this university. The average tuition fee is 12,000 – US$14,000.

    Research

    Many of the academic departments have specialist research facilities, for use by staff and students to support research from internationally significant collections in university libraries to state-of-the-art laboratories. These include those hosted at the Institute for Transport Studies, such as the University of Leeds Driving Simulator which is one of the most advanced worldwide in a research environment, allowing transport researchers to watch driver behaviour in accurately controlled laboratory conditions without the risks associated with a live, physical environment.

    With extensive links to the St James’s University Hospital through the Leeds School of Medicine, the university operates a range of high-tech research laboratories for biomedical and physical sciences, food and engineering – including clean rooms for bionanotechnology and plant science greenhouses. The university is connected to Leeds General Infirmary and the institute of molecular medicine based at St James’s University Hospital which aids integration of research and practice in the medical field.

    The university also operate research facilities in the aviation field, with the Airbus A320 flight simulator. The simulator was devised with an aim to promote the safety and efficiency of flight operations; where students use the simulator to develop their reactions to critical situations such as engine failure, display malfunctioning and freak weather.

    In addition to these facilities, many university departments conduct research in their respective fields. There are also various research centres, including Leeds University Centre for African Studies.

    Leeds was ranked joint 19th (along with The University of St Andrews (SCT)) amongst multi-faculty institutions in the UK for the quality (GPA) of its research and 10th for its Research Power in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework.

    Between 2014-15, Leeds was ranked as the 10th most targeted British university by graduate employers, a two place decrease from 8th position in the previous 2014 rankings.

    The 2021 The Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked Leeds as 153rd in the world. The university ranks 84th in the world in the CWTS Leiden Ranking. Leeds is ranked 91st in the world (and 15th in the UK) in the 2021 QS World University Rankings.

    The university won the biennially awarded Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2009 for services to engineering and technology. The honour being awarded to the university’s Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) which for over forty years has been a world leader in transport teaching and research.

    The university is a founding member of The Russell Group Association(UK), comprising the leading research-intensive universities in the UK, as well as the N8 Group for research collaboration, The Worldwide Universities Network (UK), The Association of Commonwealth Universities (UK), The European University Association (EU), The White Rose University Consortium (UK), the Santander Network and the CDIO Initiative. It is also affiliated to The Universities (UK). The Leeds University Business School holds the ‘Triple Crown’ of accreditations from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the Association of MBAs and the European Quality Improvement System.

     
  • richardmitnick 1:39 pm on March 21, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Global warming kills forests by restricting tree transpiration", 119 million hectares have burned to the ground over the past 20 years as fires occur more frequently and with greater intensity., , , Climate Change; Global warming; Ecology, , , Forests are a crucial ally in the fight against climate change. They capture and store over half of the carbon that’s emitted worldwide., Forests are a vital food source for around a billion people and countless animals., Forests cover some four billion hectares of land or nearly 31% of the Earth’s surface., Oak trees hold up well in hotter drier climates whereas beech trees – quite common at central-European latitudes – will probably disappear or migrate to the north., The data clearly show that tree mortality is increasing at an exponential rate., The direct effects of the more frequent and intense droughts and the lastingly higher temperatures are now easily visible in tree health., , The UN estimates that 10 million hectares of forestland disappear each year due to deforestation and a further 35 million are destroyed by insects., UN International Day of Forests on 21 March is the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the important forest research being done at EPFL.   

    From The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne [EPFL-École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne] (CH): “Global warming kills forests by restricting tree transpiration” 

    From The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne [EPFL-École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne] (CH)

    3.21.23
    Sarah Perrin

    1
    ©iStock.

    UN International Day of Forests on 21 March is the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the important forest research being done at EPFL. For instance, one recent study found that the changes in relative humidity caused by higher temperatures are having a significant impact on trees.

    “The data clearly show that tree mortality is increasing at an exponential rate,” says Prof. Charlotte Grossiord, the head of EPFL’s Plant Ecology Research Laboratory (PERL)*. No stranger to forest health, she’s studying the mechanisms behind forest ecosystems and how they’re responding to climate change. This year, 21 March will mark not only the first day of spring but also the 11th annual UN International Day of Forests – an occasion to shine the spotlight on Grossiord’s research. A study she published recently in Journal of Applied Ecology [below] shows that the lower relative humidity resulting from higher temperatures is disrupting trees’ natural transpiration process, putting many species at risk.
    *Part of the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC).

    Forests cover some four billion hectares of land, or nearly 31% of the Earth’s surface. To underscore the essential role they play and build awareness about the urgent need to protect them, the UN introduced an annual forest day in 2012. This year’s theme is “Forests and Health.” Forests are a vital food source for around a billion people and countless animals. They serve as a natural barrier to disease transmission between animals and humans, and are home to thousands of plants used as the basis for drug treatments – or that could hold the keys to drug treatments of the future.

    What’s more, forests are a crucial ally in the fight against climate change. They capture and store over half of the carbon that’s emitted worldwide in their soil and vegetation, are a breeding ground for biodiversity, and operate as natural filters in the water cycle.


    NASA | A Year in the Life of Earth’s CO2.
    This video shows the role that trees play in the global carbon cycle. When trees shed their leaves and enter a dormant state in the fall, they stop capturing CO2 (in red), which leads to a sharp increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

    However, the UN estimates that 10 million hectares – the equivalent of around 14 million soccer fields – of forestland disappear each year due to deforestation, and a further 35 million are destroyed by insects. According to Global Forest Watch, 119 million hectares have burned to the ground over the past 20 years as fires occur more frequently and with greater intensity. In addition to this lost tree cover, scientists are also worried about forest health.

    2
    A birch tree attacked by bark beetles. ©iStock.

    “The direct effects of the more frequent and intense droughts and the lastingly higher temperatures are now easily visible in tree health,” says Grossiord. The hotter, dryer climate is making life a struggle for trees, as reflected in their prematurely yellow leaves and dried-out branches, for example – turning them into easy prey for insects (such as the bark beetles common in Europe) and fungi.

    Grossiord and her research group are meticulously studying all these phenomena. They’ve set up a 1.2-hectare site in Valais Canton where they compare the health of trees subject to the full impact of droughts with those that have been watered regularly over the past 20-plus years.

    Lately, her research group has been looking specifically at the consequences of changes in relative humidity levels caused by higher temperatures. “This is having an important effect on trees, but until now it hasn’t really been studied,” says Grossiord. “These changes are causing worrying atmospheric droughts which are directly impacting tree transpiration and temperatures. All that can eventually pose a threat to their survival.”

    Air at higher temperatures can hold more water vapor, but the recent series of droughts means there’s less water in forest ecosystems. As a result, the gap between the amount of vapor that air can contain and the amount it actually does contain – what’s called the vapor pressure deficit (VPD) – is increasing. “The rising VPD is bringing us closer to desert-like conditions than to tropical-forest ones, and can explain the swift deterioration in the health of many trees,” says Grossiord.


    Pressured to transpire: drought, heat and forests.

    Strength in diversity

    Plants protect themselves from heat and drought by closing their stoma, or the pores on leaves that enable gas exchange with the air and, crucially, that allow plants to absorb the CO2 they need to live. With their stoma closed, trees can neither take in CO2 effectively nor carry water up to their leaves. They become weakened and eventually die. “We saw a striking example of this during the record heat wave that swept through the western US and Canada in summer 2021,” explains Grossiord. “Temperatures reached nearly 50°C and trees turned brown in the space of just a few hours. When it gets too hot, plants stop conducting photosynthesis and perform only respiration, meaning they release CO2 into the air.”

    That said, some species are more resistant than others to warm temperatures and can better adapt. Oak trees, for example, hold up well in hotter, drier climates, whereas beech trees – quite common at central-European latitudes – will probably disappear or migrate to the north. “That’s why plant diversity and interaction are so important in a forest, and it’s another focus area for our research at PERL,” says Grossiord. “That’s also why single-species crops are so problematic. They’re much more likely to be wiped out in the event of extreme weather or a parasite infection, since all the plants respond in the same way.”

    In light of both the faster aging process – with growing seasons getting shorter and shorter – and the galloping tree mortality rates, forest ecosystems might eventually become unable to play their essential role. We’re already seeing signs of this in Switzerland and the rest of Europe, but what about elsewhere in the world? “It’s hard to quantify this process on a global scale because in many regions, we don’t have enough data or reliable information sources,” says Grossiord. “But we’re seeing that forests in general are becoming younger. That’s due partly to industrial forest plantations – like eucalyptus – but also to extreme weather events that tend to kill older, more vulnerable trees first.” Unfortunately, older trees are also the ones with the highest carbon-storage capacity.

    Assisted migration

    So what can we do to protect the world’s forests? According to Grossiord, it’s simple: we need to halt deforestation, take better care of existing forests, and reduce our carbon emissions, which are the source of the problem. “Even if we plant new trees, we can’t expect plants to absorb all the carbon that we’ll emit if we continue along the current trajectory,” says Grossiord. “Climate change will reduce forests’ absorption capacity, and newly planted trees can never replace natural forests, whose complex ecosystems have evolved over hundreds or even thousands of years.”

    One idea that warrants further study, in her view, is assisted migration. That involves importing species that are more resistant and acclimated to warmer climates. “If the trees that form our existing tree cover disappear within the next 30 years and we don’t import new species from southern regions, we could simply end up with no more forests,” she says. “But any form of assisted migration should be done in a carefully thought-out manner with an emphasis on diversity.”

    Journal of Applied Ecology

    See the full article here .

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    EPFL bloc

    EPFL campus

    The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne [EPFL-École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne] (CH) is a research institute and university in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specializes in natural sciences and engineering. It is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, and it has three main missions: education, research and technology transfer.

    The QS World University Rankings ranks EPFL(CH) 14th in the world across all fields in their 2020/2021 ranking, whereas Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks EPFL(CH) as the world’s 19th best school for Engineering and Technology in 2020.

    EPFL(CH) is located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland; the sister institution in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich] (CH). Associated with several specialized research institutes, the two universities form The Domain of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Domain) [ETH-Bereich; Domaine des Écoles Polytechniques Fédérales] (CH) which is directly dependent on the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. In connection with research and teaching activities, EPFL(CH) operates a nuclear reactor CROCUS; a Tokamak Fusion reactor; a Blue Gene/Q Supercomputer; and P3 bio-hazard facilities.

    ETH Zürich, EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) [École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne](CH), and four associated research institutes form The Domain of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Domain) [ETH-Bereich; Domaine des Écoles polytechniques fédérales] (CH) with the aim of collaborating on scientific projects.

    The roots of modern-day EPFL(CH) can be traced back to the foundation of a private school under the name École Spéciale de Lausanne in 1853 at the initiative of Lois Rivier, a graduate of the École Centrale Paris (FR) and John Gay the then professor and rector of the Académie de Lausanne. At its inception it had only 11 students and the offices were located at Rue du Valentin in Lausanne. In 1869, it became the technical department of the public Académie de Lausanne. When the Académie was reorganized and acquired the status of a university in 1890, the technical faculty changed its name to École d’Ingénieurs de l’Université de Lausanne. In 1946, it was renamed the École polytechnique de l’Université de Lausanne (EPUL). In 1969, the EPUL was separated from the rest of the University of Lausanne and became a federal institute under its current name. EPFL(CH), like ETH Zürich (CH), is thus directly controlled by the Swiss federal government. In contrast, all other universities in Switzerland are controlled by their respective cantonal governments. Following the nomination of Patrick Aebischer as president in 2000, EPFL(CH) has started to develop into the field of life sciences. It absorbed the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in 2008.

    In 1946, there were 360 students. In 1969, EPFL(CH) had 1,400 students and 55 professors. In the past two decades the university has grown rapidly and as of 2012 roughly 14,000 people study or work on campus, about 9,300 of these being Bachelor, Master or PhD students. The environment at modern day EPFL(CH) is highly international with the school attracting students and researchers from all over the world. More than 125 countries are represented on the campus and the university has two official languages, French and English.

    Organization

    EPFL is organized into eight schools, themselves formed of institutes that group research units (laboratories or chairs) around common themes:

    School of Basic Sciences
    Institute of Mathematics
    Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering
    Institute of Physics
    European Centre of Atomic and Molecular Computations
    Bernoulli Center
    Biomedical Imaging Research Center
    Interdisciplinary Center for Electron Microscopy
    MPG-EPFL Centre for Molecular Nanosciences and Technology
    Swiss Plasma Center
    Laboratory of Astrophysics

    School of Engineering

    Institute of Electrical Engineering
    Institute of Mechanical Engineering
    Institute of Materials
    Institute of Microengineering
    Institute of Bioengineering

    School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering

    Institute of Architecture
    Civil Engineering Institute
    Institute of Urban and Regional Sciences
    Environmental Engineering Institute

    School of Computer and Communication Sciences

    Algorithms & Theoretical Computer Science
    Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
    Computational Biology
    Computer Architecture & Integrated Systems
    Data Management & Information Retrieval
    Graphics & Vision
    Human-Computer Interaction
    Information & Communication Theory
    Networking
    Programming Languages & Formal Methods
    Security & Cryptography
    Signal & Image Processing
    Systems

    School of Life Sciences

    Bachelor-Master Teaching Section in Life Sciences and Technologies
    Brain Mind Institute
    Institute of Bioengineering
    Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research
    Global Health Institute
    Ten Technology Platforms & Core Facilities (PTECH)
    Center for Phenogenomics
    NCCR Synaptic Bases of Mental Diseases

    College of Management of Technology

    Swiss Finance Institute at EPFL
    Section of Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship
    Institute of Technology and Public Policy
    Institute of Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship
    Section of Financial Engineering

    College of Humanities

    Human and social sciences teaching program

    EPFL Middle East

    Section of Energy Management and Sustainability

    In addition to the eight schools there are seven closely related institutions

    Swiss Cancer Centre
    Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM)
    Centre for Advanced Modelling Science (CADMOS)
    École Cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL)
    Campus Biotech
    Wyss Center for Bio- and Neuro-engineering
    Swiss National Supercomputing Centre

     
c
Compose new post
j
Next post/Next comment
k
Previous post/Previous comment
r
Reply
e
Edit
o
Show/Hide comments
t
Go to top
l
Go to login
h
Show/Hide help
shift + esc
Cancel
%d bloggers like this: