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Modelling your Sleep Quality

The University of Manchester in association with The Fine Bedding Company have derived an equation that estimates Sleep Quality. The formula scores the person’s sleep quality from ‘great’ to ‘tossing and turning all night’. The formula is: sleep quality = [(T x Bt) + C ] / [ Ha + S + L + (H […]

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BBQ Stake aka heat diffusion through protein over time

MIT students developed this great cooking meat animation for the 2013 edX Science and Cooking course. It demonstrates the heat diffusion through meat over time. This heat diffusion is calculated by modeling the meat using the diffusion constant of water. The heat at each point in the meat is calculated at each time step by […]

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Water risk as world warms

Researcher Hans Joachim Schellnhuber’s group published reports that suggest that even modest climate change might drastically affect the living conditions of billions of people, whether through water scarcity, crop shortages or extremes of weather. Regions most at risk from water scarcity include parts of the southern United States, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. By […]

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Information is beautiful: global weather conditions

Cameron Beccario presents a visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers, updated every three hours. Weather Data is derived from NCEP / US National Weather Service / NOAA Global Forecast System. Poetry in motion at http://earth.nullschool.net.

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Offshore fresh groundwater resources emerging

The flow of terrestrial groundwater to the sea is an important natural component of the hydrological cycle. This process, however, does not explain the large volumes of low-salinity groundwater that are found below continental shelves. There is mounting evidence for the global occurrence of offshore fresh and brackish groundwater reserves. The potential use of these […]

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Coastal Cities at Highest Risk of Damaging Floods

Coastal defenses reduce the risk of floods today, but they also attract population and assets in protected areas and thus put them at risk in case of the defense fails, or if an event overwhelms it.   In terms of the overall cost of damage, the cities at the greatest risk are: 1) Guangzhou, 2) […]

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NOAA & NASA conclude November 2013 is the warmest on record

An astonishing warm spell over Russia, up to 14 degrees F above normal, helped Earth achieve its warmest November on record. Global temperatures were 1.4 degrees F above the 20th century average, 0.05 degrees F above the previous record from 2004 according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.