For the first time, researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Migratory Bird Center analyzed how songbirds are affected by both general noise and the acoustics of hard human-made surfaces in urban areas.

The post Urban songbirds adjust melodies to adapt to life in the big city, Smithsonian scientists find appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Sun’s Active Region 1429 has been shooting off flares and coronal mass ejections since it rotated into Earth’s view on March 2, 2012. Two X-class flares have been released overnight, an X1.3 and an X5.4.

The post X-Class flares released by the Sun, March 6, captured by Atmospheric Imaging Assembly appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Scientists have discovered several specimens of tiny insects covered with pollen grains in two pieces of amber, revealing the first record of pollen transport and social behavior in this group of animals.

The post First ever record of insect pollination captured in 100 million-year-old amber appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation project recently announced that the golden frog, a national icon on the brink of extinction, has been successfully raised […]

The post Success: Panama’s golden frog bred in captivity appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

More than two million migrating raptors passed over Panama City on Sunday, Nov. 2, doubling the previous record of almost 900,000 tallied in a single […]

The post Panama shatters raptor migration record appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) scientists working as part of the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project hatched the […]

The post Poison Dart Frog Hatched in Captivity appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The post The amazing story of adaptation and survival in our species, Homo sapiens. appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Using an innovative new camera on board a sounding rocket, an international team of scientists have captured the sharpest images yet of the Sun’s outer […]

The post Camera captures sun’s atmospheric sparkles appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The moon passed between the Earth and the sun on Thursday, Oct. 23. While avid stargazers in North America looked up to watch the spectacle, the […]

The post Polar-orbiting satellite captures amazing X-ray footage of solar eclipse appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

No divers were in danger when two large squid (species Taningia danae) began acting aggressively toward a robot submersible operated deep in the Pacific from NOAA’s […]

The post Rare squid “T. danae” captured in new video appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Smithsonian Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP) captures a new species of deep-reef fish, the Godzilla goby, using the Curasub submersible. The lead scientist on […]

The post Capturing a new species with a submersible appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

This video highlights the mass-digitization of the National Postal Museum’s Sidney N. Shure Collection of Israeli and Palestinian stamps and covers.

The post National Postal Museum Rapid Capture Project appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The scientists staked out dozens of the gingers night and day while the plants flowered, but no long-proboscid pollinator ever appeared. Climate change, they surmised, was responsible for the loss of this highly specialized and now, perhaps forever unknown insect.

The post With specialist pollinator absent, Himalayan gingers must adapt appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Tropical forests are a sometimes underappreciated asset in the battle against climate change. They cover 7 percent of land surface yet hold more than 30 […]

The post Vine-choked forests can’t capture carbon appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

When Gary Graves cranks up his boom box and drives remote back roads through pine plantations in Texas, Louisiana and other southern states, a few […]

The post Rare American warbler surprises scientists by adapting, thriving in a new ecosystem appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

What once were orchards and citrus groves now is a dense but sprawling urban area. The city of Los Angeles is considering ways to capture stormwater near where it falls so that water can be made use of throughout the city. ; Credit: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

With a historic drought showing no signs of letting up, the city of Los Angeles is drafting a new plan to use more local water sources by capturing storm water throughout the L.A. basin. At recent community meetings, officials from the Department of Water and Power (along with the city's Sanitation Department) have been showcasing potential ideas for the final plan, due out this summer.

This new plan would make storm water about 4 percent of the city's annual water budget. For the first time, LA is talking about making storm water a small but reliable part of the city’s water sources – 25,000 acre-feet, or somewhat over 8 billion gallons of storm water a year. For perspective, a typical one-inch rain event in Los Angeles County produces more than 10 billion gallons of storm water, most of which hits asphalt and concrete, flows into storm drains and goes to the sea.

It’s hardly a new idea. But storm water capture has taken on additional urgency because of the drought, because of the increasing price of importing water, and because of local water quality rules.

On top of that, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued an executive order last October, directing the LADWP to cut its purchase of imported water in half within a decade, in part by cutting water consumption at least 20 percent.

Storm water capture projects have captured the energy and attention of environmental groups who’ve demonstrated them in backyards, neighborhoods, and alleyways.

LA could invest in much-larger-scale versions of those ideas. Good places for those bigger projects tend to be in the San Fernando Valley, where the geology is hospitable to rain water capture and the city has clearest rights. 

Some examples featured in the LADWP’s presentation aren’t yet approved, but are in consideration:

• Water capture and storage at the Van Norman Complex; 
• The Canterbury Power Line Easement, running between the Tujunga Spreading Grounds and the Pacoima Wash, which would capture 1500 acre-feet of water a year; and 
• Converting Strathern Park (near the Hollywood Freeway) from a disused gravel pit/landfill to a wetlands park, in joint operation with L.A. County. 

Storing storm water in the ground means protecting some areas from industrial pollution, and means filtering and treating polluted groundwater as it’s pulled from aquifers. Last November’s $7.5 billion dollar water bond earmarked funds for storm water capture and for groundwater cleanup. DWP officials say they’re hoping to bring some of that money to Los Angeles.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Physical and occupational therapists carry bags of personal protective equipment on their way to the room of a COVID-19 patient in a Stamford Hospital intensive care unit in Stamford, Conn., on April 24. This "prone team" turns over COVID-19 to help them breathe.; Credit: John Moore/Getty Images

Intensive care teams inside hospitals are rapidly altering the way they care for patients with COVID-19.

The changes range from new protective gear to new treatment protocols aimed at preventing deadly blood clots.

"Things are moving so fast within this pandemic, it's hard to keep up" says Dr. Angela Hewlett, an infectious diseases physician at University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and medical director of the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. To stay current, she says, ICUs are updating their practices "on an hourly basis."

"We are learning at light speed about the disease," says Dr. Craig Coopersmith , interim director of the critical care center at Emory University. "Things that previously might have taken us years to learn, we're learning in a week or two. Things that might have taken us a month to learn beforehand, we're learning in a day or two."

The most obvious changes involve measures to protect ICU doctors, nurses and staff from the virus.

"There is a true and real probability of infection," says Dr. Tiffany Osborn a critical care specialist at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. "You have to think about everything you touch as if it burned."

So ICUs are adapting measures used at special biocontainment units like the one at the University of Nebraska. These units were designed to care for patients affected by bioterrorism or infected with particularly hazardous communicable diseases like SARS and Ebola.

The Nebraska biocontainment unit "received several patients early on in the pandemic who were medically evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship," Hewlett says. But it didn't have enough beds for the large numbers of local patients who began arriving at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

So the nurses, respiratory therapists and physicians from the biocontainment team have "fanned out and are now working within those COVID units to make sure that all of our principles and protocols are followed there as well," Hewlett says.

Those protocols involve measures like monitoring ICU staff when they remove their protective gear to make sure the virus isn't transmitted, and placing infected patients in negative pressure rooms, which draw air inward, when possible to prevent the virus from escaping.

One of the riskiest ICU procedures is inserting a breathing tube in a COVID-19 patient's airway, which creates a direct path for virus to escape from a patient's lungs. "If you're intubating a patient, that's a much higher risk than, say, going in and doing routine patient care," Hewlett says.

So ICU teams are being advised to add several layers of protection beyond a surgical mask.

Extra personal protective equipment may include an N95 respirator, goggles, a full face shield, a head hood, an impermeable isolation gown and double gloves.

In many ICUs, teams are also placing a clear plastic box or sheet over the patient's head and upper body before inserting the tube. And as a final safety measure, the doctor may guide the tube using a video camera rather than looking directly down a patient's airway.

"It usually takes 30 minutes or so in order to get all of that equipment together, to get all of the right people there," says Dr. Kira Newman, a senior resident physician at UW Medical Center in Seattle. "and that would be a particularly fast intubation."

But most changes in the ICU are in response to an ongoing flood of new information about how COVID-19 affects the body.

There's a growing understanding, for example, that the infection can cause dangerous blood clots to form in many severely ill patients. These clots can kill if they block arteries supplying the lungs or brain. But they also can prevent blood from reaching the kidneys or even a patient's arms and legs.

Clots are a known risk for all ICU patients, Cooperman says, but the frequency and severity appears much greater with COVID-19. "So we're starting them on a higher level of medicine to prevent blood clots and if somebody actually develops blood clots, we have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D," he says.

ICU teams are also recalibrating their approach to ensuring that patients are getting enough oxygen. Early in the pandemic, the idea was to put patients on mechanical ventilator quickly to make sure their oxygen levels didn't fall too far.

But with experience, doctors have found that mechanical ventilators don't seem to work as well for COVID patients as they do for patients with other lung problems. They've also learned that that many COVID-19 patients remain lucid and relatively comfortable even when the oxygen levels in their blood are extremely low.

So many specialists are now recommending alternatives to mechanical ventilation, even for some of the sickest patients. "We're really trying now to not intubate," Osborn says.

Instead, ICU teams are relying on devices that deliver oxygen through the nasal passages, or through a mask that fits tightly over the face. And there's renewed interest in an old technique to help patients breathe. It's called proning.

"Instead of them being on their back, we're turning them on their front," Osborn says. The reason, she says is to open up a part of the lung that is collapsed when a patient is on their back.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Microsoft is now stating that they will fix mysterious and spontaneous cracks in Surface Laptop 3 displays as they may have been caused by a "foreign particle" introduced during manufacturing. [...]

Reindeer herding has a long history in the Arctic, but climate change and industrial activity are bringing this important economic and cultural tradition to breaking point. In a unique initiative, reindeer herders across the Arctic are leading an international team of scientists in using modern technology to adapt to global change and empower indigenous communities.

A recent study has examined the implications of CO2 leaking from storage sites under a variety of scenarios over 100,000 years. The findings suggest that ocean storage of CO2 (prohibited in the EU) would lead to long-term warming of the atmosphere, higher sea levels and acidification and dead zones in the ocean. In contrast, geological storage with low-leakage rates (1 per cent per 1000 years) would lead to conditions similar to a low-emissions future. This implies that

Adaptation to climate change in urban regions is a major policy concern. Rather than focus specifically on risk reduction, a new report has reframed the adaptation challenge, giving it a broader focus of increasing an area’s resilience and performance and proposing local-level approaches to leveraging finance for adaptation initiatives.

Reindeer herding has a long history in the Arctic, but climate change and industrial activity are bringing this important economic and cultural tradition to breaking point. In a unique initiative, reindeer herders across the Arctic are leading an international team of scientists in using modern technology to adapt to global change and empower indigenous communities.

Adapting to climate change is essential to protecting populations against extreme weather events, but is it adequately integrated into civil protection policy? A new study has analysed the level of integration in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands and provided broad recommendations for improvement.

A recent study has explored how national regulations and culture, company size and experience with weather incidents have influenced adaptation to climate change in electricity distribution companies in Norway and Sweden. Smaller companies in a strongly regulated environment, with less experience of extreme weather events, find it more difficult to pursue climate change adaption results,

Climate change is a particular threat to island nations and effective adaptation is vital. A new analysis examines current adaptation measures in tropical Oceania and identifies guidelines for implementing resilient, ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). Among its recommendations, local communities should be fully involved in planning adaptation measures.

Greenland’s four major glaciers could contribute 19 to 30 mm to sea level rise by 2200, according to a new study. The researchers developed a sophisticated model which provides new insight into the effects of climate change on Greenland’s glaciers, by capturing the complex processes involved in their movement and melt.

Climate change may increase the risk of outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as salmonella or tick-borne encephalitis. A new study has outlined five main steps in assessing policies to ensure that they can respond effectively to this challenge and highlights the importance of involving stakeholders at every stage of policy assessment.

Power plants are a major source of CO2 emissions and contributor to global warming. This study reports on a portable technology to remove CO2 from their combustion exhaust gases. Pilot testing on a coal burning plant in Poland captured thousands of kilograms of CO2 per day. This could be a viable future means of mitigating CO2 emissions from the power generation sector.

Climate change will lead to an increased risk of flooding and huge economic losses if countries do not invest in appropriate adaptation measures, according to a new study. The research estimates the risks posed by flooding to cities around the world and the associated economic losses in 2005 and 2050, and suggests that flood protection must be increased to maintain the same level of risk to coastal cities.

Following extreme weather events, many countries are unable to afford the costs of providing relief to communities and repairing infrastructure, a new study suggests. The researchers estimate that providing relief on a global scale for events which recur every 10 to 50 years would cost US$3.3 billion (€2.37 billion) annually.

Grapes are sensitive to small changes in temperature, rain and sunlight, meaning climate change will have implications for wine producers worldwide. This study assessed local vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies in two wine-producing areas in France. The findings may help growers to develop suitable methods of adapting to long-term climate change.

Bats can adapt to certain changes in habitat that threaten their preferred roosting sites. A new study from Poland shows that bats will widen their criteria for selecting roosting sites if forest management practices limit their preferred sites. However, experts recommend that small patches of old growth forest suitable for bat roosting are maintained as the bats in this study did not adapt to young woodland.