We identified a de novo heterozygous transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily M (melastatin) member 3 (TRPM3) missense variant, p.(Asn1126Asp), in a patient with developmental delay and manifestations of cerebral palsy (CP) using phenotype-driven prioritization analysis of whole-genome sequencing data with Exomiser. The variant is localized in the functionally important ion transport domain of the TRPM3 protein and predicted to impact the protein structure. Our report adds TRPM3 to the list of Mendelian disease–associated genes that can be associated with CP and provides further evidence for the pathogenicity of the variant p.(Asn1126Asp).

New research shows that bystander CPR can substantially improve a person's odds of surviving a cardiac arrest while avoiding major brain damage, especially if given immediately.

The Scotch whisky distiller has announced a major change

Nintendo has announced its Black Friday 2024 deals. 

Dozens of games will be discounted including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Maker 2, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Pikmin 4, Nintendo Switch Sports, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Super Mario Odyssey, Pikmin 1 + 2, and more.

The Neon Red and Neon Blue Joy-Con controllers and the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller will be discounted by $20, while the Nintendo Switch Carrying Case & Screen Protector - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition will be discounted by $10.

The Nintendo Switch: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle will once again return for $299.99, while the new Nintendo Switch – OLED Model: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle will be available for $349.99. Both bundles include a digital download of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online Individual Membership.

The Nintendo Switch Lite: Hyrule Edition with Bonus Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack will be available for $209.99. The bundle includes a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack Individual Membership.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463045/nintendos-black-friday-2024-deals-revealed/

Stationeers and Icarus developers RocketWerkz are making a spiritual successor to beloved space sim Kerbal Space Program, which is currently titled "Kitten Space Agency" in a flagrant display of adherence to wholesome internet trends. It's based on an actual Kerbal Space Program 2 pitch the studio threw at Take-Two subsidiary Private Division back in the day. RocketWerkz CEO and original DayZ creator Dean Hall has hired several former KSP and KSP2 developers to work on the game, and is describing it on social media as a "KSP killer".

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Remedy's Alan Wake 2 has now "recouped most of its development and marketing expenses", CEO Tero Virtala has announced in a business review for January-September 2024. Speaking as somebody who would quite like there to be more Alan Wake games - or at least, moderately weird and pretty decent blockbuster singleplayer horror games - I am both pleased by this news and a little troubled that Remedy's eldritch forest fable (which came out in October 2023) has yet to break even.

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Putting aside my natural annoyance at Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater for almost beating out the Twarhammer series in the headline real estate wars, I am more than a little excited to play. Some days, you simply must feast on a tree frog, and while we still don’t have a solid release date, that day doesn’t feel too far away. Good news for stealth fans, and perhaps gooder news for a dozen strapline writers sweating profusely, soiling themselves in anticipation of using “kept you waiting, huh?”.

Until then, I at least have a steady drip feed of new information to keep me sated, the latest of which is the substantial hint that there'll be some new dialogue in the game, as per the video below. Alongside that, the previously pseudonymous Suzetta Miñet - who was credited with voicing EVA in MGS3 and Peace Walker - has revealed herself to be Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Cheers for the spot, Automaton West.

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WASHINGTON — When Karen Pence found out that an art therapist in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico couldn’t afford the clay her clients needed, she sprang into action.

A trained watercolor artist and advocate of the little-known mental health profession, Vice President Mike Pence’s wife went to the Virginia art supply store she frequented when they lived in the state during his tenure in Congress, bought 120 pounds of self-drying clay and packed it aboard Air Force Two for their flight down to survey the damage.

“She cleaned him out,” the vice president said of the store’s owner.

Mrs. Pence made art therapy her cause ever since she first learned about it more than a decade ago. She has visited numerous art therapy programs, both in the U.S. and abroad, and on Wednesday in Florida, nine months into the administration, she planned to formally announce the goals for her art therapy initiative.

She wants to help people understand the difference between art therapy and arts and crafts, and to grasp that art therapy is a viable option for treating trauma, injury and other life experiences. She also wants to encourage young people to choose art therapy as a career.

“I don’t think that a lot of people understand the difference between therapeutic art and art therapy,” Mrs. Pence, a trained watercolor artist, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before the announcement at Florida State University in Tallahassee. The school has an art therapy program she described as “tremendous.”

Blabbing to a girlfriend can be therapeutic, she explained, but it is not the same as art therapy, which has three elements: a client, a trained therapist and art.

READ MORE: VP Pence’s wife aims to raise awareness about art therapy

As passionate as she is about raising art therapy’s profile, other issues help make Karen Pence tick, too.

One of them is helping military families, especially spouses. Her only son, Michael, is in the Marines.

There’s also her interest in honeybees. Mrs. Pence installed a beehive on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the vice president’s official residence is located, to help call attention to a decline in managed bee colonies that officials say could negatively affect U.S. agricultural production. She had a beehive at the Indiana governor’s residence for the same reason.

Now 60 and married to the vice president since 1985, Mrs. Pence has long been viewed as one of her husband’s most trusted political advisers. They are often together on trips, at the White House, or at the observatory, almost always holding hands.

Since returning to Washington in January (the family lived in the area when her husband served in Congress), she has accompanied the vice president on goodwill tours of Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as trips to survey recent hurricane damage in Texas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She tries to visit art therapy programs wherever she goes. Journalists who travel with Pence often keep an eye out for his wife; she often brings them cookies when he ventures back to the press cabin for small talk.

READ MORE: Devastated Puerto Rico needs unprecedented aid, says governor

She’s even done a little campaigning, urging Virginians to vote next month for Ed Gillespie in what’s viewed as a tight gubernatorial race.

“It really makes a difference, I can tell you. Nobody thought that we were going to win,” she said, an apparent reference to the Trump-Pence ticket.

The vice president often refers to his wife as the family’s “prayer captain.” She has led congregations in prayer during their hurricane-damage trips.

“We’re people of faith so we just try and approach everything with prayer,” Mrs. Pence said from her sunny, second-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex, where she and her staff enjoy coveted views of the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial. Art therapy drawings given as gifts adorn the outer office.

She proudly displayed several of her paintings, including of the Capitol dome, the vice president’s residence, a Ball canning jar-turned-flower vase, a cardinal bird and a pink peony. She turns many of her watercolors into prints and boxed notecards that she gifts to art therapists she meets.

Except for myriad pets, including two cats, a dog and a rabbit named Marlon Bundo, the Pences are empty nesters. Their son and two adult daughters are off on their own.

“I think for us this is a good time in our life for this role because our kids are out of college. They’re living their own lives,” Mrs. Pence said.

She’s also launching a blog in conjunction with Wednesday’s announcement to chronicle her visits to art therapy programs.

The post Karen Pence to outline goals for art therapy initiative appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

A DWP employee who has been working in the welfare system for 42 years has shared some key advice for new claims for the likes of PIP and Attendance Allowance

After a star explodes, the resulting supernova remnant collapses in on itself and could begin the cycle again, creating generations of stars enriched with heavy elements

Using images captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, researchers have created a cloud atlas of Mars, to better understand the climate of the Red Planet

The Cassini mission’s samples from Saturn’s moon Enceladus have signs of various organic molecules that could be among the ingredients needed for life to get started

A computer simulation suggests that some collisions between exotic, hypothetical stars would make space-time ripple with detectable waves

The first 18 satellites of a planned Chinese mega constellation are brighter than all but 500 stars in the sky, raising fears of a huge impact on astronomy

Electromagnetic radiation leaking from the cable between your computer and monitor can be intercepted and decoded by AI to reveal what you are looking at

A robot mimics the clever fin-folding mechanism used by tuna fish, which increased the bot's turning velocity by almost 33 per cent

Thanks to artificial intelligence, understanding animals may be closer than we think. But we may not like what they are going to tell us, says RSPCA chief executive Chris Sherwood

In the 1960s and 1970s, NASA spent a lot of time thinking about whether toroidal (donut-shaped) fuel tanks were the way to go with its spacecraft. Toroidal tanks have a bunch of potential advantages over conventional spherical fuel tanks. For example, you can fit nearly 40% more volume within a toroidal tank than if you were using multiple spherical tanks within the same space. And perhaps most interestingly, you can shove stuff (like the back of an engine) through the middle of a toroidal tank, which could lead to some substantial efficiency gains if the tanks could also handle structural loads.

Because of their relatively complex shape, toroidal tanks are much more difficult to make than spherical tanks. Even though these tanks can perform better, NASA simply doesn’t have the expertise to manufacture them anymore, since each one has to be hand-built by highly skilled humans. But a company called Machina Labs thinks that they can do this with robots instead. And their vision is to completely change how we make things out of metal.

The fundamental problem that Machina Labs is trying to solve is that if you want to build parts out of metal efficiently at scale, it’s a slow process. Large metal parts need their own custom dies, which are very expensive one-offs that are about as inflexible as it’s possible to get, and then entire factories are built around these parts. It’s a huge investment, which means that it doesn’t matter if you find some new geometry or technique or material or market, because you have to justify that enormous up-front cost by making as much of the original thing as you possibly can, stifling the potential for rapid and flexible innovation.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the also very slow and expensive process of making metal parts one at a time by hand. A few hundred years ago, this was the only way of making metal parts: skilled metalworkers using hand tools for months to make things like armor and weapons. The nice thing about an expert metalworker is that they can use their skills and experience to make anything at all, which is where Machina Labs’ vision comes from, explains CEO Edward Mehr who co-founded Machina Labs after spending time at SpaceX followed by leading the 3D printing team at Relativity Space.

“Craftsmen can pick up different tools and apply them creatively to metal to do all kinds of different things. One day they can pick up a hammer and form a shield out of a sheet of metal,” says Mehr. “Next, they pick up the same hammer, and create a sword out of a metal rod. They’re very flexible.”

The technique that a human metalworker uses to shape metal is called forging, which preserves the grain flow of the metal as it’s worked. Casting, stamping, or milling metal (which are all ways of automating metal part production) are simply not as strong or as durable as parts that are forged, which can be an important differentiator for (say) things that have to go into space. But more on that in a bit.

The problem with human metalworkers is that the throughput is bad—humans are slow, and highly skilled humans in particular don’t scale well. For Mehr and Machina Labs, this is where the robots come in.

“We want to automate and scale using a platform called the ‘robotic craftsman.’ Our core enablers are robots that give us the kinematics of a human craftsman, and artificial intelligence that gives us control over the process,” Mehr says. “The concept is that we can do any process that a human craftsman can do, and actually some that humans can’t do because we can apply more force with better accuracy.”

This flexibility that robot metalworkers offer also enables the crafting of bespoke parts that would be impractical to make in any other way. These include toroidal (donut-shaped) fuel tanks that NASA has had its eye on for the last half century or so.

Machina Labs’ CEO Edward Mehr (on right) stands behind a 15 foot toroidal fuel tank.Machina Labs

“The main challenge of these tanks is that the geometry is complex,” Mehr says. “Sixty years ago, NASA was bump-forming them with very skilled craftspeople, but a lot of them aren’t around anymore.” Mehr explains that the only other way to get that geometry is with dies, but for NASA, getting a die made for a fuel tank that’s necessarily been customized for one single spacecraft would be pretty much impossible to justify. “So one of the main reasons we’re not using toroidal tanks is because it’s just hard to make them.”

Machina Labs is now making toroidal tanks for NASA. For the moment, the robots are just doing the shaping, which is the tough part. Humans then weld the pieces together. But there’s no reason why the robots couldn’t do the entire process end-to-end and even more efficiently. Currently, they’re doing it the “human” way based on existing plans from NASA. “In the future,” Mehr tells us, “we can actually form these tanks in one or two pieces. That’s the next area that we’re exploring with NASA—how can we do things differently now that we don’t need to design around human ergonomics?”

Machina Labs’ ‘robotic craftsmen’ work in pairs to shape sheet metal, with one robot on each side of the sheet. The robots align their tools slightly offset from each other with the metal between them such that as the robots move across the sheet, it bends between the tools. Machina Labs

The video above shows Machina’s robots working on a tank that’s 4.572 m (15 feet) in diameter, likely destined for the Moon. “The main application is for lunar landers,” says Mehr. “The toroidal tanks bring the center of gravity of the vehicle lower than what you would have with spherical or pill-shaped tanks.”

Training these robots to work metal like this is done primarily through physics-based simulations that Machina developed in house (existing software being too slow), followed by human-guided iterations based on the resulting real-world data. The way that metal moves under pressure can be simulated pretty well, and although there’s certainly still a sim-to-real gap (simulating how the robot’s tool adheres to the surface of the material is particularly tricky), the robots are collecting so much empirical data that Machina is making substantial progress towards full autonomy, and even finding ways to improve the process.

An example of the kind of complex metal parts that Machina’s robots are able to make.Machina Labs

Ultimately, Machina wants to use robots to produce all kinds of metal parts. On the commercial side, they’re exploring things like car body panels, offering the option to change how your car looks in geometry rather than just color. The requirement for a couple of beefy robots to make this work means that roboforming is unlikely to become as pervasive as 3D printing, but the broader concept is the same: making physical objects a software problem rather than a hardware problem to enable customization at scale.

Fortnite fans are going wild after Epic Games announced it's bringing back the original version of its battle royale as Fortnite OG as a permanent addition to the game.

Local officials are beginning to certify the results of this year's presidential election in a process that, so far, has been playing out quietly, in stark contrast to the tumultuous certification period four years ago that followed then-President Donald Trump's loss.

A new report by OpenTheBooks reveals that the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) employs 294 people in diversity-focused positions, with 182 of them earning six-figure salaries.

Voice assistants may cause confusion across devices. Tech expert Kurt “CyberGuy" Knutsson offers some solutions to fix it.

The Portuguese midfielder is settling into life in east London well after his loan move.

Police are hunting laughing yobs who filmed themselves hurling a cat off a bridge and posted the video on Snapchat.

The design is portable, modular and boasts of 5G connectivity.

Administrative innovations in south-west Asia during the 4th millennium BCE, including the cylinder seals that were rolled on the earliest clay tablets, laid the foundations for proto-cuneiform script.

The post Study: Cylinder Seals and Sealing Practices Stimulated Invention of Writing in Ancient South-West Asia appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Using a laser-based detection system, archaeologists have discovered over 6,500 pre-Hispanic structures -- including a previously unknown Maya city named Valeriana -- in Campeche, Mexico.

The post Laser Mapping Reveals Previously Unknown Maya City with Stone Pyramids in Mexico appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Narratives around addiction often reduce it to a series of poor choices, lack of values and weakness. This has real-world consequences, warns Anna Wolfe

ALS, the most common form of motor neuron disease, can take a long time to diagnose, but a blood test could help doctors spot the condition sooner

A massive undertaking to map cancer tumours is providing new insights into how the disease forms, evolves and develops resistance to treatments

On Tuesday, three of nine ballot issues Denver voters had to decide dealt with animals and animal products. But nothing changed because all of them were slaughtered at the ballot  box. One of the ballot issues called for prohibiting any slaughterhouse from operating in the City or County of Denver. That... Continue Reading

The Food and Drug Administration uses import alerts to enforce U.S. food safety regulations for food from foreign countries. The agency updates and modifies the alerts as needed. Recent modifications to FDA’s import alerts, as posted by the agency, are listed below. Use the chart below to view import alerts.... Continue Reading

Montana public health officials are investigating an outbreak of infections caused by Salmonella. The Cascade City-County Health Department in Great Falls is reporting that six students at Sacajawea and Valley View elementary schools have tested positive for the pathogen. A staff member at another school has also tested positive. There... Continue Reading

Quantum computing is a devilishly complex technology, with many technical hurdles impacting its development. Of these challenges two critical issues stand out: miniaturization and qubit quality.

IBM has adopted the superconducting qubit road map of reaching a 1,121-qubit processor by 2023, leading to the expectation that 1,000 qubits with today’s qubit form factor is feasible. However, current approaches will require very large chips (50 millimeters on a side, or larger) at the scale of small wafers, or the use of chiplets on multichip modules. While this approach will work, the aim is to attain a better path toward scalability.

Now researchers at MIT have been able to both reduce the size of the qubits and done so in a way that reduces the interference that occurs between neighboring qubits. The MIT researchers have increased the number of superconducting qubits that can be added onto a device by a factor of 100.

“We are addressing both qubit miniaturization and quality,” said William Oliver, the director for the Center for Quantum Engineering at MIT. “Unlike conventional transistor scaling, where only the number really matters, for qubits, large numbers are not sufficient, they must also be high-performance. Sacrificing performance for qubit number is not a useful trade in quantum computing. They must go hand in hand.”

The key to this big increase in qubit density and reduction of interference comes down to the use of two-dimensional materials, in particular the 2D insulator hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). The MIT researchers demonstrated that a few atomic monolayers of hBN can be stacked to form the insulator in the capacitors of a superconducting qubit.

Just like other capacitors, the capacitors in these superconducting circuits take the form of a sandwich in which an insulator material is sandwiched between two metal plates. The big difference for these capacitors is that the superconducting circuits can operate only at extremely low temperatures—less than 0.02 degrees above absolute zero (-273.15 °C).

Superconducting qubits are measured at temperatures as low as 20 millikelvin in a dilution refrigerator.Nathan Fiske/MIT

In that environment, insulating materials that are available for the job, such as PE-CVD silicon oxide or silicon nitride, have quite a few defects that are too lossy for quantum computing applications. To get around these material shortcomings, most superconducting circuits use what are called coplanar capacitors. In these capacitors, the plates are positioned laterally to one another, rather than on top of one another.

As a result, the intrinsic silicon substrate below the plates and to a smaller degree the vacuum above the plates serve as the capacitor dielectric. Intrinsic silicon is chemically pure and therefore has few defects, and the large size dilutes the electric field at the plate interfaces, all of which leads to a low-loss capacitor. The lateral size of each plate in this open-face design ends up being quite large (typically 100 by 100 micrometers) in order to achieve the required capacitance.

In an effort to move away from the large lateral configuration, the MIT researchers embarked on a search for an insulator that has very few defects and is compatible with superconducting capacitor plates.

“We chose to study hBN because it is the most widely used insulator in 2D material research due to its cleanliness and chemical inertness,” said colead author Joel Wang, a research scientist in the Engineering Quantum Systems group of the MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics.

On either side of the hBN, the MIT researchers used the 2D superconducting material, niobium diselenide. One of the trickiest aspects of fabricating the capacitors was working with the niobium diselenide, which oxidizes in seconds when exposed to air, according to Wang. This necessitates that the assembly of the capacitor occur in a glove box filled with argon gas.

While this would seemingly complicate the scaling up of the production of these capacitors, Wang doesn’t regard this as a limiting factor.

“What determines the quality factor of the capacitor are the two interfaces between the two materials,” said Wang. “Once the sandwich is made, the two interfaces are “sealed” and we don’t see any noticeable degradation over time when exposed to the atmosphere.”

This lack of degradation is because around 90 percent of the electric field is contained within the sandwich structure, so the oxidation of the outer surface of the niobium diselenide does not play a significant role anymore. This ultimately makes the capacitor footprint much smaller, and it accounts for the reduction in cross talk between the neighboring qubits.

“The main challenge for scaling up the fabrication will be the wafer-scale growth of hBN and 2D superconductors like [niobium diselenide], and how one can do wafer-scale stacking of these films,” added Wang.

Wang believes that this research has shown 2D hBN to be a good insulator candidate for superconducting qubits. He says that the groundwork the MIT team has done will serve as a road map for using other hybrid 2D materials to build superconducting circuits.

Like many innovators, Hagit Messer-Yaron had a life-changing idea while doing something mundane: Talking with a colleague over a cup of coffee. The IEEE Life Fellow, who in 2006 was head of Tel Aviv University’s Porter School of Environmental Studies, was at the school’s cafeteria with a meteorological researcher. He shared his struggles with finding high-resolution weather data for his climate models, which are used to forecast and track flash floods.

Predicting floods is crucial for quickly evacuating residents in affected areas and protecting homes and businesses against damage.

Hagit Messer-Yaron

Employer Tel Aviv University

Title Professor emerita

Member grade Life Fellow

Her colleague “said researchers in the field had limited measurements because the equipment meteorologists used to collect weather data—including radar satellites—is expensive to purchase and maintain, especially in developing countries,” Messer-Yaron says.

Because of that, she says, high-resolution data about temperature, air quality, wind speed, and precipitation levels is often inconsistent—which is a problem when trying to produce accurate models and predictions.

An expert in signal processing and cellular communication, Messer-Yaron came up with the idea of using existing wireless communication signals to collect weather data, as communication networks are spread across the globe.

In 2006 she and her research team developed algorithms that process and analyze data collected by communication networks to monitor rainfall. They measure the difference in amplitude of the signals transmitted and received by the systems to extract data needed to predict flash floods.

The method was first demonstrated in Israel. Messer-Yaron is working to integrate it into communication networks worldwide.

For her work, she received this year’s IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies for “contributions to sensing of the environment using wireless communication networks.” The award is sponsored by Toyota.

“Receiving an IEEE medal, which is the highest-level award you can get within the organization, was really a surprise, and I was extremely happy to [receive] it,” she says. “I was proud that IEEE was able to evaluate and see the potential in our technology for public good and to reward it.”

A passion for teaching

Growing up in Israel, Messer-Yaron was interested in art, literature, and science. When it came time to choose a career, she found it difficult to decide, she says. Ultimately, she chose electrical engineering, figuring it would be easier to enjoy art and literature as hobbies.

After completing her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces in 1973, she began her undergraduate studies at Tel Aviv University, where she found her passion: Signal processing.

“Electrical engineering is a very broad topic,” she says. “As an undergrad, you learn all the parts that make up electrical engineering, including applied physics and applied mathematics. I really enjoyed applied mathematics and soon discovered signal processing. I found it quite amazing how, by using algorithms, you can direct signals to extract information.”

She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in EE in 1977 and continued her education there, earning master’s and doctoral degrees in 1979 and 1984. She moved to the United States for a postdoctoral position at Yale. There she worked with IEEE Life Fellow Peter Schultheiss, who was known for his research in using sensor array systems in underwater acoustics.

Inspired by Schultheiss’s passion for teaching, Messer-Yaron decided to pursue a career in academia. She was hired by Tel Aviv University as an electrical engineering professor in 1986. She was the first woman in Israel to become a full professor in the subject.

“Being a faculty member at a public university is the best job you can do. I didn’t make a lot of money, but at the end of each day, I looked back at what I did [with pride].”

For the next 14 years, she conducted research in statistical signal processing, time-delay estimation, and sensor array processing.

Her passion for teaching took her around the world as a visiting professor at Yale, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, and other schools. She collaborated with colleagues from the universities on research projects.

In 1999 she was promoted to director of Tel Aviv University’s undergraduate electrical engineering program.

A year later, she was offered an opportunity she couldn’t refuse: Serving as chief scientist for the Israeli Ministry of Science, Culture, and Sports. She took a sabbatical from teaching and for the next three years oversaw the country’s science policy.

“I believe [working in the public sector] is part of our duty as faculty members, especially in public universities, because that makes you a public intellectual,” she says. “Working for the government gave me a broad view of many things that you don’t see as a professor, even in a large university.”

When she returned to the university in 2004, Messer-Yaron was appointed as the director of the new school of environmental studies. She oversaw the allocation of research funding and spoke with researchers individually to better understand their needs. After having coffee with one researcher, she realized there was a need to develop better weather-monitoring technology.

Hagit Messer-Yaron proudly displays her IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies at this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony. She is accompanied by IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Couglin.Robb Cohen

Using signal processing to monitor weather

Because the planet is warming, the risk of flash floods is steadily increasing. Warmer air holds more water—which leads to heavier-than-usual rainfall and results in more flooding, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Data about rainfall is typically collected by satellite radar and ground-based rain gauges. However, radar images don’t provide researchers with precise readings of what’s happening on the ground, according to an Ensia article. Rain gauges are accurate but provide data from small areas only.

So Messer-Yaron set her sights on developing technology that connects to cellular networks close to the ground to provide more accurate measurements, she says. Using existing infrastructure eliminates the need to build new weather radars and weather stations.

Communication systems automatically record the transmitted signal level and the received signal level, but rain can alter otherwise smooth wave patterns. By measuring the difference in the amplitude, meteorologists could extract the data necessary to track rainfall using the signal processing algorithms.

In 2005 Messer-Yaron and her group successfully tested the technology. The following year, their “Environmental Monitoring by Wireless Communication Networks” paper was published in Science.

The algorithm is being used in Israel in partnership with all three of the country’s major cellular service providers. Messer-Yaron acknowledges, however, that negotiating deals with cellular service companies in other countries has been difficult.

To expand the technology’s use worldwide, Messer-Yaron launched a research network through the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), called an opportunistic precipitation sensing network known as OPENSENSE. The group connects researchers, meteorologists, and other experts around the world to collaborate on integrating the technology in members’ communities.

Monitoring the effects of climate change

Since developing the technology, Messer-Yaron has held a number of jobs including president of the Open University of Israel and vice chair of the country’s Council for Higher Education, which accredits academic institutions.

She is maintaining her link with Tel Aviv University today as a professor emerita.

“Being a faculty member at a public university is the best job you can do,” she says. “I didn’t make a lot of money, but at the end of each day, I looked back at what I did [with pride]. Because of the academic freedom and the autonomy I had, I was able to do many things in addition to teaching, including research.”

To continue her work in developing technology to monitor weather events, in 2016, she helped found ClimaCell, now Tomorrow.io, based in Boston. The startup aims to use wireless communication infrastructure and IoT devices to collect real-time weather data. Messer-Yaron served as its chief scientist until 2017.

She continues to update the original algorithms with her students, most recently with machine learning capabilities to extract data from physical measurements of the signal level in communication networks.

A global engineering community

When Messer-Yaron was an undergraduate student, she joined IEEE at the suggestion of one of her professors.

“I didn’t think much about the benefits of being a member until I became a graduate student,” she says. “I started attending conferences and publishing papers in IEEE journals, and the organization became my professional community.”

She is an active volunteer and a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. From 1994 to 2010 she served on the society’s Signal Processing Theory and Methods technical committee. She was associate editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. She is a member of the editorial boards of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

In the past 10 years, she’s been involved with other IEEE committees including the conduct review, ethics and member conduct, and global public policy bodies.

“I don’t see my career or my professional life without the IEEE,” she says

An ecologist’s long walks and detailed observations allowed him to chronicle the shifts in an iconic habitat and grow a once-overlooked branch of science

Latex balloons designed to collect high-altitude data can become a threat after they burst

From the busy cities to ocean waters, our need to illuminate the world has had some strange and tragic consequences

If you’ve ever tried to make a portrait that looks like the person you’re sketching, you know it’s no walk in the park. Maybe you’ve got the eyes perfectly, but then the mouth looks… well, let’s say “abstract.” So, how do the pros do it? What tools, materials, and techniques help bring out that jaw-dropping […]

The post Draw Portraits Like a Pro – Essential Tools and Materials for Photo-Realistic Results appeared first on Chart Attack.

Ars speaks with users and partners unhappy with Broadcom's changes.

Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, former Saudi ambassador to the United States, has written an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump asking him to “finish what you started the last time you occupied the White House” with respect to Middle Eastern affairs.

The post Saudi Royals Ask Trump to ‘Finish What You Started’ in Middle East appeared first on Breitbart.

Hours after mischief charges were dropped against a London, Ont., doctor who protested the Liberal government’s Israel policy by squirting ketchup at a member of parliament’s constituency office, Dr. Tarek Loubani repeated the protest.

The two men found guilty of mischief and firearms offences for their roles in the 2022 Coutts border blockade want the Alberta Court of Appeal to overturn their convictions, while prosecutors are seeking new trials on the more serious charge of conspiring to murder RCMP officers, for which they were acquitted.

1. Study reveals how 3D environments affect bacterial growth and survival  The Hindu
2. 3D environments influence bacterial growth & survival  The Times of India
3. Shape Matters: New Research Reveals Impact of 3D Environments on Bacterial Growth  Research Matters
4. Study reveals role of 3D environments in influencing bacterial survival and growth  Bangalore Mirror