Podcasts about ncar

Comedian Nancy Norton shares highlights from The Tromedy Podcast. Norton, a former nurse in Boulder, is trained in therapeutic humor. Then, for a second year, Colorado sends a Windsor High School student to the Poetry Out Loud national finals. And, an astrophysicist at NCAR receives one of France's highest honors. 

In this episode of The Good Trouble Show with Matt Ford, physicist / electrical engineer Mitch Randall demonstrates a radar system for detecting UAPs / UFOs that can be deployed by the public, bypassing Pentagon classification rules. The tech is called Passive Bistatics and is a distributed UFO detection system with multi-sensor data and provenance. It's designed to distinguish instantaneous acceleration - something humans can't do. This tech will be globally revealed for the first time so anyone can develop the tech. The sensor platform is based on a Lockheed Martin radar system that detects ballistic missiles and other airborne targets and, of course, UAP / UFO.Follow or Contact Mitch Randall through: Twitter/X: @realityseaker Web: https://www.ascendantai.com/skywatch.Mitch Randall, MSEE, MS Phys, began building scientific instrumentation and research radars in 1984. He joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in 1989 where he developed airborne, ground-based, and mobile scientific weather research radars. Randall pioneered Software Defined Radio (SDR) techniques and deployed them in NCAR, NASA, and NOAA radars. He developed a software-based Dopplerization technique for incoherent magnetron radars to create the Doppler On Wheels (DOW) tornado-chasing trucks, upon which was formed the Center for Severe Weather Research in Boulder, CO. His technologies became the industry standard for the meteorological weather radar community in the mid 90s. Working for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2010, Randall developed a millimeter wave channel sounder to characterize real-world cell communications, used to develop today's 5G networks. Randall co-founded Binet in the 90s to bring passive radar tech to weather radars. Randall co-founded Advanced Radar Corporation in the 2000's. In 2005 Randall co-founded WildCharge and licensed his wireless charging technology Duracell. This invention was featured in TIME magazine's "Best Inventions of 2007" issue. Randall is a prolific inventor with licensed toys currently on the market. Randall co-founded Ascendant Artificial Intelligence (AAI), a consulting firm developing custom AI and consumer electronics. In 2021 Randall became a Research Team member of Harvard's Galileo Project, where he developed and deployed the proof of concept SkyWatch passive radar. Randall is the lead author of the paper describing the system in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation.The Good Trouble Show: Linktree:  https://linktr.ee/thegoodtroubleshowPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheGoodTroubleShow YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGoodTroubleShow Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/GoodTroubleShow Instagram: @goodtroubleshow TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@goodtroubleshow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Good-Trouble-Show-With-Matt-Ford-106009712211646Threads:  @TheGoodTroubleShowBlueSky: @TheGoodTroubleShowBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-good-trouble-show-with-matt-ford--5808897/support.

Guest: Everette Joseph, Director of NCARDescription: We have the NWS, NOAA. and NCEI, but another very valuable member of the meteorological alphabet soup is NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research! However, NCAR is not constricted by any government regulations, so they are free to dissect the atmosphere as they please. However, they have a mission to uphold, just like our government organizations, to understand the world around and above us so they can indirectly protect future lives and property. Today on Weather Geeks, we have the Director of NCAR Everette Joseph to chat about atmospheric research in the past, present and future!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Boeing capsule is having issues with its thrusters and cannot bring astronauts back to Earth. Also, move over, Farmer's Almanac. A more accurate long-term weather forecast could be on the horizon.Boeing's Starliner Leaves Astronauts Stuck On The Space StationIn another blow to Boeing's Starliner program, which is meant to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, NASA announced Wednesday that the troubled spacecraft would not be able to take astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth due to issues with its thrusters.The two astronauts arrived at the International Space Station in June for a mission that was supposed to last eight days. But with the current problems, the pair might be stuck on the space station, where Starliner remains docked, until early next year. NASA is considering bringing them back in an upcoming SpaceX Dragon mission.Ira Flatow is joined by Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, who breaks down this and other top science stories this week, including how the Olympic Games are adjusting to abnormally high temperatures in France, why the EPA banned a widely used weedkiller, and what the moon's atmosphere is made of.Could We Get Weather Forecasts Years—Or A Decade—In Advance?Access to weather forecasts has been made easier than ever with the advent of smartphones. Most of the time, we can get accurate information about weather for the next few hours up through the next few days. But a week or two out, those predictions get less reliable.In the near future, it may be possible to get accurate weather forecasts weeks, months, or even a decade ahead of schedule. While this sounds like science fiction, researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are working on this very challenge.Earth system predictions, as the field is called, combines a variety of factors including atmospheric conditions, ocean currents, and even what's happening in the soil to form predictions. These forecasts are in high demand as the climate changes, particularly as farmers need more information about incoming heat and precipitation. There's even the possibility that Earth systems predictions could help regions prepare for dangerous natural hazards well ahead of time.At Science Friday Live in Boulder, Colorado, Ira sat down with two NCAR scientists, Dr. Yaga Richter and Dr. Jerry Meehl about their work in this field.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Total Solar Eclipses; They can be once in a lifetime event for some people, and we are gracious to have one coming up April 8th here in the United States. The next one across the lower 48 won't be until August of 2044, so it may be your last chance to check up on this wonderful phenomenon.  To get ready for this solar spectacle, we invited NCAR scientist Paul Bryans onto the show to just get a bit more information on what eclipses are, some tips to viewing it, and more.    Visit liquid-iv.com and use our Promo Code to save 20% off your next order!    Thanks for listening! Be sure to leave a comment and rate the podcast. If you want to get in contact with us, you can reach us at weatherlounge@weatherworksinc.com For more information about WeatherWorks, visit: weatherworksinc.com  Certified Snowfall Totals Past Weather Reports Also, check us out on Social Media! Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube  

Bjorn Stevens' main scientific interest is in the role of clouds in the climate system. He established himself early in his career as a leader in the study of marine stratus-topped boundary layers. That eventually led him to a broader climate research agenda. And since about 2008, Bjorn heads one of the world's most prominent climate modeling labs, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. In that position, with his team there and many collaborators, he has produced an enormous volume of important research, and that's not to mention the countless additional studies that use the data his lab contributes to the CMIP archives.Bjorn's personal story is as fascinating as his professional achievements. Born in Germany, he first moved to the US when he was only a few months old, and from then on he and his family kept moving a lot for his father's work. Because of that, his education ended up being “a bit of a patchwork”, but he soon realized that he felt drawn to the beauty of math and science: “Science opened itself up as something that I seemed reasonably good at, and I felt the rewards of doing it. It had this wonderful mix of being creative work, and it had an aesthetic to it. It involved many different skills from writing to analyzing to programming, so it was just something I [...] realized and enjoyed, and I had a certain amount of success that allowed me to continue.” Bjorn did indeed continue, from his PhD at Colorado State and early career at NCAR and UCLA, to his current position as managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. His research covers many topics, but a particular focus have been clouds—he has studied them as a modeler and as a theorist, and he has led many field campaigns to collect data that improve our understanding of these elusive yet critical components of the climate system. “How does precipitation affect the clouds? There were some simple hypotheses at the time […] which didn't make sense to me, and so I tried to understand how drizzle affects the development of the cloud layer. So that was mostly my PhD thesis, and at that time I was really concerned with how to use models to come up with ideas that we could test in observations. So I think that's also an enduring aspect of the way I think about things, which is not to use models to provide answers but to use models to tell us how to look at nature differently.” Bjorn's leadership role in the global climate science community goes well beyond his astonishing scientific productivity. He has a unique gift for starting, leading and facilitating important and sometimes difficult scientific conversations.And currently, Bjorn is doing this in a bigger way than ever before, as he leads an international effort to develop the Earth Virtualization Engine, or EVE. EVE is conceived as a large international collaboration, taking CERN—the particle physics facility—as a model. EVE's proposed mission is to develop kilometer-scale, that is, ultra high-resolution global climate models, using the biggest computers that exist, and use them to support climate services worldwide. You'll hear Adam and Bjorn spend quite a bit of time talking about that towards the end of their conversation. The interview with Bjorn Stevens was recorded in September 2023. Image credit: MPI-M, D. Ausserhofer Bjorn's website at Max-Planck-Institut

Rebecca Morss' scientific credentials are impeccable – a PhD in atmospheric science from MIT, more than 20 years of experience at the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and currently the Senior Scientist and Deputy Director of the center. But what really sets Rebecca apart is her focus on the intersection between scientific information and its use by people.Rebecca is an expert in weather forecasting systems and risk communication, and she specializes in high-impact weather including hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. Her research isn't limited to the intricacies of weather phenomena and prediction, but extends to how forecasts are formulated, communicated, received, and acted upon. For Rebecca, science is not a solitary endeavor but a bridge that connects researchers, societal stakeholders, and policy-makers alike.Despite the importance of weather predictions in preserving lives and property, ensuring that people understand these forecasts and know how to act upon them has often been overlooked and underfunded. In her conversation with Adam, Rebecca talks about how she has retained her unique identity as a physical scientist while navigating the challenges of this inherently interdisciplinary sphere:"There's a lot of counterincentives. I've been to workshops on interdisciplinary research [...] in a variety of fields, and if you talk to professors at universities, even if they wanna do this, there's so many barriers to doing it, there's so many disincentives. The best way to get ahead if you're in a research career is to publish a lot of papers and get a lot of citations. And the best way to do that is to do something that other people are doing, and to not buck the trend. It takes a lot longer to learn new things every time. People aren't citing you if no one else is doing it."Adam's and Rebecca's discussion then pivots to two recent extreme weather events. First, Hurricane Ian, where an evacuation order delay resulted in tragic loss of life in Lee County/Florida. Second, the Marshall Fire of December 2021, a disaster that literally hit close to home for Rebecca. The fire ravaged her neighborhood in Boulder County, Colorado, coming perilously close to her own house, and giving her a first-hand experience of the crucial role of effective risk communication.The interview with Rebecca was recorded in October 2022.Rebecca's website at NCAR

We talk to Kelly Núñez Ocasio about the excitement of aircraft missions studying African easterly waves, the challenge of effectively communicating your science, and being strategic about pursuing opportunities in the weather, water, and climate sciences.Episode transcriptHosted by Matt Moll and Kelly SavoieEdited by Peter TrepkeTheme music composed and performed by Steve SavoieVisit AMS Career Resources on the web!Contact us at skypodcast@ametsoc.org with any feedback or if you'd like to become a future guest.Copyright © 2023 American Meteorological Society

NCAR and NOAA open for visitors (Starts 1:00)  COVID pandemic rules were lifted earlier this year, so Boulder's  National Center for Atmospheric Research and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are once again open for public tours. LASP Artist in Residence Applications due July 21 (starts 2:12) CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics is accepting … Continue reading "Boulder Society for Scientific Exploration"

Bjorn Stevens is the Director of the Max Plank Institute for Meteorology in Berlin - Bjorn is a top climate scientist, with particular expertise in clouds. New climate model simulations of the world - EVE) Earth Virtualisation EnginesHuman vs science-centric climate scienceEarth in 100 yearsDarwin and the theory of e-0volutionIt's also clear that humans are responsible for global warming and not enough is being done if the goal is to stop the warming, whats the scientific consequence of that?What's the difference between 2 and 1,5 degrees of warming?How AI aids people with different backgrounds and knowledge bases to understand the same thingsWhat is Bjorn Stevens's favourite thing about clouds?Born 1966 in Augsburg. Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering, Iowa State University, USA (1990), PhD in Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, USA (1996), Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Advanced Study Program of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, USA (1996 - 1998), Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (1998 - 1999), University of California (UCLA), USA, Department of Atmospheric Sciences: Assistant Professor (1999), Associate Professor (2003), Professor (tenured, 2007), Affiliate Scientist at NCAR (since 2000), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (since 2008).The Max Planck Society conducts basic research in the natural sciences, life sciences, and humanities. It was founded in 1948 as a successor organisation to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and has 30 Nobel laureates in its ranks. With its 85 Max Planck Institutes and facilities, it is the international flagship for German science: in addition to institutions outside of Germany, it operates another 20 Max Planck Centers with research institutions such as Princeton University in the USA, the Paris University Science Po in France, the University College London in UK, and the University of Tokyo in Japan. Equally funded by federal and state governments, the University College London in UK, and the University of Tokyo in Japan. Equally funded by federal and state governments, the Max Planck Society had an annual budget of 1.98 billion Euros in 2022.https://www.mpg.de/343990/meteorology-stevenslatestthinking.orgIf you want better insights into challenges and decisions you or your business are facing, GARI's analytical services are of unmatched complexity and high accuracy - whether your questions are on the green energy transition, trade and supply chains, or political and security related - contact us for a free consultation and see how you can optimise your decision-making.www.globari.org@LinkedIn @GARInstitute) / Twitter

On today’s Morning Magazine, we'll hear about a new photography exhibit at NCAR which looks at the effects of climate change through the lens of Indigenous communities on the frontlines. This Week in Water has a story about how manufacturers […]

The building that kicked off I.M. Pei's career as a building architect also featured prominently in the city where two current staffers went to college. The NCAR Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado is the subject of This Week in Tech History, where Faith and Chris talk about the importance of the building, the design, and I.M. Pei's career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For over 40 years we have sought after a measure of friction during winter events to determine if additional treatments were required.  Over the decades the science, sensors, and computing power have advanced to the point that friction or grip is making its way into winter operations.  On this episode we explore some cutting edge work in world of winter road friction.  Lead Statewide Snow & Ice Engineer for the MassDOT Mark Goldstein and from the Research Applications Lab at the National Center for Atmospheric Research,  Senior Software Engineer Gerry Wiener and Software Engineer Seth Linden discuss projects they are involved with and the finer points associated with using friction/grip in winter maintenance.Follow this link for more information on the Aurora Road Friction Project https://aurora-program.org/research/completed/roadway-friction-modeling-improving-the-use-of-friction-measurements-in-state-dots/ You can reach out to our guests directly for more information on their work with wintertime friction and grip by emailing them directly through the links above.Chapter marks:0:00 Intro1:54 when did you start thinking about friction and wintertime operations4:03 how does friction play onto the highway environment7:23 what are some of the grip measuring devices out there12:31 how do friction sensors work, what are they measuring17:05 The Aurora Roadway Friction Modeling study discussion25:41 MassDOT friction project38:04 What's the future of friction/grip look like44:04 Last minute thoughts - autonomous vehicles46:4 2 sign off  SICOP Talks Winter Ops is always looking for interesting topics and guests to visit with regarding winter maintenance and road weather. If you have any ideas for future episodes contact Rick Nelson at rnelson@aashto.org our our co-producer Scott Lucas at Scott.Lucas@dot.ohio.gov

Kevin Trenberth is a Distinguished Scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder and an Honorary Academic in the Department of Physics, Auckland University in Auckland, New Zealand. From New Zealand, he obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology in 1972 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessment of Climate Change reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize which went to the IPCC. He served from 1999 to 2006 on the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and chaired a number of committees for more than 20 years. He is the author of "The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System"."How can you get to the point where people are actually not moving around as much and reducing their carbon footprint in various ways? The main way we're planning on doing that is decarbonizing the economy. This means electrifying a lot of things. People still are moving around. They're now using electric cars, but they're still using cars. How can you build new cities that don't require that in quite the same way? And maybe we've got some visions as to the sort of things that might happen or should happen during the pandemic when people suddenly couldn't travel, or they were in lockdown, and they had to work from home. Increasingly people have been able to work from home. This was something I advocated a long time ago when I was working at NCAR is that we needed to develop better ways of going to a seminar without driving eight miles across town to a building where that was actually happening."The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate Systemwww.ipcc.chhttps://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbertwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

"How can you get to the point where people are actually not moving around as much and reducing their carbon footprint in various ways? The main way we're planning on doing that is decarbonizing the economy. This means electrifying a lot of things. People still are moving around. They're now using electric cars, but they're still using cars. How can you build new cities that don't require that in quite the same way? And maybe we've got some visions as to the sort of things that might happen or should happen during the pandemic when people suddenly couldn't travel, or they were in lockdown, and they had to work from home. Increasingly people have been able to work from home. This was something I advocated a long time ago when I was working at NCAR is that we needed to develop better ways of going to a seminar without driving eight miles across town to a building where that was actually happening."Kevin Trenberth is a Distinguished Scholar at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder and an Honorary Academic in the Department of Physics, Auckland University in Auckland, New Zealand. From New Zealand, he obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology in 1972 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessment of Climate Change reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize which went to the IPCC. He served from 1999 to 2006 on the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and chaired a number of committees for more than 20 years. He is the author of "The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System".The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate Systemwww.ipcc.chhttps://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbertwww.oneplanetpodcast.orgwww.creativeprocess.info

On today’s Morning Magazine, we hear about an event in Boulder this weekend dedicated to empowering the Maasai women of Tanzania. After that, we will visit the site of the NCAR fire on the Nature Almanac. Finally, we have new […]

It's been about a week since the NCAR Fire ignited in Boulder County, near the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Boulder fire officials announced today that the fire is now completely contained at 190 acres. That blaze came just three months after Colorado's most destructive wildfire, the Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the communities of Superior and Louisville. And many weary residents are wondering if a year-round fire season is now the ‘new normal.'Jezy Gray was one of about 19,000 people evacuated at the peak of the NCAR fire Saturday. He's also the managing editor of the nonprofit Boulder Reporting Lab – and he joined us to discuss the emotional impact these frequent fires are having on residents.There were loud calls for gun reform in Colorado after a mass shooting at a Boulder supermarket last year. Lawmakers delivered on some of those requests, but other new laws are still in the works a year after the shooting. KUNC's Scott Franz looked at the city's ongoing recovery from the tragedy, as well as some new efforts launching this year to tackle gun violence.And - a couple of events happening around the Front Range this weekend: It's Guitar Night Friday, April 1 at the King Center at CU Denver. Professor Sean McGowan will play, along with world-renowned guitarist Pierre Bensusan.And in Fort Collins, the ACT Human Rights Film Festival will feature thought-provoking documentary films and discussions throughout the weekend, with events at The Lyric and at CSU's Lory Student Center.Colorado Edition is hosted and produced by Erin O'Toole (@ErinOtoole1). Web was edited by digital editor Jackie Hai. The mission of Colorado Edition is to deepen understanding of life in Northern Colorado through authentic conversation and storytelling. It's available as a podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.Colorado Edition is made possible with support from our KUNC members. Thank you!Our theme music was composed by Colorado musicians Briana Harris and Johnny Burroughs. Other music in the show by Blue Dot Sessions.

First up, an update on the NCAR Fire. About 150 firefighters have been working to contain the fire, which erupted Saturday in the foothills of Boulder County and prompted the evacuation of nearly 20,000 people. The fire hasn't led to injuries or damage to structures. All evacuation orders were lifted Sunday, although hiking trails in the area remain closed. Incident commander Brian Oliver said in a press briefing Tuesday that they expect it will smolder for weeks.The focus of today's episode: payouts and settlements for allegations of police misconduct. People in Northern Colorado have agreed to drop allegations that police mistreated them and settle for cash payouts. It's happened more than 200 times in the past decade, for allegations ranging from false arrest to wrongful death. And while some cases receive significant publicity, others slip under the radar. In the first of a two-part series, KUNC investigative reporter Michael de Yoanna uncovered hundreds of settlements -- and an ongoing pattern where allegations of police misconduct disappear in exchange for cash payouts.Colorado Edition is hosted and produced by Erin O'Toole (@ErinOtoole1). Web was edited by digital operations manager Ashley Jefcoat. The mission of Colorado Edition is to deepen understanding of life in Northern Colorado through authentic conversation and storytelling. It's available as a podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.Colorado Edition is made possible with support from our KUNC members. Thank you!Our theme music was composed by Colorado musicians Briana Harris and Johnny Burroughs. Other music in the show by Blue Dot Sessions.

In this KRDO News Radio update, Sydnee Stelle has the latest on the NCAR fire in Boulder, and a stabbing incident Saturday night in southeast Colorado Springs, while Merry Matthews notes cloudier conditions on Monday before the next weather front moves into the region on Tueday.

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Antytila Ukrainian band backed by Ed Sheeran refused fundraiser slot Biden to announce tax on billionaires in 2023 budget plan report Poitier My dad changed how black people were seen Ginni Thomas West Wing contacts raise new questions for another Trump ally John Eastman Ketanji Brown Jackson is the most popular Supreme Court nominee in years Biden blasts Putin in powerful speech U.S. to provide 100 million in assistance to Ukraine In pictures Taylor Hawkins, a drummer who served the song Ukraine war Oligarch Eugene Shvidlers jets held indefinitely Live updates Trump delayed as crowd waits at Save America Rally in Commerce, Ga. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry resigns after being found guilty of lying to FBI Drivers agree to race despite missile attack Afghanistan Protesters urge Taliban to reopen girls schools Oscars 2022 Could Apples Coda win best picture Russian forces release Minnesota teacher who tried to escape Ukraine Did teens big size factor in Florida amusement ride death NCAR fire prompts evacuation of 19,000 people in south Boulder, Eldorado Springs March 25, 2022 Russia Ukraine news Malmo stabbing prompts soul searching in Sweden Ukraine war Five wounded after explosions hit western city of Lviv P and O Ferries ship detained over crew training concerns

Rory Kelly is one of America's most beloved skimo racers in the humor department. A former Cat-1 cyclist, he's incredibly fast on skis and has notable performances in World Cup skimo races, at the Skimo World Championships and in teams races like the Belle Etoile, the Pierra Menta, the Grand Traverse, the Power of Four and more.  In addition, he works as a software engineer at NCAR in Boulder. 

We talk to Rosimar Rios-Berrios, a Research Meteorologist at NCAR, about her personal connection to hurricane research from growing up in Puerto Rico, why she enjoys public speaking, and how she uses a bullet journal to stay focused on her work.Episode transcriptHosted by Rex Horner and Kelly SavoieProduced by Brandon M. CroseEdited by Peter TrepkeTheme music composed and performed by Steve SavoieVisit AMS Career Resources on the web!Contact us at skypodcast@ametsoc.org with any feedback or if you'd like to become a future guest.Copyright © 2022 American Meteorological Society

The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) is collaborating with SilverLining and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to run the first full-production climate-model simulations in the cloud. Using cloud-based technology and hosting the resulting datasets in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Open Data Sponsorship Program will open a powerful new avenue to accelerate climate research and democratize access to tools and information that will help protect our planet. The Fix This team sat down with Kelly Wanser, executive director at SilverLining; Jean-Francois Lamarque, Climate & Global Dynamics Laboratory director at NCAR; and Chris Lennard, research staff and climatologist at the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Addison Snell and Tiffany Trader discuss Dell's NNSA contract, plus NCAR's Derecho announcement.

Raspberries, ellagic acid reveal benefits in two studies Oregon State University, October 1, 2021.    Articles that appeared recently in the Journal of Berry Research report that raspberries and compounds present in the fruit could help support healthy body mass and motor function, including balance, coordination and strength.   In one study, Neil Shay and colleagues at Oregon State University fed mice a high fat, high sugar diet plus one of the following: raspberry juice concentrate, raspberry puree concentrate, raspberry fruit powder, raspberry seed extract, ellagic acid (a polyphenol that occurs in a relatively high amount in raspberries), raspberry ketone, or a combination of raspberry ketone and ellagic acid. Additional groups of animals received a high fat, high sugar diet alone or a low fat diet.   While mice that received the high fat and sugar diet alone experienced a significant increase in body mass, the addition of raspberry juice concentrate, raspberry puree concentrate or ellagic acid plus raspberry ketone helped prevent this effect. Of note, mice that received raspberry juice concentrate experienced gains similar to those of animals given a low fat diet. "We hope that the findings from this study can help guide the design of future clinical trials," Dr Shay stated.   In another study, Barbara Shukitt-Hale, PhD, and her associates at Tufts University's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging gave 19 month old rats a control diet or a diet enhanced with raspberry extract for 11 weeks. Psychomotor behavior was assessed during week 7 and cognitive testing was conducted during weeks 9-10.   Animals that received raspberry performed better on psychomotor coordination and balance, and had better muscle tone, strength and stamina than those that received a control diet. "These results may have important implications for healthy aging," stated Dr Shukitt-Hale. "While further research in humans is necessary, animal model studies are helpful in identifying deficits associated with normal aging."       Massage doesn't just make muscles feel better, it makes them heal faster and stronger Harvard University, October 6, 2021 Massage has been used to treat sore, injured muscles for more than 3,000 years, and today many athletes swear by massage guns to rehabilitate their bodies. But other than making people feel good, do these "mechanotherapies" actually improve healing after severe injury? According to a new study from researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the answer is "yes." Using a custom-designed robotic system to deliver consistent and tunable compressive forces to mice's leg muscles, the team found that this mechanical loading (ML) rapidly clears immune cells called neutrophils out of severely injured muscle tissue. This process also removed inflammatory cytokinesreleased by neutrophils from the muscles, enhancing the process of muscle fiber regeneration. The research is published in Science Translational Medicine. "Lots of people have been trying to study the beneficial effects of massage and other mechanotherapies on the body, but up to this point it hadn't been done in a systematic, reproducible way. Our work shows a very clear connection between mechanical stimulation and immune function. This has promise for regenerating a wide variety of tissues including bone, tendon, hair, and skin, and can also be used in patients with diseases that prevent the use of drug-based interventions," said first author Bo Ri Seo, Ph.D., who is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Core Faculty member Dave Mooney, Ph.D. at the Wyss Institute and SEAS. Seo and her coauthors started exploring the effects of mechanotherapy on injured tissues in mice several years ago, and found that it doubled the rate of muscle regeneration and reduced tissue scarring over the course of two weeks. Excited by the idea that mechanical stimulation alone can foster regeneration and enhance muscle function, the team decided to probe more deeply into exactly how that process worked in the body, and to figure out what parameters would maximize healing. They teamed up with soft robotics experts in the Harvard Biodesign Lab, led by Wyss Associate Faculty member Conor Walsh, Ph.D., to create a small device that used sensors and actuators to monitor and control the force applied to the limb of a mouse. " The device we created allows us to precisely control parameters like the amount and frequency of force applied, enabling a much more systematic approach to understanding tissue healing than would be possible with a manual approach," said co-second author Christopher Payne, Ph.D., a former Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and the Harvard Biodesign Lab who is now a Robotics Engineer at Viam, Inc.  Once the device was ready, the team experimented with applying force to mice's leg muscles via a soft silicone tip and used ultrasound to get a look at what happened to the tissue in response. They observed that the muscles experienced a strain of between 10-40%, confirming that the tissues were experiencing mechanical force. They also used those ultrasound imaging data to develop and validate a computational model that could predict the amount of tissue strain under different loading forces. They then applied consistent, repeated force to injured muscles for 14 days. While both treated and untreated muscles displayed a reduction in the amount of damaged muscle fibers, the reduction was more pronounced and the cross-sectional area of the fibers was larger in the treated muscle, indicating that treatment had led to greater repair and strength recovery. The greater the force applied during treatment, the stronger the injured muscles became, confirming that mechanotherapy improves muscle recovery after injury. But how? Evicting neutrophils to enhance regeneration To answer that question, the scientists performed a detailed biological assessment, analyzing a wide range of inflammation-related factors called cytokines and chemokines in untreated vs. treated muscles. A subset of cytokines was dramatically lower in treated muscles after three days of mechanotherapy, and these cytokines are associated with the movement of immune cells called neutrophils, which play many roles in the inflammation process. Treated muscles also had fewer neutrophils in their tissue than untreated muscles, suggesting that the reduction in cytokines that attract them had caused the decrease in neutrophil infiltration. The team had a hunch that the force applied to the muscle by the mechanotherapy effectively squeezed the neutrophils and cytokines out of the injured tissue. They confirmed this theory by injecting fluorescent molecules into the muscles and observing that the movement of the molecules was more significant with force application, supporting the idea that it helped to flush out the muscle tissue. To pick apart what effect the neutrophils and their associated cytokines have on regenerating muscle fibers, the scientists performed in vitro studies in which they grew muscle progenitor cells (MPCs) in a medium in which neutrophils had previously been grown. They found that the number of MPCs increased, but the rate at which they differentiated (developed into other cell types) decreased, suggesting that neutrophil-secreted factors stimulate the growth of muscle cells, but the prolonged presence of those factors impairs the production of new muscle fibers. "Neutrophils are known to kill and clear out pathogens and damaged tissue, but in this study we identified their direct impacts on muscle progenitor cell behaviors," said co-second author Stephanie McNamara, a former Post-Graduate Fellow at the Wyss Institute who is now an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Harvard Medical School (HMS). "While the inflammatory response is important for regeneration in the initial stages of healing, it is equally important that inflammation is quickly resolved to enable the regenerative processes to run its full course." Seo and her colleagues then turned back to their in vivo model and analyzed the types of muscle fibers in the treated vs. untreated mice 14 days after injury. They found that type IIX fibers were prevalent in healthy muscle and treated muscle, but untreated injured muscle contained smaller numbers of type IIX fibers and increased numbers of type IIA fibers. This difference explained the enlarged fiber size and greater force production of treated muscles, as IIX fibers produce more force than IIA fibers. Finally, the team homed in on the optimal amount of time for neutrophil presence in injured muscle by depleting neutrophils in the mice on the third day after injury. The treated mice's muscles showed larger fiber size and greater strength recovery than those in untreated mice, confirming that while neutrophils are necessary in the earliest stages of injury recovery, getting them out of the injury site early leads to improved muscle regeneration. "These findings are remarkable because they indicate that we can influence the function of the body's immune system in a drug-free, non-invasive way," said Walsh, who is also the Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at SEAS and whose group is experienced in developing wearable technology for diagnosing and treating disease. "This provides great motivation for the development of external, mechanical interventions to help accelerate and improve muscle and tissue healing that have the potential to be rapidly translated to the clinic." The team is continuing to investigate this line of research with multiple projects in the lab. They plan to validate this mechanotherpeutic approach in larger animals, with the goal of being able to test its efficacy on humans. They also hope to test it on different types of injuries, age-related muscle loss, and muscle performance enhancement. "The fields of mechanotherapy and immunotherapy rarely interact with each other, but this work is a testament to how crucial it is to consider both physical and biological elements when studying and working to improve human health," said Mooney, who is the corresponding author of the paper and the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS. "The idea that mechanics influence cell and tissue function was ridiculed until the last few decades, and while scientists have made great strides in establishing acceptance of this fact, we still know very little about how that process actually works at the organ level. This research has revealed a previously unknown type of interplay between mechanobiology and immunology that is critical for muscle tissue healing, in addition to describing a new form of mechanotherapy that potentially could be as potent as chemical or gene therapies, but much simpler and less invasive," said Wyss Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at (HMS) and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, as well as Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS.   Vitamin E could help protect older men from pneumonia University of Helsinki (Finland), October 7 2021.    An article that appeared in Clinical Interventions in Aging reported a protective role for vitamin E against pneumonia in older men.   For the current investigation, Dr Harri Hemilä of the University of Helsinki, Finland analyzed data from the Alpha-Tocopherol Beta-Carotene (ATBC) Cancer Prevention Study conducted in Finland. The trial included 29,133 men between the ages of 50 to 69 years who smoked at least five cigarettes daily upon enrollment. Participants received alpha tocopherol (vitamin E), beta carotene, both supplements, or a placebo for five to eight years.   The current study was limited to 7,469 ATBC participants who started smoking at age 21 or older. Among this group, supplementation with vitamin E was associated with a 35% lower risk of developing pneumonia in comparison with those who did not receive the vitamin.  Light smokers who engaged in leisure time exercise had a 69% lower risk compared with unsupplemented members of this subgroup. The risk in this subgroup of developing pneumonia by age 74 was 12.9%.   Among the one-third of the current study's population who quit smoking for a median period of two years, there was a 72% lower risk of pneumonia in association with vitamin E supplementation. In this group, exercisers who received vitamin E experienced an 81% lower pneumonia risk.   Dr Hemilä observed that the benefit for vitamin E in this study was strongest for older subjects—a group at higher risk of pneumonia.   "The current analysis of individual-level data suggests that trials on vitamin E and pneumonia on nonsmoking elderly males are warranted," he concluded.       Toxic fatty acids to blame for brain cell death after injury New York University, October 7, 2021 Cells that normally nourish healthy brain cells called neurons release toxic fatty acids after neurons are damaged, a new study in rodents shows. This phenomenon is likely the driving factor behind most, if not all, diseases that affect brain function, as well as the natural breakdown of brain cells seen in aging, researchers say. Previous research has pointed to astrocytes—a star-shaped glial cell of the central nervous system—as the culprits behind cell death seen in Parkinson's disease and dementia, among other neurodegenerative diseases. While many experts believed that these cells released a neuron-killing molecule to "clear away" damaged brain cells, the identity of this toxin has until now remained a mystery. Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the new investigation provides what they say is the first evidence that tissue damage prompts astrocytes to produce two kinds of fats, long-chain saturated free fatty acids and phosphatidylcholines. These fats then trigger cell death in damaged neurons, the electrically active cells that send messages throughout nerve tissue. Publishing Oct. 6 in the journal Nature, the study also showed that when researchers blocked fatty acid formation in mice, 75 percent of neurons survived compared with 10 percent when the fatty acids were allowed to form. The researchers' earlier work showed that brain cells continued to function when shielded from astrocyte attacks.  "Our findings show that the toxic fatty acids produced by astrocytes play a critical role in brain cell death and provide a promising new target for treating, and perhaps even preventing, many neurodegenerative diseases," says study co-senior author Shane Liddelow, Ph.D. Liddelow, an assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone Health, adds that targeting these fats instead of the cells that produce them may be a safer approach to treating neurodegenerative diseasesbecause astrocytes feed nerve cells and clear away their waste. Stopping them from working altogether could interfere with healthy brain function. Although it remains unclear why astrocytes produce these toxins, it is possible they evolved to destroy damaged cells before they can harm their neighbors, says Liddelow. He notes that while healthy cells are not harmed by the toxins, neurons become susceptible to the damaging effects when they are injured, mutated, or infected by prions, the contagious, misfolded proteins that play a major role in mad cow disease and similar illnesses. Perhaps in chronic diseases like dementia, this otherwise helpful process goes off track and becomes a problem, the study authors say. For the investigation, researchers analyzed the molecules released by astrocytes collected from rodents. They also genetically engineered some groups of mice to prevent the normal production of the toxic fats and looked to see whether neuron death occurred after an acute injury. "Our results provide what is likely the most detailed molecular map to date of how tissue damage leads to brain cell death, enabling researchers to better understand why neurons die in all kinds of diseases," says Liddelow, also an assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at NYU Langone. Liddelow cautions that while the findings are promising, the genetic techniques used to block the enzyme that produces toxic fatty acids in mice are not ready for use in humans. As a result, the researchers next plan is to explore safe and effective ways to interfere with the release of the toxins in human patients. Liddelow and his colleagues had previously shown these neurotoxic astrocytes in the brains of patients with Parkinson's, Huntington's disease, and multiple sclerosis, among other diseases.   Clinical trial for nicotinamide riboside: Vitamin safely boosts levels of important cell metabolite linked to multiple health benefits University of Iowa Health Care, October 3, 2021   In the first controlled clinical trial of nicotinamide riboside (NR), a newly discovered form of Vitamin B3, researchers have shown that the compound is safe for humans and increases levels of a cell metabolite that is critical for cellular energy production and protection against stress and DNA damage.   Studies in mice have shown that boosting the levels of this cell metabolite -- known as NAD+ -- can produce multiple health benefits, including resistance to weight gain, improved control of blood sugar and cholesterol, reduced nerve damage, and longer lifespan. Levels of NAD+ diminish with age, and it has been suggested that loss of this metabolite may play a role in age-related health decline.   These findings in animal studies have spurred people to take commercially available NR supplements designed to boost NAD+. However, these over-the-counter supplements have not undergone clinical trials to see if they work in people.   The new research, reported in the journal Nature Communications, was led by Charles Brenner, PhD, professor and Roy J. Carver Chair of Biochemistry at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in collaboration with colleagues at Queens University Belfast and ChromaDex Corp. (NASDAQ: CDXC), which supplied the NR used in the trial. Brenner is a consultant for ChromaDex. He also is co-founder and Chief Scientific Adviser of ProHealthspan, which sells NR supplements under the trade name Tru NIAGEN®.   The human trial involved six men and six women, all healthy. Each participant received single oral doses of 100 mg, 300 mg, or 1,000 mg of NR in a different sequence with a seven-day gap between doses. After each dose, blood and urine samples were collected and analyzed by Brenner's lab to measure various NAD+ metabolites in a process called metabolomics. The trial showed that the NR vitamin increased NAD+ metabolism by amounts directly related to the dose, and there were no serious side effects with any of the doses.   "This trial shows that oral NR safely boosts human NAD+ metabolism," Brenner says. "We are excited because everything we are learning from animal systems indicates that the effectiveness of NR depends on preserving and/or boosting NAD+ and related compounds in the face of metabolic stresses. Because the levels of supplementation in mice that produce beneficial effects are achievable in people, it appears than health benefits of NR will be translatable to humans safely."   The next step will be to study the effect of longer duration NR supplementation on NAD+ metabolism in healthy adults, but Brenner also has plans to test the effects of NR in people with diseases and health conditions, including elevated cholesterol, obesity and diabetes, and people at risk for chemotherapeutic peripheral neuropathy.   Prior to the formal clinical trial, Brenner conducted a pilot human study -- on himself. In 2004, he had discovered that NR is a natural product found in milk and that there is pathway to convert NR to NAD+ in people. More than a decade of research on NR metabolic pathways and health effects in mice and rats had convinced him that NR supplementation had real promise to improve human health and wellness. After consulting with UI's institutional review board, he conducted an experiment in which he took 1 gram of NR once a day for seven days, and his team analyzed blood and urine samples using mass spectrometry. The experiment showed that Brenner's blood NAD+ increased by about 2.7 times. In addition, though he reported immediate sensitivity to flushing with the related compound niacin, he did not experience any side effects taking NR.   The biggest surprise from his metabolomic analysis was an increase in a metabolite called NAAD, which was multiplied by 45 times, from trace levels to amounts in the micromolar range that were easily detectable.   "While this was unexpected, I thought it might be useful," Brenner says. "NAD+ is an abundant metabolite and it is sometimes hard to see the needle move on levels of abundant metabolites. But when you can look at a low-abundance metabolite that goes from undetectable to easily detectable, there is a great signal to noise ratio, meaning that NAAD levels could be a useful biomarker for tracking increases in NAD+ in human trials."   Brenner notes this was a case of bidirectional translational science; having learned something from the initial human experiment, his team was able to return to laboratory mice to explore the unexpected NAAD finding in more detail.   Brenner's mouse study showed that NAAD is formed from NR and confirmed that NAAD levels are a strong biomarker for increased NAD+ metabolism. The experiments also revealed more detail about NAD+ metabolic pathways.   In particular, the researchers compared the ability of all three NAD+ precursor vitamins -- NR, niacin, and nicotinamide -- to boost NAD+ metabolism and stimulate the activity of certain enzymes, which have been linked to longevity and healthbenefits. The study showed for the first time that oral NR is superior to nicotinamide, which is better than niacin in terms of the total amount of NAD+ produced at an equivalent dose. NR was also the best of the three in stimulating the activity of sirtuin enzymes. However, in this case, NR was the best at stimulating sirtuin-like activities, followed by niacin, followed by nicotinamide.   The information from the mouse study subsequently helped Brenner's team design the formal clinical trial. In addition to showing that NR boosts NAD+ in humans without adverse effects, the trial confirmed that NAAD is a highly sensitive biomarker of NAD+ supplementation in people.   "Now that we have demonstrated safety in this small clinical trial, we are in a position to find out if the health benefits that we have seen in animals can be reproduced in people," says Brenner, who also is co-director of the Obesity Research and Education Initiative, professor of internal medicine, and a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center at the UI.   Protecting the ozone layer is delivering vast health benefits Montreal Protocol will spare Americans from 443 million skin cancer cases National Center for Atmospheric Research, October 7, 2021 An international agreement to protect the ozone layer is expected to prevent 443 million cases of skin cancer and 63 million cataract cases for people born in the United States through the end of this century, according to new research. The research team, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), ICF Consulting, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), focused on the far-reaching impacts of a landmark 1987 treaty known as the Montreal Protocol and later amendments that substantially strengthened it. The agreement phased out the use of chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that destroy ozone in the stratosphere. Stratospheric ozone shields the planet from harmful levels of the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation, protecting life on Earth. To measure the long-term effects of the Montreal Protocol, the scientists developed a computer modeling approach that enabled them to look to both the past and the future by simulating the treaty's impact on Americans born between 1890 and 2100. The modeling revealed the treaty's effect on stratospheric ozone, the associated reductions in ultraviolet radiation, and the resulting health benefits.  In addition to the number of skin cancer and cataract cases that were avoided, the study also showed that the treaty, as most recently amended, will prevent approximately 2.3 million skin cancer deaths in the U.S. “It's very encouraging,” said NCAR scientist Julia Lee-Taylor, a co-author of the study. “It shows that, given the will, the nations of the world can come together to solve global environmental problems.” The study, funded by the EPA, was published in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Mounting concerns over the ozone layer Scientists in the 1970s began highlighting the threat to the ozone layer when they found that CFCs, used as refrigerants and in other applications, release chlorine atoms in the stratosphere that set off chemical reactions that destroy ozone. Concerns mounted the following decade with the discovery of an Antarctic ozone hole. The loss of stratospheric ozone would be catastrophic, as high levels of UV radiation have been linked to certain types of skin cancer, cataracts, and immunological disorders. The ozone layer also protects terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, as well as agriculture. Policy makers responded to the threat with the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, in which nations agreed to curtail the use of certain ozone-destroying substances. Subsequent amendments strengthened the treaty by expanding the list of ozone-destroying substances (such as halons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons, or HCFCs) and accelerating the timeline for phasing out their use. The amendments were based on Input from the scientific community, including a number of NCAR scientists, that were summarized in quadrennial Ozone Assessment reports. To quantify the impacts of the treaty, the research team built a model known as the Atmospheric and Health Effects Framework. This model, which draws on various data sources about ozone, public health, and population demographics, consists of five computational steps. These simulate past and future emissions of ozone-destroying substances, the impacts of those substances on stratospheric ozone, the resulting changes in ground-level UV radiation, the U.S. population's exposure to UV radiation, and the incidence and mortality of health effects resulting from the exposure. The results showed UV radiation levels returning to 1980 levels by the mid-2040s under the amended treaty. In contrast, UV levels would have continued to increase throughout this century if the treaty had not been amended, and they would have soared far higher without any treaty at all.  Even with the amendments, the simulations show excess cases of cataracts and various types of skin cancer beginning to occur with the onset of ozone depletion and peaking decades later as the population exposed to the highest UV levels ages. Those born between 1900 and 2040 experience heightened cases of skin cancer and cataracts, with the worst health outcomes affecting those born between about 1950 and 2000. However, the health impacts would have been far more severe without the treaty, with cases of skin cancer and cataracts rising at an increasingly rapid rate through the century.  “We peeled away from disaster,” Lee-Taylor said. “What is eye popping is what would have happened by the end of this century if not for the Montreal Protocol. By 2080, the amount of UV has tripled. After that, our calculations for the health impacts start to break down because we're getting so far into conditions that have never been seen before.” The research team also found that more than half the treaty's health benefits could be traced to the later amendments rather than the original 1987 Montreal Protocol. Overall, the treaty prevented more than 99% of potential health impacts that would have otherwise occurred from ozone destruction. This showed the importance of the treaty's flexibility in adjusting to evolving scientific knowledge, the authors said. The researchers focused on the U.S. because of ready access to health data and population projections. Lee-Taylor said that the specific health outcomes in other countries may vary, but the overall trends would be similar. “The treaty had broad global benefits,” she said.     What is Boron? The trace mineral boron provides profound anti-cancer effects, in addition to maintaining stronger bones. Life Extension, September 2021 Boron is a trace mineral found in the earth's crust and in water. Its importance in human health has been underestimated. Boron has been shown to have actions against specific types of malignancies, such as: Cervical cancer: The country Turkey has an extremely low incidence of cervical cancer, and scientists partially attribute this to its boron-rich soil.1 When comparing women who live in boron-rich regions versus boron-poor regions of Turkey, not a single woman living in the boron-rich regions had any indication of cervical cancer.2(The mean dietary intake of boron for women in this group was 8.41 mg/day.)  Boron interferes with the life cycle of the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is a contributing factor in approximately 95% of all cervical cancers.1  Considering that HPV viruses are increasingly implicated in head and neck cancers,3,4 supplementation with this ultra-low-cost mineral could have significant benefits in protecting against this malignancy that is increasing in prevalence. Lung cancer: A study conducted at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center between 1995 and 2005 found that increased boron intake was associated with a lower risk of lung cancer in postmenopausal women who were taking hormone replacement therapy. Prostate cancer: Studies point to boron's ability to inhibit the growth and spread of prostate cancer cells.  In one study, when mice were exposed to boric acid, their tumors shrank by as much as 38%.6 One analysis found that increased dietary boron intake was associated with a decreased risk of prostate cancer.7 Several human and animal studies have confirmed the important connection between boron and bone health. Boron prevents calcium loss,8 while also alleviating the bone problems associated with magnesium and vitamin D deficiency.9 All of these nutrients help maintain bone density. A study in female rats revealed the harmful effects a deficiency in boron has on bones, including:10 Decreased bone volume fraction, a measure of bone strength, Decreased thickness of the bone's spongy inner layer, and Decreased maximum force needed to break the femur. And in a study of post-menopausal women, supplementation with3 mg of boron per day prevented calcium loss and bone demineralization by reducing urinary excretion of both calcium and magnesium.8 In addition to its bone and anti-cancer benefits, there are nine additional reasons boron is an important trace mineral vital for health and longevity. It has been shown to:1 Greatly improve wound healing, Beneficially impact the body's use of estrogen, testosterone, and vitamin D, Boost magnesium absorption, Reduce levels of inflammatory biomarkers, such as high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), Raise levels of antioxidant enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase, and glutathione peroxidase, Protect against pesticide-induced oxidative stress and heavy-metal toxicity, Improve the brain's electrical activity, which may explain its benefits for cognitive performance, and short-term memory in the elderly, Influence the formation and activity of key biomolecules, such as S-adenosyl methionine (SAM-e) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), and Potentially help ameliorate the adverse effects of traditional chemotherapeutic agents. Because the amount of boron varies in the soil, based on geographical location, obtaining enough boron through diet alone can be difficult. Supplementing with low-cost boron is an effective way to maintain adequate levels of this overlooked micronutrient.

In this episode, Rohin and Jess are joined by David Meshoulam, co-founder of Boston's Speak for the Trees, and Daniel Zietlow, education designer at NCAR Education and Outreach. This episode, we talk all about community engagement and how to know if you're reaching your target audience. We learn about the challenges and rewards of working directly with the community and debate, "is everyone a scientist?"Links to Share:From Daniel - Provare Media: https://www.provaremedia.com/NCAR: https://ncar.ucar.edu/what-we-offer/education-outreachFrom David -Speak for the Trees Boston: https://treeboston.org/

A scientist from NCAR contributed to a new U.N. report on climate change. She explains what it means for the western United States. Then, with classes starting, schools are still scrambling to hire teachers. And, seven musicians incarcerated in Colorado are releasing an album. Plus, the Imagine Project to help kids with anxiety.

A scientist from NCAR contributed to a new U.N. report on climate change. She explains what it means for the western United States. Then, with classes starting, schools are still scrambling to hire teachers. And, seven musicians incarcerated in Colorado are releasing an album. Plus, the Imagine Project to help kids with anxiety.

In developing news, researchers at NCAR and elsewhere are troubled about recent solar activity.Solar Cycle 25 was expected to be calm, but so far it has not been, with an X 1.5-class solar flare recorded on July 3rd.A now deleted NOAA post, which still appears up on the Space Weather Prediction System's Twitter feed, identified six distinct new spots on the side of the Sun facing Earth.Although experts say large solar flares would pose little risk to humans on Earth, they could damage space stations and craft in orbit, and could also disrupt GPS signals, satellite networks, radio signals and other technologies.Get our new book: https://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Bitcoin-Ether/dp/B08Z4CNTVN/ Earlier: https://www.fulcrumnews.com/blog/2021/7/24/solar-cycle-25-may-be-the-strongest-since-scientific-recordkeeping-of-the-suns-activity-began-ruh-roh

Christine Shields is an Associate Scientist in the Climate Change Research Section at NCAR with expertise in simulating Earth's past, present, and future climate with the Community Earth System Model. Christine's focus is toward understanding Earth's hydrological cycle in the context of climate change, with particular emphasis on atmospheric rivers (ARs), monsoons, moisture transport, cyclones, and weather extremes. Christine's research spans much of Earth history, including simulations of Deep Time (millions of years ago), lead by Dr. Jeffrey Kiehl. In this episode of Women In Environmental Science, we learn about climate change exacerbating multiple factors that influence natural disasters. We also learn about how climate models work and how we can look at the past to understand the future. Listen more to dive into an adventure of the present, past, and future and how humans can influence the Earth in ways we CAN imagine.

Where does creativity live in the brain, and why does it matter? We talk to Rex Jung, a clinical professor of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico, a research scientist at the Mind Research Network, and a practicing clinical neuropsychologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jung talks about how standard measurements of creativity correlate with the structure of the brain, and how the brain can “rewire” itself to take on challenging or unfamiliar tasks. This is especially important in our early years, but still effective as we grow older. TRANSCRIPT: Intro: 0:02 Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace. Richard Miles: 0:40 Where does creativity live in the brain and why does it matter? Welcome to Radio Cade. I’m your host Richard Miles today, I’m talking to Rex Jung, a clinical professor of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico, a research scientist at the Mind Research Network and a practicing clinical neuropsychologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Jung studies, both brain disease and what the brain does well, a field of research known as positive neuroscience. Welcome to Radio Cade , Rex . Rex Jung: 1:09 Thanks for having me. Richard Miles: 1:10 So you have done a lot of fascinating research and a lot of very interesting areas, including traumatic brain injury, lupus, schizophrenia, intelligence, and creativity. So Rex, we can either make this the first of 18 episodes on your work, or we can pick one. So I say, let’s talk about creativity if that’s okay with you. Rex Jung: 1:27 Sounds good. Richard Miles: 1:29 So I took a look at some of your recent research on creativity. And one thing that jumped out to me as a layman, I don’t have any special expertise in the background was your use of tests to determine baseline levels of creativity. I noticed that you mentioned something called the creative achievement questionnaire, and you also use something called a musical creativity questionnaire. So we can start with what your working definition of creativity is, which I assume these things measure these tests measure, and then tell us, how were those tests developed? How do you know they’re accurate? And then how do they differ from other tests that have been around for instance, to test on divergent thinking? Rex Jung: 2:07 So at the onset, I should say that as a neuropsychologist, I’m very keenly aware of test reliability and validity. And the tests in creative cognition are universally somewhat crappy. That’s not a technical term, but it is a term that kind of captures the fact that we’ve only been trying to capture this construct in the last 50, 70 years, and only really aggressively trying to study this in the last 10 or 15. So we inherited measures that came to us from the past and the creative achievement questionnaire, as you mentioned, first is perhaps one of the better of these that it just measures your achievements in 10 different domains. It was a test created by Dr. Carson at Harvard, I believe and it really quantifies or attempts to quantify creative cognition across things from most generally in the sciences and the arts more specifically in things like inventions versus culinary arts. So it really quantifies things across those domains to answer a different part of your question. The definition is not one of mine of creativity, but one inherited from Dr. Stein in the 1950s who defined creativity as the production of something novel and useful. And that dichotomy is really interesting looking at novelty on the one hand utility on the other. And there arises from that brain mechanisms that could tap novelty versus utility. And finally you’re mentioned of divergent thinking is one of the measures of novelty generation that has been used since the 1950s. And that is okay, but not the only measure I’m hopeful as we move forward in this field, that we can develop better metrics and measures of creative cognition. Richard Miles: 4:06 Well, that helps a lot Rex and creativity on one hand, it’s very popular in that people like to talk about creativity in terms of musicians and artists and what makes them tick. But it seems like there are also a lot of fairly common misconceptions about how creativity actually works in the brain like, Oh, well, creative people, they’re using their right brain and it’s uncreative people using their left brain and that sort of stuff. How definitively does the research show that those conceptions misconceptions are either serious or inaccurate or flat out wrong? The way it works in the brain for most people sort of a black box, right? They just think something happens in there . Some of us are creative, some are not. What does the research show in terms of how it actually is working neurologically? Rex Jung: 4:49 I’ll correct a misconception that just arose in your description of that. Some of us are creative and some of us are not. I think, in my research and did my hypothesizing about creativity. It is clear to me and research our research and other research supports this, that creativity is a type of problem solving. And so everyone has to have that at some level. It’s either more or less of it. And if creativity is a type of problem solving for very low incident problems, it is valuable in the fact that we are able to think outside the box and come up with something novel and useful, that would address problem. That is less prevalent in our day-to-day life. I like to think about creativity as being somewhat dichotomous, but overlapping with a construct of intelligence where it’s also a type of problem solving, but it’s problem solving for things that happen on a more regular basis, as opposed to once in a hundred years with a hundred year flood, for example, what am I going to do? My house is going to be underwater. I need to figure out something really novel and useful to get out of this particular. So there are a number of what we call neuro mythologies about creativity. And you mentioned one of them that creativity resides in the right brain or right hemisphere. This arises from work with neurosurgeon theory, I believe, and a neuroscientist who looked at patients that had epilepsy and they separate the corpus callosum, which is the central connecting structures between the left and right hemisphere. And they discovered that the left and right brains function somewhat differently. The left is more logical and linear and reading and math tend to be localized in that have a hemisphere. And then the right hemisphere is more synthetic and adaptive and some artistic capabilities might reside more over there. So that is where this neural mythology of left brain right brain or right brain locus of creativity emerged from our research has found that, and others have found that it takes nearly your whole brain to be effectively creative. And it doesn’t reside in one hemisphere or one lobe of the brain, but it’s an integration of different parts of the brain that are critical to creative success. Another myth is that you have to be extremely intelligent to be creative. A genius, Einstein and Newton, Picasso, and Michael Jordan are particular examples of genius in their particular domains. But as I tried to dispel the myth that you somewhat articulated earlier, everyone has creative capacity. It’s, it’s a matter of more or less than how you use it, what domain you use it, but creativity in my conceptualization is a critical problem solving capacity. Another myth is that you have to be kind of crazy to be creative, that there has to be some sort of neuro pathology in order to express creativity. And , and we have every number of examples of the mad genius from Vincent van Gogh to John Nash, who won the Nobel prize in economics. The movie A Beautiful Mind was formed after there is an equal number and greater number of the averse that no hint of neuropathology is associated with the creativity of Michelangelo or Edison. So these neuro myths prevail because we continue to view creativity as somehow elusive and a capacity that is given to us from the gods when actually it is a critical component of everyday thinking. Richard Miles: 8:26 So a lot of progress has been made generally in the field of neuroscience, particularly since the development of the functional MRI. What in particular strikes you say from the last couple of years in the field of creativity in neuroscience, that you’re excited about, that points to deeper or higher levels of understanding of how creativity operates in the brain, this sort of stuff that hasn’t made it yet into the popularized science articles. Rex Jung: 8:49 I’m most excited, perhaps about this studies of interplay between intelligence and creativity. There have been issues in neuro-psychology and one coming out in the journal of intelligence, which explore the interplay or overlap between intelligence and creativity, because my hypothesis is centered around these both being problem solving capacities. It’s important to understand where there’s overlap and where there is different . So I’m most excited about neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies, which look at brain networks that underlie intelligent problem solving as opposed to, or in addition to brain networks that are involved in creative problem solving. And I think that will really give us some insight into whether these problem solving capacities are rather similar. If one is hierarchically located above the other, like intelligence is very important and creativity comes from intelligence, or if they’re rather disparate or different from each other. I think that is exciting research. Richard Miles: 9:52 I’m guessing that a lot of people are looking at research or your type of research that you’re doing and seeing, does this have useful implication for, for instance, educators in particular at the preschool and primary school levels, or what are your preliminary conclusions or findings in terms of, are there ways that kids learn that perhaps should be changed with an eye towards enhancing their ability to learn more creatively or be more creative? Rex Jung: 10:17 I do have some preliminary ideas about this. It is very hard to translate neuroscientific research to actual life, but I think that there are some preliminary indications that there are things that we might consider doing differently. One thing that I usually recommend is adequate time for downtime that lets your brain meander or cogitate or think about ideas in a very non-linear way. And so the best example I have for this is for my own life where I think one of the most valuable classes for me in elementary school was recess. And so recess, what is it just play or is there something else going on? And I think there’s something very important going on where people are taking the knowledge that they’ve learned in the classroom in their life and being more playful with it and more nonlinear with it. And so that downtime, I think is incredibly important. I know caring stories from the students and teachers, our pre COVID educational paradigm was centered around a lot of homework and a lot of knowledge acquisition, which is an important aspect of creativity and intelligence and learning, but not the only one. There has to be time to put ideas together in novel and useful ways that requires a different approach and requires a more relaxed approach than is provided by just drilling towards knowledge, acquisition and testing. Richard Miles: 11:52 So may be an example of actually where popular consumption gets it , right. When you think about these stories of the Eureka, you know, Archimedes in the bathtub where after a period of relaxation, or like you said, the mind wandering and meandering, they hit upon, or the circuits come together and they have this insight, but obviously based on knowledge, they already possessed, right? Most of the people have these insights are happen to be experts in the field. Rex Jung: 12:13 Yeah, you have to have some thing in your brain to put together in a novel and useful way. So there is a knowledge acquisition part that is critically important to gather the raw materials necessary to be creative. But then Archimedes is perhaps the best example of sitting in the bathtub and figuring out how you would measure the amount of gold and a crown and water dispersion and Eureka. I have it where you have figured out a way to measure something in a very non-intuitive way. And so that downtime, and oftentimes people describe this arising from taking a bath or a long walk or run or doing something that is very non-cognitive where ideas are jumbling around and merging in unique ways and even sleep where they can come up with an idea that otherwise would have been elusive. Richard Miles: 13:02 So one problem I face is that my wife has all of her creative ideas, right I’m about to go to sleep. And she wants to tell me about them. And then we’ve learned how to solve that problem. I say, no, tell me in the morning, because I can’t deal with your creative idea right now. Rex Jung: 13:15 It’s interesting because she is telling you those ideas right before she falls asleep. When her mind is in a very relaxed state, when the day’s tasks are behind her, frankly, a perfect time to explore those. But perhaps she should explore those on her own because there’s no one size fits all. Richard Miles: 13:35 Yeah. The unfair thing is she can tell me the idea and fall asleep and I solved the problem in my head and I can’t fall asleep. Rex Jung: 13:40 Yeah. You’ll take up that idea and really start working it and then not be able to go to sleep. So, and that’s an important thing to consider too, is that there are different creative styles and some people really want to offload if you will, those creative ideas before she falls asleep, but then other people really want to work them and form them and look at them from different angles. And that’s a creative process too, is to really be deliberative about that creative process. And there’s a major theories that talk about spontaneous versus more deliberate creativity. And it sounds like you and your wife are matched well and that you have complimentary styles, but she should perhaps write those down and then you can start working on them in the morning. Richard Miles: 14:26 Well , I was going to say that most of my creative thoughts used to happen when I’d go running and an idea would pop in my head, but it just occurred to me that for the last year or so, I listened to podcasts instead while I run and I actually don’t have as many creative ideas. Right. Cause my mind is distracted listening to the story or two people talk. Rex Jung: 14:42 It’s working on information. Yeah. And on your internal process. Richard Miles: 14:47 So Rex , one thing I think you can probably say about Americans in general is that there’s this tremendous thirst for anything related to self-improvement and self-health so in the realm of creativity, sometimes h ere versions of this, particularly people my age mid to late fifties, I know you can rewire your brain. You can teach yourself new things, you stave off dementia and so on. And again, I’m not asking you to speculate too much, but is there anything in your findings that provide ammunition for those who say, Hey, we can all rewire our brains, become Picasso, or is it more i n the direction of, sorry about a year or two old and s et i n your age. So just keep playing golf and watching reruns. Is there any way for those later in life, let’s say m iddle-aged and beyond, do they still have a significant ability to increase their level of creativity? Rex Jung: 15:32 Yeah. So I think neither of those things are true in their extreme. You can neither massively rewire your brain to be something that it has not developed to be over decades, nor is it hopeless on the other side of the spectrum. But I think some middle ground is probably appropriate. I mean, we know that the brain is incredibly plastic when we are infants and learning things and acquiring new information and forming neural networks that underlie language, visual process as motor processing that decreases over the lifespan and it decreases in known way is the capacity to change your brain by changing your mind. And while you can modulate your brain function through concerted effort, that becomes harder over time. So if you are making a decision to make a major change in your life in your fifties and you and I sound like we’re the same age, although you’re quite a bit less gray than I, I would say it’s going to take a bit more effort and a concerted effort to do that. And that while the fantasy or hype about neuro-plasticity would imply that we can completely change our brain by doing this different thing. That’s probably more a factor of one to 3% change in terms of cognitive capacity. So I would encourage people at any age. And I think as our brains change in our fifties and up there is more of an opportunity to make more disparate connections than we would when we were younger. And we had many more tasks in front of us. You were talking about listening to podcasts on your runs and yeah, that changes your run from a free-wheeling kind of associative process to a knowledge acquisition process. And it’s going to be significantly harder to do that creative thing when you are consuming the creative product of other people and learning. So it’s important to do both learning and creative expression simultaneously, but that has to be balanced. And in older people like you and me , I think that’s really critical to set aside time to do nothing or do less or not acquire knowledge anymore . But extrapolate that be my best advice. Richard Miles: 17:50 I’ve read a couple of good articles in the popular press . I’m sure you’ve probably seen them too. Hypothesizing the connection between boredom and creativity and particularly in young kids, right? When your bored is where you think of perhaps a fantasy game, or you tell a story to yourself or make up a story because you just want occupy your mind. But if your mind is occupied, as you said, with a TV show or a video game or whatnot, you’re probably less likely to find the need to create something in your own head . Rex Jung: 18:16 Yeah. Boredom is kind of the bane of our modern existence. People talk about it as a bad thing, but it actually is an important aspect of our lives that force us, or invite us to use our brains in ways that can transcend our current experience. We can imagine. I mean, I can go anywhere in my mind’s eye from countries that I visited in the past to traveling to different planets in the galaxy. I can imagine just about anything and boredom invites us to use our imaginative ability to create different realities and create different ideas that might not have existed before. Richard Miles: 18:57 So I guess I have to be careful how far I take this example because then of course people go, well, I’m not gonna listen to your podcast because then you’re going to distract me from thinking great thoughts . So we’ve got to keep this within reason. Rex Jung: 19:08 Well, it’s a both thing. Like I said, I listened to the podcast to acquire knowledge, but then find some recess time to do your own thing and to put those ideas that you’ve acquired together in novel and useful ways. And I think that is the correct balance as far as the literature would suggest. Richard Miles: 19:25 So Rex, I like to ask all my guests a little bit about themselves and their background. And you’re originally from Boulder, Colorado, your mother was a technical writer. Your dad was a hospital administrator. So first question, what was it like to grow up in Boulder? I’ve only been once or maybe twice. And what was your first clue that you’d be spending your career studying the brain? Rex Jung: 19:43 Well, that’s a big question, but I loved growing up in Boulder. Boulder was a fantastic rich environment of very diverse kind of experiences from Buddhism and the Naropa Institute high-tech centers of engineering and NCAR is their National Center for Atmospheric Research. I mean just a real smorgasbord, if you will, of opportunities to see different ways that one might want to spend one’s intellectual life. Unfortunately, I chose as my undergraduate degree. Well , I don’t know if it’s unfortunate. It’s hard to say I’d studied finance business and got a degree and went into the business world and was not super happy about the intellectual opportunities for me in the world that I had chosen. So I quit that job started volunteering for Special Olympics with friends of mine, and really became interested in bringing structure and function in brains that work well and brains that work differently and really started to pursue the path of, well , you know, what’s going on in these brains and what is happening to create an individual who is intellectually disabled, but has incredible artistic capabilities. And I’m not talking about the art that your children produce that you put up on the refrigerator, but Alonzo Clemons, who is an autistic savant, creating just massively, technically detailed representations of animals that will sell for thousands and thousands of dollars. These brains are fascinating in their variability. And I wanted to go into studies and a career that looked at that. And that’s kind of what brought me here all these many years later, Richard Miles: 21:29 Growing up in Colorado, where you outdoorsy, were you a ski bum? Did you do a lot of hiking or how has that sort of influenced you? Rex Jung: 21:35 I wasn’t in anything bum, but I really enjoy camping and going out on my own and camping on the continental divide in Colorado and did a lot of that. So a lot of time to think I would bring, I have this somewhat embarrassing book , uh , memory of bringing Dante’s Inferno to read while I was camping on the continental divide. And then this lightning storm almost killed me and I thought I was going to go straight to hell. So , uh , I mean really a lot of time to be by myself, to look at the stars to revel in natural beauty of Colorado. I skied, I hiked, I ran , I did all of the things, but I wasn’t a bum of any of those. I wasn’t an expert in really any of those, but I just really loved growing up in Colorado and a very fun memories. Now that I’ve brought to New Mexico, a lot of natural beauty here, fewer people, I’m an outdoors guy, I guess, at my root . Richard Miles: 22:31 Yeah. One thing we always tell foreign friends for visitors, you really have not experienced the United States unless you’ve had a chance to drive out West long distances for long periods of time. And then you really appreciate the profound nature of our country in terms of physical beauty and so on. Rex Jung: 22:46 I totally agree. And most people who visit us from foreign countries spend time in LA or New York, or maybe Florida at Disney World, but there’s a vast opportunity to explore something on a more meandering route through the middle parts of the country. And the West is certainly got a big place in my heart. Richard Miles: 23:04 So Rex final question that will allow you to be a little bit philosophical here, a lot philosophical if you’d like, but being a pioneer researcher sounds really cool to most people, but by definition people in your field or people like you are studying things that haven’t been studied very much and reaching conclusions that may seriously undermine conventional wisdom. So you’re at the age, as you said, where you start getting asked for advice by younger researchers or students or so on, and who may be in the process of picking a career or picking a field, what do you say about that subject or that potential obstacle? That there are a lot of fields now, which they’re going to probably encounter particularly research fields and kind of resistance or criticism of some sort. How do you prepare them for that? That it’s not just all pulling down awards and citations and accolades. Some of it can be serious resistance or criticism. Rex Jung: 23:53 It’s a very good point. And I can’t say that my journey has been peaches and cream throughout the way. I mean, I was told by my graduate advisor, I was studying intelligence at the time that that would destroy my career. I should stop that immediately and pick something more conventional. Otherwise I would not be a successful researcher. I’m glad I didn’t take that advice. It’s good advice. There’s two paths that I’ve seen in being a successful researcher. One is a very deliberate and somewhat obsessive path of just hammering out the details of a concept that has been discovered previously. This is called normal science. And I think a lot of good work comes out of that. And it depends on your personality style. If you’re a very conscientious and somewhat agreeable person, you will do very well in writing grant. After grant, after grant, that gets rejected until the one gets accepted and you can do very good work in that area, but you have to be extremely conscientious and extremely agreeable because it is a field that rewards conformity. There’s another path. And I think it’s the path that I’ve chosen. I may be deluding myself, but it is a path where you really identify what you feel passionate about and what you feel excited about studying. And these are more paradigm shifting ideas or revolutionary ideas from the Thomas Kuhn nomenclature. And it can be very rewarding, but it’s a less successful path. You will always have to fight against opposition and granting and funding agencies that are not willing to take risks. But if you have excitement and passionate about your work and less conscientiousness and agreeable is frankly, you can succeed. And I think I’ve had some measure of success in my career that has been rather unconventional. You should always have in your back pocket studying something conventionally . And you talked about my studies in traumatic brain injury and lupus and schizophrenia, but there should be some passionate involvement with these issues that allow you to go back and forth between your true passion and something that keeps you funded. So I think those are the two major paths for researchers. Neither of them are right or wrong. Both of them involve incredible amounts of work, but one involves something that you really get excited to wake up every day and do. And the other involves being extremely persistent over long periods of time. Richard Miles: 26:29 So your secret is to be unpleasant and annoying. Rex Jung: 26:34 I’m sticking with that. Your words, not mine. Richard Miles: 26:37 I’m sorry. I , I, that was a cheap shot. No, I was going to say Rex. So the way you described it, we interview a lot inventors and entrepreneurs on the show. And when we ask them, like, why did you stick with this idea or this business? And a lot of times they say a version of, you know, if I didn’t believe in it, it would be too hard at a certain point in their journey. They could objectively say or have said to them, this isn’t worth it. And so the number of said across different types of fields that, you know, it’s just resilience. It’s the ability to just hang in there and keep going is what explains my success. Now they’re all a bunch of other factors, obviously that contribute, but at that’s refusal to give up, but not be delusional about it, right? Rex Jung: 27:16 I started to have a trickle of success. And then I had a stream of success. And then I had a flood of success by identifying this area that hadn’t been explored before creative neuroscience and really starting to work the problem. And I felt really passionate about it and no NIH funding out there for that. There’s very little NSF funding. I found the Templeton Foundation, which was willing to fund this crazy idea that I had, and it yielded dozens of publications and other grants. And now a new generation is taking the mantle and really starting to explore the limits of creativity, neuroscience. And I couldn’t be more pleased with my stubbornness. Richard Miles: 27:57 Well, and it really points to the importance of seed funding, right? Again, you see similar parallels in the business world. If one person can manage to make significant progress, then they themselves might not reap all the rewards or the riches, but they have taken the knowledge or taken the research to another level so that other people can then capitalize on that. We had one of our inventors say, you know, the most important thing about a patent is not that you’re going to be able to cash in the patent and get rich, but you have added to the body of knowledge. So you’ve made things in a sense, easier for people coming after you because you’ve solved a piece of the puzzle and they can now use your research to maybe go on and carry that down the road. And once they put it like that, I go, yeah , that makes total sense. Because most researchers who get patents, don’t get rich. Rex Jung: 28:44 I have a patent, I’m not rich. Richard Miles: 28:46 There you go. But yet they know that they have solidly advanced their field of knowledge and that other people can use this in a constructive way, may use in a constructive way. Rex Jung: 28:54 It couldn’t be better said you really are carving out an idea space that you know, that you can’t solve yourself. And that will rely on others to take up the mantle . And I’m very happy in this field and both intelligence and creativity, that a number of people will become excited about this area of research and find it to be productive in terms of their grant applications and scholarly activity. And it’s enormously rewarding to know that I and other people was a part in starting this process. Richard Miles: 29:27 Well, Rex , it’s a great note to end on. And as I said, this is actually just part one of an 18 part series in the lifetimes of Rex Jung, really enjoyed having on the show. I hope we can have you back at some point, I learned a lot and I hope this was fun for you. Rex Jung: 29:39 It was great. Thank you for the opportunity. I really enjoy talking to you in this audience is particularly important with entrepreneurs and idea generators. I think it’s a perfect opportunity. Thanks. Richard Miles: 29:50 Thank you. Outro: 29:52 Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak. The radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist Jacob Lawson.

Northern white rhinos are extinct in the wild and there are just two females in captivity in Kenya. Conservationists are working on an artificial breeding programme, using eggs from the females and sperm from a deceased male. Now five embryos have been created. Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin explained the research. President Biden’s first executive order was what’s being called the hundred-day mask mandate. The day before the inauguration a massive analysis of mask-wearing and COVID rates demonstrated a clear, if small, benefit. Epidemiologist Ben Rader told Roland Pease that it got over 300,000 opinions by using the online questionnaire, SurveyMonkey. After the alarming series of record-breaking heatwaves last year, global warming is causing specific problems in the innumerable lakes around the world. Lakes are ecologically particularly vulnerable to extremes. The European Space Agency’s Yestyn Woolway has been analysing past trends, and modelling the future. 2020 delivered a record year in hurricanes, which caused around $60 billion dollars in damage to the US alone, according to one estimate. A new technology called Airborne Phased-Array Radar promises to improve the measurements that are currently made by planes that fly right into the eye of the hurricanes, and make the missions safe. It’s being developed at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research and Roland discussed the new technology with the Director of NCAR, Vanda Grubišić. And Covid-19 has prompted a cleaning frenzy. CrowdScience listener William works as a personal trainer in a gym, and while cleaning’s always been part of his job, it’s now taken over much of his working day. He’s constantly wiping down equipment and doing regular deep cleans, and he reckons he can sanitize his hands 40 times in one shift. This kind of routine might strike a chord with many of us, and it’s certainly vital to take hygiene seriously during times of pandemic. But could there be any downsides to all this extra cleaning? There’s a whole world of microbes out there: some, like SARS-CoV-2, make us sick, but others are essential for our health. A rich microbiome is linked to a healthy immune system, while ‘good’ microbes help keep ‘bad’ ones at bay. And what about the chemicals in cleaning products – do they have any unintended consequences for our health? CrowdScience turns to the experts to ask whether our supercharged hygiene routines could damage our immune systems, or promote the spread of superbugs. And we hear why, as long as we have a good diet, plenty of fresh air, and ideally a furry pet, we don’t need to worry too much about being too clean. (Image; Najin and Fatu, the only two remaining female northern white rhinos graze in their paddock. Credit: Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images)

Northern white rhinos are extinct in the wild and there are just two females in captivity in Kenya. Conservationists are working on an artificial breeding programme, using eggs from the females and sperm from a deceased male. Now five embryos have been created. Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin explained the research. President Biden’s first executive order was what’s being called the hundred-day mask mandate. The day before the inauguration a massive analysis of mask-wearing and COVID rates demonstrated a clear, if small, benefit. Epidemiologist Ben Rader told Roland Pease that it got over 300,000 opinions by using the online questionnaire, SurveyMonkey. After the alarming series of record-breaking heatwaves last year, global warming is causing specific problems in the innumerable lakes around the world. Lakes are ecologically particularly vulnerable to extremes. The European Space Agency’s Yestyn Woolway has been analysing past trends, and modelling the future. 2020 delivered a record year in hurricanes, which caused around $60 billion dollars in damage to the US alone, according to one estimate. A new technology called Airborne Phased-Array Radar promises to improve the measurements that are currently made by planes that fly right into the eye of the hurricanes, and make the missions safe. It’s being developed at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research and Roland discussed the new technology with the Director of NCAR, Vanda Grubišić. (Image; Najin and Fatu, the only two remaining female northern white rhinos graze in their paddock. Credit: Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images) Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Deborah Cohen

Dan is a scientist working at NCAR and his main interests span the fields of oceanography, biogeochemistry and computer science. Here he explains why biogeochemistry matters for projections of future climate change, and we have an interesting exchange on the effects of pollution on fisheries and sustainability. Finally, we talk about how we deal with negativity and rejection in academia and ways to feel better about them (it was actually a fun chat!). Check out Dan's work: https://danielwhitt.github.io/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-climate-academy/message

Business of Weather speaks to Dr. Tony Busalacchi, President of the the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), about atmospheric research, public health, and how we might extend the benefits of the Covid-19 lockdownThe University Corporation for Atmospheric Research – or UCAR for short – is a US non profit consortium of more than 115 North American colleges and universities focused on research and training in the atmospheric and related sciences.Since it's formation in 1958, it's aim has been to exchange ideas, discuss challenges, and share knowledge. Through co-operation with the private sector it takes research out of the lab and into the real world for the benefit of society.UCAR has a major presence in the community which embraces numerous areas ranging from encouraging diverse students to pursue science careers, to providing online professional training, data delivery, and other services.UCAR also manages the National Centre for Atmospheric Research – or NCAR – which it set up in partnership with the US National Science Foundation to address pressing scientific and societal needs involving the atmosphere and its interactions with the oceans, land, and the Sun – what is now called ‘Earth system science'.To get an inside view on UCAR, and how it is responding to the growing challenges of extreme weather & climate change, Business if Weather spoke to the UCAR President, Dr. Tony Busalacchi.Dr Busalacchi also gave his thoughts on the relationship between atmospheric research and public health, and how we might extend the benefits gained during the Covid-19 lockdown. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

2017 NCAR Tactile and Audio Tour (Apr. 22, 2020) Show Notes NCAR, or the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is a worldwide resource focused on earth system sciences. They have worked hard to make their public displays very accessible. Join hosts Nancy and Peter Torpey as they take a tour of a number of interactive … Continue reading 2017 NCAR Tactile and Audio Tour (Apr. 22, 2020) →

We fire up the show with introductions and a little snippiness on Dan’s part. Henry reports that the weather in Minnesota is nearly human.AI in ScienceJumping into our main topic, Shahin introduces an article from HPCwire interviewing Argonne’s Associate Laboratory Director Rick Stevens about how the DOE will be using AI in science. This is one of the biggest potential changes in our industry and well worth the investigation. But figuring out where AI fits into the traditional world of research and simulation is a difficult problem. Henry points out that nearly every grant proposal needs to include “AI” in order to get serious consideration.We discuss Dan's Great HPC Road Trip* of national labs in 2018 and how nearly every lab is looking at using AI to inform their simulations and cut down on the brute force computing they’re doing now. Dan’s national lab interviews are here: Idaho National Lab, NCAR, NREL, Los Alamos, Sandia, NERSC, Lawrence LivermoreThere’s also a slight tangent where Dan talks about driving hundreds of miles out of his way to mess with Henry’s Las Cruces lot and future home. This resulted in an epic short film “The Haunting of Henry House” which is stuck in bureaucratic  approval cycles according to Henry. RFHPC Hall of Fame?We also discuss the possibility of founding a Radio Free HPC Hall of Fame, but discarded it when we realized that no one would want to be in it.COVID-19As the conversation continues, Dan brings up an article that discusses how COVID-19 might affect processor foundry revenues and demand. We are, as a group, underwhelmed by the analysis. Henry notes that he has seen a significant increase in the price of laptops when shopping for a graduation gift for his nephew. Henry has reportedly seen an increase of around 20% in prices since February.Reasons Why No One Should Ever Be Online. Ever.Hackers have stolen and ransomed AMD’s GPU test files, a dastardly act, but not surprising to see. They’re looking for $100 million to give the files back, while AMD has downplayed their importance and value.Catch of the WeekHenry:  Another empty net week for our pal HenryShahin: How is the internet coping with all of the extra traffic caused by Covid19 isolation?Jessi:   For the first time in recorded history, Jessi’s net is empty….sad.SuperCatchDan:  has a SuperCatch! He does a promo of the inaugural episode of a new RadioFreeHPC segment. Suffice to say that RadioFreeHPC Studios has a brand new production of “Charles Babbage, His Life & Times,” a gripping radio drama that will engage your emotions from A-B.Listen in to hear the full conversation* Download the MP3 * Sign up for the insideHPC Newsletter* Follow us on Twitter * Subscribe on Spotify * Subscribe on Google Play * Subscribe on iTunes * RSS Feed * eMail us

Claudia Tebaldi (Climate Central & NCAR) gives a talk at the 6th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Conference on "Models and Decisions" (10-12 April, 2013) titled "Making sense of multiple climate models' projections". Abstract: In the last decade or so the climate change research community has adopted multi-model ensemble projections as the standard paradigm for the characterization of future climate changes. Why multiple models, and how we reconcile and synthesize -- or fail to -- their different projections, even under the same scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, will be the themes of my talk. Multi-model ensembles are fundamental to exploring an important source of uncertainty, that of model structural assumptions. Different models have different strength and weaknesses, and, how we use observations to diagnose those strengths and weaknesses, and then how we translate model performance in a measure of model reliability, are currently open research questions. The inter-dependencies among models, the existence of common errors and biases, are also a challenge to the interpretation of statistics from multi-model output. All this constitutes an interesting research field in the abstract, whose most current directions I will try to sketch in my talk, but is also critical to understand in the course of utilizing model output for practical purposes, to inform policy and decision making for adaptation and mitigation.

Joining us as our Guest WeatherBrain this week is a hydrologist in the Research Applications Lab at NCAR.  He has a background in hydrology, geology and computer science.  In graduate school, he found a happy marriage of these in hydrological modeling, remote sensing, and more recently atmospheric modeling.  Ethan Gutmann, welcome to WeatherBrains!

Should we worry about solar storms? Probably! How MUCH should we worry? We talk with a guy who knows: Scott McIntosh, Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research High Altitude Observatory.

This interview was made possible by BRIDGE, a new initiative at UMass focused on increasing the presence of early career underrepresented scientists and providing them with the opportunity to give department seminar talks. To learn more: https://blogs.umass.edu/bridge/ Join us as we talk with Doctora Rosimar Rios-Berrios originally from the mountains of Puerto Rico (Barranquitas), as she shares with us what she works on at NCAR. Motivated and intrigued by the hurricane weather that affected her home in Puerto Rico, Dra. Rosimar's work is dedicated to answering questions on hurricane intensification while bridging the knowledge gap by sharing this information with her community of Puerto Rico. Hear about her journey in academia and what lead her to starting a platform that would enable her to directly help her community during Hurricane Maria. https://www.facebook.com/rosimarriosberrios/ To learn more about Dra. Rosimar Rios-Berrios: https://rosimarwx.github.io/

Branch banking has truly evolved over the past few years examining the physical space, the technology and people skills for future success. This will impact the marketing and selling of all bank services. More emphasis has been placed on the redesign of the interior, and the recruiting, training/mentoring of new branch frontline teams to provide a wider range of services. In this second of three podcasts from the 10/5/2017 NJ Bank Marketing Association seminar, Cris Gunter, senior associate vice president with CallisonRTKL, is the presenter.  

Addison Snell and Michael Feldman discuss the high-tech industry's response to Trump's travel ban, NCAR's new five-petaflop supercomputer, and the poker triumph of AI.

This Week In HPC Episode 103 featuring Addison Snell and Michael Feldman. US Heats Up Supercomputing at NOAA and NCAR; HPC Budget Map Update.

Beth Bennett speaks with Claudia Tebaldi, a climate scientist at NCAR, about her work analyzing climate models to project climate change in the future. She addressed heat waves and local conditions and how these models can be used to make projections in these areas. Start time approx 5 min. Host: Beth Bennett Producer: Beth Bennett Engineer: Maeve Conran Additional contributions: Joel Parker Executive Producer: Susan Moran Listen to the show:

On today's show we offer three feature interviews, including a short opening interview. Alcohol and weight gain (starts at 3:34): Science journalist Jill Adams shares the latest science on the connection between alcohol and weight gain. The science is murky, as she states in her recent column in the Washington Post.   Climate Clues in Coral (starts at 9:02): Despite certain appearances and rumors to the contrary, global warming has not been on holiday for the past decade. But increases in temperature at the Earth’s surface have slowed down, prompting scientists to work hard to figure out why. It seems that a lot of heat that has been building up in our planet’s climate system due to greenhouse gas emissions has winded up deep in the Pacific Ocean. Why? Diane Thompson, a post-doctoral scientist at NCAR and lead author on a new study, discusses with HOE's Tom Yulsman how a sample of coral from a remote atoll in the tropical Pacific revealed some important answers. Tropic forests love CO2 (starts at 16:04) It’s been known for some time that tropical forests are not only rich in biodiversity, but they also absorb a lot of carbon dioxide that humans spew into the atmosphere.  But just how much greenhouse gases—namely CO2--these forests take up, say, compared with temperate and boreal forests, has been eluding researchers.  Britton Stephens, an atmospheric scientist at NCAR, discusses with HOE's Susan Moran a new study he co-authored. It suggests that tropical forests may be absorbing far more CO2 than many scientists had previously thought. Hosts: Susan Moran, Tom Yulsman Producer: Susan Moran Engineer: Shelley Schlender Executive Producer: Kendra Krueger

FrackingSENSE: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and What We Hope to Learn about Natural Gas Development. The Center of the American West, CU Continuing Education, Boulder County, and the AirWaterGas Research Network invite you to a new lecture series. Beginning on February 26th, on Tuesday nights through May, a speaker with substantial expertise on natural gas development will provide a measured, honest exploration of this controversial topic. Each presenter will be scrupulous about acknowledging areas of uncertainty (“What We Don’t Know”), and emphasizing open questions that require careful deliberation. Throughout the series, CU historian Patty Limerick will act as moderator. Recognizing that many members of the audience will hold strong opinions, we look forward to honest – and civil and respectful – discussions of a crucially important topic.

FrackingSENSE: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and What We Hope to Learn about Natural Gas Development. The Center of the American West, CU Continuing Education, Boulder County, and the AirWaterGas Research Network invite you to a new lecture series. Beginning on February 26th, on Tuesday nights through May, a speaker with substantial expertise on natural gas development will provide a measured, honest exploration of this controversial topic. Each presenter will be scrupulous about acknowledging areas of uncertainty (“What We Don’t Know”), and emphasizing open questions that require careful deliberation. Throughout the series, CU historian Patty Limerick will act as moderator. Recognizing that many members of the audience will hold strong opinions, we look forward to honest – and civil and respectful – discussions of a crucially important topic.

FrackingSENSE: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and What We Hope to Learn about Natural Gas Development. The Center of the American West, CU Continuing Education, Boulder County, and the AirWaterGas Research Network invite you to a new lecture series. Beginning on February 26th, on Tuesday nights through May, a speaker with substantial expertise on natural gas development will provide a measured, honest exploration of this controversial topic. Each presenter will be scrupulous about acknowledging areas of uncertainty (“What We Don’t Know”), and emphasizing open questions that require careful deliberation. Throughout the series, CU historian Patty Limerick will act as moderator. Recognizing that many members of the audience will hold strong opinions, we look forward to honest – and civil and respectful – discussions of a crucially important topic.

Feature #1: (start time: 06:03) On January 12, 2010, just over three years ago, a magnitude 7 earthquake shook Haiti, taking more than 200,000 lives and displacing an estimated 2 million. Still today, the International Organization for Migration estimates hundreds of thousands of people are without permanent homes, and in many ways Haiti seems no closer to rebuilding than it did three years ago.  Co-host Beth Bartel speaks to Haiti's first seismologists -- Roby Douilly and Steeve Symithe, both graduate students at Purdue University -- about the future of Haiti and a career in seismology there Feature #2: (start time: 15:42) You’ve probably heard by now that 2012 was the warmest ever in the U.S.  We’re not the only ones overheating. At the bottom of the world, over the last 50 years, West Antarctica has warmed more than scientists had thought. The implications are huge; an enormous ice sheet there  may be at risk of long-term collapse, which could cause sea levels to rise alarmingly.  Co-host Susan Moran speaks with Andrew Monaghan, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, here in Boulder. Dr. Monaghan co-authored the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Hosts: Susan Moran and Beth Bartel Producer: Susan Moran Engineer: Jim Pullen Executive Producer: Shelley Schlender

Larry Winter is the Deputy Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). In that role he assists with scientific leadership, provides administrative oversight, and helps formulate strategic goals, budgets, and programmatic priorities for the institution. Dr. Winter is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona. Before moving to NCAR, Dr. Winter was leader of three groups at Los Alamos National Laboratory. During 1997-1999 he led the Computer Research and Applications Group; from 1995-1997 he led the Geoanalysis Group; from 1990-1995 he led the Applied Mathematics and Statistics Team. Presented March 23, 2012.

This week's How On Earth offers two features: Co-host Susan Moran interviews Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor for The Atlantic magazine and author of the new book, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. Madrigal spins tales of the bicycle boom in the 1800s and how it paved the way for cars, ironically; of a time when gasoline emerged as a waste product of kerosene for lighting; and when crude oil was what you might call the environmentally sound alternative to oil from whales, which were nearly hunted to extinction.  Madrigal also pays tribute to Colorado's National Renewable Energy Lab and its deep history of spawning renewable energy and surviving budget cuts. And he honors green-tech (and fossil fuel) inventors and beacons of yesteryear, as he looks forward to what a greener future could be. In the second feature, Shelley Schlender interviews Warren Washington, a ground-breaking climate scientist at the National Center of Atmospheric Research in Boulder. He's a world leader in using computers to model climate.  Last year he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Obama. Dr. Washington's autobiography is  Odyssey in Climate Modeling, Global Warming, and Advising Five Presidents. Hosts: Susan Moran, Ted Burnham Producer: Susan Moran Engineer: Shelley Schlender

National Center for Atmospheric Research surface dye model predicting worse case scenario if surface oil makes into into a strong Loop Current. This helped incorrectly focus attention on surface waters.