Imagine what it would be like to be stuck in an area equivalent for humans to the size of an airplane seat for virtually your entire life.
#Can We Protect Against The next Moore Tornado? The scenes of devastation in Moore Okla. after a possibly 2-mile-wide tornado tore apart schools and homes on Monday (May 20) led to an inevitable question:
Could anything have been done to save buildings and lives? The answer according to tornado experts and building engineers is yes though there are roadblocks in the way.
Some are scientific because meteorologists have yet to fully grasp why tornadoes form when they form
and how to predict their paths. Others are economic: Building a tornado-proof building for example is already completely possible albeit very expensive.
There's no doubt we could engineer something that could withstand an EF4 or EF5 tornado said Darryl James a professor of mechanical engineering at Texas Tech University.
The question is who could afford it? Despite these challenges researchers are working to make sure future tornadoes wreak less destruction
whether that means getting a better grip on where tornadoes are likely to form and move or protecting property
and people once the tornadoes have arrived. Â Â Predicting twisters The Moore Okla. tornado touched down at 2: 56 p m. CDT (3: 56 p m. EDT) on May 20
and spent 40 minutes on the ground carving a 17-mile-long (27 kilometers) path of destruction through the Oklahoma city suburb.
The National Weather Service pegged the tornado as an EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale meaning winds reached more than 200 mph (322 km h).
) See images of the Moore tornado damage Tornados as strong as the one that ravaged Moore are relatively rare.
About 95 percent of tornadoes in the United states are EF2S or below according to the National Climatic Data center.
Only about 1 percent reach EF5 status. Predicting which storms will generate monster tornadoes or any tornadoes at all remains a challenge.
The basics of tornado formation are simple enough. When wind and humidity conditions are right thunderstorm systems can begin to rotate
and become what are called supercells. Supercells are marked by the presence of a mesocyclone a rotating updraft of air that can sometimes create a funnel cloud.
Exactly why this happens in some storms and not others is a key mystery. We're trying to be able to figure out why of two pretty much identical supercells one will generate a tornado
and one won't said Amy Mcgovern a computer scientist at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Mcgovern and her colleagues are among the researchers trying to improve tornado predictions.
Using supercomputer simulations she and her team are working to model tornadoes on a very fine scale tracking their movements to within 165 to 245 feet (50 to 75 meters).
On-the-ground observations can only take researchers so far Mcgovern said. Radar can't sense every component of the wind's movement for example.
or temperature to see whether and how each influences tornado formation. At the 165-to 245-foot level of precision building a stable realistic simulation is difficult.
The team has done similar work to predict airplane turbulence with great success so once the database of simulated storms is built using them to predict real-world weather should be said successful she.
when a tornado is bearing down. On Monday the National Weather Service office in Norman Okla. gave residents 16 minutes of warning before the tornado even formed based on radar indicators that the storm clouds were circulating in such a way that a tornado was likely.
That 16 minutes is 3 more minutes than the average tornado warning time of 13 minutes.
The actual time most residents had to seek shelter was been longer because it took the tornado time to reach them.)
Ultimately researchers want to get quicker. Mcgovern's work could help meteorologists look for clues in storms that make tornado conditions more likely.
The eventual goal said William Gallus a meteorologist at Iowa State university is warn-on-forecast.
In other words meteorologists would be able to forecast tornadoes and issue warnings rather than waiting to see rotation
Using tornado simulators Gallus and his colleagues are working on understanding how local topography affects the way a tornado might move
and strengthen. For example they've found that ridges cause tornadoes to deviate left as they climb up
and right as they descend. Narrow valleys can also funnel wind into tornadoes from a mile
or so away Gallus said causing damage far afield from the actual funnel cloud. 50 Amazing Tornado Facts Moore in particular has been hit by three violent tornadoes in less than 15 years:
One in 1999 one in 2003 and one on Monday. Most scientists see that as a coincidence
Statistically that should not happen for about a million years to have a violent tornado pass by the same spot three times
Gallus isn't the only researcher looking to get a hyper-local look at how tornadoes work.
Tornado protection Once a tornado is on its way though saving lives can be a matter of having a place to Go in Moore students at Plaza Towers Elementary huddled in interior hallways
and bathrooms but a direct hit by the tornado collapsed most of the building. Likewise homes in neighborhoods hit by the tornado were destroyed completely.
As of Wednesday the death toll stood at 24 10 of whom were children. Video:
War Zone Sad experience is teaching that some old tornado safety tricks aren't as effective as hoped particularly
when buildings aren't designed with tornado safety in mind. In Joplin Miss. a 2011 tornado killed 158 according to the National Weather Service (the city of Joplin pegs the death toll at 161.
Among the devastated buildings was a local high school and some of the spots disaster experts would normally suggest people go for shelter turned out to be among the most badly damaged there.
Building in tornado country Even in Tornado Alley buildings are designed to withstand only 90 mph (145 km h) straight-line winds said Partha Sarkar who studies wind engineering and aerodynamics at Iowa State university.
and doesn't take into account even the most common types of tornadoes. An EF1 tornado can sustain gusts of up to 110 mph (177 km h).
) What's more Sarkar said rotational tornado winds can put even stronger stresses on buildings than straight-line winds.
A 90-mph tornado can be much more damaging than a 90-mph straight gust.
The buildings are designed simply not to withstand that level of wind he told Livescience. The Deadliest Tornadoes in U s. History Designing a tornado-proof building is said expensive Sarkar.
You need reinforced masonry steel or composite materials instead of timber and enhanced connections between walls foundations and roofs
and that will certainly help to make them stand up to most medium-intensity tornadoes EF2S EF3S maybe Sarkar said.
Another option would be tornado shelters another feature frequently missing from Tornado Alley construction. The storm shelters today are designed for 250 mph (402 km h) wind speeds
and we feel that is higher than will ever be experienced at the ground level in a tornado said Ernst Kiesling a mechanical engineer at Texas Tech and the executive director of the National Storm Shelter Association.
Shelter from the storm Unfortunately cost prevents homeowners in even tornado-prone areas from installing these shelters.
And of course some homes can't be retrofitted mobile homes for example have no slab to fasten a shelter to.
In-ground shelters can be equally as elusive in mobile home parks. The landowner is typically not the homeowner
so who is going to make the investment to make a shelter in the mobile home park?
For Sarkar tornado-ready construction is a national issue. It's not going to go away he said.
During the war The british Royal air force developed a new type of radar technology that helped pilots shoot down German enemy planes at night according to Smithsonian Magazine.
But in order to keep the new technology a secret the government said carrots were behind the pilots'success. Advertisements during the war touted the benefits of carrots for nighttime vision including one that read Carrots keep you healthy
said study researcher E. Fuller Torrey a psychiatrist at Johns hopkins university Medical center in Chevy Chase Md.
(which are invisible to the human eye) according to the Earth Observatory of the National aeronautics and space administration (NASA).
And since the Industrial revolution the burning of fossil fuels like coal oil and gasoline have increased greatly the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere according to NASA's Earth Observatory.
CO2 methane nitrous oxide water vapor and ozone are among the most prevalent according to NASA. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCS) were used once commonly as refrigerants
A drop in solar activity for example is believed to have caused the Little Ice age a period of unusually colder climate that lasted from about 1650 to 1850 according to NASA.
And in 2011 Ukraine opened up the area to tourists who want to see firsthand the after-effects of the disaster.
and trafficked wolf pelts from Greece at Beijing's Capital International airport for example was a commendable act by China's General Administration of Customs.
With the global economic balance of power shifting eastward the rising purchasing power in East asia has made it a new destination for illegal ivory and other wildlife products.
Manufacturing industries and Beijing's 5 million-plus cars all contribute to the city's crippling air pollution
and area residents were forced to rely on fire trucks to deliver safe drinking water. More than half of China's surface water is polluted
While items like red meat liquor and automobiles were considered once forbidden luxuries more and more families are driving their car to a market to buy tenderloin beef 120-proof baijiu liquor and other consumer goods.
and its dependence on coal-burning are significant drivers of climate change Scientific American reports.
At the time Hansen was still the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New york. He retired from that position in April in part to pursue political and legal efforts on combating climate change.
Because stimuli throughout the day such as car headlights will set off a rooster's crow at any time it was also possible that increasing light was the trigger for the cock's crows.
Costa rica is also implementing a number of strategies to reduce emissions including converting solid waste to energy switching to cleaner fuels in cars trucks
and buses and promoting the use of biodigesters on thousands of small farms to generate energy from agricultural waste.
Lehner's most recent Op-Ed was Electric Vehicles Approach Popularity Tipping Point This Op-Ed was adapted from a post on the NRDC blog Switchboard.
however since they travel awkwardly on land and can't negotiate wooded areas. To make up for the relatively brief amount of time spent with kills in the grassland the big cats must kill more prey to get the same amount of meat said Elbroch who works for Panthera a conservation group dedicated to preserving big cats.
There is only one road in the area meaning much of his work had to be done on horseback and on foot.
Information gathered from the collars allowed Elbroch to know where the cougar had traveled and spent the night after
But according to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity which explains how gravity operates in the universe real-life time travel isn't just a vague fantasy.</
</p><p>Traveling forward in time is an uncontroversial possibility according to Einstein's theory. In fact physicists have been able to send tiny particles called muons which are similar to electrons forward in time by manipulating the gravity around them.
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/39159-time-travel-with-wormhole. html target=blank>Wormhole Is Best Bet for Time machine Astrophysicist Says</a p></p><p>Crocodiles
#Coolest Science Stories of the Week<p></p><p>NASA's next mission to...home?
Antimatter Might Just Fall Up</a p><p></p><p>Flies have tiny wings and even tinier brains yet they are capable of flying swiftly and agilely through even turbulent air.
How do they do it?</</p><p>And could we create a robot capable of doing the same?</
and his team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard university have created a robot the size of a penny that is capable of remote-controlled flight.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/29292-robotic-insects-controlled-flight. html target=blank>Fly-sized Robot Takes First Flight</a p><p
></p><p>NASA's newest rover won't be exploring another planet but will take a look at part of our own.
Named Grover (short for Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research) the rover will explore Greenland's ice sheets to better understand how they form
It was developed from 2010-2011 by teams of students in summer engineering boot camps at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland according to a release from NASA.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/29259-nasa-rover-explores-greenland. html target=blank>NASA Rover to Explore...
</p><p>Archaeologists announced today (Feb 4) that bones excavated from underneath a parking lot in Leicester beyond reasonable doubt belong to the medieval king.
A group of researchers has put a silkmoth in the driver's seat of a small two-wheeled robot to study how the insect tracks down smells.</
#Coolest Science Stories of the Week<p></p><p>Answers to old questions a clue to ancient Viking lore and the upside of being a psychopath all made our top stories this week.</
lore has suggested that the Vikings used special crystals to find their way under less than-sunny skies.
Though none of these so-called sunstones have ever been found at Viking archaeological sites a crystal uncovered in a British shipwreck could help prove they did indeed exist.</
The stone was discovered less than 3 feet (1 meter) from a pair of navigation dividers suggesting it may have been kept with the ship's other navigational tools according to the research team headed by scientists at the University of Rennes in France.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/27696-viking-sunstone-shipwreck. html target=blank>First Evidence of Viking-Like'Sunstone'Found</a p><p
Primitive life could have lived on ancient Mars NASA says.</</p><p>A sample of Mars drilled from a rock by NASA's Curiosity rover and then studied by onboard instruments shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes NASA officials announced today (March 12) in a statement and press conference.</
</p><p>Full Story:<<a href=http://www. livescience. com/27841-ancient-mars-microbes-curiosity-rover. html target=blank>Wow!
Ancient Mars Could Have supported Primitive Life NASA Says</a p><p></p><p>A newfound particle discovered at the world's largest atom smasher last year is indeed a Higgs boson the particle thought to explain how other
particles get their mass scientists reported today (March 14) at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference in Italy.</
and skeleton have been found underneath a parking lot in Scotland and researchers believe they might belong to a knight.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/27914-medieval-knight-tomb-found-in-parking-lot. html target=blank>Medieval Knight's Tomb Found Beneath Parking lot</a p><p></p
what is sported now China wings on their legs a new study of fossils suggests.</</p><p>Researchers found evidence of large leg feathers in 11 bird specimens from China's Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature.
The feathers suggest that early birds had four wings which may have played a role in the evolution of flight scientists report in a study published today (March 14) in the journal Science.</
</p><p>Full Story:<<a href=http://www. livescience. com/27898-early-birds-sported-4-wings. html target=blank>Early Birds Sported 4 Wings</a p><p></p
><p>A real-time look at plant sex in an environment simulating microgravity reveals that agriculture in space might face challenges.</
</p><p>The study also illuminates how gravity works on intercellular transport a crucial process for mating plants
Ancient Mars Could Have supported Primitive Life NASA Says</a p><p></p><p>A newly deciphered Egyptian text dating back almost 1200 years tells part of the crucifixion story of Jesus with apocryphal
SAN MATEO Calif. The word drone tends to conjure up images of planes that kill terrorists or of creepy surveillance tools.
But tiny drone airplanes made of foam may be more useful in rural environments one researcher says.
There the fliers could revolutionize agriculture reducing the need for pesticides and improving crop production. Because drones can fly cheaply at a low altitude they can get highly detailed images of cropland said Chris Anderson the CEO of 3d Robotics
Photos of Unmanned Aircraft Vast unknown The automation of farming has led to fewer farmers tending massive plots of land.
 Plane power Drones provide a potential solution to this problem because they can provide high-resolution images of crops are cheap to make
Anderson is developing tiny foam drone airplanes that fly using a $170 autopilot essentially a brain for the plane that works in any kind of automated vehicle.
That information allows the planes to stitch pictures together more accurately getting a better image of
and near-infrared images which could be captured in drone airplane imagery. More precise imagery could also allow farmers to target pesticides just to the plants that need them reducing how much ends up in the food supply Anderson said.
which traveled in packs were constantly moving sometimes quite frantically when being chased by predators and left a natural layer of fertilizer in the form of droppings.
The origin of flight is debated by many experts. In the oetrees down theory it is thought that small reptiles may have evolved flight from gliding behaviors.
In the oeground up hypothesis flight may have evolved from the ability of small Theropods to leap high to grasp prey.
Feathers probably evolved from early body coverings whose primary function at least at first was thermoregulation. At any rate it is clear that Avians were highly successful
and apparently flattened reeds and grass which he assumed had been made by the alien spacecraft (but
Many who favor an extraterrestrial explanation claim that aliens physically make the patterns themselves from spaceships;
others suggest that they do it using invisible energy beams from space saving them the trip down here.
The same thing is true with other explanations including alien spacecraft; the only things ever caught on camera making the circles are hoaxers.
Access to roads. Crop circles usually appear in fields that provide reasonably easy public access close to roads and highways.
They rarely appear in remote inaccessible areas. Because of this the patterns are noticed usually within a day or two of their creation by passing motorists.
There are many theories about what creates crop circles from aliens to mysterious vortices to wind patterns
The safety of the animal is important as well as the safety of our research teams said Frank van Manen a researcher with the USGS who leads the interagency team.
Because of these dumps the grizzlies started roaming for food in areas too close to the park's tourists leading to policies of euthanization and removal.
van Manen said naming one question the scientists are asking. This occurs when the growth of the population itself regulates its own size.
Van Manen's team completed surveys of the whitebark pine population finding a marked decrease (74 percent) in the number of trees in the past few years.
and more severe outbreaks van Manen said. It's unclear how greatly this is affecting the grizzly bears though.
or find other plants as a substitution van Manen said. The researcher's team has submitted a paper examining the body composition
While van Manen declined to give specifics about the results until they are published he said there are no major indications that body fat as a percentage of bear weight is declining This could with further study suggest that the food source isn't the explanation.
40 Freaky Frog Photos Shrinking range Charles darwin first discovered the frogs while traveling in Chile in 1834.
and gardening activities such as home repairs mowing/cutting the lawn and hedges car maintenance and gathering mushrooms or berries.
which suggested that housework alone may not be enough to make up for a trip to the gym.
The new offerings advertised prominently would make one think that a trip to the local burger joint is suddenly heart-healthy and waistline-friendly.
At Subway there are several low-fat cholesterol-free sandwiches now. But Agarwal added that sometimes
when trapped at airports or in a small city there can be very few options.
You could be hit by a bus struck by lightning or end up in the path of a rockslide.
If they make it past their younger years they're likely to keep trucking until as old as 80 years of age.
When confronted with a raging wildfire such as the Rim Fire now threatening California's Yosemite Valley the U s Forest Service has several weapons in its firefighting arsenal including ground crews who create firebreaks and aircraft that dump water
In 2002 a plane inadvertently dumped thousands of gallons of fire retardant into the Fall River in Oregon causing the immediate death of roughly 21000 trout whitefish
What we're interested in is trying to understand what the climate might be in relation to a fire event Phil van Mantgem a research ecologist with the U s. Geological Survey who led the research told Livescience.
but they were focused on the physical aspects Van Mantgem said. We were interested more in the biological context of this.
Van Mantgem's team studied the effects of controlled fires on trees because the information about these forests before and after these events is entered into an ecological database called FFI (FEAT/FIREMON Integrated).
 Jan Willem van Groenigen of Wageningen University in The netherlands and lead author on the Nature Climate Change article doesn't advocate exterminating earthworms. oeyou cannot say earthworms are good or bad.
Van Groenigen and other researchers from the first report have completed just a 750-day study
that a crazed maniacal group destroyed their environment by cutting down trees to transport gigantic statues said study co-author Carl Lipo an anthropologist at California State university Long beach.
That transport method would have required many people and led to deforestation and environmental ruin that would've caused the population to plummet.
Along the road to the platforms are moai whose bases curved so they couldn't stand upright
but instead would topple forward meaning the ones in transit would have to be modified once they reached the platform.
from this demonstration and assuming the ancient builders would have been somewhat of experts at their jobs Lipo suspects they would have moved the Rapa Nui statues about 0. 6 miles (1 kilometer) a day meaning transport would have taken about two weeks.
The combination of physics archaeological evidence satellite imagery of the roads and human feasibility makes their story compelling Terrell told Livescience.
when they were moved said Jo Anne Van Tilburg the director of the Easter Island Statues Project
Her research of 887 statues on Rapa Nui has found much more variation in this ratio even in statues found in transit to their ceremonial platforms.
In 1998 Van Tilburg and others from the Easter Island Statues Project used a similar replica to show that moving the statues horizontally along parallel logs could work as well.
I don't think you have to invent a very awkward difficult transport method Van Tilburg told Livescience.
What's more Rapa Nui's prepared roads were rough and uneven and the statues would have been moved over hilly terrain said Christopher Stevenson an archaeologist at Virginia Commonwealth University who was involved not in Lipo's study.
By contrast in the NOVA exercise it was like an airport runway Stevenson said. And the replica the team moved is on the small side for statues some
Since then park rangers have reduced the number of elephants killed in the reserve each year from 400 to 170
In one unsettling incident last June armed attackers descended on the park headquarters killing park rangers
One reason for this is that shark skin is composed of a special type of scale covered by riblets that reduce friction as the shark travels through the water.
Reduced friction means that water flows more rapidly across the surface making it difficult for microscopic hitchhikers to grab hold.
Panicked the goat ran through the neighborhood banging his head against doors in an effort to evade the cops scrambling after it according to the Daily mail. The police chased the goat into a parking lot across from Interfaith Medical center where the animal encountered Seydou Ndiaye a parking lot attendant and as luck would have it a former goat herder
and helped NYPD officers lift it into the back of a patrol car which took the goat to a local animal shelter reports WABC.
Just as human travelers often adopt the local cuisine wild monkeys learn to eat what those around them are eating new research finds.
at the Sagehen Creek Field Station near Truckee Calif. as well as the American River Ranger District of the Tahoe National Forest.
A fire is burning in the treated area of the American River Ranger District. Once the fire dies out the team will have a rare chance to see how the new technique worked in action Conway said.
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