Our Mission to Planet Earth: A Guide to Teaching Earth System Science

This teaching guide provides hands-on activities and information related to studying the Earth system. Its primary goal is for children to become familiar with the concept of cycles and to learn that some human activities can cause changes in their environment. Educational levels: Primary elementary

Surface ocean-lower atmosphere study: Scientific synthesis and contribution to Earth system science

The domain of the surface ocean and lower atmosphere is a complex, highly dynamic component of the Earth system. Better understanding of the physics and biogeochemistry of the air-sea interface and the processes that control the exchange of mass and energy across that boundary define the scope of the Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) project. The scientific questions driving SOLAS research, as laid out in the SOLAS Science Plan and Implementation Strategy for the period 2004-2014, are highly challenging, inherently multidisciplinary and broad. During that decade, SOLAS has significantly advanced our knowledge. Discoveries related to the physics of exchange, global trace gas budgets and atmospheric chemistry, the CLAW hypothesis (named after its authors, Charlson, Lovelock, Andreae and Warren), and the influence of nutrients and ocean productivity on important biogeochemical cycles, have substantially changed our views of how the Earth system works and revealed knowledge gaps in our understanding. As such SOLAS has been instrumental in contributing to the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) mission of identification and assessment of risks posed to society and ecosystems by major changes in the Earth́s biological, chemical and physical cycles and processes during the Anthropocene epoch. SOLAS is a bottom-up organization, whose scientific priorities evolve in response to scientific developments and community needs, which has led to the launch of a new 10-year phase. SOLAS (2015–2025) will focus on five core science themes that will provide a scientific basis for understanding and projecting future environmental change and for developing tools to inform societal decision-making

Space, the new frontier

Space program - high thrust boosters with greater payload capabilities, superior guidance and control, and astronaut trainin

The Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory: Where ecology meets big data

Advances in computing power and infrastructure, increases in the number and size of ecological and environmental datasets, and the number and type of data collection methods, are revolutionizing the field of Ecology. To integrate these advances, virtual laboratories offer a unique tool to facilitate, expedite, and accelerate research into the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. We introduce the uniquely cloud-based Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory (BCCVL), which provides access to numerous species distribution modelling tools; a large and growing collection of biological, climate, and other environmental datasets; and a variety of experiment types to conduct research into the impact of climate change on biodiversity. Users can upload and share datasets, potentially increasing collaboration, cross-fertilisation of ideas, and innovation among the user community. Feedback confirms that the BCCVL's goals of lowering the technical requirements for species distribution modelling, and reducing time spent on such research, are being met

CERN openlab Whitepaper on Future IT Challenges in Scientific Research

This whitepaper describes the major IT challenges in scientific research at CERN and several other European and international research laboratories and projects. Each challenge is exemplified through a set of concrete use cases drawn from the requirements of large-scale scientific programs. The paper is based on contributions from many researchers and IT experts of the participating laboratories and also input from the existing CERN openlab industrial sponsors. The views expressed in this document are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the view of their organisations and/or affiliates

ISY Mission to Planet Earth Conference: A planning meeting for the International Space Year

A major theme was the opportunity offered by the International Space Year (ISY) to initiate a long-term program of Earth observation mission coordination and worldwide data standardization. The challenge is immense and extremely time critical. A recommendation was made to inventory the capabilities of Earth observing spacecraft scheduled during the next decade. The ISY effort to strengthen coordination and standardization should emphasize global issues, and also regional initiatives of particular relevance to developing nations. The concepts of a Global Information System Test (GIST) was accepted and applied to specific issues of immediate concern. The importance of ISY Earth observation initiatives extending beyond research to include immediate and direct applications for social and economic development was stressed. Several specific Mission to Planet Earth proposals were developed during the Conference. A mechanism was set up for coordinating participation of the national space agencies or equivalent bodies

Seafloor characterization using airborne hyperspectral co-registration procedures independent from attitude and positioning sensors

The advance of remote-sensing technology and data-storage capabilities has progressed in the last decade to commercial multi-sensor data collection. There is a constant need to characterize, quantify and monitor the coastal areas for habitat research and coastal management. In this paper, we present work on seafloor characterization that uses hyperspectral imagery (HSI). The HSI data allows the operator to extend seafloor characterization from multibeam backscatter towards land and thus creates a seamless ocean-to-land characterization of the littoral zone

A Better World? Cosmopolitan Struggles in Twenty-First Century Science Fiction Cinema

Esta tesis argumenta que, a principios del siglo XXI, el cine de ciencia ficción (cf) hacomenzado a mostrar un interés especial por las interacciones transnacionales y cuestionesrelacionadas con el cosmopolitismo. La tesis se centra en el modo en que películas recientesdel género utilizan temas y convenciones de la cf como las sociedades distópicas, desastresnaturales increíbles, escenarios apocalípticos, alienígenas, monstruos, viajes en el tiempo,teletransporte y habilidades sobrenaturales para abordar inquietudes cosmopolitas. El primercapítulo ofrece una perspectiva general sobre trabajos académicos relacionados con el cine deciencia ficción transnacional y teorías sobre el cosmopolitismo. El capítulo sugiere que unametodología cosmopolita basada en el análisis de las fronteras como lugares que canalizanconflictos de interés es particularmente apropiada para el análisis de la ciencia ficcióntransnacional. El capítulo número dos se centra en Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013) e InTime (Andrew Niccol, 2011), dos distopías sistémicas que enfatizan las desigualdadesradicales que genera el neoliberalismo global. A través de un análisis detallado de 2012(Roland Emmerich, 2009), el tercer capítulo demuestra que los desastres espectaculares y queaparentemente no tienen ningún sentido pueden contribuir a desarrollar una conciencia deplaneta eco-cosmopolita y a explorar la dimensión biopolítica del cambio climático. Elcapítulo cuatro considera los modos en que películas sobre romances entre humanos yalienígenas como The Host (Andrew Niccol, 2013) y Codependent Lesbian Space AlienSeeks Same (Madeleine Olnek, 2011) sugieren que el desarrollo de relaciones íntimas entreseres de diferentes planetas fomentan actitudes de apertura cosmopolita en sus sociedades. El último capítulo se acerca a la idea de las redes cosmopolitas a través del ejemplo de CloudAtlas (The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, 2012), una película coral que establece diversasconexiones espaciotemporales entre individuos. El capítulo se centra en cómo la películacuestiona diferentes versiones de la lógica de la colonialidad mediante conexiones entrepersonajes a través de varias fronteras nacionales y periodos históricos. Aunque estaspelículas parecen celebrar cambios cosmopolitas, la tesis sugiere que estos discursoscosmopolitas tienden a ser ambivalentes.<br /

Cloud animation

Clouds are animate forms, shifting and evanescent, mutable and always in movement. They have also long been a subject of imagery, especially painting, because paint, most notably watercolour, as John Constable knew, seeped into thick drawing papers much as a cloud seeped itself through the sky. The drama of clouds in the 20th century was seized by film and it is striking to note that many Hollywood Studio logos use clouds. Clouds from Constable to the Hollywood logos are Romantic clouds. They drift and float, produce ambience and mood, along with weather. But the cloud appears in the digital age too, in more ways than one. Clouds have been constituted digitally by commercial animation studios and used as main characters in cartoons; they are available in commercial applications, such as architecture and landscaping packages; they have been made and represented by art animators. This body of work, kitsch and dumb as some of it is, is treated in this article as emblematic of an age in which the digital cloud looms as a new substance. The cloud in the digital age is a source of form, like a 3D printer, a source of any imaginable form. As such it comes to be less a metaphor of something else and more a generator of a metaphor that is itself. Now we live alongside – and even inside - a huge cloud metaphor that is The Cloud. In what ways do the clouds in the sky speak across to the platform and matter that is called The Cloud? What is at work in the digitalising of clouds in animation, and the production of animation through the technologies of the Cloud? Are we witnessing the creation of a synthetic heaven into which all production has been relocated and the digital clouds make all the moves? Keywords Cloud, day-dreaming, dust, digital, metaphor, Romanticis