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For the last several years the U.S. Navy has been making plans to deploy Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFA), a new extended-range submarine-detection system that will create noise billions of times more intense than before in the world?s oceans. The National Marine Fisheries Service has proposed issuing a permit that would allow the Navy to proceed with LFA deployment and, in the process, to harass, injure, or even kill marine mammals while flooding the ocean with sound. The Navy wants to use LFA to deploy a global surveillance system to hunt for a new generation of silent enemy submarines. But marine scientists and environmentalists are fighting the proposal, saying it could prove lethal to whales and other marine mammals.
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The key to improving weather forecasts may lie in the discovery of atmospheric ?hot spots?– regions in which small changes in conditions magnify quickly into large changes in the weather.

Researchers from the University of Maryland have shown that not all chaos on a weather map is equal, and they?ve developed a technique for identifying regions they call chaos hot spots. These hot spots shift location on a regular basis and cover about 20 percent of the global map at any given time.

?This work has tremendous potential for improving both the accuracy of existing forecasts and for increasing the length of time into the future that the weather can be predicted accurately,? says math professor James Yorke, principle investigator for the research project. read more

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Comets and asteroids have been blamed for bringing life to Earth in the form of bacteria and wiping out the dinosaurs. Now scientists say they may also be responsible for sex.

The origin of sex remains one of biology?s greatest mysteries. Scientists can?t say exactly why we do it. Before sex, life seemed to manage fine with asexual reproduction. Researchers Claus Wilke and Chris Adami of Caltech and NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have used digital organisms to simulate life before sex and reveal a possible mechanism for the start of sex.
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An enormous dust storm is taking place on Mars, shrouding the planet in haze and raising the temperature of its atmosphere an amazing 54 degrees Fahrenheit. It?s the largest such storm in 25 years and still growing. The storm is so big that amateur astronomers using 8 to 10 inch telescopes can see it from Earth.
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