La Niña leaves on Thursday – El Niño could be coming

Changes are brewing in the equatorial Pacific, and they could profoundly affect weather across the U.S. and much of the globe next winter and spring.

La Nina, which has held sway since last fall, will be officially declared a goner Thursday, an official at the Climate Prediction Center in Maryland told InsideClimate News. And while nobody is quite certain what will happen next, some long-range forecast models are pointing to the possible emergence of the opposite phenomenon: El Nino.

Climate scientists are still trying to determine what role climate change plays in the La Nina/El Nino cycle. One study by scientists with NASA and the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle suggests global warming may already be affecting the intensity and impacts of El Nino.

Regardless of climate change’s role, a shift away from this year’s La Nina could dramatically alter temperature, precipitation and extreme-weather patterns.

…keep reading – Adios, La Nina. Hola, El Nino?

 

// Photo – Vinoth Chandar

America exports the magic of (billion-dollar) movies

When it comes to exports, America brings movies to the world. So which ones are having the biggest impact?

“The Avengers” is likely to stand with”Avatar,””Titanic”and iterations of “Harry Potter,” “Star Wars,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Lord of the Rings,””Toy Story” and”Transformers,” as one of a new breed of globally dominant film franchises.

via LA Times

These are the billion dollar movies with the highest worldwide gross. Comics, sci-fi, magic, history, pirates, animation, and fantasy.

Not bad compared to some elements of our culture we could be sending overseas. Of course, the main reason these are successful is largely due to their extensive action scenes which easily cross-over the language barrier

The latest movie having a huge impact overseas, “Avatar”, came in this weekend with $200.3 million in the United States and $151.5 internationally, for one-week total of $441.5 million.

 

// Photo – gtall1

College competition racing Baja off-road vehicles

A group of students in gray shirts file out of a cramped classroom onto the road. Shining flashlights to see through the darkness, they huddle around the frame of a short, black car.

One yanks on the pull start.

The engine roars to life, and the car takes off down the road, ready for competition.

The vehicle will race this week at the Baja Society of Automotive Engineers regional competition in Oregon. The competition challenges collegiate teams to design, build and race an off-road vehicle, testing the cars in categories such as maneuverability, acceleration and endurance.

***

Each car in the competition must be built using the same type of engine, but the design of other parts such as the gear box and transmissions are up to each team, said Dylan Aramburu, a second-year mechanical engineering student on the UCLA Team. This gives teams the opportunity to fabricate their own customized parts.

A lot of teams buy gearboxes to put in their cars, but UCLA’s Baja team makes its own from scratch, said Anthony Tyson, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student and one of the project leaders for the team.

…keep reading – UCLA Racing Baja team seeks off-road victory

Climate Change in California means heats waves…lots of them

In the past 60 years, California has experienced two heatwaves – in 1955 and 2006 – in which temperatures in its urban centers were greater than 37.8 degrees C (100 degrees F) for three or more consecutive days.

A new analysis prepared by other Scripps researchers indicates that by century’s end, those kinds of heatwaves will be the norm. Scripps climate researcher David Pierce said the new data will be assimilated into a major climate report scheduled for release in 2013.

“We’ll start getting these kinds of heatwaves more frequently by 2020 and by 2070, they’ll become common,” Pierce said.

…in all scenarios, not only do episodes of 100-degree-plus temperatures happen more frequently (several times a decade), but events in which temperatures top 100 for seven or more days begin happening at least once a decade by 2060 in all the models.

via Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Continue reading “Climate Change in California means heats waves…lots of them”

Google launches Student Search with lesson plans, live trainings, & daily challenges

Google has launched a free tutorial website, Search Education, which will help students learn how to better use Google Search for learning and academic research. The site is aimed at both at teachers and at individual users.

The company knows that while its many tools can be useful, not everyone understands how to use them. Student Education seeks to solve this by providing live training that anyone can access as well as lesson plans that teachers can use to teach their students about Google’s many services. There are even “A Google A Day” challenges that can be used to reinforce search skills in students.

Teachers will be pleased to find that the lessons plans are comprehensive. They include beginner, intermediate and advanced versions covering five different topics:

  • Picking the right search terms
  • Understanding search results
  • Narrowing a search to get the best results
  • Searching for evidence for research tasks
  • Evaluating credibility of sources

There are also ten challenges, each of which covers a specific academic topic (such as history, biology and even math).

via Make Use Of

 

 

// Thx – Ricardo Blanco

Marine Corps ordered to open certain ground combat billets to women

The Marine Corps wants “a few good men” and some women too:

Commandant Gen. James Amos this week ordered that certain jobs previously meant for men now be opened to women as well. In some cases, the change is meant as a test to help Amos make recommendations about a possible permanent shift.

Amos’ order comes as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has ordered all the services to no longer restrict women from certain jobs because those jobs are “co-located” with ground combat units. Women will continue to be prohibited from direct involvement in combat units and special operations units.

Panetta has called for all the services to report to him in six months about their efforts to pursue “gender-neutral physical standards”; how the experiment of assigning women to certain billets is working; and when more positions can be opened for women.

Among all the services, Panetta’s initiative is meant to open 14,325 job titles to women.

The Marine Corps, with its primary mission being direct ground combat, has 7% women in its ranks, the lowest of any service. The Army has 14%, Navy 16%, Air Force 19%, and Coast Guard 16%.

via LA Times

 

// Photo – DVIDSHUB

San Diego Surf Film Festival – May 11-13, 2012

The inaugural San Diego Surf Film Festival welcomes one and all to celebrate the passion that we all share for just being in the ocean.

Surfing and surf cinema alike have been developed by individuals with a deep passion for trying to capture and preserve the very special feeling of just being a surfer.

The inaugural San Diego Surf Film Festival at Bird’s Surf Shed, May 11-13, 2012.