Month: March 2021

Enlarge / Sensors, support electronics, and a transmitter are all encased in a pressure-proof shell. (credit: Michael Prior-Jones)

Through the GRACE satellite program, researchers have shown that Greenland’s ice sheet has been losing about 280 billion tons of ice each year—the equivalent of close to 1.5 million Olympic swimming pools. For glaciers like those in Greenland and Antarctica, most of this meltwater ends up in the ocean—with already noticeable consequences for rising sea levels.

Better predictions of future sea level rise will require us to understand what meltwater is doing inside—and especially underneath—glaciers. But to do this, researchers need to take measurements through a glacier. Earlier this month, electrical engineer and glaciologist Dr. Michael Prior-Jones and his collaborators in the UK, Switzerland, Denmark, and Canada published their redesigned version of a wireless subglacial probe—the Cryoegg—to help study the inner “plumbing” of glaciers.

Glacial obstacles

The meltwater flowing through and underneath glaciers can end up in small pockets, large lakes, or fast-moving rivers—each of which destabilizes the overlying glacier to different degrees. Subglacial lakes can cause entire sections of the glacier to shift. In contrast, subglacial rivers channel meltwater into a smaller area, causing comparatively less glacial movement.

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  By year's end, 99 of these electric Transit vans will be delivering packages for DHL Express in California and New York. [credit: Lighting eMotors ]

Electrifying commercial fleets of vehicles makes even more sense than trying to persuade individual private citizens to switch to electric vehicles. After all, if you convince your neighbor to buy an EV, that's one more EV on the road, but a single decision to electrify a commercial fleet can replace dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of internal combustion engine-powered vehicles.

Take DHL Express, for example. After a successful trial of nine electric Transit 350HD vans from Lightning eMotors, this week the courier company announced it will deploy another 89 electric vans to New York and California this year.

"We're aiming to improve the lives of people where they live and work, using clean pickup and delivery solutions—such as electric vehicles and cargo cycles—for our first- and last-mile services," said DHL Express US CEO Greg Hewitt. "With the successful deployment of the first nine pilot vehicles, we are excited to expand our electric delivery van footprint and continue to drive forward our corporate roadmap to decarbonization."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress in April 2018. It wasn't his only appearance in DC this decade. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress today, and he may have a few more uncomfortable questions to answer. Among them, why is Facebook autogenerating pages for white supremacist groups?

Researchers at the Tech Transparency Project found that Facebook created dozens of pages for groups like the “Universal Aryan Brotherhood Movement” when a user did something as simple as listing it as their employer. Some of the autogenerated pages garnered thousands of likes by the time they were discovered by researchers. TTP also discovered four Facebook groups that had been created by users. The researchers shared their findings with Facebook, which removed most of the pages. Yet, two of the autogenerated pages and all four Facebook groups remained active when the group published its findings.

Facebook reportedly banned “white nationalist” content following the 2019 mass shooting at a New Zealand mosque, expanding on an earlier ban of white supremacist content.