Not a shot in the dark

Indiscriminate violence is unacceptable whether the perpetrator is insane, a police officer, a soldier, or anyone else. Shootings of innocents by deranged individuals have become common in the news. It is hard to know how much worse it has become compared to the past. The parameters keep changing and the statistics are usually about three years behind. How many victims do there have to be to make it a mass shooting? One is too many.

Volcano Watch: Volcano monitoring from space: InSAR time series success in Alaska

In a recent “Volcano Watch” article, we learned about a remote sensing technique known as InSAR. This method of using satellite radar signals to detect changes to the surface of the Earth has been very beneficial for the monitoring of active volcanoes, especially in remote locations where it is difficult to install ground-based geophysical sensors. One such place where InSAR recently proved instrumental in detecting deformation of a volcano previously considered inactive was in Southeast Alaska.

New AI reef conservation tool monitors, measures from space

A new coral reef conservation tool has been developed by University of Hawai‘i at Manoa researchers using cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology. By developing novel deep learning algorithms, coral ecologists in the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) are now able to identify and measure reef halos from space. The study was published recently in Remote Sensing of Environment.