tagged w/ Sandstorm
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A 900m high sandstorm has engulfed the US city of Phoenix for the second time in two weeks, cancelling flights and creating dangerous conditions for drivers.A 900m high sandstorm has engulfed the US city of Phoenix for the second time in two... more
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Massive dust storm kicks up potential for Valley Fever
PHOENIX- Valley hospitals are seeing a spike in emergency
room visits after the dust storm of the decade.
Tuesday's storm brought in a wall of dust a mile high
and up to 100 miles wide. That dust storm has left the
Desert Medical Center, says after the storm people poured
into the emergency room with breathing problems. "From this
big wind? Yes, there were a lot of asthma problems and
respiratory problems that they needed to come in and get
some extra help to get overMassive dust storm kicks up potential for Valley Fever
PHOENIX- Valley hospitals are... more
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A wall of dust moved through Phoenix, Arizona Tuesday night
(July 5, 2011), with sustained winds of around 60 miles per hour,
close to hurricane force, according to KNXV-TV in Phoenix.
At one point, wind gusts hit 81 mph in a Phoenix suburb.
commonly called a haboob – is a common sight in Phoenix,
but not like this wall, which Phoenix residents said was
and turned the normally sunny skies of Phoenix literally black.
long-time residents said they have never seen anything like this
hit the Arizona capital.A wall of dust moved through Phoenix, Arizona Tuesday night
(July 5, 2011), with... more
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Massive dust storm kicks up potential for Valley Fever
PHOENIX- Valley hospitals are seeing a spike in emergency
room visits after the dust storm of the decade.
Tuesday's storm brought in a wall of dust a mile high
and up to 100 miles wide. That dust storm has left the
Desert Medical Center, says after the storm people poured
into the emergency room with breathing problems. "From this
big wind? Yes, there were a lot of asthma problems and
respiratory problems that they needed to come in and get
some extra help to get over
more http://bit.ly/qlrxFz
A wall of dust moved through Phoenix, Arizona Tuesday night
(July 5, 2011), with sustained winds of around 60 miles per hour,
close to hurricane force, according to KNXV-TV in Phoenix.
At one point, wind gusts hit 81 mph in a Phoenix suburb.
commonly called a haboob – is a common sight in Phoenix,
but not like this wall, which Phoenix residents said was
and turned the normally sunny skies of Phoenix literally black.
long-time residents said they have never seen anything like this
hit the Arizona capital.Massive dust storm kicks up potential for Valley Fever
PHOENIX- Valley hospitals are... more
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13023556
A freak sandstorm that swept across a motorway in northern Germany caused a multiple pile-up, leaving eight people dead and dozens injured.
Sand and dirt were blown onto the four-lane A19 near Rostock, close to the Baltic Sea in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state, on Friday.
The pile-up involved 80 cars and three lorries, with 20 vehicles set ablaze.
A combination of recent dry weather, ploughing of fields and high winds was blamed for the accident.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13023556
A freak sandstorm that swept across... more
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Many of the systems studied by scientists evolve through time and space, like diseases spreading through a population, weather fronts rolling across a continent, and solar flares churning the atmosphere. A paper, part of a special series on what's termed "spatial computing," argues that understanding these processes will necessarily require computing systems to have a structure that reflects the corresponding spatial and temporal limits. According to its authors, the spatial nature of the systems being studied is reflected in everything from data gathering to its processing and the visualization of the results. So, unless we engineer the computing systems to handle spatial issues, we're not going to have very good results.
It would be easy to dismiss spatial computing as a buzzword, except the authors provide concrete examples that demonstrate spatial issues do play a major role in scientific computing. Unfortunately, they also demonstrate that they play several roles, some of them largely unrelated to each other; as a result, the spatial tag ends up getting applied to several unrelated problems, which dilutes the message to an extent.
Still, each of the individual problems, which they illustrate with the example of forecasting dust storms, make for compelling descriptions of spatial issues in scientific computing.
Given our current knowledge of dust storms, there are over 100 variables that have to be recorded, like wind speed, relative humidity, temperature, etc. This data is both dynamic (it can change rapidly with time) and spatial, in that even neighboring areas may experience very different conditions. The data itself is recorded by a variety of instruments, with different locations and capabilities. Even within the US, these are run by different government agencies—just finding all of the available stations could be a challenge.
Integrating these readings into a single, coherent whole is a nightmare; response times can be anywhere from a second to hours, and the different capabilities of the stations require some extensive processing before the data can be used. To tackle these issues, the authors set up a system of local servers to process the data on-site, and created a central portal to provide rapid access to their data; in short, they eliminated the spatial component of data access while retaining the spatial nature of the data itself. The end result was a set of data from 200 stations that could be accessed within a second from anywhere in the US.
That data can then be used for dust storm forecasting, where other spatial issues come into play. When the authors started, their algorithm took a full day to perform a three-day forecast when using a grid with a 10km square resolution. Obviously, that's not especially useful, and the clear solution was to generate parallel code so that each grid square could be assigned to an individual core.
Still, the spatial nature of the problem limited the benefits of parallel code. Each grid square will influence its nearest neighbors, so the simulation runs into a lot of dependencies that require communication between the parallel processes. You can speed things up considerably if you get neighboring nodes onto individual cores of a single processor; balancing all of this requires that the spatial arrangement of the grid be considered when dividing up the tasks. But that quickly runs into limits both in terms of how many cores a node has. The authors found significant gains up to about 20 cores (that system could do a five-day forecast in three hours), but things tailed off after that.
A similar issue comes into play when you try to visualize the results. Physically adjacent grid squares are likely to be accessed at the same time, so it's best to keep them close in memory and processed on the same node. But again, threads increase performance to a point before hitting limits, and nodes had a tendency to run out of RAM.
In the end, the need for spatial resolution pushed the problem up against some hard limits. It was possible to create and visualize a forecast with a grid size of four square kilometers, but trying to go down to three simply failed, and the only solution that could improve it was faster processors; more RAM and a faster network only had a minimal impact.
Overall, the authors make a good case that the spatial properties of a scientific data set require a degree of consideration when designing methods for analyzing that data. But the problems lumped in under the umbrella of spatial computing seem to include everything from differences in data gathering equipment down to getting threads to be executed on the same processing node. These are very different problems, and they're handled by correspondingly different approaches. The work done by the authors also clearly demonstrates that, even when spatial considerations are taken into account, doing so has its limits.Many of the systems studied by scientists evolve through time and space, like diseases... more
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Sandstorms blasted regions in northern China on Sunday (April 25), leaving a blanket of dust over areas in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, Inner Mongolia and Jilin province on Monday (April 26), state media reported.
Dust filled skies lowered visibility to just two metres over the weekend and a cold front sweeping northern China is likely to bring strong winds and low temperatures for the next two days, the China Meterological Administration said.
Strong winds caused fires to spread rapidly, killing three people and seriously injuring one, CCTV reported.
The winds blowing over central and eastern Inner Mongolia could reach speeds of around 50 km per hour, the weather report said, causing temperatures to drop by 10 degrees Celsius in some areas.
Spring snows have added to farming troubles in Inner Mongolia, which saw its worst winter in 50 years.
China's officials warned those in the affected regions to take precautions against more severe weather expected to hit the region.Sandstorms blasted regions in northern China on Sunday (April 25), leaving a blanket... more
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Nature is a miraculous creation that accommodates some unusual and wondrous sights occurring in the framework of the whole universe.Nature is a miraculous creation that accommodates some unusual and wondrous sights... more
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Over the horizon a wall of sand is forming, amalgamating and gaining momentum. It develops unity and mass, devouring everything in its path. As it approaches, a tempest of unknown faces scramble to their homes to wear it out.
Over the horizon a wall of sand is forming, amalgamating and gaining momentum. It... more
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Run Judy Run! The Judge Judy show gets rattled by an earthquake, Bowser's Minions fight back, and much more on today's Current Virals.
To watch the full versions of all five videos just click on the links in the comments section below.Run Judy Run! The Judge Judy show gets rattled by an earthquake, Bowser's Minions... more
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