Sixteen years after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers sent a “cloud” of toxic debris across Lower Manhattan, children living nearby who likely breathed in the ash and fumes are showing early signs of risk for future heart disease.

NASA's Aqua satellite captured clear view of the eye of Hurricane Jose at it moved toward the Leeward Islands and strengthened into a Category 4 Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Aqua also analyzed the storm in infrared light showing powerful storms around the center, capable of heavy rainfall.

Two days of satellite imagery from NASA's Terra and NOAA's GOES East satellites showed that Hurricane Katia was starting to crawl to the coast of southeastern Mexico.   

Strontium (Sr) is an element which in the event of a nuclear accident is the one that is most released into the atmosphere. The chemical behaviour of strontium is similar to that of calcium and can accumulate in the soil, in plants and in animals (in bones, especially). It is an element with two main radioisotopes (90Sr and 89Sr) which have an effective biological life that is relatively high for human beings, and due to its fixation in the bones, ends up giving a dose of radiation over many years.

Hurricane response crews from the U.S. Geological Survey are installing storm-tide sensors at key locations along Florida’s southeast and southwest coastlines in advance of Hurricane Irma.

Under a mission assignment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the USGS is currently deploying approximately 58 storm tide sensors, 24 barometers and five rapid deployment gauges, and is consulting with federal and state partners about the need for similar equipment for other coastal areas farther north along the coastlines.

The back deck of the Healy is a tough place to work.  It’s wet, it’s cold, and the scientists slogging away there are always covered in mud.  That’s because getting samples off the bottom of the Chukchi Sea is an important part of our mission this year.

Packing tiny solar cells together, like micro-lenses in the compound eye of an insect, could pave the way to a new generation of advanced photovoltaics, say Stanford University scientists.

In a new study, the Stanford team used the insect-inspired design to protect a fragile photovoltaic material called perovskite from deteriorating when exposed to heat, moisture or mechanical stress. The results are published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science (E&ES).

For a few weeks over the summer in 2011, teams of scientists from around the world converged on a small patch of ponderosa pine forest in Colorado to carry out one of the most detailed, extended survey of atmospheric chemistry ever attempted in one place, in many cases using new measurement devices created especially for this project. Now, after years of analysis, their comprehensive synthesis of the findings have been released this week.

Satellite imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite and NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite have provided different data on the still Category 5 Hurricane Irma as it headed for the Turks and Caicos Islands.  

IBM and MIT today announced that IBM plans to make a 10-year, $240 million investment to create the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab in partnership with MIT. The lab will carry out fundamental artificial intelligence (AI) research and seek to propel scientific breakthroughs that unlock the potential of AI. The collaboration aims to advance AI hardware, software, and algorithms related to deep learning and other areas; increase AI’s impact on industries, such as health care and cybersecurity; and explore the economic and ethical implications of AI on society. IBM’s $240 million investment in the lab will support research by IBM and MIT scientists.