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Friday, November 15, 2013

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EasyJet, Airbus team create world's first man-made ash cloud

The world's first man-made ash cloud has been created by a team led by airline easyJet and planemaker Airbus to test how passenger aircraft cope with volcanic blasts such as the 2010 Icelandic eruption. The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano shut down much of Europe's airspace for six days, affecting more than 10 million people and costing $1.7 billion. An Airbus A400M test plane on Wednesday dispersed one tonne of ash over the Bay of Biscay, off western France, creating conditions similar to that of the 2010 eruption, said the team, which also included Norwegian sensor maker Nicarnica Aviation. The ash used in the test was from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption, collected and stored by scientists in Reykjavik.

Vanishing Forests: New Map Details Global Deforestation

A new global map of deforestation reveals that 888,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometers) of forest has vanished since 2000. "We say that it's globally consistent but locally relevant," said Matt Hansen, a geographer at the University of Maryland who led the mapping effort. During that time, 309,000 square miles (800,000 square km) of new forests were gained. Of the 888,000 square miles lost and 309,000 square miles gained, about 77,000 square miles (200,000 square km) were areas that were lost between 2000 and 2012 and then re-established.

Potentially Dazzling Comet ISON Now Visible to Naked Eye After Outburst

The much-anticipated Comet ISON is now visible to the naked eye according to reports from many observers. Comet ISON — the potential "comet of the century" — has suddenly brightened in an outburst of activity with just two weeks to go before it literally grazes the surface of the sun, In recent months, Comet ISON has repeatedly befuddled forecasters trying to anticipate just how bright it will ultimately become. Comet ISON lightens up, literally

Comet ISON Headed for Close Sun Encounter on Thanksgiving

Comet ISON's highly anticipated flyby of the sun is now just two weeks away, and scientists and skywatchers alike hope the encounter gives them another reason to be thankful this holiday season. If ISON survives this perilous plunge, the icy wanderer could put on quite a show in the ensuing weeks, becoming visible to the naked eye throughout much of December, experts say. ISON was discovered by two Russian amateur astronomers in September 2012, giving scientists more than a year to gear up for its dramatic brush with the sun. Researchers have tracked the comet assiduously, training a number of ground- and space-based instruments on ISON as it barrels through the inner solar system.

39 Minutes: Quantum Bits Store Data for Record Time

The pipe dream of speedy quantum computers may be a bit closer to reality. For the first time, physicists have coaxed a quantum bit of information to maintain its superposed state, in which quantum bits stay as both a 1 and a 0 at the same time, for 39 minutes at room temperature, at least 10 times longer than previously reported. That could then be used to perform many calculations at once, enabling computers to solve big data problems that previously seemed hopelessly intractable, said study co-author Stephanie Simmons, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford. "Quantum bits support an exponential amount of information, so this can give rise to an exponential speed-up in computation time," Simmons told LiveScience.

Old Dog, New Origin: First Pooches Were European

Man's best friend gained that title in Europe, according to a new study that pinpoints the origin of dog domestication to between 18,800 and 32,100 years ago. "All modern dogs analyzed in our study were closely related to either ancient dogs and wolves from Europe or modern wolves from there," study scientist Olaf Thalmann, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku in Finland, told LiveScience in an email. Dogs are the only large carnivores that humans have ever domesticated, but when and where dangerous wolves became lovable pups has been hard to pin down. Adding to the confusion is the intensive period of selective dog breeding that started in the late 1880s and gave humans the wide variety of dog breeds known today.

Forecasting Raging Forest Fires Soon a Reality

"Fires have always been thought of as a forest science problem," said Janice Coen, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. "But when they bow into elliptical shapes, or do things that otherwise appear very strange, they appear very natural to us because they are similar to things we understand from thunderstorms, or modeling air flow over complex terrain like mountains," Coen told LiveScience. By treating wildfires as a weather phenomenon, Coen and her colleagues have created a computer model that can predict fire behavior. Coen and co-author Wilfrid Schroeder of the University of Maryland recently tested their model against data from New Mexico's Little Bear fire, which burned more than 44,000 acres in June 2012 and was the most destructive wildfire in the state's history. However, there's a crucial difference between their fire model and a weather forecast: There's no 10-day outlook.

US Crushes Its Stockpile of Elephant Ivory

Six tons of carvings, jewelry, trinkets and tusks were being reduced to powder Thursday afternoon (Nov. 14) as the United States, for the first time, destroyed its ivory stockpile. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had collected the items over the past 25 years through smuggling busts and border confiscations. Though the international ivory trade was banned in 1989, there are still domestic markets and lucrative black markets around the world where ivory is in high demand. "Some argue that the seized ivory should be sold to alleviate the demand for ivory," Dan Ashe, director of the FWS, wrote in a blog post today.

NASA Video Shows Ancient Mars as Lush, Water World

Mars may be a desolate world today, but billion of years ago, the Red Planet was a warm, wet paradise of blue skies and lakes — a hospitable realm recreated in a stunning new video animation by NASA. The video of Mars as an ocean world, which NASA released Wednesday (Nov. 13), shows the Red Planet's evolution from a lush land with water oceans to the barren, rocky world is today. "The animation shows how the surface of Mars might have appeared during this ancient clement period," officials with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., wrote in a video description. The video ends with NASA's new Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, called MAVEN for short, in orbit around modern Mars.

Spectacular Orion Nebula View Captured by Amateur Astronomer (Photo)

The Orion Nebula takes center stage in this eye-popping image snapped by an amateur astronomer in South Carolina.

Stingrays' Weird Swimming May Inspire New Submarine Designs

Scientists at Harvard University and the University at Buffalo are studying how stingrays move, including the seemingly effortless way the fish's round and flattened bodies ripple through water. A stingray's swimming is much more unique, like a flag in the wind," Richard Bottom, a mechanical engineering graduate student at the University at Buffalo, said in a statement.

Dangerous New Eruption at Sumatra's Sinabung Volcano

Superheated ash and gas flowing down the slopes of Indonesia's Sinabung volcano signals the intensity of eruptions may be increasing at the fiery mountain, according to local officials. More than 5,000 people have been evacuated from towns and villages in North Sumatra's Karo Regency since Mount Sinabung awoke in October after a three-year dormancy. The evacuation and devastating ash fall have affected crop harvests, leading to higher prices on vegetables and chilies elsewhere in Indonesia, according to the Jakarta Post. The Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation warned people not to approach within 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of Mount Sinabung.

Cancer Patient's Brain Cells Shed Light on How Cancer Spreads

One of the great mysteries of cancer is how it spreads, or metastasizes, throughout the body. But researchers have made an important discovery that may help to solve that puzzle: Cancer cells may fuse with white blood cells in order to spread. Researchers at Yale University have discovered a metastasis in the brain of a cancer patient that likely grew from the hybrid of a cancer cell and a white blood cell. The researchers investigated a brain metastasis in a 68-year-old cancer patient who had been treated with a bone marrow transplant from his brother.

In Texas, Standing Up for Science (Op-Ed)

He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Texas is again drawing attention for its actions to distort the integrity of science education. Late last year, the Texas State Board of Education began the process of adopting textbooks for science classrooms — and because Texas is a large state with substantial buying power, it has significant influence on the textbooks available for classrooms across the nation. The board engaged a textbook review team to evaluate proposed science textbooks submitted by publishers and to make recommendations regarding content and quality.

How Do Dogs Learn Words? Just Like Kids (Op-Ed)

But what is truly remarkable about Chaser, the border collie who has taken the world by storm, is how she learns words. When Chaser played the game that tested the same ability in the citizen science project Dognition, not surprisingly, she was off the charts. John Pilley, Chaser's owner and author of the new book Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) taught Chaser words in a similar way. Then Pilley asked Chaser to fetch a toy using a new word she had never heard before, like 'Fuzzbee'.

Grit Your Teeth: Toothbrush Holder Yields New Germ (Op-Ed)

Robert Donofrio is director of NSF International's Applied Research Center. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Recently, my colleagues and I at NSF International's Applied Research Center (ARC) discovered a new bacterium, Klebsiella michiganensis, lurking on a toothbrush holder. This unique coliform bacterium is a member of the same family as E. coli, a species typically found in human intestines and fecal matter.

Got Science? Nebraska Scientists Stand Up Against Political Interference (Op-Ed)

Seth Shulman is a senior staff writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a veteran science journalist and author of six books. Shulman contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Al Dutcher, Nebraska's state climatologist, is an expert on climate change and a professor at the University of Nebraska. He's also a self-described conservative who is outraged that the state legislature and Nebraska's Republican governor are letting politics interfere with questions of science.

The World's Most Dangerous Band Promotes Shelter Pets (Op-Ed)

Wayne Pacelle is the president and chief executive officer of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). This Op-Ed is adapted from a post on the blog A Humane Nation, where the content ran before appearing in LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. This has been a year of real progress in ending the use of carbon monoxide gas chambers in animal shelters. Just last month, animal advocates closed two more carbon monoxide gas chambers in North Carolina and one in South Carolina, thanks to funding and support provided through The HSUS.

Trans Fat Isn't Evil, Ignorance Is (Op-Ed)

Dr. Mitchell Roslin is chief of obesity surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. He holds several patents for the treatment of obesity and designed a method for treating relapse after gastric bypass surgery. Roslin has expertise in laparoscopic obesity surgery, duodenal switch surgery and revisional bariatric surgery. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Volcano Detectives Uncover Monster Ancient Eruption (Op-Ed)

He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. In fact, one solitary line of evidence seemed, incredibly, to be the only remnant of one of the most gigantic natural disasters since the Stone Age: A volcanic eruption which dwarfed anything on record — and had barely left a trace. it was already known that these kinds of deposits were linked to particularly large volcanic eruptions. Professor Franck Lavigne joined the hunt for the mystery eruption with about as much insight as you have now.

Don't Take Federal Science for Granted (Op-Ed)

Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Negin contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's water-quality monitoring programs, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's flu prevention efforts, the National Cancer Institute's new treatment clinical trials, NASA's telescope tests and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's safety inspections all closed.

What the Brain and Twitter Have in Common

SAN DIEGO — The brain is a remarkably complex web of interconnections, and, as it turns out, has a few things in common with Twitter, new research suggests. Researchers developed a theoretical model, presented here Sunday (Nov. 10) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, which suggests information flows between neighboring brain regions and between Twitter users mostly in one direction — a property that prevents backflow of redundant information, the researchers say. "Much like in journalism, you don't want yesterday's news," study researcher Stefan Mihalas, a computational neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, told LiveScience. Mihalas and his colleague Michael Buice compared three different kinds of networks: a network of mouse brain regions, a network of individual neurons in the roundworm C. elegans and a network of Twitter users.

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Thursday, November 14, 2013

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Leech Toxins, Snake Venom: How Nature's 'Poisons' Help People

"Poisons can be bad for some things and good for others, including humans," said Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the American Museum of Natural History, at an opening of a new poison-themed exhibition Tuesday (Nov. 12).

3.5-Billion-Year-Old Fossil Microbial Community Found

Scientists have found fossil evidence of ancient microbial communities that lived 3.5 billion years ago. You've got a 3.5-billion-year-old ecosystem," said study co-author Robert Hazen, an earth scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. The new find reveals that a scant 1 billion years after Earth's origin, complex microbial communities that clung to sediments along the windswept seashore had already begun harvesting energy from sunlight, rather than the rocks. Though chemical evidence of carbon-based life forms, such as isotopes (or different forms) of carbon, reveal that life existed on early Earth, scientists have discovered a few controversial traces of its existence.

Carl Sagan Archive Opens at U.S. Library of Congress

WASHINGTON — The legacy of the famed astrobiologist and science communicator Carl Sagan is now available to people around the world. The new Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive opened to the public Tuesday (Nov. 12) during a celebration of Sagan's life here at the Library of Congress. The archive is composed of 1,705 boxes of material that once belonged to Sagan and his widow, Ann Druyan. MacFarlane — the creator of the animated TV show "Family Guy" and producer of the new "Cosmos" (a series originally hosted by Sagan) — provided money, making it possible for the Library of Congress to complete the archive.

Comet ISON Observing Tips: Choosing the Right Binoculars or Telescope

With excitement about the upcoming solar flyby of Comet ISON now approaching a fever pitch, I recently thought about a similar scenario that took place back in 1985 with the approach of Halley's Comet. One Sunday in the magazine supplement of my local newspaper, an ad caught my eye for a department store telescope, complete with a king-size image of a comet hovering over the instrument. "So," the ad continued, "If you don't want to miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, you are going to have to 'trap it.'" And what better way to do so than with the telescope pictured in the ad, offering up to 500 times magnification power and claiming to be a "wonderful scientific learning tool." [Photos of Halley's Comet through History] So if you're among those who are thinking about buying a telescope simply to get a view of Comet ISON — which is visible in binoculars now but could put on an even better show in December if it survives its Nov. 28 solar encounter, which will bring the icy wanderer within just 730,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) of the sun's surface — take a few deep breaths and read what I have to say:

Why the US Will Destroy, Not Sell, Its Ivory Stockpile

Today the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) called on other governments to follow the United States' lead and crush or burn their ivory stockpiles, too. "Right now, Africa is hemorrhaging elephants," Patrick Bergin, CEO of the African Wildlife Foundation, said in a statement. "The only way to staunch the movement of illegal ivory is to wipe out the demand, and that begins with destroying stockpiles and stopping trade." The AWF is also urging countries to go a step further and halt their domestic ivory trade until all elephant populations are no longer threatened.

Massive Antarctic Iceberg Sets Sail

After lingering in its birthing bay for nearly six months, an Antarctic iceberg the size of Singapore is finally heading out to sea. Strong winds blowing off the continent are pushing the giant floe away from its parent, the giant Pine Island Glacier, and the warming Southern Hemisphere's has melted the thick winter sea ice that held the block in place since July, said Grant Bigg, an ocean modeler at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. The latest satellite images show several kilometers (a couple of miles) of open water between the iceberg and the glacier, Bigg told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. The enormous ice block took more than two years to calve (break off) from Pine Island Glacier.

What America's Forests Looked Like Before Europeans Arrived

The fossil site is a muddy layer packed with leaves from hardwood trees that lived more than 300 years ago along Conestoga Creek in Lancaster County, Pa. The muck was laid down before one of Pennsylvania's 10,000 mill dams, called Denlinger's Mill, was built nearby, damming the stream and burying the mud and leaves in sediment. The same spot is now home to mostly box elder and sugar maple trees, said Sara Elliott, the study's lead author and a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology. "This is a very unusual opportunity to compare modern and fossil forest assemblages," Elliott told LiveScience. Other kinds of trees found in the fossil layer that have since vanished from North America include the American chestnut, which was attacked by an imported fungal disease called the chestnut blight.

Who Killed JFK? TV Show Looks at New Evidence

Nearly 50 years after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, debate and conspiracy theories linger over how he was killed, and who exactly was behind it. In a new television special on PBS' science documentary show "NOVA," a team of experts look at the assassination in a new light, in some cases casting doubt on the "official story" of the president's murder by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. One of these, the so-called "magic bullet," also allegedly caused serious injuries to Texas Governor John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat of the president's convertible.

New 'H6N1' Bird Flu Reported in Taiwan

A 20-year-old woman in Taiwan is the first person known to be infected with a strain of bird flu called H6N1, according to a new report of the case. Of the 125 cases of flu reported in Taiwan since the woman became ill, none were caused by H6N1. H6N1 is the latest bird flu virus to hop over to humans. The new finding "shows the unpredictability of influenza viruses in human populations," the researchers, from the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, wrote in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

Asthma May Lengthen Time to Get Pregnant

Getting pregnant may take longer for women with asthma, a new study from Denmark suggests. Researchers analyzed information from more than 15,000 women in Denmark, including 950 who had asthma. When asked whether they had ever spent more than a year trying to become pregnant, 27 percent of women with asthma said yes, compared to 21 percent of women without asthma. Women were particularly likely to experience a delay in pregnancy if they had untreated asthma, or if they had asthma and were over age 30.

See Two Comets and Planet Mercury in Pre-Dawn Sky This Week

This week in the hour before sunrise early morning stargazers will get a double treat: the planet Mercury and two special comets. The best time to spot Mercury is about half an hour before sunrise. ISON is not currently visible to the naked eye, but some observers report that it is brightening well. This week, skywatching experts reported that Comet ISON is now visible through binoculars, as well as telescopes.

Fast Food: Meals Have More Calories Than You Think

BOSTON – People eating at fast food restaurants aren't very good at estimating how many calories are in their meals, particularly if they're eating at Subway, a new study suggests. For the study, researchers queried more than 3,000 customers, including adults, teenagers and parents with young children, at such fast food chains in New England, such as McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, Wendy's, KFC and Dunkin' Donuts. Customers were asked how many calories they thought were in their meal (or, if they were parents, in their children's meals), and researchers viewed receipts to verify what was purchased. About two-thirds of customers thought there were fewer calories in their meal than there actually were, according to the study presented here at the American Public Health Association.

Music Could Track Human Migrations

Music could be used to track human migration patterns over history, new research suggests. That conclusion, described Tuesday (Nov. 12) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, came from examining a genetic analysis of indigenous populations in Taiwan along with the people's folk music. Populations with more similar folk music also tended to be more closely related, the researchers found. Scientists propose that the Austronesian-speaking people who populate the Pacific, from Papua New Guinea to the Philippines to Hawaii, originally set sail from Taiwan between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago.

Bone and Bracelets Found in Roman Child's Coffin

Last month, treasure hunters equipped with metal detectors led archaeologists to the rare lead coffin buried in a field in Warwickshire. The funerary box was child-sized, and researchers think it is likely more than 1,600 years old, dating back to the Roman occupation of Britain. A crew with a group called Archaeology Warwickshire opened the coffin on Monday (Nov. 11) and found fragmentary skeletal remains and two bracelets made of jet, a dark black gemstone. "Finding the two jet bangles was a surprise," Stuart Palmer, the business manager for Archaeology Warwickshire said in a statement.

How NASA Will Use 3D Printers in Space (Video)

Instead, they can use a newly arrived 3D printer to fabricate the tools and materials they need. "The 3D printer that we're going to fly on space station will actually be the first-ever 3D printer in space," Niki Werkheiser, 3D Print project manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said in a video about the space station 3D printer that posted online Oct. 30. "It is the first step toward [the 'Star Trek' replicator]," Werkheiser added, referring to the machine in the science-fiction franchise capable of creating meals and spare parts. The 3D printer headed to the space station in August 2014 — a joint project between NASA Marshall and the California-based company Made in Space — would be limited to parts only, rather than edible objects.

Typhoon Haiyan Aftermath: How Technology Can Help

In the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, aid workers are stymied by overwhelming obstacles: lack of fuel for relief vehicles, near-total absence of food, water and shelter, and social chaos on an apocalyptic scale. While technology can't prevent storms like Haiyan, there are some clever devices that could alleviate the suffering of survivors and provide lifesaving access to clean drinking water and hot food. The German Solar Energy Foundation (Stiftung Solarenergie) has launched a program to provide solar lamps to Tacloban, Ormoc and other hard-hit areas of the Philippines. Watts of Love, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization, is committed to sending 10,000 solar lamps to the Philippines by Christmas.

How Many Friends Can Your Brain Handle?

SAN DIEGO — Being a social butterfly just might change your brain: In people with a large network of friends and excellent social skills, certain brain regions are bigger and better connected than in people with fewer friends, a new study finds. The research, presented here Tuesday (Nov. 12) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, suggests a connection between social interactions and brain structure. "We're interested in how your brain is able to allow you to navigate in complex social environments," study researcher MaryAnn Noonan, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, in England, said at a news conference.

1st-Century Roots of 'Little Red Riding Hood' Found

One researcher in the United Kingdom tested this analogy quite literally, using analytical models that are typically used to study the relationships between species to create an evolutionary tree for "Little Red Riding Hood" and its cousins. "This is rather like a biologist showing that humans and other apes share a common ancestor but have evolved into distinct species," Durham University anthropologist Jamie Tehrani explained in a statement. Tehrani found that "Little Red Riding Hood" likely branched off 1,000 years ago from an ancestral story that has its roots in the first century A.D. [5 Real-Life Examples of Fairy Tales Coming True] "Little Red Riding Hood" is well known to Westerners thanks to the Brothers Grimm.

E-cigarettes and Hookahs Rise in Teen Popularity

Unconventional tobacco products such as electronic cigarettes and hookahs are becoming more popular among U.S. teens, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2012, 1.1 percent of middle school students reported using e-cigarettes, up from 0.6 percent in 2011. Among high school students, e-cigarette use rose from 1.5 percent to 2.8 percent, and hookah use increased from 4.1 percent to 5.4 percent over the same period. The reason for the rise is not known, but it could be due to an increase in marketing and availability of electronic cigarettes and hookahs, as well as the perception that the products are "safer" than cigarettes, the CDC said.

Hydrogen phone chargers to keep Africans connected when power runs short

By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - African smartphone users will soon have an alternative means to get round the power shortages afflicting much of the world's poorest continent - a portable charger that relies on hydrogen fuel cells. British company Intelligent Energy plans to roll out 1 million of the new chargers in mid-December, mainly in Nigeria and South Africa, after successfully testing them in Nigeria over the last five months, its consumer electronics managing director, Amar Samra, said. "In emerging markets where the grids are not reliable and people are using (mobile phones) as a primary device, it is mission critical; The chargers are designed to back up the spread of smartphones and tablets across countries where cellphones have already helped to transform lives and businesses.

Ocean Glow Stick: Sea Worm Emits Strange Blue Glow

One common sea worm has a rather uncommon trick: Chaeteopterus variopedatus – also known as the parchment tube worm for the paperlike tubes it builds for itself and lives within throughout its life — secretes a bioluminescent mucus that makes it glow blue. Its glow sets it apart from other tube worms, most of whichdon't glow, and other shallow water organisms, which typically emit green light, not blue. "Shallow water is much more complex than deep water from a physical standpoint, and green is what organisms see best," Dimitri Deheyn, a biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography involved in the research, told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

NASA Maps to Aid Super Typhoon Haiyan Disaster Relief

NASA scientists have used satellite images to create detailed maps of the devastation in the Philippines from Super Typhoon Haiyan in order to help disaster relief efforts by recovery crews. Super Typhoon Haiyan — which struck the island nation on Nov. 8 — was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. produced the damage maps in order to depict the hardest hit regions of the country, NASA officials wrote in a news release. JPL's ARIA (Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis) team created the 24.9 by 31 mile (40 by 50 kilometers) map using data from the Italian Space Agency's COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation. NASA scientists created the damage map by using "a prototype algorithm to rapidly detect surface changes caused by natural or human-produced damage," space agency officials wrote in a release.

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