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Sun-like stars rotate differentially, with the equator rotating faster than the higher latitudes. The blue arrows in the figure represent rotation speed. Differential rotation is thought to be an essential ingredient for generating magnetic activity and starspots. MPI for Solar System Research/MarkGarlick

Researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi reveal that sun-like stars rotate up to two and a half times faster at the equator than at higher latitudes, a finding that challenges current science on how stars rotate.

Until now, little was known about the precise rotational patterns of Sun-like stars, only that the equator spins faster than at higher latitudes, similar to the Sun.

Scientists at the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Space Science used observations from NASA’s Kepler mission and asteroseismology — the study of sound waves traveling inside stars — to determine with precision how Sun-like stars rotate, which no other scientif m2m communication  ic method has been able to achieve.

Their study found that Sun-like stars, characterized as being like the Sun in mass and age, do indeed rotate in a similar manner as the Sun in that their equatorial regions rotate more rapidly than at mid- to high latitudes. But there’s a key difference.

The equator of the Sun rotates about 10 percent faster than its mid latitudes, while equators of Sun-like stars spin up to two and a half times faster than their mid latitudes.

“This is very unexpected, and challenges current numerical simulations, which suggest that stars like these should not be able to sustain differential rotation of this magnitude,” said Othman Benomar, research associate at the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Space Science and lead author of the study published in Science.

“Understanding differential rotation — how fast one part of a star spins compared to the rest — is not only important for a complete understanding of how a star works, it will help us gain deeper insights about their magnetic fields,” explained Katepalli Sreenivasan, principal investigator of the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Space Science.

Magn Industrial LTE Router  etic fields on the Sun have been known to cause enormous solar storms that frequently disrupt orbiting space satellites and have knocked out power grids on Earth.

Scientists agree that the rotation of the Sun plays a crucial role in the generation of the solar magnetic field, but the exact details still remain a mystery, despite the Sun having been observed and studied in great detail.

Sreenivasan added, “learning more about how stars rotate and generate their own magnetic fields could help us gain further insight into the solar dynamo, the physical process that generates the Sun’s magnetic field.”

Publication: O. Benomar, et al., “Asteroseismic detection of latitudinal differential rotation in 13 Sun-like stars,” substation monitoring   Science 21 Sep 2018: Vol. 361, Issue 6408, pp. 1231-1234; DOI: 10.1126/science.aao6571

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Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, astronomers have discovered the youngest disk around a protostar to date.

Planets form in disks around their host protostar, but when and how disks form is still an unanswered question. ALMA observations by a team of astronomers led by Nadia Murillo and Shih-Ping Lai [1] have found the youngest disk around a protostar to date, at an earlier stage than predicted by most models.

Material in our own Solar System follows Kepler’s Laws, with the inner planets orbiting the Sun faster than planets further out. This is what is usually referred to as Keplerian rotation. Keplerian disks, that is disks with Keplerian rotation, are very likely to eventually form planets in stable orbits. Discovering these types of disks in the very early stage when the protostar is still deeply embedde Verizon Embedded router d in its natal cloud provides insight into the ability of these systems to form planets.

VLA1623, a triple protostellar system  low-cost cellular router located in the rho Ophiuchus star-forming cloud.

ALMA was used to observe VLA1623, a triple protostellar system located in the rho Ophiuchus star-forming cloud. A disk structure was observed towards VLA1623A, a very young source still wrapped in its cocoon of dust and gas. Thanks to ALMA’s capabilities, analysis of the gas in the disk revealed its motion to be Keplerian and to have a radius of roughly 5 times the radius of Neptune’s orbit [2], but with a central protostar mass of only 0.2 times our Sun’s mass. This shows that the protostar is still very young and growing.

Models and simulations have previously predicted that Keplerian disks cannot form in the earliest phases of star formation. However, the discovery of VLA1623A’s big Keplerian disk proves otherwise, suggesting that other factors may play a role in disk formation. This is in line with more recent studies that suggest that misalignment of magnetic field and rotation axes or turbulence may enhance early disk formation, producing disks of 100 times the Earth-Sun radius or larger. The recent evidence that nearly all stars, including multiple stars, have at least one planet is in line with our observed result that nature finds a way to make protoplanetary disks.

Notes

[1] ALMA Cycle 0 data were obtained by Nadia Murillo and Shih-Ping Lai through East Asia partnership while Nadia Murillo was a Master student at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan.

[2] The radius of Neptune’s orbit around the Sun is about 30 times that of the Earth.

Publication: Nadia M. Murillo, et al., “A Keplerian disk around a Class 0 source: ALMA observations of VLA1623A,” A&A, Volume 560, A103, December 2013; doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201322537

PDF Copy of the Study: A Keplerian disk a inhand  round a Class 0 source: ALMA observations of VLA1623A

Image: Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

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Scientists from the Imperial College London have developed an “intelligent knife” that can inform surgeons about the tissue they are cutting, alerting them to whether the tissue is cancerous or not by using rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry.

In the first study to test the invention in the operating theater, the “iKnife” diagnosed tissue samples from 91 patients with 100 per cent accuracy, instantly providing information that normally takes up to half an hour to reveal using laboratory tests.

The findings, by researchers at Imperial College London, are published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Imperial Biomedical Research Center, the European Research Council and the Hungarian National Office for Research and Technology.

In cancers involving solid tumors, removal of the cancer in surgery is generally the best hope for treatment. The surgeon normally takes out the tumor with a margin of healthy tissue. However, it is often impossible to tell by sight which tissue is cancerous. One in five breast cancer patients who have surgery require a second operation to fully remove the cancer. In cases of uncertainty, the removed tissue is sent to a lab for examination while the patient remains under general anaesthetic.

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The iKnife is based on electrosurgery, a technology invented in the 1920s that is commonly used today. Electrosurgical knives use an electrical current to rapidly heat tissue, cutting through it while minimizing blood loss. In doing so, they vaporize the tissue, creating smoke that is normally sucked away by extraction systems.

The inventor of the iKnife, Dr Zoltan Takats of Imperial College London, realized that this smoke would be a rich source of biological information. To create the iKnife, he connected an electrosurgical knife to a mass spectrometer, an analytical instrument used to identify what chemicals are present in a sample. Different types of cell produce thousands of metabolites in different concentrations, so the profile of chemicals in a biological sample can reveal information about the state of that tissue.

In the new study, the researchers first used the iKnife to analyze tissue samples collected from 302 surgery patients, recording the characteristics of thousands of cancerous and non-cancerous tissues, including brain, lung, breast, stomach, colon and liver tumors to create a reference library. The iKnife works by matching its readings during surgery to the reference library to determine what type of tissue is being cut, giving a result in less than three seconds.

The technology was then transferred to the operating theater to perform real-time analysis during surgery. In all 91 tests, the tissue type identified by the iKnife matched the post-operative diagnosis based on traditional methods.

While the iKnife was being tested, surgeons were unable to see the results of its readings. The researchers hope to carry out a clinical trial to see whether giving surgeons access to the iKnife’s analysis can improve patients’ outcomes.

“These results provide compelling evidence that the iKnife can be applied in a wide range of cancer surgery procedures,” Dr Takats said. “It provides a result almost instantly, allowing surgeons to carry out procedures with a level of accuracy that hasn’t been possible before. We believe it has the potential to reduce tumor recurrence rates and enable more patients to survive.”

Although the current study focused on cancer diagnosis, Dr Takats says the iKnife can identify many other features, such as tissue with an inadequate blood supply, or types of bacteria present in the tissue. He has also carried out experiments using it to distinguish horsemeat from beef.

Professor Jeremy Nicholson, Head of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London, who co-authored the study, said: “The iKnife is one manifestation of several advanced chemical profiling technologies developed in our labs that are contributing to surgical decision-making and real-time diagnostics. These methods are part of a new framework of patient journey optimization that we are building at Imperial to help doctors diagnose disease, select the best treatments, and monitor individual patients’ progress as part our personalized healthcare plan.”

Lord Darzi, Professor of Surgery at Imperial  industrial cellular modem  College London, who also co-authored the study, said: “In cancer surgery, you want to take out as little healthy tissue as possible, but you have to ensure that you remove all of the cancer. There is a real need for technology that can help the surgeon determine which tissue to cut out and which to leave in. This study shows that the iKnife has the potential to do this, and the impact on cancer surgery could be enormous.”

Lord Howe, Health Minister, said: “We want to be among the best countries in the world at treating cancer and know that new technologies have the potential to save lives. The iKnife could reduce the need for people needing secondary operations for cancer and improve accuracy, and I’m delighted we could support the work of researchers at Imperial College London. This project shows once again how Government funding is putting the UK at the forefront of world-leading health research.”

Publication: Júlia Balo PLC remote accessg, et al., “Intraoperative Tissue Identification Using Rapi hardware  d Evaporative Ionization Mass Spectrometry,” Sci. Transl. Med., 17 July 2013: Vol. 5, Issue 194, p. 194ra93; DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3005623

Image: Imperial College London News

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PCN nanolayers under sunlight can split water. Image: Nannan Meng /Tianjin University

Polymeric carbon nitrides exhibit a catalytic effect in sunlight that substation monitoring   can be used for the production of hydrogen from solar energy. However, the efficiency of these metal-free catalysts is extremely low. A team at the Tianjin University in China, in collaboration with a group at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, has increased the catalytic efficiency of these polymeric carbon nitrides by a factor eleven through a simple process resulting in a larger surface area. The paper was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

One of the major challenges of the energy transition is to supply energy even when the sun is not shining. Hydrogen production by splitting water with the help of sunlight could offer a solution. Hydrogen is a good energy storage medium and can be used in many ways. However, water does not simply split by itself. Catalysts are needed, for instance Platinum, which is rare and expensive. Research teams the world over are looking for more economical alternatives. Now a team headed by Dr. Tristan Petit from the HZB, together with colleagues led by Prof. Bin Zhang from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, has made important progress using a well-known class of metal-free photocatalysts.

Nanolayers with large pores

Bin Zhang and his team specialise in the synthesis of polymeric carbon nitrides (PCN) that is considered a good candidate as a catalyst for hydrogen production. The PCN molecules form a structure that can be compar wastewater treatment  ed to thin layers of filo pastry dough: sheets of this material lie on top of each other tightly packed together. The Chinese chemists have now succeeded by means of a relatively simple two-step heat treatment in separating the individual sheets from each other – the same way that puff pastry separates into individual crispy layers in the oven. The heat treatment produced samples consisting of individual nanolayers with large pores containing different amino groups with specific functionalities.

A heat treatment produced samples  Wireless ATM  consisting of individual nanolayers with large pores containing different amino groups with specific functionalities. Image: Nannan Meng /Tianjin University

Amino- and oxygenated groups analysed at BESSY II

Petit and his team investigated a series of these PCN samples at BESSY II. “We were able to determine which amino and oxygenated groups had been deposited in the pores”, PhD-student Jian Ren and co-first author of the publication explains. They could analyse how specific amino groups pull electrons to themselves, a particularly favourable property for splitting water, and how new oxygen-based defects were formed.

Efficiency increased by factor eleven

When combined with nickel as a co-catalyst, those samples of nanostructured PCN actually exhibited record-breaking efficiency, eleven times that of normal PCN under visible light irradiation.

Photocatalytic processes at BESSY II unraveled

“This demonstrates that PCN is an interesting potential catalyst for solar-to-hydrogen production, approaching the efficiency of inorganic catalysts,” explains Petit, who is a Volkswagen Foundation Freigeist Fellow. “Furthermore, this work also shows that soft X-ray spectroscopies are essential tools to unravel possible catalytically active sites on photocatalysts.”

Publication: Nannan Meng, et al., “Engineering oxygen-containing and amino groups into two-dimensional atomically-thin porous polymeric carbon nitrogen for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production,” Energy & Environmental Science (2018) doi:10.1039/C7EE03592F

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Fragment of Chelyabinsk meteorite, showing the fusion crust — the result of a previous collision or near miss with another planetary body or with the sun. Credit: Dr. Victor Sharygin

New measurements on the Chelyabinsk meteorite rule out the possibility for the Baptistina Asteroid Family being the source of the K/T impactor.

Tucson, Arizonia — A long-standing debate about the source of the asteroid that impacted the Earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs has been put to rest thanks to the Chelyabinsk meteorite that disintegrated over Russia in February 2013, a new paper published in the journal Icarus shows.

Astronomers have debated whether the dinosaur killer was linked to the breakup of a large asteroid forming the Baptistina Asteroid Family (BAF) beyond Mars, some of which ended up on Earth-crossing orbits. The asteroid impacting Earth is thought to have been dark and carbonaceous. The BAF hypothesis was bolstered by them being dark and with a spectral shape similar to carbonaceous meteorites.

Analysis of the Chelyab vending vms insk meteorite shows that shock produced during catastrophic disruption of a large asteroid can darken otherwise bright silicate material. Shock darkening was first reported by Dan Britt (now at the University of Central Florida) in the early 1990s. The Chelyabinsk meteorite has both bright unshocked and dark shocked material. However, the details of the spectra of the dark Chelyabinsk material closely reproduces spectral signatures seen with members of the Baptistina Asteroid Family, said Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Vishnu Reddy, lead author of “Chelyabinsk meteorite explains unusual spectral properties of Baptistina Asteroid Family” that appears in Icarus.

“Shock and impact melt can make bright asteroids dark,” Reddy said. “In other words, touchscreen vending   not all dark asteroids are rich in carbon as once thought.” The latest measurements rule out the possibility for the Baptistina family being the source of the K/T impactor, he added.

“The link between the K/T impacator, thought to be carbonaceous, and BAF, has been proved invalid,” Reddy said.

Chelyabinsk provided a great opportunity to see the mixture of shocked and unshocked material in a single meteorite, Reddy said while cautioning that no clear evidence exists that the Russian meteorite itself came from the Baptistina family.

“The new finding has implications for hazards from Near-Earth Objects and for mining asteroids for space-based resources,” Reddy said. “A potential target identified as primitive and rich in volatiles/organics and carbon based on its spectral colors could in fact be just shocked material with entirely different composition.”

PSI researchers David P. O’Brien and Lucille Le Corre were among the co-authors on the paper.

This research work was supported by grants from NASA’s Planetary Mission Data Analysis Program, NEOO Program and Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program.

Publication: Vishnu Reddy, et al., “Chelyabinsk meteorite explains unusual spectral properties of Baptistina Asteroid Family,” Icarus, Volume 237, 15 July 2014, Pages 116–130; DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2014.04.027

PDF Copy of Predictive Grid Analyticsthe Study: Chelyabinsk meteorite explains unusual spectral properties of Baptistina Asteroid Family

Image: Dr. Victor Sharygin

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A new study from the University of Copenhagen revealed that eating a diet rich in antioxidants may actually counteract many of the health benefits of exercise, including reduced blood pressure and cholesterol in older men.

In older men, a natural antioxidant compound found in red grapes and other plants – called resveratrol – blocks many of the cardiovascular benefits of exercise. This is the surprising result from a research project from the University of Copenhagen published today in The Journal of Physiology.

The research unusually suggests that eating a diet rich in antioxidants may actually counteract many of the health benefits of exercise, including reduced blood pressure and cholesterol.

Resveratrol has received widespread attention as a possible anti-aging compound and is now widely available as a dietary supplement; much has been made of its role in explaining the cardiovascular health benefits of red wine, and other foods.

In contrast to earlier studies in animals in which resveratrol improved the cardiovascular benefits of exercise, this study in humans has provided surprising and strong evidence that in older men, resveratrol has the opposite effect.

New view on antioxidants

What is emerging is a new view that antioxidants are not the fix for everything, a Vending Telemetry  nd that some degree of oxidant stress may be necessary for the body  UMTS router  to work correctly. This pivotal study suggests that reactive oxygen species, generally thought of as causing aging and disease, may be a necessary signal that causes healthy adaptations in response to stresses like exercise. So too much of a good thing (like antioxidants in the diet) may actually be detrimental to our health.

“We studied 27 healthy, physically inactive men around 65 years old for 8 weeks. During the 8 weeks all of the men performed high-intensity exercise training and half of the group received 250 mg of resveratrol daily, whereas the other group received a placebo pill (a pill containing no active ingredient). The study design was double-blinded, thus neither the subjects nor the investigators knew which participant that received either resveratrol or placebo”, says Ph.D. student Lasse Gliemann, University of Copenhagen, who was one of the researchers in the study.

He continues: “We found that exercise training was highly effective in improving cardiovascular health parameters, but resveratrol supplementation attenuated the positive effects of training on several parameters including blood pressure, plasma lipid concentrations and maximal oxygen uptake.”

“We were surprised to find that resveratrol supplementation in aged men blunts the positive effects of exercise training on cardiovascular health parameters, in part because our results contradict findings in animal studies”, adds professor Ylva Hellsten, the leader of the project, and she continues: “It should be noted that remote secure networking   the quantities of resveratrol given in our research study are much higher than what could be obtained by intake of natural foods.

This research adds to the growing body of evidence questioning the positive effects of antioxidant supplementation in humans.

Publication: Lasse Gliemann, et al., “Resveratrol Blunts the Positive Effects of Exercise Training on Cardiovascular Health in Aged Men,” The Journal of Physiology, 2013; doi:10.1113/jphysiol.2013.258061

Image: Red Wine & Grapes from Shutterstock

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By using an “aluminum-doped zinc oxide,” or AZO, Purdue researchers have shown how to create metamaterials without using silver or gold. The new metamaterial consists of 16 layers alternating between AZO and zinc oxide and has enhanced performance that is compatible with semiconductors.

West Lafayette, Indiana – Researchers have taken a step toward overcoming a key obstacle in commercializing “hyperbolic metamaterials,” structures that could bring optical advances including ultrapowerful microscopes, computers and solar cells.

The researchers have shown how to create the metamaterials without the traditional silver or gold previously required, said Alexandra Boltasseva, a Purdue University assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Using the metals is impractical for industry because of high cost and incompatibility with semiconductor manufacturing processes. The metals also do not transmit light efficiently, causing much of it to be lost. The Purdue researchers replaced the metals with an “aluminum-doped zinc oxide,” or AZO.

“This means we can have a completely new material platform for creating optical metamaterials, which offers important advantages,” Boltasseva said.

Doctoral student Gururaj V. Naik provided major contributions to the research, working with a team to develop a new metamaterial consisting of 16 layers alternating between AZO and zinc oxide. Light passing from the zinc oxide to the AZO layers encounters an “extreme anisotropy,” causing its dispersion to become “hyperbolic,” which dramatically changes the light’s behavior.

&ldq Industrial LTE Router  uo;The doped oxide brings not only enhanced performance but also is compatible with semiconductors,&rdindustrial iot gatewayquo; Boltasseva said.

Research findings are detailed in a paper appearing Monday (May 14) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The list of possible applications for metamaterials includes a “planar hyperlens” that could make optical microscopes 10 times more powerful and able to see objects as small as DNA; advanced sensors; more efficient solar collectors; quantum computing; and cloaking devices mri remote monitoring  .

The AZO also makes it possible to “tune” the optical properties of metamaterials, an advance that could hasten their commercialization, Boltasseva said.

“It’s possible to adjust the optical properties in two ways,” she said. “You can vary the concentration of aluminum in the AZO during its formulation. You can also alter the optical properties in AZO by applying an electrical field to the fabricated metamaterial.”

This switching ability might usher in a new class of metamaterials that could be turned hyperbolic and non-hyperbolic at the flip of a switch.

“This could actually lead to a whole new family of devices that can be tuned or switched,” Boltasseva said. “AZO can go from dielectric to metallic. So at one specific wavelength, at one applied voltage, it can be metal and at another voltage it can be dielectric. This would lead to tremendous changes in functionality.”

The researchers “doped” zinc oxide with aluminum, meaning the zinc oxide is impregnated with aluminum atoms to alter the material’s optical properties. Doping the zinc oxide causes it to behave like a metal at certain wavelengths and like a dielectric at other wavelengths.

The material has been shown to work in the near-infrared range of the spectrum, which is essential for optical communications, and could allow researchers to harness “optical black holes” to create a new generation of light-harvesting devices for solar energy applications.

The PNAS paper was authored by Naik, Boltasseva, doctoral student Jingjing Liu, senior research scientist Alexander V. Kildishev, and Vladimir M. Shalaev, scientific director of nanophotonics at Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering and a scientific adviser for the Russian Quantum Center.

Current optical technologies are limited because, for the efficient control of light, components cannot be smaller than the size of the wavelengths of light. Metamaterials are able to guide and control light on all scales, including the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter.

Unlike natural materials, metamaterials are able to reduce the “index of refraction” to less than one or less than zero. Refraction occurs as electromagnetic waves, including light, bend when passing from one material into another. It causes the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water appears bent when viewed from the outside. Each material has its own refraction index, which describes how much light will bend in that particular material and defines how much the speed of light slows down while passing through a material

Natural materials typically have refractive indices greater than one. Metamaterials, however, can make the index of refraction vary from zero to one, which possibly will enable applications including the hyperlens.

The layered metamaterial is a so-called plasmonic structure because it conducts clouds of electrons called “plasmons.”

“Alternative plasmonic materials such as AZO overcome the bottleneck created by conventional metals in the design of optical metamaterials and enable more efficient devices,” Boltasseva said. “We anticipate that the development of these new plasmonic materials and nanostructured material composites will lead to tremendous progress in the technology of optical metamaterials, enabling the full-scale development of this technology and uncovering many new physical phenomena.”

This work has been funded in part by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation and Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Image: Purdue University

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Lake Tahoe is renowned for its intense blue hue. Credits: Wikimedia Commons

New research from UC Davis and NASA reveals that the blueness of Lake Tahoe is controlled by algal concentration, which in turn is driven by the level of nutrients available to the algae.

Lake Tahoe’s iconic blueness is most strongly related to algae, not clarity, according to research released today from the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, telemeter   or TERC. In the “Tahoe: State of the Lake Report 2015,” researchers found the lower the algal concentration, the bluer the lake.

The report also includes updates related to clarity, climate change, drought and new research at Lake Tahoe.

Clear and blue

The assumption that lake clarity is tied to blueness has driven advocacy and management efforts in the Lake Tahoe Basin for decades. But the report’s findings show that at times of the year when clarity increases, blueness decreases, and vice versa. This is due to the seasonal interplay of sediment, nutrients and algal production as the lake mixes.

Clarity is controlled by sediment. Blueness is controlled by algal concentration, which in turn is driven by the level of nutrients available to the algae.

“This is good news,” said Geoffrey Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center and a civil engineering professor. “It shows that we better understand how Lake Tahoe works, and it reinforces the importance of controlling nutrient inputs to the lake, whether from the forest, the surrounding lawns or even from the air. It’s particularly encouraging that blueness has been increasing over the last three years.”

Low precipitation helped keep runoff from both nutrients and sediment low in 2014.

Blueness Index

Shohei Watanabe, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis TERC, led the blueness study in collaboration with NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Laval University. He produced a Blueness Index, quantifying Lake Tahoe’s color for the first time by using data from a NASA-JPL research buoy at the lake and hyperspectral radiometers that measure the amount of light leaving the lake at each waveband — in other words, its color.

Watanabe combined the Blueness Index with TERC measurements of Secchi depth — the depth at which a white disk remains visible when lowered into the water. He was surprised to see that blueness and clarity did not correspond. In fact, they varied in opposite directions.

“This does not mean that clarity should be dismissed,” said Watanabe. “Rather, it shows that algae concentrations and nutrient input should be managed more closely to truly keep Tahoe blue and clear.”

The JPL buoy u distribution automation  sed in the study is one of four established by NASA with support from TERC to calibrate and validate measurements taken by satellites flying overhead.

“This particular buoy has instruments beneath the water looking up, and an instrument on the buoy looking down,” said JPL’s 4g LTE router with SIM cardSimon Hook, who collaborated with Watanabe. “The combination of instruments in and above the water are used in this study to look at how light is being scattered and attenuated. That tells you something about both the color and the clarity of the lake.”

A record-breaking year

Other highlights from the State of the Lake Report include:

Clarity: Average annual water clarity was the best in more than a decade, improving from 70.2 feet in 2013 to 77.8 feet in 2014. The improvements were influenced, in part, by the drought: With little rain, fewer contaminants washed into the lake. Climate change: Warm, dry conditions continued for the third straight year in 2014. The average annual minimum and maximum air temperatures at Tahoe City were the highest recorded since 1910. Precipitation was only 61 percent of average, with only 18 percent of it falling as snow, well below normal. April snowpack in the Tahoe Basin was the lowest recorded in 100 years of record keeping. Evaporation: The largest water loss from Lake Tahoe is from evaporation. In 2014, 52 inches of water evaporated from the lake. One inch of evaporation is equal to 3.5 billion gallons of water. Lake level fell below the natural rim on Oct. 16, 2014, stopping the outflow of Lake Tahoe water to the Truckee River. By the end of 2014, the final lake level was a half-foot below the rim. Lake temperature: Annual average surface temperatures reached an all-time high of 53 F, and winter experienced that season’s warmest surface water temperature in the lake’s recorded history. Mixing. Lake Tahoe did not mix to its full depth for the third consecutive year, due to warmer water and record-high levels of lake stability (resistance to mixing). This lack of deep mixing also led to the highest nitrate-nitrogen levels on record, 20 micrograms per liter. Biology: Attached algae around the margins of the lake were at record-low values, largely due to the very low lake level.

The State of the Lake report informs nonscientists about the most important factors affecting lake health and helps influence decisions about ecosystem restoration and management within the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The 2015 State of the Lake report was funded by the California Tahoe Conservancy, IVGID Waste Not Program, League to Save Lake Tahoe, Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation, Tahoe Area Sierra Club, Tahoe Fund, Tahoe Lakefront Owners Association, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Tahoe Water Suppliers Association, Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club, and the generosity of supporters who value the role of science to save the lake. TERC partners with other research institutions and with resource agencies in the Tahoe Basin to address the current challenges facing Lake Tahoe.