All posts tagged: dust

Rosie O’Donnell’s guest stint hosting Kimmel leaves Jimmy Fallon in the ratings dust

Rosie O’Donnell’s guest stint hosting Kimmel leaves Jimmy Fallon in the ratings dust

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Rosie O’Donnell will be celebrating this week as her stint as guest host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! has proved a hit with late night viewers. The 64-year-old comedian has already sparked headlines with her comments referring to the president as “Mango Mussolini.” As Late Nighter reports, she’s been rewarded with a bumper audience. Nielsen figures show that O’Donnell’s first night as guest host drew an audience of 1.87 million total viewers. That put her out in front of her NBC rival program Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and well ahead of Kimmel’s other guest hosts this summer, who have included Tiffany Haddish and Colman Domingo. However, the figures still don’t quite match Kimmel’s own viewing figures, which regularly top 2 million per episode. Rosie O’Donnell is filling in this week on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ (ABC) Last night, O’Donnell drew gasps from …

El Niño and Saharan Dust Silence Atlantic Hurricane Season

El Niño and Saharan Dust Silence Atlantic Hurricane Season

Published by skeptic

It’s the middle of Atlantic hurricane season, but you’d be forgiven for forgetting that it’s even happening. The basin has only seen three named storms since the start of hurricane season in June, a trio of weak and largely disheveled tropical storms. One or two additional tropical storms are possible through the middle of August as the season struggles against a bevy of unfavorable conditions. They include this year’s El Niño, which is on its way to making history as sea surface temperatures soar to unprecedented heights across a critical swath of the Pacific Ocean, as well as persistent puffs of dry, dusty air that are blowing off the coast of Africa. Together, these distant forces are working to stifle any opportunity for tropical storms to develop across the Atlantic basin. Forecasters now expect one of the quietest hurricane seasons in years, with fewer than 10 named storms likely to sneak through the unfavorable conditions. Experts have been stunned by how fast El Niño has intensified this summer. This pattern of warmer-than-normal waters around the …

My 3DS XL was collecting dust until I hacked it — now I use it more than my Switch

My 3DS XL was collecting dust until I hacked it — now I use it more than my Switch

Published by skeptic

I spent an entire afternoon hacking my Nintendo New 3DS XL the other day, all to be able to use Homebrew on the old portable console. Was it worth the hours spent moving files back and forth on a tiny SD card, hitting dead ends, and digging into forums and Discords for assistance? Yes, yes it was, and here’s why. Related What Should You Do With Old Consoles? They may be old, but they can still serve a purpose. How I hacked my New 3DS XL It took some doing I opened up my little Nintendo dual-screened handheld a week or so ago, looking to see what there was left to play on the device. The eShop closed a few years back, so I wanted to see what I had left between my physical cartridges and the games I had downloaded to the console previously. Turns out, it wasn’t a whole lot, and what was left on my list didn’t really draw me in. So I went looking to see what I could do with …

Dust from the Chicxulub asteroid baked dinosaurs alive within hours of impact

Dust from the Chicxulub asteroid baked dinosaurs alive within hours of impact

Published by Jenni Sidey

Fine asteroid dust may have trapped intense heat near Earth’s surface, killing exposed animals and starting widespread fires. Animals that hid underground or underwater had better protection, which may help explain why some groups survived. After trapping heat, the same dust may have blocked sunlight and caused years or decades of cold and darkness. Sixty-six million years ago, the sky above Earth may have turned into a furnace. Dust from the Chicxulub asteroid impact could have trapped returning heat so efficiently that forests ignited and exposed animals died within hours. An analysis led by Purdue University planetary scientist Brandon Johnson argues that fine dust played a decisive role in the catastrophe. The dust did more than block sunlight later. In the first hours after impact, it may have acted like a lid, forcing thermal radiation back toward the surface. “We’re in the realm where we might be essentially killing off everything within that first hour or two,” Johnson said. The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, revives a long-running debate over what …

Dust storms on Mars amplify effects of solar storms

Dust storms on Mars amplify effects of solar storms

Published by skeptic

New research suggests that dust storms on Mars could interact with solar storms to alter the planet’s lower atmosphere, offering fresh insight into how Martian weather behaves. Scientists found evidence that temperatures in the lower atmosphere increased when a powerful solar energetic particle (SEP) event coincided with a global dust storm. The findings come from researchers at Lancaster University, the University of Leicester, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-CSIC in Spain. Their analysis indicates that while solar storms alone showed little impact on lower atmospheric temperatures, the combination of intense solar activity and widespread Martian dust storms may produce effects not previously recognised. The research points to a more intricate Martian climate system than earlier studies suggested. If confirmed by future observations, the results could improve atmospheric models and help scientists better understand weather conditions on the Red Planet. Investigating the link between solar activity and Martian weather The research team examined five long-duration SEP events to determine whether charged particles released during solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) could influence Mars’ lower …

The New Siri AI Leaves Old Siri in the Dust on Apple Watch

The New Siri AI Leaves Old Siri in the Dust on Apple Watch

Published by skeptic

The Siri logo, left, and the visual interface for Apple’s AI-enhanced version of the assistant. Apple/Vanessa Hand Orellana/CNET If you’ve ever tried asking Siri anything on your Apple Watch, you’ve probably been met with its all-too-familiar “Here’s what I found on the web” response. Happy to report, those days are finally coming to an end. I put both the old and the new version of Apple’s Siri assistant through a few real-world questions on my Apple Watch(es) to see how they stack up, and the results have me sold on the upgrade. With the WatchOS 27 public beta rolling out this week, I wanted to take Siri AI for a spin where it matters most: the Apple Watch. Apple’s digital assistant has long needed an upgrade, but nowhere have its shortcomings been more obvious than on your wrist. Previously, all the old Siri could do on the Apple Watch was return web results, leaving me to wait for pages to load on a tiny screen that wasn’t designed for browsing. To get started, I downloaded …

Sunshine and Saharan Dust Make Miami’s World Cup Quarter-Final a Dangerous Game for England Norway

Sunshine and Saharan Dust Make Miami’s World Cup Quarter-Final a Dangerous Game for England Norway

Published by skeptic

For Norway’s national men’s soccer team, Saturday’s World Cup quarter-final against England will be a first in more ways than one. As the Scandinavian side prepares for the biggest match of its history, it will also face conditions almost unimaginable back home: the punishing combination of South Florida heat, humidity, and blazing sunshine that scientists warn can push the human body to its limits. South Florida’s mix of strong sun, hot-air temperature, and high humidity—boosted by a plume of dusty air from the Sahara desert sweeping across the Atlantic through the state—will put the northern European players under a level of heat stress rarely experienced in their native countries. Scientists quantify this heat stress by calculating the WetBulb Globe Temperature. On top of air temperature, the index takes into account humidity, which limits evaporation of sweat from the skin; wind, which can act as a coolant; and solar intensity, as sunshine directly raises individuals’ skin and core temperatures. Saturday’s match is forecast to be played at an extremely high WBGT of around 88 degrees Fahrenheit …

ISS test finds that moon dust could be effective as a lunar building material

ISS test finds that moon dust could be effective as a lunar building material

Published by Jenni Sidey

Building material samples from the University of Delaware spent six months bolted to the outside of the International Space Station, exposed to vacuum, radiation and constant temperature swings. When they came back, some were stronger than matching samples kept on Earth. That result does not mean moon bases are around the corner. But it does offer an encouraging sign for one of the hardest practical problems in space exploration: how to build roads, landing pads, shelters and shields without hauling huge amounts of construction material from Earth. The team is working with geopolymers, a cement-like material that can be made by chemically binding clay-rich powders into a solid. In this case, the powders were simulated lunar and Martian regolith, stand-ins for the dusty surface material found on those worlds. The results appear in Advances in Space Research, with related processing work reported in Acta Astronautica and a special issue of the Journal of Rheology. “Regolith is essentially a clay-like silicate material,” said Norman Wagner, the Unidel Robert L. Pigford Chair in Chemical Engineering at the …

Finally, I found a robot vacuum that leaves my two-year-old model in the dust

Finally, I found a robot vacuum that leaves my two-year-old model in the dust

Published by skeptic

pros and cons Pros Very efficient mop roller that cleans your floors with fresh water. Its vacuum performance is outstanding against pet hair. New fragrance diffuser helps mitigate odors. Cleans with electrolyzed water. Cons The water needs emptying and refilling more often than most hands-free combination models. Dock design is rather tall. Battery life is on the mid-to-low end at 150 minutes. Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. The Eufy Omni S2 stands out the moment you unbox it. Aside from its unique shape, which is much taller than most robot vacuum and mop combos with a hands-free dock, Eufy directly improved on the shortcomings from the S1 model.  Also: The solar-powered backup station I trust after years of testing – and why it works so well For about two years, the S1 was my favorite robot vacuum and mop combination. But as good as it was, it had issues — some were glaringly obvious, others less so. For example, the detergent container ballooned as it filled with air when it was emptied, …

The best air purifiers in the UK to cleanse your home of fumes, pollen and dust – tested | Health & wellbeing

The best air purifiers in the UK to cleanse your home of fumes, pollen and dust – tested | Health & wellbeing

Published by Sam Flores

You may not have given much thought to air quality, nor to air purifiers, if you’re lucky enough never to have had hay fever or any of the many other health conditions connected to airborne particles. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. But air pollution – including industrial emissions, exhaust fumes and dust – is one of the gravest environmental health risks in the UK. Densely populated and low-income areas feel the worst effects. It’s a global problem, explored in Beth Gardiner’s book Choked. While you can’t do much about the air quality outdoors, a good air purifier will sanitise the air inside your home, invisibly yet measurably making the space conducive to better health. These electrical appliances work by drawing in air and passing it through one or more filters, which capture unhealthy particles such as dust, pollens, pet dander and fumes (often known as VOCs). Purifiers are more varied than you might think, with differences in effectiveness, purification range, filtration, …