Satellite uses SAR imagery to capture world's sharpest images

A satellite carrying a camera that is so powerful it can capture an image of virtually any object on Earth with crystal-clear resolution is now offering its services to the public.

source https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-satellite-sar-imagery-capture-world.html

United Airlines to resume Boeing 737 MAX flights in February

United Airlines became the latest carrier to announce a timeframe to fly the Boeing 737 MAX again, saying Friday the jet would resume flights in February.

source https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-airlines-resume-boeing-max-flights.html

Florida launches investigation into hacking of its servers

Florida officials acknowledged Friday that state servers appear to have been compromised by overseas hackers who gained entry by imbedding malicious code into networking software from a Texas-based software company, SolarWinds.

source https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-florida-hacking-servers.html

Hacked networks will need to be burned 'down to the ground'

It's going to take months to kick elite hackers widely believed to be Russian out of the U.S. government networks they have been quietly rifling through since as far back as March in Washington's worst cyberespionage failure on record.

source https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-hacked-networks-ground.html

Two dead, hundreds flee floods in Philippine storm

At least two people were killed and hundreds forced to flee their inundated homes in the Philippines as torrential rain triggered flooding and landslides in the storm-battered archipelago, officials said Saturday.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-12-dead-hundreds-philippine-storm.html

More than half of Hudson River tidal marshes were created accidentally by humans

In a new study of tidal marsh resilience to sea level rise, geologist and first author Brian Yellen at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues observed that Hudson River Estuary marshes are growing upward at a rate two to three times faster than sea level rise, "suggesting that they should be resilient to accelerated sea level rise in the future," he says.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-12-hudson-river-tidal-marshes-accidentally.html

Identifying where to reforest after wildfire

In the aftermath of megafires that devastated forests of the western United States, attention turns to whether forests will regenerate on their own or not. Forest managers can now look to a newly enhanced, predictive mapping tool to learn where forests are likely to regenerate on their own and where replanting efforts may be beneficial.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-12-reforest-wildfire.html

New class of cobalt-free cathodes could enhance energy density of next-gen lithium-ion batteries

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a new family of cathodes with the potential to replace the costly cobalt-based cathodes typically found in today's lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and consumer electronics.

source https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-class-cobalt-free-cathodes-energy-density.html

Plants can be larks or night owls just like us

Plants have the same variation in body clocks as that found in humans, according to new research that explores the genes governing circadian rhythms in plants.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-12-larks-night-owls.html

Researchers take a closer look at the genomes of microbial communities in the human mouth

Bacteria often show very strong biogeography—some bacteria are abundant in specific locations while absent from others—leading to major questions when applying microbiology to therapeutics or probiotics: how did the bacteria get into the wrong place? How do we add the right bacteria into the right place when the biogeography has gotten 'out of whack'?

source https://phys.org/news/2020-12-closer-genomes-microbial-human-mouth.html