All posts tagged: measure

Himalayan snowfall has been miscalculated for years, here’s how we found a new way to measure it

Himalayan snowfall has been miscalculated for years, here’s how we found a new way to measure it

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Mountain snow and meltwater from glaciers in the Himalayas determine how much water is available for drinking, farming and hydropower for millions of people in India, Pakistan, Nepal, China and Afghanistan. This is especially important during the spring and early summer crop-growing season when meltwater helps sustain the flow of rivers and provides the region with a vital buffer against the worst impacts of a dry season or drought. Because many of these rivers cross national borders, changes in water supply can also heighten regional tensions when resources are scarce. Meltwater from snow is one of the pillars of survival – but it’s proved difficult in the past to get accurate measurements across this challenging terrain. So measuring where and how much snow falls is essential. My team’s new research gives improved estimates of snowfall across the west-central Himalayas. Results show that in just one winter, the previous best available snowfall analyses underestimated total seasonal snowfall by 37% over Lake Hampta area in Himachal Pradesh. By including new snowfall observations, we reduced that error dramatically. …

15 years after its big demotion, Pluto still doesn’t measure up

15 years after its big demotion, Pluto still doesn’t measure up

Published by Jenni Sidey

From 1929 until 2006, Pluto lived in the imagination of children and adults alike as the ninth and outermost planet in our solar system. Until 1978, with the discovery of its giant moon, Charon, it was the only known large object in our solar system that orbited beyond the reach of Neptune. But the story began to change shortly after that. In the 1990s and 2000s, a tremendous number of new objects were discovered — including planets orbiting stars other than our Sun (exoplanets) and a wide variety of Kuiper belt objects (trans-Neptunian objects) both large and small — that compelled us to rethink just what it meant for an object to be considered a planet. In 2006, with only a small fraction of the general assembly in attendance, the International Astronomical Union put forth three criteria that an object needed to meet in order to be officially defined as a planet: It must be massive enough to pull itself into hydrostatic equilibrium, where gravitation and rotation determine its overall shape. It must orbit the …

How digitally sovereign are you? Red Hat can help measure that

How digitally sovereign are you? Red Hat can help measure that

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways As trust in US tech companies wanes, the importance of digital sovereignty grows. Red Hat’s open-source evaluation toolkit helps you assess your digital sovereignty. You, not Red Hat, control your data and how you use the evaluation.  Over the past year, several governments and companies outside the US have decided they can’t trust American tech companies. So,  digital sovereignty has become an important goal. While American companies, as you can imagine, aren’t happy about that, they’re now helping European organizations to achieve their digital sovereignty goals. One of the first of these was Linux and cloud-native computing powerhouse Red Hat. Late last year, Red Hat became the first US company to announce its own EU-specific digital sovereignty program, Red Hat Confirmed Sovereign Support (RHCSS). This initiative guarantees critical European IT operations remain under EU control. Also: Why even a US tech giant is launching ‘sovereign support’ for Europe now Now, Red Hat is backing this initiative with its open-source Digital Sovereignty Readiness Assessment toolkit. This …

New Year’s resolutions work better if you know what to measure

New Year’s resolutions work better if you know what to measure

Published by Miika Tikkanen

As 2025 draws to a close, it is traditional to look back at the year that was and forward to what may come next. Many of us will be considering New Year’s resolutions, such as getting fitter, eating better and boosting our immune system – but how do you know if your new habits are truly working? To start with, “boosting” your immune system is a misnomer, since an overactive immune defence would be a bad thing, but as new research is revealing (see page 26), it is possible to assess our ability to fend off infection by measuring levels of certain immune cells. From this, your “immune grade” can reveal if you are fighting fit. Tests alone aren’t very useful, though, if you don’t know what you are measuring. We are increasingly aware of the need to have a diverse gut microbiome, with numerous DIY faecal tests now for sale. The trouble is, no one agrees which microbes give you a high score. That should soon change, thanks to a study using the Zoe …