Geophysicist: A Katrina hurricane will strike every two years

Increases in Earth’s average temperature will result in far more hurricanes in the future, new study reveals.

Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes in US history. The hurricane and the subsequent flooding killed 1,836 people.

The UN climate panel estimates that Earth’s average temperature may rise by 3.4 degrees Celsius over the next hundred years. This, scientists say, will increase the frequency of extreme weather events.

”If this trend continues, it is realistic to expect a ten-fold increase in hurricanes like Katrina. That amounts to once every two years,” says geophysicist Aslak Grinsted, of Copenhagen University’s Niels Bohr Institute.

Reasoning Training Increases Brain Connectivity Associated with High-Level Cognition

A number of studies across various domains– from juggling to taxi navigation to meditation to music to motor learning to processing speed– demonstrate the importance of experience on patterns of neural connectivity. Finally, the cognitive ability domain is catching up.

In recent years, neuroscientists have discovered a large-scale brain network critical for novel and complex goal-directed problem solving. According to Aron Barbey and colleagues, a major function of this network is the manipulation, integration, and control of distributed patterns of neural activity throughout the brain, including lower-level sensory and motor modules. This neural integrative architecture– sometimes referred to as the prefrontal parietal network– involves efficient and reliable communication between specific areas of the lateral prefrontal cortex (critical for high-level abstract integration) and posterior parietal lobe (critical for sensory integration). Here’s an illustration of the key regions of this neural architecture, along with the critical white matter tract binding these regions together into a coordinated network:

Dr. David Livingstone, a Bicentenary

Two hundred years ago the remarkable Dr. David Livingstone was born in the small village of Blantyre, Scotland.

His family was poor, and he started work in a cotton mill at the age of 10. His life as a laborer did not prevent him from the Herculean task (for a poor man) of pursuing the study of medicine, and at the age of 23 he entered Anderson College in Glasgow.

Livingstone was from a deeply religious family, but he rejected the antagonism growing between Science and Religion. He believed in a Christian theology that was dedicated to a scientific understanding of nature.

Starting in 1840 he worked in and explored Africa as a missionary and a scientist. His contributions to medicine, geography, and natural history were, and still are, significant. His experiences led him to become a leading anti-slavery crusader. His phrase describing the East African slave trade, “this open sore of the world,” still condemns the slave trade of today.