 |
|
|
|||||
An outbreak of extreme weather has roiled the country with deadly dust storms in the plains and hundreds of tornadoes across the eastern U.S. over the past few weeks. Now, heavy rainfall across parts of the South and Midwest is prompting comparisons with some of the worst flooding on record for the region. Very moist air from the record-warm Gulf of Mexico is being drawn northward into a stalled frontal system creating a perfect recipe for torrential rains. Parts of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys received more than 15 inches of rain over the past four days. High water swept away buildings, forced water rescues in river towns, and cut off rural areas when roads flooded. More than 18 people have died, just days after damaging tornadoes swept through some of the same locations. The rains prompted dire wording from the National Weather Service including warnings of a potentially historic, prolonged flash flood event and serious concern of catastrophic, life-threatening consequences from generational rainfall. This isnt routine. This is a rare, high-impact, and potentially devastating event, said a social media post from the Memphis office of the National Weather Service. This weeks floods are set to reach a mark set only a handful of times over the past 200 years. The region’s last floods of this magnitude were in 1997 and 2011. In 1997, parts of western Kentucky received more than 10 inches of rain in a single day, which created turbulent currents on the Ohio River strong enough to flood the lock-and-dam infrastructure that allows barge traffic to operate. In 2011, water rose so rapidly that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to blast a hole in levees along Mississippi River farmland in rural southern Missouri in a last-ditch effort to avoid an uncontrolled breach of the levees further downstream in Memphis, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. The worst-case scenario for the Ohio River was the flood of 1937in which the river peaked about 10 feet higher than current forecasts. Although that magnitude isn’t expected this time, a similar amount of rain felljust about 100 miles further north than this weeks storms, enough so nearly all runoff went into the Ohio River. More than a million people were homeless after the 1937 flood, and only one bridge was left intact between Pittsburgh and Memphis. The flood struck during the middle of the Dust Bowl and at the end of the Great Depression, and it paved the way for the modern system of flood control through levees and dams. Although weather forecasts for the rains have been reliable, the National Weather Service continues to be stretched thin due to Trumps budget cuts. A staffing assessment gathered by NWS employees and published by the Associated Press on Friday found that nearly half of all local forecast offices are now critically understaffed, reducing meteorologists ability to interface with the public and local emergency management. Detailed vacancy data for all 122 weather field offices show eight offices are missing more than 35% of their staffincluding those in Arkansas and Kentucky where tornadoes and torrential rain hit this week, said the report. A four-day total rainfall of 15 inches is more than Memphis typically receives in April, May, and June combined. According to NWS data, in a stable climate, that kind of rainstorm is only expected to recur approximately once every 500 to 1,000 years. This is exactly the sort of extreme weather event that our infrastructure isn’t built to handle. According to the Corps of Engineers, many of the locks and dams along the Ohio River are beyond their 50-year lifespan. Climate change increases the risk of extreme rainfall events, and the Corps is in the process of updating its flood maps to account for those changes nationwide. This weeks rains have already created major flash flooding in cities and smaller rivers from Texas to Ohio. Near the confluence with the Mississippi River, the Ohio River is expected to crest by mid-April at its highest level since 2011just a few feet below the tops of the levees there. All that water will gradually make its way into the Mississippi and out to the Gulf of Mexico through Louisiana. In addition to physical damages, the flooding could bring weeks of shipping delays for companies that rely on the roads and river barges that form the backbone of the Midwests economy. This weeks flooding could add to supply chain chaos as Trumps latest tariffs go into effect. The governors of Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee have asked the federal government for help, and Kentucky has also activated its National Guard to help respond to the floods. The governors have also declared states of emergency as waters continue to rise.
Category:
E-Commerce
An outbreak of extreme weather has roiled the country with deadly dust storms in the plains and hundreds of tornadoes across the eastern U.S. over the past few weeks. Now, heavy rainfall across parts of the South and Midwest is prompting comparisons with some of the worst flooding on record for the region. Very moist air from the record-warm Gulf of Mexico is being drawn northward into a stalled frontal system creating a perfect recipe for torrential rains. Parts of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys received more than 15 inches of rain over the past four days. High water swept away buildings, forced water rescues in river towns, and cut off rural areas when roads flooded. More than 18 people have died, just days after damaging tornadoes swept through some of the same locations. The rains prompted dire wording from the National Weather Service including warnings of a potentially historic, prolonged flash flood event and serious concern of catastrophic, life-threatening consequences from generational rainfall. This isnt routine. This is a rare, high-impact, and potentially devastating event, said a social media post from the Memphis office of the National Weather Service. This weeks floods are set to reach a mark set only a handful of times over the past 200 years. The region’s last floods of this magnitude were in 1997 and 2011. In 1997, parts of western Kentucky received more than 10 inches of rain in a single day, which created turbulent currents on the Ohio River strong enough to flood the lock-and-dam infrastructure that allows barge traffic to operate. In 2011, water rose so rapidly that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to blast a hole in levees along Mississippi River farmland in rural southern Missouri in a last-ditch effort to avoid an uncontrolled breach of the levees further downstream in Memphis, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. The worst-case scenario for the Ohio River was the flood of 1937in which the river peaked about 10 feet higher than current forecasts. Although that magnitude isn’t expected this time, a similar amount of rain felljust about 100 miles further north than this weeks storms, enough so nearly all runoff went into the Ohio River. More than a million people were homeless after the 1937 flood, and only one bridge was left intact between Pittsburgh and Memphis. The flood struck during the middle of the Dust Bowl and at the end of the Great Depression, and it paved the way for the modern system of flood control through levees and dams. Although weather forecasts for the rains have been reliable, the National Weather Service continues to be stretched thin due to Trumps budget cuts. A staffing assessment gathered by NWS employees and published by the Associated Press on Friday found that nearly half of all local forecast offices are now critically understaffed, reducing meteorologists ability to interface with the public and local emergency management. Detailed vacancy data for all 122 weather field offices show eight offices are missing more than 35% of their staffincluding those in Arkansas and Kentucky where tornadoes and torrential rain hit this week, said the report. A four-day total rainfall of 15 inches is more than Memphis, Tennessee, typically receives in April, May, and June combined. According to NWS data, in a stable climate, that kind of rainstorm is only expected to recur approximately once every 500 to 1,000 years. This is exactly the sort of extreme weather event that our infrastructure isn’t built to handle. According to the Corps of Engineers, many of the locks and dams along the Ohio River are beyond their 50-year lifespan. Climate change increases the risk of extreme rainfall events, and the Corps is in the process of updating its flood maps to account for those changes nationwide. This weeks rains have already created major flash flooding in cities and smaller rivers from Texas to Ohio. Near the confluence with the Mississippi River, the Ohio River is expected to crest by mid-April at its highest level since 2011just a few feet below the tops of the levees there. All that water will gradually make its way into the Mississippi and out to the Gulf of Mexico through Louisiana. In addition to physical damages, the flooding could bring weeks of shipping delays for companies that rely on the roads and river barges that form the backbone of the Midwests economy. This weeks flooding could add to supply chain chaos as Trumps latest tariffs go into effect. The governors of Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee have asked the federal government for help, and Kentucky has also activated its National Guard to help respond to the floods. The governors have also declared states of emergency as waters continue to rise.
Category:
E-Commerce
The news has been something of a hellscape lately, and the urge to doomscroll is destined to worsen rising anxieties about tariffs and the cost of living. Luckily, theres a new website that you can turn to if you need a bit of a brain break, and its all about chickens. Chicken.pics is a site from the mind of Erika Hall, cofounder of the design consultancy Mule. In a new subsection on the site, called Clickens, users are presented with two paintings of chickens and asked to judge them based on a hyper-specific adjective: For example, one might have to choose which of two hens is more maladjusted, mephistophelean, or persnickety. All of the chickens are hand-painted by Hall, and there are over 200 of them, as well as more than 200 potential adjectives, which means the chicken show-down options are functionally infinite. Its a nostalgic concept that harkens back to an early 2010s era of the internet, when silly stunt websites were everywhereand its a reminder that sometimes, the internet can still be fun. [Photo: chicken.pics] Which chicken is more punk? The idea for Clickens hatched back in 2021, when Hall was on a sabbatical to write her book, Just Enough Research, and was, by her own admission, looking for ways to procrastinate. She took up painting with watercolors and gouache as a sufficiently distracting side-hobby, but soon found it difficult to imagine new things to paint. Chicken was top of mind at the time because Halls senior pug, Rupert, had begun preferring the meat over his usual canned food. [Photo: chicken.pics] I thought, You know what, if I have to cook all this chicken for my silly little dog, I need to do something for the chickens, because we take chickens for granted, Hall says. Like, there’s 33 billion of them on the planet, and we just turn them into nuggets and things. And I thought, I’m going to honor these chickens that I’m feeding to my dog by really trying to see chickens and help other people see chickens. So, Hall started painting chickensand just didnt stop. Soon, square profile pics of chickens were covering her kitchen walls. Last year, she set up Chicken.pics to as a gallery to display the works. [Photo: chicken.pics] I made this website last year called Chicken.picswhich is, like, the greatest domain everbecause the web has gotten all platformized, and there just aren’t fun, stupid websites anymore, Hall says. So I decided I was going to restart the web from first principles and just make a website. It’s not trying to sell you anything. It’s just got pictures of chickens. In the last week of February, a friend helped Hall add the Clickens feature to the website, which pits two random chickens against each other in a battle of adjectives, hot or not style, Hall says. In just over a month, more than 74,000 votes have been cast on the site. People need something to do that isn’t doom scrollingthat was the intention, Hall says. It’s just a silly thing for people to do.
Category:
E-Commerce
When the House of Cinema in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was demolished in 2017, it was an architectural awakening for the city. A large circular concrete building completed in 1982, the House of Cinema was an instant cultural and architectural landmark in the city, then part of the Soviet Union. Its demolition, to make way for a controversial commercial development project, spurred many in the city to worry about which landmark would fall next. That led the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation to launch a citywide research project to document endangered buildings. Most were built between the late 1960s and early 1980s when the Soviet Union sought to frame its ambitions through civic architecture. Many buildings from this time embraced modernism, with swooping facades, inventive structural forms, and artful mosaic panels adorning interiors and exteriors. As public buildings, their fates were at the whims of government leaders eager to develop the city into a 21st century economic powerhouse, which is how the House of Cinema was destroyed. [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] To try to stop others from falling, the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation funded a team of international researchers, historians, and architects to undertake Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI, a research project documenting the city’s modernist structures, and rallying for their preservation. [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] The concentration of modernist architecture is very high in Tashkent, but what truly sets it apart is the remarkable number of well-planned, innovative, and elegantly designed public buildings, says architect Ekaterina Golovatyuk, one of the experts involved in the project and a co-founder of Grace Studio, a Milan-based architecture, design, and urbanism firm. Underway since 2018, the research project has documented 24 key modernist sites across the city. Of those, 21 have secured national heritage site status, along with 154 mosaic panels, protecting them from demolition. [Cover Image: Rizzoli] These buildings, and the ongoing effort to save them, is the subject of a pair of new books, Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, published by Rizzoli New York, and Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI, published by Lars Müller Publishers. The books reveal Tashkent as an under appreciated hotbed of modernist architecture, and a historical turning point for both Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia. At one point the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, Tashkent was chosen in the 1950s as a showcase of the Soviet Orient, which resulted in an architectural boom. The city was meant to demonstrate how well socialism could adapt to a different cultural context, Golovatyuk says. This initiated a very interesting search for local identity, contended between architects from Tashkent and Moscow. The result was a transformation of traditional architectural elements within the framework of a modernist language. State Museum of History [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] This building spree took on new urgency in 1966 when a massive earthquake damaged much of the city. The city’s recovery coincided with a Soviet Union-wide emphasis on prefabricated building and new forms of construction, leaving Tashkent with a wide variety of inventive and modern buildings. Palace of Peoples’ Friendship [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] The Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project has put this legacy under a new spotlight, helping to save many buildings from demolition while also underscoring their significance as the city grows. Some of these buildings are also being seen in a broader context. Golovatyuk and Giacomo Cantoni, co-founder of Grace Studio, were recently named curators of Uzbekistan’s national pavilion at the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale. Their exhibition will focus on one project included in the research project, a large-scale scientific complex outside Tashkent known as the Sun Heliocomplex. Dedicated to studying solar energy, it was ahead of its time in both design and intention. Big Solar Furnace [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] Golovatyuk says this project and others that are being saved through the Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project are finding new relevance, especially within Uzbekistan, where contemporary architects are building on their heritage. I think the search for national identity restarted almost from scratch when Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, says Golovatyuk, who first visited Tashkent in 2006. Many buildings have sought to establish continuity with the pre-Soviet past through ornamentation, probably in a more exuberant manner than during the modernist period. Big Solar Furnace [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] An emerging generation of young architects is taking particular inspiration from the buildings being preserved through the Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project, creating what Golovatyuk calls a more sophisticated dialogue with both tradition and the modernist past. Palace of Peoples’ Friendship [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] The effort to save and recognize these buildings is city-specific for Tashkent, where modernism is now a kind of calling card. But it’s also a fight that exists in cities around the world, such as Philadelphia, where an internationally renowned police headquarters building is losing a long preservation battle, and Boston, where the government center complex is a perennial demolition target. Palace of Culture of Aviators [Photo: Karel Balas/Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, Rizzoli New York/courtesy of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation] A few of these buildings faced at least some risk of transformation, but I believe it is to be expected. The city has been undergoing rapid growth for the past eight years, there is significant pressure on all real estate, Golovatyuk says. This kind of pressure is the fate of modernism not only in Tashkent, but worldwide. The research project’s success in securing protected status for Tashkent’s modernist buildings could be a playbook for other cities to follow.
Category:
E-Commerce
Chinese aerospace giant Comac has unveiled its plans for the C949, a supersonic aircraft designed to fly 50% farther than the Concorde and produce sonic booms quieter than a hairdryer. Scheduled to debut in 2049coinciding with the centenary of the People’s Republic of Chinathe aircraft positions China to challenge US supersonic projects like NASA’s X-59 and Boom Supersonic’s Overture in a race to redefine global air travel. The most important thing here is that this shows supersonic is a raceand Chinas interested, says Blake Scholl, CEO and founder of Boom Supersonic. Advanced airplanes symbolize technological superiority, and its no accident that China wants that crown. In a scientific paper published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Aeronautica Sinica, Comac engineers detailed a Mach 1.6 aircraft capable of flying 4,225 miles, surpassing the Concorde’s 2,796 miles. The key to its design is a reverse-camber fuselage. In aerodynamics, this term refers to an unconventional curvature design in the fuselage or wings that inverts traditional airfoil shapes (which usually turns down from front to back). For the Comac C949, this term specifically describes a concave midsectioncurving inward rather than outwardalong the aircrafts body. The team claims this curved midsection weakens shockwaves. This silhouette combines with a long needle-shaped nose that splits pressure pulses, and aerodynamic bulges near the engines to disperse exhaust turbulence. The airplane doesnt have a regular cockpit. [Image: Comac/South China Morning Post] Similar to the X-59 If the long dart shape looks familiar, it’s because you probably saw it before: NASA’s X-59 uses a very similar design. According to the research paper reported by the South China Morning Post, the team led by Comacs chief aerodynamicist Wu Dawei did simulations that demonstrate that the C949 aerodynamic features will reduce its sonic boom noise to just 83.9 perceived level decibels (PLdB), about the sound of a hairdryer. This is only 5% of the 105 PLdB noise generated by the Concorde. NASA’s aircraft will have a 75 PLdB boomcomparable to the hum of a dishwasherso the C949 will be slightly louder. Comac, like NASA with the X-59, believes that a quieter boom will make the case for removing the supersonic flight ban over land that’s been in place since 1971. The company says that the take-off noise will be within the international limits for take-off in airports near cities. The state-owned company, which aims to become the next Boeing or Airbus, knows that this is crucial for its commercial viability all around the world. Both the C949 and X-59 employ elongated noses and redesigned fuselages to fracture shockwaves, but the C949 adds artificial intelligence systems not found in NASA’s demonstrator. The paper claims that its artificial intelligence-powered fly-by-wire control system adjusts the aircraft’s surfaces 100 times per second to counteract instability at high speeds. The C949s twin turbofansthe jet engines that provide the thrustare adaptive-cycle, which means that they will alternate between two modes. One, when flying at a cruise altitude of 52,000-feet, is a fuel-efficient mode at 1.7 times the speed of sound (Mach 1.7). The other one, at lower altitudes, a low boom mode at Mach 1.6. Like the C949, the X-59 features a 30-meter needle-shaped nosenearly half its lengthto stretch and disperse shockwaves, while its engine is positioned atop the fuselage to direct noise upward. It’s all about the geometry, Lockheed X-59 program director Dave Richardson told me in an interview. There’s no exotic technology, just a meticulous way to turn a bang into a dull thud. Lockheed has envisioned that, using its aerodynamics, a 44-passenger commercial aircraft would be 61 meters long. Richardson acknowledges there will be obstacles: Scaling [the X-59] requires engines that can sustain Mach 1.8 without afterburnersa challenge, but not impossible. The Chinese engineers will have to develop a new engine too, just like Boom Supersonic. NASA’s Quesst prototype uses a virtual cockpit system that uses HD cameras to project the frontal outside view on internal screens that traditional pilot’s glass cockpit. This eliminates protuberances from the fuselage that would amplify the sonic boom sound. While Comac hasnt disclosed if the C949 will feature a full digital cockpit, its the only possible design option. Overture will also use one, like the Boom Supersonic XB-1, the prototype that served Scholl and his team to test their design ideas for Overture and their idea of boom-less supersonic flight. The Overture avoids these extreme aerodynamic shapes, leveraging an atmospheric phenomenon called Mach cutoff. At 18,000 meters, its boomless cruise technique uses temperature and wind gradients to bend shockwaves upward, preventing them from reaching the ground. The sonic boom occurs but never reaches the ground. Not even as a dull thud, like the C949 and X-59. The company demonstrated this in two supersonic flights over the Mojave Desert, California, just a few months ago. Its not magic, just math, says Scholl, who aims to offer Mach 1.7 flights at business-class prices by 2029. We dont need new materials, just smarter engineering, he adds. Challenges and advantages According to Scholl, the X-59 and the C949 won’t be able to operate at current airports due to their size and shape, hindering their commercial adoption. The X-59 requires new airport infrastructureits too long for existing gates, tells me. Overture, by contrast, fits current airports, he says. Regardless, Comac faces considerable challenges. It’s a relative newcomer to commercial aviation. Its first airliner, which includes a first homegrown engine, the C919, entered service in 2023. The company lacks the certifiation experience or supply chain power of Boeing or Airbus. Still, its ambitious timeline includes delivering a wide-body airplane called the C929 (an equivalent to the 787 Dreamliner) by 2027; and an ultra-long haul, 400-seat airplane called the C939 (equivalent to Boeings 777-9) by 2039. Then it plans to launch the C949 in 2049. So many complex projects, all built from scratch, carry the risk of delays, especially with unproven engine technology, according to industry experts. But if any country can pull this off, it’s China. Beijing has developed a very mature aerospace industry. The country is manufacturing a completely new, homegrown Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighter in large quantities. It is now testing two different new sixth-generation fighters, which broke cover months before the U.S. announced its future sixth-generation fighter, the F-47, for now just a 3D render. And, to top it all, Beijing is ahead in another key aerospace race: hypersonic flight. General Mark Milley, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, recognized this fact when the Pentagon detected a Chinese secret test that defied physics in 2021, qualifying it as close to a Sputnik moment, referring to the day the Soviet Union left the U.S. behind in the space race. China has the economic and technological power to make it happen, and state funding shields Comac from market pressures. The supersonic endgame Its a real danger, especially when the U.S. is abdicating leadership, warns Scholl. Look at Boeingthey havent launched a new plane in decades [Boeing’s last new commercial airliner was the Dreamliner, which was announced in 2003 and took off in 2009 for the first time] China aims to replicate their industrial success in aviation. Look at what happened with cars. Chinese cars take over in markets without any tariffs. That shift happened in 10 years, he says. China aims to replicate this in aviation. The C949 is feasible and fits into Chinese aerospace ambitions, but Comac still have to turn its idea into realityand from scratch. For now, NASA’s X-59 must demonstrate that its boom is acceptable to regulators. Boom Supersonic has shown that quiet supersonic flight is possible, but needs a new fuselage and new engines that balance speed and efficiency. Almost everything remains to be done, and the race has just begun. But Scholl warns: They have put a date on it. They have a model number. They are very serious. Theyll move as fast as engineering allows, without our regulatory red tape. Weve seen what happened in semiconductors when we lost leadership. We cant let that happen here, Scholl urges. And Wu and his team knows it, as they write in their paper: The winner will dictate 21st-century aviation. For now, all three contenders are rewriting the rules for this race, almost silently.
Category:
E-Commerce
Sites : [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] [87] [88] [89] [90] next »