Indian Trail Robotics Team recognized for winning championship
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — The Indian Trail Middle School Robotics Team was honored for winning the state's 2025 robotics championship.
The team was recognized during the Johnson City School Board's meeting Monday evening.
Federal library grants' future uncertain after Trump order
The Robo-Hawks team consists of students Byron Eisenzopf, Sam Quaintance, and Mushabbar Raza and coaches Misty Davis and Carleton Lyon.
The team will head to the World Robotics Championship next month in Dallas.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Ticking time bomb': Ocean acidity crosses vital threshold, study finds
The deep oceans have crossed a crucial boundary that threatens their ability to provide the surface with food and oxygen, a new study finds. Nearly two-thirds of the ocean below 200 meters, or 656 feet, as well as nearly half of that above, have breached 'safe' levels of acidity, according to findings published on Monday in Global Change Biology. The fall in ocean pH is 'a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies,' Steve Widdicombe, director of science at the United Kingdom's Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), said in a statement. The study was funded in part by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that has been targeted for steep cuts by the Trump White House, in large part because of its role in investigating climate change. Some of the biggest changes in deep water are happening off the coast of western North America, home to extensive crab and salmon fisheries, the study found. The core problem is one scientists have warned about for a long time: the continued global burning of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide — an acid when dissolved in water — is making the seas and oceans more acidic. Or, technically, it's making them less basic, which is to say: Less hospitable to species such as corals and clams that form the foundation of the ocean's ecosystem. 'Most ocean life doesn't just live at the surface — the waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals,' lead author Helen Findlay of PML. 'Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought.' As of five years ago, Findlay's study noted, the oceans may have crossed a critical threshold in which oceanic levels of calcium carbonate — the main ingredient in limestones, and also the shells of those animals — fell to more than 20 percent below pre-industrial levels. If true, that shift would mean the Earth has passed seven out of nine of the critical 'planetary boundaries' needed to maintain its ecosystem, as the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found last year. That shift, Widdicombe of the Marine Lab said, means 'we're witnessing the loss of critical habitats that countless marine species depend on.' 'From the coral reefs that support tourism to the shellfish industries that sustain coastal communities,' he added, 'we're gambling with both biodiversity and billions in economic value every day that action is delayed.' The further implications are even more serious. The reasons for the ocean's rise in acid, or fall in base, is that its waters have absorbed about one-third of all the carbon dioxide released by surface burning of coal, oil and gas. But the more carbon dioxide it absorbs, the lower its ability to absorb more — meaning faster warming on the surface. Making that dynamic even more dramatic, seas and oceans have also absorbed 90 percent of the global heating that the Earth's surface would have otherwise experienced, according to NASA. In addition to absorbing heat and carbon dioxide, the ocean also provides 50 percent of the Earth's oxygen — which comes from the very marine ecosystems that warming and acidification are threatening. Ecosystem loss and fossil fuel burning mean that levels of oxygen below the surface are decreasing, as, more slowly, is oxygen above the surface. —Updated at 12:37 p.m. EDT Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Amid Musk threat to decommission SpaceX Dragon, NASA reveals more Boeing Starliner delays
As the fracas between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump escalated last week to the point of Musk threatening to decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, NASA revealed even more delays to Dragon's alternative, Boeing's Starliner. 'NASA is assessing the earliest potential for a Starliner flight to the International Space Station in early 2026, pending system certification and resolution of Starliner's technical issues,' according to a statement sent to media late Friday. Though it didn't mention SpaceX specifically, the statement — coupled with Musk's threat — underscored the extraordinary degree to which NASA remains dependent on the private company for many of its key endeavors. It came after the fallout between the two powerful men sparked in part by Musk's opposition to Trump's so-call 'Big Beautiful Bill' that critics including Musk say would increase federal spending. Trump posted a threat on his Truth Social platform last week saying, 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!' That would include NASA's Commercial Crew Program contracts that rely on SpaceX as the lone U.S.-based option to safely fly astronauts to the International Space Station. 'In light of the President's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,' Musk posted to X in retort, although he later backed off. By now, Boeing's Starliner was supposed to have been a viable alternative sharing the taxi duties with SpaceX, but it has fallen behind Musk's company by more than five years. Last year, Starliner made its first flight with crew on board to the station, but suffered thruster issues and helium leaks on the way to docking with the station. NASA elected to send the spacecraft home without its crew, and the original plan for as short as an eight-day stay on board turned into more than nine months. While Starliner was able to make a safe landing, NASA and Boeing's path forward required not only a fix of the thruster and helium leak issues, but juggling whether or not the next flight would risk humans on board. That decision is pending, NASA said Friday. 'The agency is still evaluating whether Starliner's next flight will be in a crew or cargo configuration,' NASA stated. 'NASA astronauts are training for a Starliner post-certification mission as the agency continues to review its forward plans and execute testing campaigns targeted throughout the spring and summer.' With the continued delay, two of the crew that were looking to fly on the first operational rotational crew mission — Starliner-1 — were pulled and reassigned to the upcoming SpaceX Crew-11 mission that's targeting liftoff in late July. NASA said it has not yet determined just who will be assigned to the full Starliner-1 crew. But if the next flight is yet another uncrewed certification mission to ensure it's safe for astronauts, and that doesn't come until early 2026, then an actual operational flight would come likely no earlier than summer 2026. In the meantime, SpaceX will be relied on to continue rotational missions, although for now NASA has not announced the mission that will relieve Crew-11. If SpaceX were not a viable option, the U.S. would have to return to relying on Russia and its Soyuz spacecraft to maintain a presence on the space station. That's the situation NASA was in after the Space Shuttle Program ended in 2011. It wasn't until May 2020 when SpaceX was successful with the crewed Demo-2 mission that NASA was able to launch from the U.S. again. Since then, SpaceX has flown its fleet of four Crew Dragons 17 times carrying 64 humans to space. That includes 10 operational crew rotation missions as well as three private company visits to the space station for Axiom Space. A fifth Crew Dragon is set to launch for the first time Wednesday morning on Axiom Space's Ax-4 mission taking another four-person crew on a two-week trip to the space station. _____
Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Contributor: Donald Trump's plan for pirate mining
On April 24, President Trump issued another questionable executive order, this one calling for deep-sea mining in both federal and international waters. The former is within his control; the latter would be a violation of international law. Although the U.S. is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — the 1982 treaty ratified by 169 other nations that regulates maritime activities, including deep-sea mining, on and in the high seas — the U.S. has always abided by it. Until now. 'You know we're sometimes an outlier on things like the Law of the Sea treaty,' says Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee. 'And what [Trump's] doing with deep-sea mining is just making us even more of a lone ranger, if not a pariah.' Read more: The Oceans Court ruled that the seas are a hot mess. Why haven't you heard about it? Global mining consortiums have been eyeing mineral-rich nodules on the ocean floor since the 1970s. Sometimes as large as potatoes, the nodules form around a hard nucleus, such as a grain of sand or a shark's tooth, accumulating minerals out of seawater and sediment over millions of years in the deep benthic zone, the least-studied of the ocean's fragile ecosystems. Given the limits of 20th century technology, mining two to three miles below the ocean's surface proved commercially impractical, to the relief of environmentalists and oceanographers. But a bad idea that promises quick returns never gets old. Today, tech-driven mining corporations, such as the Metals Company of Canada, known as TMC, are leading the way back into the deep. The UN's International Seabed Authority, established under the Law of the Sea treaty, has granted TMC and other companies exploratory permits for deep-sea mining. Using massive mother ships, the companies deploy tank-tread "robotic excavators" (essentially, underwater bulldozers) or giant vacuum crawlers connected to pipes, pumps and miles of power cable. The Metals Company alone has recovered 4,500 tons of nodules. Now, TMC and the Trump administration are claiming that a novel interpretation of an obscure American law allows the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue commercial mining permits in waters the rest of the world considers outside American jurisdiction. Read more: The most important part of the ocean you've never heard of In 1960, U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh was one of the first two humans to reach the deepest part of the ocean — the so-called Challenger Deep — along with Jacques Piccard, who piloted their bathysphere. Two years before Walsh died in 2023, he explained why opening large swaths of international waters to deep-sea mining would be a mistake. 'It's kind of like clear-cutting the forest,' Walsh told me. 'It doesn't differentiate between the ore and the things that live on the seafloor. And these are organisms that take thousands of years to populate an area. So, I can't support awarding mining permissions or licenses to areas that have not been carefully studied.' That's also the assessment of more than 900 marine scientists and policy experts from 70 nations who have signed a statement urging the United Nations to hold off on licensing mining operations 'that could result in the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.' Read more: L.A. fires wreaked havoc on the land. Scientists are racing to learn what they've done to the sea What we don't know about the deep ocean is astonishing. Just last year, a paper in the journal Nature showed that the nodule-covered seafloor in a 1.7-million-square-mile area between Hawaii and Mexico — where mining companies are already exploring — was producing 'dark oxygen.' Until that revelation, scientists had considered sunlight, for photosynthesis, essential for ocean oxygen. The 'huge' discovery, as described by the lead researcher, needs more study. Understanding the dark oxygen process could translate into the ability to sustain life on other planets or remake our understanding of how life began on Earth. Mining the seabed raises other concerns besides the need to preserve dark oxygen. The oceans are a carbon sink. If the sediments are constantly stirred up, as they would be in mining, we 'may be reintroducing that carbon back into the water column — and then ultimately back into the atmosphere,' NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad cautioned me back when he ran the agency in 2023. His remarks stand in sharp contrast to the headline on a recent fawning news release from the current NOAA — ''The next gold rush': President Trump unlocks access to critical deep seabed minerals" — and its subhead: "Historic executive order will boost economic growth, support national security.' Read more: How humanity's ear-splitting racket deafens whales and other marine animals The mining companies like to argue that scraping the bottom of the deep ocean is itself a climate solution and can be accomplished with appropriate ecosystem safeguards. The nodules are rich in manganese, copper, nickel and cobalt, key constituents of battery-powered clean energy, such as EVs. 'You've got to have a planetary perspective,' the Metal Company's chief scientist Greg Stone insists, but critics question the environmental vision of the mining industry. Thirty-three nations, including France and New Zealand, have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining until the world's largest habitat is better understood. Corporate customers including Google, Samsung, Philips, Volvo and BMW have pledged to keep deep-sea minerals out of their electric cars and other products. The United States during the Biden administration supported a take-it-slow approach. Deep-sea mining 'is not ready for prime time,' Monica Medina, assistant secretary of State for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, told me two years ago. For the present, Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio is retaining that post but not that policy position. Read more: Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be eliminated in 10 years, cleanup organization says Like Trump's America, China and India have shown keen interest in quickly bringing commercial mining operations to the planet's last physical frontier. The tiny Pacific Island nation of Nauru, which has a contract with the Metals Company, has been pushing the Seabed Authority to finalize its deep-sea regulations and issue commercial permits. Under Trump's executive order, the United States is barreling ahead regardless, circumventing the Law of the Sea and the best advice of scientists who are pleading for a better understanding of what dredging the sea floor could destroy or unleash. On the high seas in the 21st century, the U.S. may prove to be the world's newest pirate threat. David Helvarg is the executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group. He co-hosts "Rising Tide: The Ocean Podcast." If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
