Leaping sturgeon provide a show for nature lovers on Maine rivers
The shortnose population on the river nearly doubled from about 5,100 in the late 1970s to more than 9,400 around 2000, and it has likely grown since, state biologists have said. The ancient fish have also shown signs of recovering elsewhere in Maine, such as the Saco River further south.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Wall Street Journal
an hour ago
- Wall Street Journal
Fiction: ‘Daikon' by Samuel Hawley
Samuel Hawley's 'Daikon' springs from a hypothetical. What if the U.S. military had deployed not two but three atomic bombs to be used against Japan during World War II? When Mr. Hawley's absorbing alternative history begins, an attempted U.S. attack goes haywire: The B-29 aircraft carrying the first of these bombs is shot down over Japan, leaving an undetonated weapon with world-altering destructive power in the hands of the enemy. But will the Japanese understand what they have and know how to use it? The novel centers on two men who are uneasily allied by the discovery at the crash site. Lt. Col. Shingen Sagara is a staunch militarist who recognizes the bomb as one of the devastating 'new-type' weapons that have been rumored about but generally thought to be years from arrival. He conscripts Keizo Kan, a physicist in Project Ni-Go (Japan's less successful version of the Manhattan Project), to study the bomb and prepare it for immediate use against the country that created it. 'Daikon'—the word, meaning radish, becomes the bomb's codename—unfolds like a detective novel, as Kan works backward to grasp how the weapon was made. Mr. Hawley has previously written nonfiction (including 'The Imjin War' from 2005, a history of Japanese conquest in the 16th century) and he is a fluent explainer of complex subjects. The captured bomb is technologically identical to the one used on Hiroshima. It contains rings of enriched uranium that are shot at each other inside a tube, a process not unlike the firing of a gun. Kan is staggered by the design that is at once ingenious and almost rudimentary. The story barrels ahead urgently, as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki take place while Kan is working. Sagara becomes desperate to launch a reprisal that will thwart Japan's 'surrender faction' and extend the war to its brutal, bitter end. Kan finds himself bound to the bomb's fate, and thus to the war's. He has a connection to the U.S., having studied physics under Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley. He is also deeply affected by the death of his daughter, who was killed in the U.S. Air Force's firebombing of Tokyo. Duty, anger, sorrow, conscience and even hope mix together to form the novel's bracingly intimate ending. Even in alternate histories, it is startling to consider how single decisions can decide worldwide outcomes.
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
In a Reversal, Key Hurricane-Monitoring Data Will Stay Online
The Department of Defense has said it will cancel plans to discontinue a program that makes public satellite data that is crucial for hurricane forecasting and sea ice monitoring. The decision, confirmed by the department on Tuesday in an email to The New York Times, is the latest about-face in the agency's plans for the data. The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, which hosts the data, shocked scientists by announcing in June that it would stop providing the information at the end of that month, citing 'significant cybersecurity risk.' A week later, the agency offered a temporary extension, saying that the data would remain available until July 31, which is just before the usual peak of hurricane season. Now, two days before the latest end-of-month deadline, the agency has decided to keep the program running indefinitely. According to a Navy spokesperson who declined to be identified, it will remain available until the sensors stop working or until the program formally ends in September 2026. 'The center had planned to phase out the data as part of a Defense Department modernization effort,' the spokesperson said. 'But after feedback from government partners, officials found a way to meet modernization goals while keeping the data flowing.' The Navy declined to specify which government partners had provided feedback, or what concerns they had expressed. NOAA did not respond to a request for comment. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
India and US launch 'first-of-its-kind' satellite
Indian and US space agencies have launched a new satellite which will keep a hawk's eye on Earth, detecting and reporting even the smallest changes in land, sea, and ice sheets. Data from the joint mission by Indian Space agency Isro and Nasa will help not just the two countries but the world in preparing and dealing with disasters. The 2,392kg Nasa-Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar (Nisar) was launched at 17:40 India time (12:10 GMT) on Wednesday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in south India. The satellite comes close on the heels of the Axiom-4 mission which saw an Indian astronaut going to the International Space Station for the first time. Nasa, which already has more than two dozen observation satellites in space, says Nisar is the "most sophisticated radar we've ever built" and that it will be able to spot the "minutest of changes anywhere in the world". The "first-of-its-kind satellite" will be the first in space to watch Earth using two different radar frequencies - Nasa's L-band and Isro's S-band. The satellite will be shot into the "sun-synchronous polar orbit", which means it will pass over the same areas of Earth at a regular interval, observing and mapping changes to our planet's surface, former Nasa scientist Mila Mitra told the BBC. Nasa and Isro say Nisar will revisit the same spot every 12 days. It will detect changes and land, ice, or coastal shifts as small as centimetres, says Ms Mitra. Repeated scans will generate rich data, helping Nasa and Isro ground stations support disaster preparedness and track climate change impacts, she added. Scientists say Earth's surface is constantly changing due to natural and human activities, and even small shifts can impact the planet. "Some of these changes happen slowly, some abruptly, some are small while some are subtle," Nasa's director of Earth Sciences Karen St Germain, who is in India for the launch, told a pre-launch press conference. "With Nisar, we'll see the precursors to natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides and volcanoes; we'll see land subsidence and swelling, movements and deformations, melting of glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica; and we'll see forest fires. "We'll also be able to spot human-induced land changes caused by farming and infrastructure projects such as buildings and bridges," she said. The satellite will take 90 days to fully deploy and will start collecting data once tests on all its systems are complete. The $1.5bn joint mission, over a decade in the making, features India's payload, rocket, and launch-pad facilities. Nasa's St Germain said the satellite was special as it was built by scientists "who were at the opposite ends of the globe during the Covid-19 pandemic". Isro chairman V Narayanan told NDTV news channel that the "life-saving satellite" is a symbol of India's rising leadership in space. Talking about Wednesday's launch, he said: "This is going to be yet another great day for India." Indian Science Minister Jitendra Singh has called the mission a defining moment in India-US space cooperation and a boost to Isro's international collaborations. India makes historic landing near Moon's south pole Aditya-L1: India's Sun mission reaches final destination "Nisar is not just a satellite; it is India's scientific handshake with the world," the minister said. The joint mission comes just weeks after astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla travelled to the International Space Station on the AX-4 mission, led by former Nasa veteran Peggy Whitson. India has been making big strides in its space programme recently. In August 2023, the country made history as its Moon mission became the first to land in the lunar south pole region. And last year, it commissioned its first solar observation mission. Isro has announced plans to launch Gaganyaan - the country's first-ever human space flight - in 2027 and has ambitious plans to set up a space station by 2035 and send an astronaut to the Moon by 2040. Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook Solve the daily Crossword
