A dust transport scheme has been developed for a general circulation model of the Martian atmosphere. This enables radiatively active dust transport, with the atmospheric state responding to changes in the dust distribution via atmospheric heating, as well as dust transport being determined by atmospheric conditions. The scheme includes dust lifting, advection by model winds, atmospheric mixing...

Moisture-harvesting lizards, such as the Australian thorny devil Moloch horridus, have remarkable adaptations for inhabiting arid regions. Their microstructured skin surface, with channels in between overlapping scales, enables them to collect water by capillarity and passively transport it to the mouth for ingestion. We characterized this capillary water transport for live thorny devils using ...

Laboratory studies, numerical simulations, and desert field tests indicate that aeolian dust transport can generate atmospheric electricity via contact electrification or “triboelectricity.” In convective structures such as dust devils and dust storms, grain stratification leads to macroscopic charge separations and gives rise to an overall electric dipole moment in the aeolian feature, similar...

Multi-annual dust transport simulations have been performed using a Mars general circulation model containing a dust transport scheme which responds to changes in the atmospheric state. If the dust transport is ‘radiatively active’ the atmospheric state also responds to changes in the dust distribution. This paper examines the suspended dust distribution obtained using different lifting paramet...

A new nanoscale electric field sensor was developed for studying triboelectric charging in terrestrial and Martian dust devils. This sensor is capable to measure the large electric fields for large dust devils without saturation. However, to quantify the electric charges and the field strength it is critical to calibrate the mechanical stiffness of the sensor devices. We performed a technical f...

March 2006 “Manic-depressive illness, like other severe psychiatric disorders, has come out of the closet. Once relegated to the dark recesses of the family, it is now openly discussed as a brain disease – frequently a tragic disease, to be sure, but a disease nonetheless, like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, or Alzheimer’s disease. The devils and demons once suspected of lurking in th...