ScienceIQ.com

What Is Sickle Cell Anemia?

Sickle cell anemia is an inherited blood disease. That means you are born with it and it lasts a lifetime. Sickle cell anemia affects the red blood cells. Normal red blood cells are smooth and round like doughnuts. They move easily through blood vessels to carry oxygen to all parts of the body. In sickle cell anemia, the red blood cells become ...

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WhatIsSickleCellAnemia
Geology

Will Runaway Water Warm the World?

Water in the upper atmosphere will make the Earth heat up, but not as much as many scientists have believed, says a new study published by NASA scientists. Using satellite data, researchers Ken ... Continue reading

WillRunawayWaterWarmtheWorld
Geology

There's Oil Down There

Ever wonder what oil looks like underground, down deep, hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface, buried under millions of tons of rock and dirt? If you could look down an oil well and see oil ... Continue reading

TheresOilDownThere
Biology

Why Tree Twig Twine Twists Tongues

Even though we call it a 'tongue twister,' it isn't really your tongue that has a hard time saying 'sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.' It's not all that rare for people to make mispronunciations ... Continue reading

TreeTwigTwineTwists
Biology

Throw Out Your Thermometer

If you're out camping, and you've left your favorite thermometer at home, how can you figure out the temperature? Not the most earth-shaking problem, we admit, but there is an all natural way to find ... Continue reading

Thermometer

What's In A Name?

HurricaneElenaHurricane Elena as seen from the space shuttle. Have you ever wondered how hurricanes get their names? For several hundred years many hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane occurred. Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive given names in written as well as spoken communications is quicker and less subject to error than the older more cumbersome latitude-longitude identification methods. These advantages are especially important in exchanging detailed storm information between hundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases, and ships at sea.

The use of easily remembered names greatly reduces confusion when two or more tropical storms occur at the same time. For example, one hurricane can be moving slowly westward in the Gulf of Mexico, while at exactly the same time another hurricane can be moving rapidly Northward along the Atlantic coast. In the past, confusion and false rumors have arisen when storm advisories broadcast from radio stations were mistaken for warnings concerning an entirely different storm located hundreds of miles away. Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center and now maintained and updated by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization. The lists featured only women's names until 1979, when men's and women's names were alternated.

Six lists are used in rotation. Thus, the 2001 list will be used again in 2007. The only time that there is a change in the list is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity. If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the WMO committee (called primarily to discuss many other issues) the offending name is stricken from the list and another name is selected to replace it. The name lists have an international flavor because hurricanes affect many nations and are tracked by the public and weather services of countries other than the United States. Names for these lists are selected from library sources and agreed upon by nations involved during international meetings of the World Meteorological Organization.