Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future

If three people tell you are a horse, buy a saddle.

Are you where you want to be professionally? Whether you want to advance faster at your present company, change jobs, or make the jump to a new field entirely, the goal is clear: to build a career that thrives on your unique passions and talents. As part of the Microsoft Research Visiting Speaker Series, branding expert Dorie Clark provides a step-by-step guide to help you assess your unique strengths, develop a compelling personal brand, and ensure that others recognize the powerful contribution you can make.

The Deadly Ascent of Denali

Smithsonian Channel

For many climbers, Mt. McKinley presents the alluring chance to reach the top of our continent. But the dangers involved in doing so are very real and sometimes very sudden.

How to Entertain Yourself in 30-Below Weather

Smithsonian Channel

Dog-sledding in public parks, a furry winter festival, and a playful take on the Running of the Bulls are just a few ways Anchorage residents celebrate their incredibly frosty home.

Fermi Helps Scientists Study Gamma-ray Thunderstorms

NASA

Merging data on high-energy bursts seen on Earth by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope with data from ground-based radar and lightning detectors, scientists have completed the most detailed analysis to date of the types of thunderstorms producing terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, or TGFs.

TGFs occur unpredictably and fleetingly, with durations less than a thousandth of a second, and remain poorly understood. Yet the gamma rays they produce rank among the highest-energy light naturally produced on Earth.

Earlier Fermi studies helped uncover lightning-like radio signals emitted by TGFs. This made it possible to use ground-based lightning location networks to pin down storms producing the flashes, opening the door to a deeper understanding of the meteorology powering these extreme events.

Scientists gathered a sample of nearly 900 Fermi TGFs accurately located by ground networks, which can pinpoint the location of lightning discharges — and the corresponding signals from TGFs — to within 6 miles (10 km) anywhere on the globe. From this group, they identified 24 TGFs that occurred within areas covered by Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) sites.

The researchers found that even weak and marginally electrified storms are capable of producing TGFs.

The new study also confirms previous findings indicating that TGFs tend to occur near the highest parts of a thunderstorm, between about 7 and 9 miles (11 to 14 kilometers) high. However, TGFs associated with lightning at lower altitudes would be so weakened by traveling a longer path through the atmosphere that Fermi couldn’t detect them. If true, the estimated number of 1,100 TGFs occurring each day may be much larger than previously thought.

Immunology of the Lung

Nature Video

Our lungs bring in vital oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. But they’re also an important immune site. They filter the air we breathe, repulsing invaders and repairing injury. But sometimes these powerful immune responses overreact, causing diseases such as asthma.