Alabama Intel: Top targets trending, predictions logged  On3

Trending tickers: Oracle, Nio, Porsche, Legal & General and Balfour Beatty  Yahoo Finance UK

What's Driving Attention Behind These Trending Stocks? MRVL, STRL, HIMS  TradingView

What Did Joel Embiid Say to James Harden in Trending Video? Internet Sleuths Try to Match Lip Sync  Bleacher Report

Nation's No. 1 Athlete Trending Toward Big Ten Powerhouse After Top Six Emerges  Sports Illustrated

1. Google Maps brings a 3D map to your driving directions  Engadget
2. How we’re reimagining Maps with Gemini  blog.google
3. Google brings more AI to navigation with 'Ask Maps' feature that lets users ask complex questions  CNBC
4. Google Maps Just Got a Massive Makeover and New AI Features for Drivers  Road & Track
5. Google overhauls its Maps app, adding in more AI features to help people get around  abcnews.com

1. MacBook Neo Teardown: Modular Ports, Glue-Less Battery, Zero Tape  MacRumors
2. MacBook Neo  Apple
3. Apple’s MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks  Ars Technica
4. Asus Co-CEO: MacBook Neo Is a 'Shock' to the PC Industry  PCMag
5. Exec of laptop maker says Apple's budget MacBook Neo is a 'shock to the entire market'  Business Insider

1. The Galaxy S26 series is now officially on sale, and the trade-in values have plummeted  9to5Google
2. I used the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra for weeks, and I love its new display trick  CNN
3. Galaxy S26 Ultra Review: Privacy Display Proves Hardware Still Matters in an AI World  CNET
4. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is available now: Launch deals, early sales  Mashable
5. Samsung Galaxy S26 Series and Galaxy Buds4 Series Now Available Worldwide  Samsung Global Newsroom

1. WhatsApp is launching parent-linked accounts for pre-teens  TechCrunch
2. WhatsApp launches parent-managed accounts for pre-teens amid safety concerns  Reuters
3. WhatsApp Introduces Parent-Managed Accounts for Children  WSJ
4. WhatsApp launches preteen accounts, here’s how they work  9to5Mac
5. WhatsApp to launch ‘pre-teen’ accounts controlled by parents  The Times

1. iPhone Fold rumor: iPad-like multitasking, but no iPad apps and no Face ID  The Verge
2. Apple’s Foldable iPhone to Feature iPad-Like Interface When Opened  Bloomberg
3. Apple Stays Competitive On New iPhone Fold Price  Forbes
4. A new iPhone Fold design leak reportedly revealed: See it now  Mashable
5. iPhone Fold Said to Come in These Three Storage Options  MacRumors

Stars peek through the dusty, winding arms of NGC 5134, a spiral galaxy located 65 million light-years away, in this Feb. 20, 2026, image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument collects the mid-infrared light emitted by the warm dust speckled through the galaxy’s clouds, tracing the clumps and strands of dusty gas. The telescope’s Near Infrared Camera records shorter-wavelength near-infrared light, mostly from the stars and star clusters that dot the galaxy’s spiral arms.

By using Webb to study the infrared light nearby galaxies like NGC 5134 whose stars and gas can be seen in detail, astronomers can apply their knowledge to galaxies too distant to be observed so closely — like those that are scattered in the background of this image, barely more than points of light.

Read more about this galaxy.

Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)

Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy

Galaxies carry the imprints of past encounters. When they pass near one another or collide, gravity pulls their stars into long tails, thin streams, and faint shells – features that preserve the history of these dramatic events. Thanks to deep, high-resolution images from the Euclid space telescope, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with critical contributions from NASA, we can now see these delicate structures more clearly than ever before in unprecedented numbers.

As a volunteer for the Galaxy Zoo: Tidal Tales project, you’ll help identify these signs of galaxy interactions. By classifying galaxy images, you’ll help build the first large catalog of galaxy mergers seen by the Euclid space telescope. Your input will also train computer models to better recognize these features and describe how collisions shape star formation, galaxy growth, and the evolution of the universe. 

Want to help astronomers trace how galaxy collisions reshape the universe over time?  Join Galaxy Zoo: Tidal Tales on Zooniverse today! 

Download PDF: Efficient Large Displacement/Large Rotation Dynamic Simulations Using Nonlinear Dynamic Substructures

Utilizing reduced-order dynamic math models (DMM) in linear system-level dynamic analyses is a well-known practice that enables extreme computational efficiencies. But what about nonlinear system dynamics? Reduced-order DMMs have found their way into contact dynamics. The engineer must look no further than the Henkel-Mar pad separation analysis methodology to verify this fact. More sophisticated applications of DMMs in contact dynamics are possible when certain repetitive geometry pattens are present. For example, Figure 1 shows a type of pipe known as a “flexible” pipe used by the subsea industry. This design features four layers of helically wound steel wires that provide the pipe with its stick/slip behavior during bending, thereby enabling a longer fatigue life in harsh ocean environments. With these helically wound armor layers presenting a repetitive contact topology, contact surfaces can be constructed and tracked enabling the friction logic to operate resulting in the friction hysteretic moment-curvature plot provided in Figure 1 (top). 

As seen from Figure 1, the pipe was subjected to many bending cycles and executed in essentially a real-time computation. A single bending cycle of the same pipe in full finite element model (FEM) resolution (i.e., no use of DMMs) would require 48 hours of computation on 36 central processing units (CPUs) running in parallel given the very large order of the FEM.   

What about utilizing DMMs for computationally efficient nonlinear dynamics involving large displacements and rotations? Before addressing this question, the residual flexibility mixed boundary transformation (RFMB¹) must be defined. The RFMB coordinate transformation is given as follows: 

The transformation is a mix of the following submatrices: constraint modes (ψ) due to unit displacements on the b-set boundary degrees of freedom (DoFs) that remain fixed during the eigenvalue problem, residual flexibility (g) due to unit forces at the c-set boundary DoFs that remain free during the eigenvalue problem, and a truncated set of normal modes (φ) computed with the b-set DoFs constrained. It can be shown that the transformation retains full flexibility at the DMM physical DoFs and retains the full dynamics of the FEM up to the user-selected truncation frequency for the normal modes. The reduction of DoFs, and hence the computational efficiency, arises from the number of kept modes (k) being significantly less than the number of interior FEM DoFs. 

To enable DMM large displacements/rotations, four coordinates are added to the above RFMB to track large rotations. These quaternions replace the rigid-body modes that are only valid for infinitesimal rotations. With this process, the RFMB is transformed into a nonlinear dynamic substructure (NDS). Solution algorithms need to be modified accordingly as well to allow for equilibrium iterations since the problem now is highly nonlinear. As an example, consider the undeformed cantilever beam model (Figure 2) composed of 20 DMMs (single DMM of a beam composed of 5 CBAR elements repeated 20x).   

A moment is applied at the free end (right end) of Figure 2. While small displacement theory is limited and breaks down after a few degrees of rotation, the cantilever beam can be completely rolled up using NDS (see Figure 3) in a highly nonlinear dynamic simulation. Also note that the entire nonlinear dynamic simulation was executed in seconds on a laptop and included all dynamic effects. Similarly, the beam can be bent into a “catenary-like²” shape by turning on gravity and enforcing displacements at each end to the required coupling location (see Figure 4). 

One application for this large displacement/rotation NDS capability has been to include umbilical models in the coupled loads analysis (CLA) framework. Figure 5 shows the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) umbilical that was integrated into the Space Launch System (SLS) CLA. The SLS CLA is an integrated assembly of various component DMMs (boosters, core stage, mobile launcher (ML), upper stage, etc.) to which the ICPS umbilical (ICPSU) and its hoses as NDS DMMs can now be added. For each hose, one end connects to the SLS vehicle and the other end to the ML structure. As an example, Figure 6 shows the evolution of the deformations of the forward vent hose (modeled with 20 NDS DMMs) as it goes from the undeformed geometry (straight line) into its prelaunch geometry during the initial condition setup in the CLA. 

As the timed command for umbilical separation is given, the vehicle-side ground plate separates (using the Henkel-Mar contact/separation algorithm) and the ML gantry rotates the separating umbilical away from the already lifting vehicle (the gantry was brought into the CLA as a NDS capable of large rotations). Figure 7 captures the post-separation forward vent hose dynamics (extracted from the CLA). From this, 100  ICPSU hose clearances to the lifting vehicle can be computed. 

The power of the reduced-order models does not end with linear dynamics. It is possible to introduce large displacements and rotations into reduced-order models to enable seamless integration into large substructured integrated system dynamic analyses such as a CLA. For the specific case of the SLS, this capability allowed us to integrate umbilicals into the CLA to more accurately capture the impact of system flexibilities, dynamic response to forcing functions, pad separation “twang” effects, ML dynamics, and gantry/umbilical timings on clearances.  

For information, contact Dr. Dexter Johnson.  dexter.johnson@nasa.gov 

Winter winds lofted clouds of dust from the Sahara Desert, carrying it north toward the Mediterranean and dispersing it widely across Europe in March 2026. When the dust combined with moisture-laden weather systems, a dirty rain fell in parts of Spain, France, and the United Kingdom.

This animation highlights the concentration and movement of dust throughout the region from March 1 to March 9. It depicts dust column mass density—a measure of the amount of dust contained in a column of air—produced with a version of the GEOS (Goddard Earth Observing System) model. The model integrates satellite data with mathematical equations that represent physical processes in the atmosphere.

The animation shows dust plumes originating in northwestern Africa being blown both to the west across the Atlantic Ocean and north toward the Mediterranean. As plumes spread throughout Western Europe over several days, people observed hazy skies from southern England, where sunrises and sunsets took on an eerie glow, to the Alps in Switzerland and Italy, where a dust layer encroached on the Matterhorn.

Not all of the dust remained aloft. Storms encountered some of the dust, causing particles to fall to the ground with rain and coat surfaces with a brownish residue. A low-pressure system, named Storm Regina by Portugal’s weather service, moved across the Iberian Peninsula and brought so-called blood rain to southern and eastern Spain, along with parts of France and the southern UK in early March, according to news reports.

Over the Mediterranean, areas of “dusty cirrus” clouds developed higher in the atmosphere, where dust particles can act as condensation nuclei for ice crystals, according to MeteoSwiss, Switzerland’s Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology. Scientists are studying these clouds to better understand their formation and how they affect weather, climate, and even solar power generation.

In a new analysis, researchers used NASA’s MERRA-2 (Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2), observations from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), and other satellite products to parse the effect of airborne Saharan dust on solar power in Hungary. They found that photovoltaic performance dropped to 46 percent on high-dust days, compared with 75 percent or more on low-dust days. They determined the greatest losses occurred because dust enhanced the presence and reflectance of cirrus clouds and reduced the amount of radiation that reached solar panels.

Some research suggests more frequent and intense wintertime dust events have affected Europe in recent years. Researchers have proposed several factors contributing to these outbreaks, including drier-than-normal conditions in northwestern Africa and weather patterns more often driving winds north from the Sahara.

NASA Earth Observatory animation by Lauren Dauphin, using GEOS-FP data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

References & Resources

• Barcelona Dust Regional Center (2026, March) Daily Dust Products. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• FOX Weather (2026, March 9) Blood rain, a rare weather phenomenon, falls across southern Europe. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• IQAir (2026, March 6) Southwest Europe Air Quality Alert: Southwest Europe Dust. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• Met Office (2026, March 4) What is ‘blood rain’ and will we see it this week? Accessed March 11, 2026.
• MeteoSwiss (2026, March 4) He’s here again, the visitor from North Africa. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2022, March 31) Dusty Storm Clouds Over Europe. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• NASA Earthdata (2026) Dust/Ash/Smoke. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• Seifert, A., et al. (2023) Aerosol–cloud–radiation interaction during Saharan dust episodes: the dusty cirrus puzzle. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 23, 6409–6430.
• Varga, G., et al. (2026) Saharan dust and cirrus clouds: Dominating indirect impact of dust events on photovoltaic energy generation in Hungary (2019–2024). Solar Energy, 307.

By USGS Landsat Missions 

The William T. Pecora Award is presented annually to individuals or teams using satellite or aerial remote sensing that make outstanding contributions toward understanding the Earth (land, oceans, and air), educating the next generation of scientists, informing decision-makers, or supporting natural or human-induced disaster response. Both national and international nominations are welcome.

The award is sponsored jointly by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and was established in 1974 to honor the memory of Dr. William T. Pecora, former Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and Under Secretary, Department of the Interior.  

Dr. Pecora was a motivating force behind the establishment of a program for civil remote sensing of the Earth from space.  His early vision and support helped establish what we know today as the Landsat satellite program. 

Nominations for the 2026 award will be accepted until May 29, 2026.

Visit the William T. Pecora Awards webpage for eligibility requirements and the nomination process.  

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