Physics

• At the end of the southern summer, Antarctica’s sea ice hit its annual minimum.
• By at least one measure, which tracks the area of ocean that contains at least 15% of sea ice, it was a little above the record low of 2023.
• But something has changed in how the Southern Ocean works and the area covered by sea ice has decreased dramatically.

The southernmost shelf sea

• The annual freeze-thaw cycle of Antarctic sea ice is one of the defining properties of our planet.
• Time to take our medicine

  The voyage was led by a team of scientists who coordinate Italy’s longstanding research in the Southern Ocean.

• Continental shelf seas around Antarctica are special because of the presence of sea ice – but this varies in space and time.
• It shows that by the end of summer, the Ross Sea region holds only a few patches of sea ice.
• The region is the southernmost open water on the planet and acts as a gateway to seawater flowing in and out under the largest (by area) ice shelf on the planet – the Ross Ice Shelf.

The state of sea ice

• This reinforced our understanding of the importance of the spatial variability of sea ice.
• At the late-summer sea-ice minimum, the Ross Sea is largely free of ice, while the Weddell Sea stays filled with ice.

• They took me beyond anything imagined from data and models.
• However, it is clear that Antarctic ocean data collection systems need to expand when and where they collect information.

The future is robotic

• We deployed 11 relatively simple Argo floats that will drift around the region for years, surfacing to send back data on temperature, salinity and in some cases oxygen.
• We also sent three robotic ocean gliders on their data-collecting missions independent of the ship.

• The data provide evidence of warmer water lying just beneath the edge of the continental shelf, highlighting the fragility of the system.
• There is a growing sense that the Ross Sea sector will become more important in the coming decade.

• Craig Stevens receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), Antarctica New Zealand Antarctic Science Platform (ASP-ANTA1801), MBIE Strategic Science Investment Fund and the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund.
• The observations and collaboration described here were made possible through long-term funding for the work from both the Italian PNRA (Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide) and the NZ Antarctic Science Platform.

• VALENCIA, Calif., March 20, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nusano, a physics company transforming the production of medical radioisotopes, will present at the 7th Theranostics World Congress taking place March 22-24, 2024, in Santiago, Chile.
• Greg Moffitt, Nusano Director of Target Development, will provide an overview of the company’s proprietary radioisotope production platform on Sunday, March 24.
• He will discuss Nusano’s plans to supply commercial-scale lutetium-177 beginning in early 2025 and to make the short-lived radioisotope, astatine-211, viable for therapeutic use.
• “Nusano is bringing our commercial-scale, proprietary technology online to support cancer patients, stabilize supply chains and enable innovation,” said Greg Moffitt, Director of Target Development at Nusano.

• SAN JOSE, Calif., March 18, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GTC -- To accelerate efforts to combat the $140 billion in economic losses due to extreme weather brought on by climate change, NVIDIA today announced its Earth-2 climate digital twin cloud platform for simulating and visualizing weather and climate at unprecedented scale.
• “Climate disasters are now normal — historic droughts, catastrophic hurricanes and generational floods appear in the news with alarming frequency,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.
• It also includes GPU acceleration of numerical weather prediction models like ICON on the latest NVIDIA Grace Hopper™ systems.
• Running on NVIDIA DGX GH200, HGX™ H100 and OVX™ supercomputers, Earth-2 may provide a path to simulate and visualize the global climate simulations at unprecedented speed and scale.

• HOD HASHARON, Israel, March 18, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Weebit Nano Limited (ASX:WBT), a leading developer of advanced memory technologies for the global semiconductor industry, will showcase a live demo of Resistive Random-Access Memory (ReRAM) technology implemented in GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX® platform.
• The demo confirms the capability of ReRAM in this advanced geometry – a process node where embedded flash is unable to scale.
• It also highlights some of the numerous capabilities of Weebit ReRAM, including ultra-low power consumption, fast programming time and byte addressability.
• The 8Mb Weebit ReRAM demo chip in 22nm has the largest memory capacity of any Weebit module to-date and is implemented in the most advanced process so far.