Dance

• Mauricio Umansky Ranks in the Top 50 and Moves Up 19 Spots from 2023; The Swanepoel Power 200 Recognized the Top Industry Leaders in Residential Real Estate.
• LOS ANGELES, Jan. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Swanepoel Power 200 (SP 200), the definitive ranking of the residential real estate industry's executives and leaders, today named Mauricio Umansky, CEO and Founder of The Agency, as the nation's 50th most powerful and influential person for 2024.
• "It's an honor to be recognized alongside esteemed leaders in The Swanepoel Power 200 2024 list.
• This acknowledgment is a testament to the incredible team at The Agency and our commitment to innovation and excellence," shared Mauricio Umansky.

• The St. Baldrick's Foundation introduces its 2024 Ambassadors to raise awareness about the need to fund childhood cancer research to find cures and better treatments.
• LOS ANGELES, Jan. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The St. Baldrick's Foundation , the largest charity funder of childhood cancer research grants , is proud to introduce its 2024 Ambassadors who along with their families, will share their unique journey and experiences associated with childhood cancer.
• Now 12 years in remission, Scott is enjoying the 9th grade and is a passionate advocate for childhood cancer research.
• Continue following the St. Baldrick's 2024 Ambassadors' heroic stories on the St. Baldrick's blog and social media channels: Facebook , X , Instagram , YouTube , Tik Tok and LinkedIn .

• From the mesmerizing water clock to the enchanting WinterFaire experience, create lasting memories and start 2024 with a splash of wonder!
• INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Dive into the enchanting world of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, where the magic of water ushered in the New Year with joy, entertainment and a valuable science lesson.
• Families celebrated at the family-friendly hour of noon and Grammy-nominated Zak Morgan set the stage for a unique Countdown to Noon, featuring North America's largest water clock .
• Educational Twist: All the while, visitors uncovered the hidden science lesson regarding the basic principles of a water clock .

• Longer nights during the fall and winter also favour seeing more auroras, but the show is best outside of light-polluted cities.
• Impressive auroral events allowed bright auroras to be seen as far south as the United States recently.
• The number of auroras is increasing as the sun’s activity becomes stronger, approaching a solar maximum.

Night visions

• The Earth, in the sun’s outer atmosphere, is surrounded by hot magnetic plasma which rushes past us at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second in a flow called the solar wind.
• Earth has a magnetic field, which protects us from the solar onslaught, but is pushed back by it as well.

• This explains why auroras are seen at night: not only is it dark, but the sun’s energy takes an indirect route by first being stored in the magnetotail.
• If the magnetic fields change rapidly, they can affect large regions of the Earth, building up to cause problems for power networks.

Solar cycles

• About 300 years later, American astronomer George Hale showed that sunspots had intense magnetic fields, several thousand times stronger than Earth’s.
• In the 400 years since Galileo’s observations, we have found that the number of sunspots varies dramatically over an 11-year long cycle.

Energy storage

• Magnetic fields store energy, and sometimes, as in Earth’s magnetotail or near sunspots, this energy can be changed to other forms.
• In the strong fields of sunspots, it can be released as X-rays in rapid, unpredictable flares.
• Sunspots and flares are near the surface or light-emitting layer of the sun, but material can escape from the sun’s strong gravity field.

Space weather forecasts

• However, in this, the following solar cycle, we have already exceeded predicted numbers of sunspots and had large magnetic storms, so predictions may need to be revised upward.
• Although direct measurement of incoming disturbances by satellites in the solar wind gives us only about an hour’s warning of stormy space weather, we can also predict a bit further in advance by watching sunspots rotate into view as the sun turns.

Rare storms

• The strongest flare of Solar Cycle 25 so far occurred on Dec. 14, and was the most powerful eruption the sun has produced since the great storms of September 2017.
• Large solar storms are rare, but we must calmly prepare for possible space weather impacts that should maximize in a few years.

Martin Gerard Connors receives funding from Canada's NSERC.