tropical

People up and down the East Coast are bracing for Hurricane Irene's arrival this weekend. When will she make landfall, and what damage might she bring to your area? Tracking a hurricane isn't an exact science, but thankfully there are a number of sites that can keep you informed.

The Queen Mother of hurricane-tracking sites is the National Hurricane Center. It serves up information straight from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including current advisories, satellite photos, and a number of maps that show projections for wind speed and storm surge.

Weather.com is an obvious stop … Read more

Every year as summer is winding to a close, hurricane season ramps up here in the United States. Though meteorologists officially describe hurricane season as being from June 1 to November 30, they admit that those are not magic dates and that the bulk of severe weather occurs between August and October. Right now in late August, Hurricane Irene is headed toward North Carolina and is expected to travel northward into New England. If you live in these areas or want to track the storm, there are several Web sites as well as iOS and Android apps that give you … Read more

A new NASA mission aims to come to grips with the way nature whips up hurricanes.

Set to begin Sunday, the agency's six-week Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) mission will see a series of planes outfitted with sophisticated instruments take to the skies in an attempt to understand the birth of a hurricane, in order to give people a better chance to prepare for them.

This is NASA's first domestic hurricane project since 2001 and its largest ever. Three NASA planes, several satellites, and four planes from research partners will team up to measure tropical storms as … Read more

The 3D Fish School Screensaver is an attractive way for users to transform their computer screens into burbling aquariums. The simple interface and realistic graphics make this program a pleasure to use, but the limitations of the trial version are a somewhat significant drawback.

The trial version of the software allows users to choose between one freshwater and one saltwater scene; the full version includes additional options. Users can customize such features as the number and types of fish, amount of bubbles, background, and lighting. The screensaver features both bubble and wave sounds, each of which can be turned off … Read more

Wilson can't make it to the show again because of his ongoing illness, so everyone send us a voice mail wishing our buddy well wishes and a speedy return back to The 404! Dan the Mantern takes time out of his busy schedule of doughnut runs and paper stapling to fill in and give us some laughs on this overcast Monday. We recap our weekend adventures, talk about the dangers of kidnapping a virtual lion, send our condolences to the hungry worker bees at Google, protect ourselves from exploding iPods, and perform reveal the first ever sushi DNA test!… Read more

On the show today: Dan the Mantern has his first day as the official 404 stenographer, a dude gets a girlfriend and sells off his entire videogame collection, Jeff finally agrees to give Justin his old PS2, Wilson introduces the worst story ever to infect the show, and a quick discussion of college mating rituals. Disney also has a bad week: Cinderella and Tinkerbell get cuffed in front of a hoard of screaming fans and the Disney fatcats "dive in" to little girls' underwear.

I'd like to give a warm welcome to the newest CNET TV Intern, … Read more

Carbon dioxide is known to be one of the greenhouse gases that can cause the Earth's atmosphere to retain heat. Today, two new scientific studies have been released that offer more insight into carbon and its dispersal into the air as carbon dioxide.

First, from Australia's CSIRO, the national science agency, comes a study on carbon contained within tropical forests that is thus not available to be released as CO2. This study says the current deforestation rate in the tropics releases 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually--about one-fifth of all carbon emissions caused … Read more