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After Katrina, scientists are trying to learn how to prevent hurricanes from making landfall by calming them down offshore or steering them off course. Hurricanes are created when tropical storms pass over warm water, and due to global warming, there?s a lot more of that than there used to be.

Justin Mullins writes in New Scientist that Moshe Alamaro of MIT tried floating jet engines on the ocean ahead of an approaching hurricane. They triggered tiny cyclones in the atmosphere. The idea was to drain the atmosphere of energy before the actual hurricane arrived. But it didn’t work because it would be impossible to assemble enough jet engines to inject enough energy into the atmosphere to even trigger a small storm.
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Newswise – Clothes dryers use up a lot of valuable energy, but most of us don’t have a place to hang our wet clothes out on a line. But if clothes were less wet when they went into the dryer, we wouldn’t have to dry them for as long a time. Now a chemist has invented a chemical clothes wringer to add to our washing machine loads, so that clothes will dry much more quickly–and you can make it at home.

Chemical engineer Dinesh Shah says, “We feel it’s very cost-effective research and convenient for consumers.” The University of Florida, where Shah teaches, has applied for a patent on the product and you may see it in the store soon, since the research that led to its creation was funded with a $200,000 grant from Procter & Gamble.
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On The Daily Show recently, Jon Stewart made jokes about how Americans tend to get worked up over new threats to their health, while they are comfortable with old threats that are much more dangerous. Maybe a little perspective is needed.
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Newswise – Hurricane Katrina could lead to smaller crop yields in corn and soybean fields in Indiana. How can a gulf coast hurricane effect crops so far away? It’s because these farmers have lost access to shipping routes along the Mississippi River. Agronomists are advising them to postpone harvesting their crops, if possible. There may be shortages of soy and cattle feed in Western states.

Grain-carrying ships are just now starting to move into the Gulf through New Orleans ports for again. About 75% of the nation’s corn and soybeans goes through Louisiana.
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