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The St. Patrick Bay ice caps on the Hazen Plateau of northeastern Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, have disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) scientists and colleagues predicted via a 2017 paper in The Cryosphere that the ice caps would melt out completely within the next five years, and recent images from NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) have confirmed that this prediction was accurate. Mark Serreze, director of NSIDC, Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, and lead author on the paper, first set foot on the St. Patrick Bay ice caps in 1982 as a young graduate student. He visited the ice caps with his advisor, Ray Bradley, of the University of Massachusetts. "When I first visited those ice caps, they seemed like such a permanent fixture of the landscape," said Serreze. "To watch them die in less than 40 years just blows me away." In 2017, scientists compared ASTER satellite data from July 2015 to vertical aerial photographs taken in August of 1959. They found that between 1959 and 2015, the ice caps had been reduced to only five percent of their former area, and shrank noticeably between 2014 and 2015 in response to the especially warm summer in 2015. The ice caps are absent from ASTER images taken on July 14, 2020. The St. Patrick Bay ice caps were one-half of a group of small ice caps on the Hazen Plateau, which formed and likely attained their maximum extents during the Little Ice Age, perhaps several centuries ago. The Murray and Simmons ice caps, which make up the second half of the Hazen Plateau ice caps, are located at a higher elevation and are therefore faring better, though scientists predict that their demise is imminent as well. "We've long known that as climate change takes hold, the effects would be especially pronounced in the Arctic," said Serreze. "But the death of those two little caps that I once knew so well has made climate change very personal. All that's left are some photographs and a lot of memories." source: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-canadian-ice-caps-scientific.html

Despite the controversy related to China-India border, this articles show us the importance of Remote Sensing as a strategic tools on Politic and Military The recent deaths of at least 20 soldiers along the contested border at Ladakh between India and China represents the largest loss of life from a skirmish between the two countries since the clashes in 1967 that left hundreds dead. It also highlights the tensions that have been building along the Line of Actual Control since early May. Using this satellite imagery, I will try to illustrate the approximate reality on the ground. My analysis disproves some of the more extreme claims that have been made about the incident, such as that thousands of Chinese soldiers have crossed the LAC and encamped in Indian-controlled territory. The satellite pictures also highlight the obvious threats to a peaceful status quo that exist along the western sector of India’s border with China. The analysis includes evidence that strongly suggests People’s Liberation Army forces have been regularly crossing into Indian territory temporarily on routine patrol routes. The details of this week’s clashes are still murky. But based on recent satellite imagery and media reporting, it appears the bulk of casualties were the result of soldiers falling during hand-to-hand fighting along a steep ridgeline that marks the LAC. The small area that is at the heart of this dispute appears to straddle the LAC and likely houses less than 50 Chinese troops. Neither Beijing nor Delhi considers the loosely demarcated line that separates the two countries in Ladakh to be an authoritative border. It approximates areas of territorial control established at the end of the 1962 Sino-Indian War when China withdrew from much of its captured territory on the Himalayan plateau. The border standoff at Ladakh has become a politically charged issue in India. The Indian government has revealed few details about the situation over the past few weeks. Former Indian Army officers, however, have been providing information to journalists and the media have been consistently painting a picture of a substantial conflict, often involving claims of the incursion of 10,000 PLA troops into undisputed Indian territory. The reality is less dramatic, but does represent a significant change to the status quo along the India–China border that threatens to escalate. By analysing satellite imagery from late May and early June it’s possible to make informed judgements about the positions of forces at multiple hotspots. Along the India–China border there are three key areas that produce the majority of tension between the two countries: Arunachal Pradesh; Sikkim and nearby Doklam (the site of a major skirmish in 2017 that saw Indian troops enter Bhutanese territory to prevent the completion of a strategic road being built by China); and Ladakh. The build-up of troops and military positions in recent months has been mostly in the Ladakh sector. Developments have occurred in three strategic areas along the LAC: the Galwan River Valley, where this week’s deadly clashes occurred; Hot Springs, where satellite evidence suggests that Chinese forces have regularly entered Indian territory; and the Pangong Tso. complete story : https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/satellite-images-show-positions-surrounding-deadly-china-india-clash/ https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/latest-satellite-images-show-situation-far-from-normal-at-ladakh-s-pangong-tso-1706373-2020-07-31

This is without a doubt the most anticipated feature of the year for CarPlay users, as Google Maps can now replace Apple Maps on the multi-view screen. Apple originally locked the maps card on the CarPlay dashboard to Apple Maps, which means that users weren’t allowed to configure any other application to display real-time information in this panel. It goes without saying this was quite an issue for many users, especially as Google Maps and the Google-owned Waze are extremely popular choices among CarPlay users. The release of iOS 13.4 in April brought massive changes in this regard, as the maps card was unlocked for third parties, essentially allowing any developer of such an app to add support for the dashboard and thus be able to replace Apple Maps. Google, however, has never been in a rush to make the whole thing happen, so here we are in early August finally getting support for Google Maps on the dashboard. What you need to know, however, is that the feature is only available for testers who are part of the beta program, but chances are that support for the multi-view screen on CarPlay will be included in one of the next Google Maps updates rolling out this month for production devices. In the meantime, Waze is yet to get this feature, as not even the beta builds of the app come with it. However, I’m guessing it’s all now just a matter of time until Waze is being updated with dashboard support on CarPlay, and I’m expecting Google to make this happen in its traffic navigation app rather sooner than later. On a side note, Google has also released a new Google Maps update for the stable channel on iOS, bringing the app to version 5.49. This one, however, includes only fixes and improvements, so no dashboard support for now on production devices. source: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/google-releases-the-most-anticipated-google-maps-carplay-feature-for-testers-146802.html#