On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis on a level that none of us have experienced before. The following editorial intends to show a physician's perspective of the impact of this storm on healthcare, particularly in triggering cardiovascular events.

U nderstanding and mitigating the effects of disasters requires the integration of research and practice in multiple science, engineering, technology, and social science fields to create a world that’s more resilient in terms of public safety, economic strength, and collective welfare. The January/February 2011 issue of CiSE explored hurricane prediction.1 Hurricanes are one of many natural dis...

In studying the dynamics and mechanics that go into the formation of one of the most incredible structures in meteorology, the eye of a hurricane surpasses the ideal weather system. A hurricane, in all definitions, is truly a machine that has puzzled meteorologists and weather-watchers for centuries. Numerous research has been done to study and help predict the paths, intensity, and structure o...

1 Surface Radar, Thales Nederland B.V. Haaksbergerstraat 49, 7554 PA Hengelo, The Netherlands 2NURC, NATO Research Centre, Viale S. Bartolomeo 400, 19126 La Spezia, Italy 3German Defence Establishment (FGAN-FKIE), Neuenahrer Strasse 20, 53343 Wachtberg, Germany 4Naval Undersea Warfare Center, 1176 Howell Street, Newport, RI 02841-1708, USA 5Metron Inc., 11911 Freedom Drive, Suite 800, Reston, V...

Rapid progress toward the understanding of tropical cyclones has been made during the past 10 years, largely as a result of the development of numerical models. The dynamics and energetics of the mature tropical cyclone are reviewed in this article. First, the pressure, wind, temperature, and moisture structures of the hurricane are summarized. Then a scale analysis is applied over four separat...

[1] The anomalously strong hurricane activity in the Atlantic sector during the recent years led to a controversy about the impact of global warming on hurricane activity in the Atlantic sector. Here we show that the temperature difference between the tropical North Atlantic and the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans (IndoPacific) is a key parameter in controlling the vertical wind shear over t...

Although evacuation is one of the best strategies for protecting citizens from hurricane threat, the ways that local elected officials use hurricane data in deciding whether to issue hurricane evacuation orders is not well understood. To begin to address this problem, we examined the effects of hurricane track and intensity information in a laboratory setting where participants judged the proba...

The localization accuracy of a track-before-detect search for a target moving across a distributed sensor field is examined in this paper. The localization accuracy of the search is defined in terms of the area of intersection of the spatial-temporal sensor coverage regions, as seen from the perspective of the target. The expected value and variance of this area are derived for sensors distribu...

On 25 September 2005, the US President, responding to growing criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina, said ‘... is there a natural disaster – of a certain size – that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort? That’s going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about.’ [1]. Five days later his b...

Adolescents exposed to hurricanes may be at risk to develop symptoms of internalizing disorders. The impact of hurricane exposure on peer systems may contribute to the emergence of symptoms of internalizing disorders. This study examined the influence of peer system variables in the development of internalizing disorder symptoms in adolescents exposed to Hurricane Georges. Participants included...