3,200 miles beneath Earth’s surface lies the inner core, a ball-shaped mass of mostly iron that is responsible for Earth’s magnetic field. In the 1950’s, researchers suggested the inner core was solid, in contrast to the liquid metal region surrounding it.

New research led by Rhett Butler, a geophysicist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), suggests that Earth’s “solid” inner core is, in fact, endowed with a range of liquid, soft, and hard structures which vary across the top 150 miles of the inner core.

No human, nor machine has been to this region. The depth, pressure and temperature make inner Earth inaccessible. So Butler, a researcher at SOEST’s Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, and co-author Seiji Tsuboi, research scientist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, relied on the only means available to probe the innermost Earth—earthquake waves.

“Illuminated by earthquakes in the crust and upper mantle, and observed by seismic observatories at Earth’s surface, seismology offers the only direct way to investigate the inner core and its processes,” said Butler.

As seismic waves move through various layers of Earth, their speed changes and they may reflect or refract depending on the minerals, temperature and density of that layer.

In order to infer features of the inner core, Butler and Tsuboi utilized data from seismometers directly opposite of the location where an earthquake was generated. Using Japan’s Earth Simulator supercomputer, they assessed five pairings to broadly cover the inner core region: Tonga–Algeria, Indonesia–Brazil, and three between Chile–China.

“In stark contrast to the homogeneous, soft iron alloys considered in all Earth models of the inner core since the 1970’s, our models suggest there are adjacent regions of hard, soft, and liquid or mushy iron alloys in the top 150 miles of the inner core,” said Butler. “This puts new constraints upon the composition, thermal history, and evolution of Earth.

The study of the inner core and discovery of its heterogeneous structure provide important new information about dynamics at the boundary between the inner and outer core, which impact the generation Earth’s magnetic field.

“Knowledge of this boundary condition from seismology may enable better, predictive models of the geomagnetic field which shields and protects life on our planet,” said Butler.

The researchers plan to model the inner core structure in finer detail using the Earth Simulator and compare how that structure compares with various characteristics of Earth’s geomagnetic field.

Read more on UH News, Phys.org, Florida News Times, Eurekalert and Science Daily.

This past summer, eight graduate students from across Hawaiʻi dove into a month-long course to harness the power of technology to understand and advance marine science and future ocean health. The partially in-the-field class, “Applying Innovative Technologies in Marine Science,” at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), gave students a chance to explore the ever-changing world of innovative technologies and apply them to their own research. The course was sponsored by Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Watch a video summary (YouTube) of the experience.

“What’s great about the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology is that we have such great access to the reefs—I would say unparalleled access to reefs,” said Elizabeth Madin, a HIMB assistant research professor. “It allows us to bring the students directly into the field and have both the lab experiences and the field experiences. So for the summer course, it’s kind of an ideal place to do this sort of work where you can get it all in one day.”

New technology and innovation is allowing researchers to answer questions that they have never been able to before. Through this course, students are equipped to take the next steps in examining how humans are changing marine ecosystems and develop solutions for the future.

“What’s happened in the last decade is truly incredible,” said Joshua Madin, a HIMB associate research professor. “We can take camera equipment down there and create three dimensional maps of the reef that is just like a terrestrial ecologist walking through a forest. We can bring that back to the lab and start asking deeper questions to understand very complicated problems.”

“We were absolutely thrilled to partner with Schmidt Ocean Institute to offer this course,” said Judy Lemus, specialist and former interim director of HIMB. “HIMB is a recognized leader in marine science graduate education, and opportunities like these are seminal experiences in the development of our next generation of marine scientists.”

Read also on UH News.

Similar to a giant sponge, the ocean absorbs a quarter of the excess CO2 produced every year from human activities (anthropogenic carbon) around the world. Carbon dioxide dissolves in the surface water and through the overturning circulation of ocean currents and mixing processes, is slowly transported into the ocean’s interior—which allows the surface ocean to absorb more CO2. In this cycle, CO2 reacts with the water molecules in the ocean to form carbonic acid in a process known as ocean acidification. Like ocean warming, an increase in ocean acidification can also have a profound impact on marine ecosystems.

SOEST Oceanography professor Christopher Sabine has devoted his life to understanding the connections between the ocean and anthropogenic carbon. After earning his PhD in chemical oceanography at UH Mānoa in the early 1990s, Sabine spent the next decade conducting high-quality carbon measurements in an effort to better understand where inorganic carbon is stored in the ocean.

“Initially, we were thinking that ocean storage of anthropogenic carbon was a good thing,” said Sabine, who also serves as the SOEST associate dean for research. “While producing the first robust, global synthesis of anthropogenic carbon based on direct ocean carbon measurements, we in the scientific community came to the realization that the accumulation of more than 100 billion metric tons of anthropogenic carbon in the ocean would negatively impact marine organisms in ways not considered previously.”

With this discovery, the field of ocean acidification research was created. Today, researchers have written tens of thousands of articles on ocean acidification, a term that did not exist 20 years ago.

One of the initial concerns with ocean acidification was the impact it would have on calcifying organisms, that is, creatures that produce calcium carbonate skeletons or shells. Calcium carbonate is what forms the white sand beaches of Hawaiʻi. It is formed when corals, or other calcifying organisms, take a dissolved calcium ion and a carbonate ion and put them together to create a solid, calcium carbonate.

“As the ocean absorbs more CO2 from the atmosphere, the concentration of carbonate ions decreases—nearly 20% so far,” said Sabine. “With less carbonate ion in seawater, it becomes more difficult for corals and other calcifiers to form their critical skeletons and shells.”

Since 2018, Sabine has been monitoring ocean carbon concentrations around Hawaiʻi using autonomous, buoy-based systems he helped develop as a researcher with NOAA. He is also working with colleagues to develop and test new instruments for measuring ocean acidification, as well as methods to better understand the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on Hawaiian corals.

“Corals are a particularly vulnerable species because they are sensitive to rising ocean temperatures through a phenomenon known as coral bleaching, and they exhibit slower growth rates and increased fragility from ocean acidification,” said Sabine. “These combined stresses, together with an increased risk of damage from a possible hurricane or drowning from rising sea levels, are a grave concern for Hawaiʻi’s coral reefs.”

Read also on UH News and the UH Office of the VP for Research and Innovation.

Planetary scientists at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa are now studying samples of the asteroid Ryugu, returned to Earth by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft flown by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Ryugu is an ancient fragment of a larger asteroid that formed in the cloud of gas and dust that spawned our solar system. It is an intriguing type of asteroid that is rich in carbon, which is an element essential to life.

Hope Ishii, Elena Dobrica, John Bradley and Kenta Ohtaki, researchers at the Hawai‘i Institute for Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, have already begun to analyze the treasured sample here in Hawai‘i. Their Advanced Electron Microscopy Center (AEMC) in HIGP is home to a specialized scientific instrument called a transmission electron microscope which is capable of identifying minerals and the crystal structure in the sample at an incredible level of detail.

Scientists at the W.M. Keck Cosmochemistry Laboratory at HIGP have also been working on Ryugu samples. Researcher Kazuhide Nagashima, who is a deputy leader of the group that is making in situ, micron-scale analyses of the grains for their chemical and isotopic compositions, traveled to Japan to make the measurements. Nagashima and HIGP’s Keck Lab researchers Gary Huss and Alexander Krot will be receiving additional samples and analyzing them in their laboratory early next year using the secondary ion mass spectrometer.

“In addition to our long-standing collaborations with researchers in Japan, I believe we were invited to participate as members of the initial analysis team for the Ryugu sample because of international recognition of the expertise we have in transmission electron microscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometer analyses of extraterrestrial samples here at UH,” said Ishii, researcher and director of the AEMC. 

Combined, the analyses conducted by scientists at UH Mānoa and around the world will provide clues about the origin of the ancient grains contained in these rare samples.

Read also on UH News.

A federal initiative seeking to recruit and mentor STEM students from underrepresented backgrounds toward pursuing careers in biomedical research has awarded the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa a five-year, $2 million grant.

The National Institutes of Health’s “Maximizing Access to Research Careers” (MARC) grant will enable UH Mānoa faculty including Matt Medeiros at SOEST’s Pacific Biosciences Research Center and Rosie Alegado at SOEST’s Department of Oceanography to select undergraduate students in their junior or senior years to enroll in a two-year MARC@UHM program that pairs trainees with research mentors.

The mission of MARC@UHM is to provide paid training in biological research for a diverse group of students, including Hawaiian/Part Hawaiian, other Pacific Islanders (Samoan, Tongan, Micronesian, Guamanian/Chamorro, mixed Pacific Islander), Filipino, Latinx, African American; under-represented Asians (e.g., Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian); those from disadvantaged backgrounds, including low social-economic and residents of rural outer islands; and students with apparent and non-apparent disabilities.

Addressing inequities through training

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the undergraduate student body and faculty at UH Mānoa is the most diverse in the nation, but inequities persist. Only 8.5% of PhD candidates in STEM-related programs at UH Mānoa are from under-represented backgrounds. Additionally, a considerable number of these students do not apply to STEM-related PhD programs at UH. As a result, their cultures have little involvement in our nation’s workforce. This program seeks to increase their numbers in scientific research.

Participating in MARC@UHM are more than 25 Mānoa faculty and 10 faculty at other institutions. They represent diverse backgrounds in ethnicity, age, gender and rank.

Serving as principal investigator on the grant is Vivek R. Nerurkar, professor and chair of the JABSOM Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology.

“The primary outcome measure will be the number of trainees graduating with BA/BS in four years who transition to research-intensive graduate programs,” said Nerurkar. “Thus, MARC@UHM seeks to increase Hawaiʻi’s under-represented citizens who transition to research careers, and bring their diverse cultural backgrounds, life experiences, ideas and interests to biomedical research.”

More on MARC@UHM

Objectives:

• Enroll six students in their junior or senior year of college annually and teach them to identify important research questions, design and conduct rigorous and reproducible experiments, and analyze data and interpret results
• Provide each trainee with four semesters of paid, mentored research and a summer research experience
• Develop skills trainees need to be competitive in graduate school and in careers as research professionals
• Assist each trainee in applying to at least five graduate school programs early in the senior year

The two-year MARC@UHM program for juniors and seniors begins with a summer workshop, which includes a two-credit course each semester designed specifically for MARC trainees, four semesters of mentored research, a summer research experience (either at UH Mānoa or working with a collaborator of their UH mentor at an external site), a short workshop, attending an annual national meeting and presenting their research at professional meetings.

The rolling application deadline is October 8. Students who meet the qualifications can apply here. All questions regarding the MARC@UHM application process or the program can be directed to uhm-marc@lists.hawaii.edu.

Read also on UH News.

For a second consecutive year, Hawaiian History Month in September recognizes social justice and reconciliation of historical and cultural wrongs in Hawaiʻi. 

“By educating ourselves about Hawai’i’s past history, we can, as community and family, work to develop and strengthening personal, familial and community bonds, to more readily create meaningful, healing conversations and actionable work towards justice—and ties with others throughout Hawai’i and the world.”
— Hawai’i Pono’i Coalition

The month-long virtual celebration spearheaded by the Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī Coalition in collaboration with the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻinuākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge commenced on Thursday, September 2, in honor of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s 183rd birthday.

In 1881, Liliʻuokalani served as queen regent for her brother, King David Laʻamea Kalākaua, while he was on his year-long world tour. Just weeks after the king departed, a virulent outbreak of smallpox impacted Honolulu. To prevent the disease from spreading, Liliʻuokalani imposed a strict quarantine and was praised for saving thousands of lives.

“We hope people take away that Queen Liliʻuokalani was a leader that created solutions for our people and the larger community and took action even when it was a hard decision to make. Our Hawaiian history and our ʻike kupuna (ancestral wisdom) shows us the solutions and the path ahead,” said Malia Nobrega, director of strategic partnerships at Hawaiʻinuākea and who helped organize the month-long celebration.

Virtual events will include discussions on Hawaiian health, songs and stories; and feature cinematography put together by UH Mānoa’s Academy for Creative Media highlighting the Liliʻu Project, a performing arts presentation which explores the queen through the lens of her music and poetry. 

For details of upcoming events and recordings of earlier events visit Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī Coalition. To learn more, view a timeline of key points in Hawaiian history and videos including Mai Poina: The Overthrow. 

Read more on UH News.

Climate change is causing the Arctic sea ice to thin, making more Arctic waters accessible to shipping and transportation, research and exploration, and other economic development activities. Increased maritime activities in the region pose potential risks to the pristine Arctic environment, especially in areas used by fishing vessels, offshore oil and gas industry and cruise liners.

The National Science Foundation recently granted nearly $800,000 in funding to University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa researchers to develop a state-of-the-art mathematical model to predict interactions between sea ice and ships or industrial structures. Additionally, the research team will create a risk assessment system for shipping and other operations in the Arctic.

“The interaction between the built and natural environment shapes social and economic realities in the Arctic in observable ways,” said Deniz Gedikli, lead investigator on the new grant and assistant professor of Ocean and Resources Engineering at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “We anticipate that, in the end, the knowledge acquired through the project will benefit a wide range of stakeholders, such as residents, businesses, local, regional, and government agencies, and academia who are invested in the both natural and social well-being of the region to enable resilient and sustainable Arctic communities.”

In the Arctic, the major barrier deterring the understanding of the physical environment is that all the components of the Arctic system interact with each other in a complex, evolving pattern. Further, marine structures operating in icy areas of the region also cause changes in the Arctic icescape. Therefore, the researchers include three important aspects in this project—the built environment, natural environment and social systems.

Gedikli and Oceana Francis, co-investigator and Civil and Environmental Engineering and Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program associate professor, will use a combination of data from field experiments, models, satellites and observations to explore complex interactions between ice and marine structures in the Arctic to provide safe shipping and operations in the region.

The developed model will be used to form a novel risk assessment concept which will help ship operators and people working on other man-made structures to make informed decisions during operations in the Arctic.

In addition to several graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who will work on this project, the team will hire undergraduate students during the summer months to help increase the climate change awareness among young investigators across the globe and in Hawai‘i.

Collaborations facilitate progress

Francis has a long history working on Arctic-related projects and spent 16 years in Alaska, working in both industry and academia and completing her doctoral degree at the University of Alaska. Gedikli had a postdoctoral research position in Norway where he been working on Arctic engineering-related projects. Realizing the potential for synergy between their lab groups,  the two researchers will combine their expertise for the upcoming efforts.

Through this project, the UH team will initiate an international collaboration with Hayo Hendrikse from Delft University of Technology (Netherlands). Hendrikse will use his newly developed ice-structure interaction model to cross-validate the certain aspects of the proposed framework.

To further assess their risk assessment model, Gedikli and Francis will also collaborate with two large fishing companies from Alaska, which kindly agreed to test the proposed framework.

Over 100 people, including students from Hawai‘i Island schools and the University of Hawai‘i (UH) and faculty from UH and the Hawai‘i Science and Technology Museum (HSTM), contributed to the creation of “Hiapo,” a small satellite equipped with sensors to measure Earth’s magnetic field. 

“Our team took this project from concept to launch and we learned so much along the way,” said Christian Wong, director of HSTM, a Hilo-based science education non-profit. “Developing a science mission, designing the spacecraft, testing and delivery, and meeting the required specifications—it’s a pretty complex process. We certainly could not have done it without the guidance of our partners at the Hawai‘i Space Flight Laboratory [HSFL] at UH Mānoa.”

Through the HSTM, Wong runs various rocketry and robotics programs for students in elementary through high school. Wong had an idea to provide a real-world experience for the students. He asked Amber Imai-Hong, an avionics engineer with the HSFL at UH Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, if they could develop a satellite on a shoestring budget.

“It was very reminiscent of the early days of robotics in Hawai‘i,” said Imai-Hong. “We gathered up all sorts of old parts from the Hawai‘i Space Flight Lab and made a design plan. It was an exciting challenge.”

Imai-Hong, and Heather Bottom, an aerospace engineer from NASA JPL provided training in design and project management as well as hands-on skills such as soldering and circuit assembly in a “clean room” provided by UH Institute for Astronomy. Additionally, the Hiapo team of students in grades 3-12 and undergraduates, staff, and faculty assembled components and tested instrumentation.

“Most students had less than a year of experience with satellite design or rocketry when they started working on Hiapo,” said Imai-Hong. “This project gave many interested and enthusiastic students the knowledge and confidence to become leaders in their groups.”

Launch day

After two years of work, the miniature CubeSat satellite, measuring just four inches on each side, was ready for launch. On September 2, 2021, Hiapo was aboard the maiden launch of the Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha Launch Vehicle which took off from Vandenberg Airforce Base in California.

Unfortunately, about two minutes into the launch, after hitting supersonic speed, the rocket experienced an anomaly and the engine failed.

“Although Hiapo didn’t make it into orbit, this one project inspired a movement here at UH to lower the bar of entry for students who want to join the field of aerospace engineering,” said Imai-Hong.

“I consider this a huge accomplishment for Firefly and all members of the Hiapo team,” said Wong. “We got a lot out of the experience. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for our organization, the students who were a part of this and the community in Hawai‘i. CubeSats can be an industry here in Hawai‘i.”

Future education opportunities

Wong is looking forward to future projects with HSFL which was recently awarded a Governor’s Emergency Education Relief grant to create opportunities for public, private, and charter school educators interested in incorporating spacecraft hardware into their curriculum. Additionally, the  team recently learned that they may be getting another opportunity for a spot on one of Firefly’s next launches so they are working hard to take another shot at getting into space. 

Their goal with projects like these is to create a pipeline for students—wherein they have opportunities to join robotics clubs, compete in rocketry competitions, attend UH Mānoa and join the high-tech workforce.    

“Hawai‘i is one of the best places in the world to do CubeSat based research because of our proximity to the equator,” said Wong. “Having this opportunity for our keiki to explore space from their classrooms is just out of this world.”

Educators interested in working with HSFL are encouraged to visit www.hsfl.hawaii.edu/project-poke

Read also on UH News.

Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse, complex and productive ecosystems on the planet. Most of coral reef biodiversity consists of tiny organisms living deep within the three-dimensional reef matrix. Although largely unseen, this diversity is essential to the survival and function of coral reef ecosystems, and many have worried that climate change will lead to dramatic loss of this diversity.

New research led by scientists at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa reveals that the species which dominate experimental coral reef communities shift due to climate change, but the total biodiversity does not decline under future ocean conditions of warming and acidification predicted by the end of the century.

The study was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

“Rather than the predicted collapse of biodiversity under ocean warming and acidification, we found significant changes in the relative abundance, but not the occurrence of species, resulting in a shuffling of coral reef community structure,” said Molly Timmers, lead author who conducted this study during her doctoral research at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

“The tiny organisms living in the reef structure are known as the cryptobiota, which is analogous to the insects in a rainforest,” said Timmers. “They play essential roles in reef processes such as nutrient cycling, cementation, and food web dynamics – they are an important diet of many of the fishes and invertebrates that make coral reef ecosystems so dynamic.”

Despite their critical importance to coral reef ecosystems, these cryptobiota are often overlooked in climate change research due to the challenges associated with surveying them using visual census and in identifying this highly diverse and understudied community.

“As a result, our perceptions of coral reef biodiversity across marine gradients and how biodiversity will respond to climatic change has been primarily based on a handful of observable surface-dwelling taxa, such as corals and fish,” said Timmers. 

To assess the responses of the understudied cryptobiota to future ocean conditions, Timmers and colleagues at HIMB devised an experiment wherein tiered settlement plates were placed in experimental flow-through tanks. These mesocosms received unfiltered seawater from a nearby reef slope off the shore of HIMB and were treated with end-of-the-century predicted ocean warming and/or ocean acidification conditions. After two years of exposure, the team examined the organismal groups that had developed on the settlement plates using DNA metabarcoding techniques.

“This two-year experimental mesocosm study is unprecedented for climate change research and is the first one to examine the diversity of the entire coral reef community from microbes and algae to the corals and fishes,” said Chris Jury, HIMB postdoctoral researcher and the author who developed and maintained the mesocosm system.

While the total number of species did not change between the present-day and the combined future ocean conditioned treatments, the study results revealed that the composition of the coral reef community differed substantially between the treatments.  The ultimate outcome of this shuffling in response to climate change will depend critically on the ecological roles that winners and losers play.

However, “we lack sufficient information on the ecological functions, life histories, and distributions (let alone names) for most members of the coral reef cryptobenthic community to be able to adequately predict responses or ecosystem outcomes of changes in this community,” said Timmers.

This study highlights the importance of including these understudied organisms in future work that seeks to predict the outcomes of climate change on coral reef ecosystems.

Read also on The Garden Island, Maui Now, Eurekalert, UH News and Phys.org.

New research co-authored by a University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa scientist provides insights into how the position and intensity of the North Atlantic jet stream has changed during the past 1,250 years. The findings, published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the position of the jet stream could migrate outside of the range of natural variability by as early as the year 2060, with potentially drastic consequences for weather, climate, and societies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Familiar to air travelers flying between North America and Europe, the North Atlantic jet stream is the ribbon of prevailing westerly winds that impacts flight times, and also weather and climate across eastern North America and western Europe—accounting for between 10% and 50% of year-to-year variability in precipitation and temperature in both regions.

The research team, led by Matthew B. Osman, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Arizona, collected glacial ice core samples from nearly 50 sites spanning the Greenland ice sheet. Because the North Atlantic jet stream impacts weather and climate across Greenland, the researchers were able to reconstruct changes in the jet stream dating back to the eighth century by analyzing year-to-year variations in the amount of snowfall archived in the ice cores, as well as the chemical makeup of the water molecules comprising those annual snow layers.

“Despite its critical importance, we have only a few decades of direct observations of the North Atlantic jet stream,” said Sloan Coats, study co-author and assistant professor of Earth Sciences in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “This has greatly limited our understanding of how and why the jet stream changes, particularly over longer periods of time. Glacial ice cores in Greenland provide a remarkable archive of how the North Atlantic jet stream has changed over the last 1,250 years, allowing us to better understand why.”

The work reveals that natural variability has largely controlled the position of the North Atlantic jet stream to date. However, when combined with insights from model projections, it becomes clear that human caused warming could cause significant deviations from the norm. In particular, a northward migration of the North Atlantic jet stream under 21st-century warming has the potential to render the jet stream significantly different from any other time in the last 1250 years.

Weather events like this summer’s floods in Europe are a recent example of how the North Atlantic jet stream affects weather patterns in the short term. But societally significant changes also occur across longer time scales. Reconstructing the jet stream’s past revealed that in some years, it could be far north, only to venture more than 10 degrees farther south a few years later.

The team was able to match some of these changes to historical weather-related calamities. For example, during a famine that gripped the Iberian Peninsula in 1374, the jet stream was situated unusually far north, bringing dry conditions. Similarly, two famine events in the British Isles and Ireland in 1728 and 1740 coincided with years that the jet stream blew at nearly half its usual intensity, dramatically cooling temperatures and reducing precipitation. The latter of these events, in 1740, is estimated to have cost the lives of nearly half a million people.

Coats and his co-authors expect that any future shifts in the North Atlantic jet stream would also have dramatic implications on day-to-day weather and ecosystems, with trickle-down effects impacting national economies and societies. As with many of the most drastic consequences of human caused climate change, however, reducing emissions has the potential to avoid this outcome.

Read also on UH News and Big Island Now.