Heavens

RALEIGH, NC - A team of researchers from North Carolina State University set out to provide strawberry growers in their region with information that could help them transition to more sustainable soil and pest management production practices. Their study, published in the August 2015 issue of HortTechnology, compared conventional, compost, and organic strawberry production systems in the southeastern United States, and revealed good news for growers.

DURHAM, N.H. - A team of scientists, including seven from the University of New Hampshire, present findings from six years of direct observations made by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission of the interstellar wind that blows through our solar system in 14 papers published today in an Astrophysical Journal Supplement (ApJS) Special Issue.

San Antonio -- Oct. 20, 2015 -- NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) reached a milestone in its seven-year mission today with the publication of 14 papers in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement. Data from IBEX, led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), allowed the team of international researchers to provide the most definitive analyses, theories, and results about the "local" interstellar space to date.

PULLMAN, Wash.--Scientists at Washington State University and the University of Idaho are helping students figure out how to farm on Mars, much like astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, attempts in the critically acclaimed movie "The Martian."

Washington State University physicist Michael Allen and University of Idaho food scientist Helen Joyner teamed up to explore the challenge. Their five-page study guide was published online at the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science the day the movie premiered earlier this month, said Allen.

The daily use of sunscreen bearing an SPF of 15 or higher is widely acknowledged as essential to skin cancer prevention, not to mention skin damage associated with aging. Though this sunscreen may be very good for us, it may be very bad for the environment, a new Tel Aviv University study finds.

How Australia acts today will determine the security and safety of driverless cars, autonomous vehicles and intelligent transport systems in the future, with Queensland University of Technology (QUT) academics warning there is a risk of in-vehicle cyber attack without appropriate safeguards.

QUT information security expert Dr Ernest Foo presented his paper at the 2015 Australasian Road Safety Conference titled Security Issues for Future Intelligent Transport Systems, highlighting the need to protect the future smart car.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Oct. 20, 2015 - To explore the potential health benefits associated with pear consumption and related health outcomes, Joanne Slavin, Ph.D., R.D., professor of food science and nutrition at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, assisted by food science graduate Holly Reiland, conducted a systematic review of studies from PubMed (database of the National Library of Medicine with citations and abstracts of biomedical literature) and Agricola (database of the National Agricultural Library with citations of agricultural literature) from 1970 to present.

Every two to seven years, an unusually warm pool of water -- sometimes two to three degrees Celsius higher than normal develops across the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean to create a natural short-term climate change event. This warm condition, known as El Niño, affects the local aquatic environment, but also spurs extreme weather patterns around the world, from flooding in California to droughts in Australia. This winter, the 2015-16 El Niño event will be better observed from space than any previous El Niño.

Jena (Germany) Asthma bronchiale, hayfever or neurodermatitis -- allergies are on the increase in Western European industrial countries. According to the Robert-Koch-Institute every third adult falls ill with an allergy at least once in their lives. The reasons for allergic reactions are inflammation processes of the immune system. The enzyme 5-Lipoxygenase, or in short, 5-LO, plays a pivotal role in this. "This enzyme regulates the inflammation activities by catalyzing the biosynthesis of pro-inflammatory mediators," as Dr.

Cardiovascular diseases are globally the main cause of death and vascular tissue integrity is important for the proper functionality and homeostasis of the blood system. Therefore, a profound understanding of vascular cell physiology is beneficial in successfully treating vascular diseases and for improving strategies for regenerative medicine. Blood vessels walls are mainly composed of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and endothelial cells (ECs).

MADISON, Wis. -- Phenomenally durable crystals called zircons are used to date some of the earliest and most dramatic cataclysms of the solar system. One is the super-duty collision that ejected material from Earth to form the moon roughly 50 million years after Earth formed. Another is the late heavy bombardment, a wave of impacts that may have created hellish surface conditions on the young Earth, about 4 billion years ago.

Tropical storm Koppu was approaching the Philippines when the GPM core observatory satellite passed above on October 15, 2015 at 1436 UTC (10:36 a.m. EDT) and analyzed the intensifying storm's rainfall. By October 16, the storm intensified into a typhoon as it neared Luzon.

Seven new research programmes that aim to tackle some of the UK's major science and engineering challenges were given the green light today by the Universities and Science Minister, Jo Johnson.

Academics, industrialists and policy makers will address issues such as:

According to observations from the Tihany Magnetic Observatory in Hungary, the indices used by scientists to assess the Sun's geomagnetic perturbations to the Earth are unable to detect some of these events, which could put both power supply and communication networks at risk. The Tihany Magnetic Observatory registered a solar storm similar to the largest one ever recorded while other observatories were completely unaware of the event.

Nanoparticles with sizes the order of a wavelength interact with light in specific ways. A young investigator group at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, led by Professor Martina Schmid, is inquiring how to use arrangements of such nanoparticles to improve solar cells and other opto-electronic devices. Now the scientists report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society ACS Nano a considerable success with ultrathin CIGSe solar cells.

Problems add up below 1 micrometer