Heavens

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Found in warm regions of the world, geckos are extremely capable of climbing up steep, smooth surfaces. To do so, they employ an adhesive system – a key evolutionary innovation that facilitates climbing vertically, and even in inverted positions. On the underside of their toes are "setae," millions of very fine hair-like structures, which provide increased surface area and close contact between the foot and the surface on which it rests.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Ana on Monday, Oct. 13 after it formed in the Central Pacific Ocean.

Ana formed on Oct. 13 at 5 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. HST) as Tropical Depression 2-C, about 920 miles (1,480 km) east-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii. By 9 p.m. EDT that day, the depression had strengthened into Tropical Depression Ana.

In 2012, the "Mars One" project, led by a Dutch nonprofit, announced plans to establish the first human colony on the Red Planet by 2025. The mission would initially send four astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars, where they would spend the rest of their lives building the first permanent human settlement.

It's a bold vision — particularly since Mars One claims that the entire mission can be built upon technologies that already exist. As its website states, establishing humans on Mars would be "the next giant leap for mankind."

Responding to the large number of people with serious mental illnesses in the criminal justice system will require more than mental health services, according to a new report.

In many ways, the criminal justice system is the largest provider of mental health services in the country. Estimates vary, but previous research has found that about 14 percent of persons in the criminal justice system have a serious mental illness, and that number is as high as 31 percent for female inmates.

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has provided scientists their first look at a storm of energetic solar particles at Mars and produced unprecedented ultraviolet images of the tenuous oxygen, hydrogen and carbon coronas surrounding the Red Planet, said University of Colorado Boulder Professor Bruce Jakosky, the mission's principal investigator.

WASHINGTON, DC— The 1934 drought was by far the most intense and far-reaching drought of the last 1,000 years in North America, and was caused in part by an atmospheric phenomenon that may have also led to the current drought in California, according to a new study.

New research finds that the extent of the 1934 drought was approximately seven times larger than droughts of comparable intensity that struck North America between 1000 A.D. and 2005, and nearly 30 percent worse than the next most severe drought that struck the continent in 1580.

Humans have a focus on the short term. We are more interested in a potential benefit if we can get it now.

The ability to delay gratification has been studied in children with the "marshmallow test": a child can have one treat now, or two if he or she can wait a few minutes without gobbling the first treat.

Psychologists and economists have shown that similar trends can be observed and measured in many spheres of life. They call the tendency for the perceived value of a delayed benefit to diminish "delay discounting."

Cyclone Hudhud made landfall in east-central India on Oct. 12 and caused a lot of damage and several fatalities as it moved inland and weakened to a remnant low pressure area. NASA saw those remnants on Oct. 14.

When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Indochina, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument provided picture proof that the remnants of Typhoon Hudhud were still over India, Nepal, and China. Aqua passed over the region on Oct. 14 at 08:05 UTC (4:05 a.m. EDT).

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite detected fires burning in Western Australia on October 14, 2014. Matching these hot spots up to the the prescribed fire burns on Western Australia's parks and wildlife site: http://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/fire/prescribed-burning/burns these fires are most likely prescribed burns used to limit bushfire outbreaks.

Montreal, October 14, 2014 — By 2040, there will be more than three times the number of Americans aged 80+ than there were in 2000. Condo towers crowding city skylines seem to reflect builders' hopes that the grey set will head to urban centres for increased services and better transit options. But new research from Concordia University suggests that the opposite is more likely to occur.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Extra-Tropical Storm Vongfong on Oct. 4 as it was moving away from Hokkaido, Japan, the northernmost of the big islands. Vongfong transitioned into an extra-tropical storm early on Oct. 4 as its core changed from warm to cold.

Tropical Storm Gonzalo intensified into a hurricane late on Monday, Oct. 14 and is expected to become a major hurricane as it moves toward Bermuda. NASA's Aqua satellite saw powerful thunderstorms within the center of the storm that were dropping heavy rainfall.

Numerous fires (marked with red dots) are burning in the Ukraine, likely as a result of regional agricultural practices. The body of water at the lower left of this true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image is the Sea of Azov. The Sea is bordered by Ukraine to the northwest, west and southwest and by Russia to the northeast, east, and southeast. To its left is the Black Sea.

Twenty years ago, biologists Kathy Boyer and Joy Zedler, then researchers at San Diego State University, speculated that too many insects feeding on cordgrass in the marshes of San Diego Bay could endanger the grass, and in turn endanger the bay wildlife that relies on it.