Heavens

Skin cancer is one of the biggest fears for one in two outdoor workers and when the boss and staff work together the sun safe message gets through, a QUT study has found.

The study, which found more than 50 per cent of outdoor workers rated UV radiation exposure at work as one of their biggest concerns, also identified how a workplace intervention could improve workers' behaviours and attitudes towards sun protection to reduce their risk of skin cancer.

DENVER (Oct. 14, 2014) – America's streets are designed and evaluated with a an inherent bias toward the needs of motor vehicles, ignoring those of bicyclists, pedestrians, and public transit users, according to a new study co-authored by Wesley Marshall of the University of Colorado Denver.

Is matter falling into the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way or being ejected from it? No one knows for sure, but a UC Santa Barbara astrophysicist is searching for an answer.

Carl Gwinn, a professor in UCSB's Department of Physics, and colleagues have analyzed images collected by the Russian spacecraft RadioAstron. Their findings appear in the current issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A Rice University study of tamper-resistant voting methods revealed that only 58 percent of ballots were successfully cast across three voting systems. The researchers concluded additional work is needed to make voting both secure and user-friendly.

Tropical Storm Vongfong continues to weaken as it tracks across the big islands of Japan, and NASA satellite data showed that westerly wind shear is taking its toll on the storm's structure.

The Eastern Caribbean islands were getting the brunt of Tropical Storm Gonzalo as the storm slowly moved through on Oct. 13. NASA's Terra satellite and NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided data on the storm. Gonzalo is the sixth named storm in the Atlantic Ocean Hurricane Season.

The fifth named Atlantic storm didn't maintain hurricane status long. Fay became a hurricane late on Oct. 12 and by early on Oct. 13, had weakened back to a tropical storm.

The once-powerful Category 5 Typhoon Vongfong has fortunately weakened to a barely Category 1 typhoon as it approaches the big islands of Japan. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite and NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Vongfong on Oct. 11 and noticed the heaviest precipitation was north of the center.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Cyclone Hudhud as it was nearing east-central India's coastline on Oct. 11.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard Aqua captured infrared data on the storm on Oct. 11 at 07:23 UTC (3:23 a.m. EDT) that showed cloud top temperatures had dropped, indicating stronger uplift and stronger thunderstorms. That's an indication that the storm has strengthened in the last day.

Tropical Storm Gonzalo formed quickly on Oct. 12 just east of the Leeward Islands, triggering tropical storm warnings for many islands. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured an image of the newborn storm on Sunday, Oct. 12, and Tropical Storm Fay northeast of Bermuda.

This might allow for improved disaster preparedness. As the complex systems technique builds upon a mathematical comparison that can be utilised for any time series data, the approach could be applied to extreme events in all sorts of complex systems.

Childhood overweight and obesity rates have plateaued in primary school aged children in the Republic of Ireland, reveals research published today in the open access journal BMC Public Health. The study found that although obesity rates remain high, there is evidence that they have stabilised and may be beginning to fall.

A new measurement of dark matter in the Milky Way has revealed there is half as much of the mysterious substance as previously thought.

Australian astronomers used a method developed almost 100 years ago to discover that the weight of dark matter in our own galaxy is 800 000 000 000 (or 8 x 1011) times the mass of the Sun.

They probed the edge of the Milky Way, looking closely, for the first time, at the fringes of the galaxy about 5 million billion kilometres from Earth.

It has been known for several years that sulfuric acid contributes to the formation of tiny aerosol particles, which play an important role in the formation of clouds. The new study by Kürten et al. shows that dimethylamine can tremendously enhance new particle formation. The formation of neutral (i.e. uncharged) nucleating clusters of sulfuric acid and dimethylamine was observed for the first time.

Focusing on large, star-forming galaxies, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University were able to measure radiation leaks in an effort to better understand how the universe evolved as the first stars were formed.

Sanchayeeta Borthakur, an assistant research scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, reports in a paper published online Oct. 9 in the journal Science that an indicator used for studying star-forming galaxies that leak radiation is an effective measurement tool for other scientists to use.