Heavens

Cambridge, Mass. -- A new company will commercialize sensing technology invented at Harvard University that can perform instant, in-field characterization of the chemical make-up and material properties of unknown liquids.

Validere, cofounded by Harvard scientists and engineers, has raised an initial round of seed capital and has entered into a worldwide exclusive licensing agreement with the university to pursue applications in quality assurance and liquid identification.

Tropical storm Earl has been intensifying as it moves through the Caribbean Sea. The GPM satellite spotted hot towers, towering thunderstorms within Earl that indicate the storm may intensify.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) now predicts that Earl will be a hurricane before it hits Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula tomorrow afternoon. Earl is predicted by NHC to remain in a light to moderate vertical wind shear environment over very warm sea surface temperatures until landfall.

Since 1896, swimming has been an event in the Olympic games. Back then it was the swimmer's physical condition that was decisive in securing a win, but today it is mostly technique that determines who takes home the title of world champion. Researchers at Bielefeld University have developed a system that professional swimmers can use to optimize their swimming technique. The system expands the athlete's perception and feel for the water by enabling them to hear, in real time, how the pressure of the water flows created by the swimmer changes with their movements.

New experiments provide insight into how Earth-type planets form when giant asteroids or planetesimals collide and how the interiors of such planets develop. Researchers at Hiroshima University, Osaka University, Ehime University, University of Tokyo, and the Chiba Institute of Technology collaborated to publish their research in the August 3, 2016 issue of Science Advances.

Looking for another Earth? An international team of researchers has pinpointed which of the more than 4,000 exoplanets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission are most likely to be similar to our rocky home.

The research, detailed in an article to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, outlines 216 Kepler planets located within the "habitable zone" -- the area around a star in which a planet's surface could hold liquid water. Of those, they list 20 that are the best candidates to be habitable rocky planets like Earth.

Recently, a team of astrobiologists from the EU funded MASE (Mars Analogues for Space Exploration) project descended 1.1 kilometers below Earth's surface to the Mars-like environment of the Boulby Mine in the UK looking for answers about life on other planets. Six members of the MASE team headed to the mine on the North East coast of England to study ancient formations of honey-comb like hexagonal patterns that were formed 250 million years ago.

Overconsumption of alcohol can lead to errors in judgment, causing, for example, some people to get behind the wheel when they are impaired. To help imbibers easily and quickly know when they've had enough, scientists have developed a flexible, wearable patch that can detect a person's blood-alcohol level from his or her sweat. The monitor, reported in the journal ACS Sensors, works quickly and can send results wirelessly to a smartphone or other device.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (August 3, 2016) Mantis shrimp, often brightly colored and fiercely aggressive sea creatures with outsized strength, use the ultraviolet reflectance of their color spots as well as chemical signals to assess the likelihood of victory in combat, according to research led by a Tufts University doctoral candidate.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The newest Airbus and Boeing passenger jets flying today are made primarily from advanced composite materials such as carbon fiber reinforced plastic -- extremely light, durable materials that reduce the overall weight of the plane by as much as 20 percent compared to aluminum-bodied planes. Such lightweight airframes translate directly to fuel savings, which is a major point in advanced composites' favor.

Infrared data from NASA's Terra satellite has revealed that Tropical Storm Howard is weakening quickly as it continues to move over cooler waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

UCLA astronomers have made the first accurate measurement of the abundance of oxygen in a distant galaxy. Oxygen, the third-most abundant chemical element in the universe, is created inside stars and released into interstellar gas when stars die. Quantifying the amount of oxygen is key to understanding how matter cycles in and out of galaxies.

This research is published online in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, and is based on data collected at the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii.

University of Utah anthropologists counted the number of carbon-dated artifacts at archaeological sites and concluded that a population boom and scarce food explain why people in eastern North America domesticated plants for the first time on the continent about 5,000 years ago.

San Antonio -- Aug. 2, 2016 -- A Southwest Research Institute-led team has documented atmospheric changes on Io, Jupiter's volcanically active satellite, as the giant planet casts its shadow over the moon's surface during daily eclipses.

NASA's Aqua satellite provided forecasters with visible and infrared imagery of Tropical Storm Howard as it continued moving west through the waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean on Aug. 1 and 2.

NASA's Terra satellite flew over Typhoon Nida shortly after it made landfall just north of Hong Kong.

On Aug. 1 at 11p.m. EDT (Aug. 2 3 a.m. UTC) the Joint Typhoon Warning Center issued its final bulletin on Typhoon Nida. By that time, Nida had already made landfall and was located about 49 nautical miles northwest of Hong Kong, near 22.8 degrees north latitude and 113.5 degrees east longitude. Nida was moving to the west-northwest. Maximum sustained winds were near 74.8 mph (65 knots/120.4 kph) making it a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale.