Heavens

Perhaps no aspect of 3D printing has captured the popular imagination more than personalized figurines with the facial features of real people. Now, researchers at Disney Research Zurich and the University of Zaragoza have developed a method that can incorporate an individual's hairstyle as well.

The researchers will present their new method at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Vancouver, Aug. 10-14.

Perhaps no aspect of 3D printing has captured the popular imagination more than personalized figurines with the facial features of real people. Now, researchers at Disney Research Zurich and the University of Zaragoza have developed a method that can incorporate an individual's hairstyle as well.

The researchers will present their new method at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Vancouver, Aug. 10-14.

Curtin University planetary scientists have shed some light on the bombardment history of our solar system by studying a unique volcanic meteorite recovered in Western Australia.

Captured on camera seven years ago falling on the WA side of the Nullarbor Plain, the Bunburra Rockhole Meterorite has unique characteristics that suggest it came from a large asteroid that has never before been identified.

A research team led by astronomers and astrophysicists at the University of Warwick have found that some of the Universe's loneliest supernovae are likely created by the collisions of white dwarf stars into neutron stars.

Dr Joseph Lyman from the University of Warwick is the lead researcher on the paper, The progenitors of calcium-rich transients are not formed in situ, published today by the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (to appear on astro-ph 8 August 2014).

Astronauts suffer considerable sleep deficiency in the weeks leading up to and during spaceflight, according to the most extensive study of sleep during spaceflight ever conducted, published in The Lancet Neurology journal.

Fatigue and sleep deficiency are common complaints among astronauts, but this is the most comprehensive study to include both objective evaluation of sleep (via an actigraph, a device worn on the wrist which records sleep and wake cycles) and subjective evaluations (via a daily diary recording alertness and sleep quality).

BOSTON, MA – In an extensive study of sleep monitoring and sleeping pill use in astronauts, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Colorado found that astronauts suffer considerable sleep deficiency in the weeks leading up to and during space flight. The research also highlights widespread use of sleeping medication use among astronauts.

The fires on the shores of the Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories in Canada do not seem in any hurry to be extinguished. In this natural-color satellite image which was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on July 29, 2014 dozens of fires and copious amounts of smoke are evident. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.

Researchers are a step closer to understanding the birth of the sun.

Published in Science, the team led by Dr Maria Lugaro and Professor Alexander Heger, from Monash University, have investigated the solar system's prehistoric phase and the events that led to the birth of the sun.

Dr Lugaro, from the Monash Centre for Astrophysics, said the team used radioactivity to date the last time that heavy elements such as gold, silver, platinum, lead and rare-earth elements were added to the solar system matter by the stars that produced them.

AMHERST, Mass. -- A challenge increasingly important to physicists and materials scientists in recent years has been how to design controllable new materials that exhibit desired physical properties rather than relying on those properties to emerge naturally, says University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist Christian Santangelo.

CPHC said the onset of tropical storm conditions is expected on the Big Island of Hawaii this afternoon (August 7), with hurricane conditions expected tonight. Tropical storm conditions are expected over Maui County Tonight (August 7), over Oahu on Friday (August 8) and over Kauai county on Friday afternoon.

NASA's Fermi and Aqua satellites captured two different views of bursts of strength show by Hurricane Julio as it intensified. NASA's Fermi satellite saw a gamma-ray flash from Julio, while NASA's Aqua satellite saw Julio become more structurally organized as a hurricane.

Tropical Storm Genevieve had ups and downs in the Eastern Pacific and Central Pacific over the last week but once the storm crossed the International Dateline in the Pacific, it rapidly intensified into a Super Typhoon. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured of the storm.

Our universe may have emerged from a black hole in a higher-dimensional universe, propose a trio of Perimeter Institute researchers in the cover story of the latest Scientific American.

The big bang poses a big question: if it was indeed the cataclysm that blasted our universe into existence 13.7 billion years ago, what sparked it?

NASA's Terra satellite grabbed a look at Typhoon Halong as it was nearing the Japanese islands of Minamidaito and Kitadaito and headed for a landfall in the main islands of southern Japan.

A visible satellite image from NOAA's GOES-East satellite shows that Post-Tropical Storm Bertha was merging with a frontal system in the North Atlantic Ocean.