Heavens

Bringing "virtual dental homes" to schools, nursing homes and long-term care facilities can keep people healthy - reducing school absenteeism, lessening the need for parents to leave work to care for an ailing child, and helping to prevent suffering for millions of people who have no access to a dentist, a six-year study by University of the Pacific demonstrates.

BINGHAMTON, NY - Poor communication systems at nursing homes can lead to serious injury for residents who are not tended to in a timely manner. A new smartwatch app being developed at Binghamton University could help certified nursing assistants (CNAs) respond to alerts more quickly and help prevent falls.

The universe is 13.8 billion years old, while our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists think this time gap means that life on other planets could be billions of years older than ours. However, new theoretical work suggests that present-day life is actually premature from a cosmic perspective.

"If you ask, 'When is life most likely to emerge?' you might naively say, 'Now,'" says lead author Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "But we find that the chance of life grows much higher in the distant future."

NASA satellites provided a look at Typhoon Nida's size, clouds, rainfall and cloud heights as it approached southeastern China.

The fifth named tropical cyclone, Nida, known as Carina in the Philippines, formed in the Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines on July 29, 2016 (UTC). After moving over Luzon in the northern part of the country, Nida emerged in the South China Sea where it re-strengthened as moved toward southeastern China.

Infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite showed strong thunderstorms within the ninth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, as the storm was strengthening. Early on Aug. 1 Tropical Depression 9E intensified into a tropical storm and was renamed Howard.

Tropical Storm Howard, the ninth tropical cyclone to develop in 30 days in the Eastern Pacific is also the eighth named storm of the 2016 season. Tropical Depression 1E in June was the only tropical cyclone that developed this season and did not reach tropical storm status.

WASHINGTON -- The photovoltaic (PV) cells in traditional solar cells convert sunlight efficiently within a narrow range of wavelengths determined by the material used in the PV cells. This limits their efficiency, as long wavelengths of sunlight are not converted at all and the energy of short wavelength light is largely wasted. Scientists have sought to increase the efficiency of photovoltaics by creating "multi-junction" solar cells, made from several different semiconductor materials that absorb at varying wavelengths of light.

Astronomers have managed to peer into the past of a nearby star millions of years before its famous explosion, using a telescope in remote outback Australia at a site free from FM radio interference.

Research by an international team including astronomers at the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) observing the region at the lowest-ever radio frequencies has helped fine-tune our understanding of stellar explosions.

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2016 -- At the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, NASA is preparing tiny satellites the size of briefcases for a mission to Mars. Called CubeSats, swarms of these small marvels could potentially take on NASA's riskiest missions -- think exploring the surface of Venus or the volcanoes of Io -- at a lower cost than full-size, multi-instrument satellites. Matt Davenport and JPL Chief Engineer for Interplanetary Small Spacecraft Andrew Klesh geek out on CubeSats in the latest Speaking of Chemistry episode.

The recent detection of gravitational waves emitted by two merging black holes by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations has opened up a new observational window into the cosmos.

Future observations of similar mergers between two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole may revolutionize what we know today about the properties of neutron stars, the densest stellar objects in the universe. By providing detailed dynamical information about the material properties of these stars, such measurements will shed light on their internal composition.

Safety concerns of the concomitant use of clopidogrel with the proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) omeprazole or esomeprazole were published in May 2009 and February 2010 by European regulatory agencies. After the last publication, there was an observed drop in dispensing these medicines in the Netherlands: 11.9 percent decreases for omeprazole and esomeprazole, versus an increase of 16.0 percent for other PPIs. Still 22.6 percent of patients started on omeprazole and esomeprazole in February 2010, placing them at risk for cardiovascular events.

NASA analyzed rainfall data from slow-moving storms that triggered flash floods over parts of central Maryland and caused devastating flooding in historic Ellicott City, Maryland.

A slow-moving line of heavy thunderstorms dumped as much as 6 to 7 inches of rain in about two hours' time during the evening of Saturday, July 30, over parts of Howard County in central Maryland, resulting in severe local flash flooding.

HOUSTON - (August 1, 2016) - In a set of papers published last week in Cell Systems, Dr. Erez Lieberman Aiden, assistant professor of molecular and human genetics and McNair Scholar at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Center for Genome Architecture (TC4GA), and his colleagues introduce Juicer, an open-source tool used in three-dimensional (3-D) genome sequencing (Hi-C) processes.

Tropical Depression 06W appeared to be consolidating and coming together in infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite. The storm formed east of the Philippines in the Philippine Sea on July 29, 2016.

Vibrations from a bus engine can sometimes be felt uncomfortably strongly through the seats. Similarly, vibrations from the propellers or rotors in propeller aircraft and helicopters can make the flight bumpy and loud, and also lead to increased fatigue damage of the aircraft and its components. Engineers have therefore sought to prevent such vibrations in machines, vehicles and aircraft. A new three-dimensional lattice structure developed by ETH scientists could now expand the possibilities of vibration absorption.

Tropical Storm Frank weakened to a tropical storm on July 28, 2016 and satellite imagery shows that winds and thunderstorms have continued to weaken.

On July 27, NASA's RapidScat instrument observed Frank's strongest sustained winds were near 30 meters per second (67 mph/108 kph) north of the center. Tropical-storm-force winds extended outward up to 60 miles (95 km) from the center. Frank weakened from a hurricane to a tropical storm by 5 p.m. EDT on July 27.