Heavens

How do you feed a six-person crew on a three-year mission to Mars?

Food scientists are working on this and other challenges related to creating and optimizing food for astronauts, soldiers, pilots and other individuals working and living in extreme environments, according to a June 23 panel discussion at the 2014 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Food Expo® in New Orleans.

DENVER (June 24, 2014) - A University of Colorado Denver study examining collisions between bicycles and motorists, shows bicyclist safety significantly increases when there are more bikes on the road, a finding that could be attributed to a "safety in numbers effect."

The study focused on Boulder, Colorado, which has one of the highest rates of bicycling in the country at about 12 percent of the population.

CHICAGO, IL — A new "smart pill" called Gelesis100 safely leads to greater weight loss in overweight and obese individuals compared with those who receive an active comparator/placebo capsule, while all subjects have similar diet and exercise instructions, an international multicenter study finds. The three-month results of the First Loss Of Weight (FLOW) study were presented Sunday June 22, 2014 at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is a 1.7 million-square-kilometer, 2-mile thick layer of ice that covers Greenland. Its fate is inextricably linked to our global climate system.

In the last 40 years, ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet increased four-fold contributing to one-quarter of global sea level rise. Some of the increased melting at the surface of the ice sheet is due to a warmer atmosphere, but the ocean's role in driving ice loss largely remains a mystery.

Rochester, Minn. — Facial hair and home oxygen therapy can prove a dangerously combustible combination, a Mayo Clinic report published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings finds. To reach that conclusion, researchers reviewed home oxygen therapy-related burn cases and experimented with a mustachioed mannequin, a facial hair-free mannequin, nasal oxygen tubes and sparks. They found that facial hair raises the risk of home oxygen therapy-related burns, and encourage health care providers to counsel patients about the risk.

A team of astronomers has identified possibly the coldest, faintest white dwarf star ever detected. This ancient stellar remnant is so cool that its carbon has crystallized, forming -- in effect -- an Earth-size diamond in space.

"It's a really remarkable object," said David Kaplan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "These things should be out there, but because they are so dim they are very hard to find."

A new study on the digestion of milk could lead to the development of new formulas for premature babies, weight loss drinks and potentially new drug delivery systems.

Published in the journal ACS Nano, the Monash University research shows for the first time detailed insights into the structure of milk during digestion.

Whilst milk's nutritional values are well known, little research has been conducted into the detailed structure of milk and how its fats interact with the digestive system until now.

CHICAGO, IL—Nondiabetic obese and overweight people lose more weight, are more likely to reverse prediabetes and are slower to develop type 2 diabetes when they take the diabetes drug liraglutide in addition to dieting and exercising, a new study finds. The results of the multicenter study were presented Saturday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Now you don't see it. Now, you do.

And now you don't see it again. Astronomers have discovered a bright, mysterious geologic object – where one never existed – on Cassini mission radar images of Ligeia Mare, the second-largest sea on Saturn's moon Titan. Scientifically speaking, this spot is considered a "transient feature," but the astronomers have playfully dubbed it "Magic Island."

Concentrating solar power (CSP) could supply a large fraction of the power supply in a decarbonized energy system, shows a new study of the technology and its potential practical application.

In late May, NASA's Swift satellite imaged comet Siding Spring, which will brush astonishingly close to Mars later this year. These optical and ultraviolet observations are the first to reveal how rapidly the comet is producing water and allow astronomers to better estimate its size.

An international team of astronomers, using data from several NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) space observatories, has discovered unexpected behavior from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy NGC 5548, located 244.6 million light-years from Earth. This behavior may provide new insights into how supermassive black holes interact with their host galaxies.

They may be little, but they pack a big star-forming punch. New observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show small galaxies, also known as dwarf galaxies, are responsible for forming a large proportion of the universe's stars.

What seemed to be rock-solid assumptions about the nature of small asteroids may end in collections of rubble or even a cloud of dust, but in such findings lies the lure of the unexpected.

Northern Arizona University researchers David Trilling and Michael Mommert, while playing a well-defined role in the NASA Asteroid Initiative, are beginning to wonder if they have found a separate path of investigation.

Astronomers have discovered strange and unexpected behaviour around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy NGC 5548. The international team of researchers detected a clumpy gas stream flowing quickly outwards and blocking 90 percent of the X-rays emitted by the black hole. This activity could provide insights into how supermassive black holes interact with their host galaxies.