Heavens

DENVER (June 10, 2014) – As New Urbanist communities expand nationwide, a study from the University of Colorado Denver shows the increasing challenges of balancing complex traffic engineering systems with the ideals of walkable, sustainable neighborhoods.

The sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 7:42 a.m. EDT on June 10, 2014. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory – which typically observes the entire sun 24 hours a day -- captured images of the flare.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground. However, when intense enough, they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

An NYU Langone internal medicine specialist who served as a White House fellow at the US Department of Veteran's Affairs says the headline-grabbing failures of the VA health system's administration stand in sharp contrast to the highly rated care the system delivers.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University researchers who developed a new approach to more effectively teach large numbers of engineering students are recommending that the approach be considered for adoption by universities globally.

Hot town, summer in the city — it's nothing new, but ways to handle the heat, humidity, and stormwater haven't changed much since the invention of the sewer system.

One solution offered by architectural researchers is known as a "green roof" — a roof covered in living, growing plants to soften the effects of heat, flooding, noise, and stormwater runoff.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The state of Mato Grosso is the epicenter of an agricultural revolution in Brazil. During the last 15 years, expansion of agriculture in the state has helped Brazil become one of the world's top producers of soy, corn, cotton, and other staple crops. Despite the increase in production, the rate at which Amazon forestland in the state was cleared to make room for new farmland slowed significantly in the second half of the last decade.

"Hello, World!" came the message from the International Space Station as NASA successfully beamed high-definition video via laser from space to ground on Thursday, June 5. The 175-megabit video transmission was the first of its kind for the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) with the goal of improving the way we receive data from orbit and beyond. In fact, this emerging technology of optical communications--or lasercomm--is likened to an upgrade from dial-up to DSL.

Climate change mitigation strategies such as the German Energiewende require linking vast numbers of new power generation facilities to the grid. As the input from many renewable sources is rather volatile, depending on how much the wind blows or the sun shines, there's a higher risk of local power instabilities and eventually blackouts. Scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) now employed a novel concept from nonlinear systems analysis called basin stability to tackle this challenge.

System 90L was an area of tropical low pressure that never managed to form into a tropical depression during its lifetime, but did drop heavy rainfall on eastern and southeastern Mexico before dissipating. NOAA's GOES-East satellite data captured the end of System 90L's life as it made landfall and dissipated.

NASA and NOAA satellites are gathering visible, infrared, microwave and radar data on a persistent tropical low pressure area in the southwestern Bay of Campeche. System 90L now has a 50 percent chance for development, according to the National Hurricane Center and continues to drop large amounts of rainfall over southeastern Mexico.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite gathered infrared data on the developing low on June 5 at 18:59 UTC (2:59 p.m. EDT).

The Man in the Moon appeared when meteoroids struck the Earth-facing side of the moon creating large flat seas of basalt that we see as dark areas called maria. But no "face" exists on farside of the moon and now, Penn State astrophysicists think they know why.

"I remember the first time I saw a globe of the moon as a boy, being struck by how different the farside looks," said Jason Wright, assistant professor of astrophysics. "It was all mountains and craters. Where were the maria? It turns out it's been a mystery since the fifties."

On June 7, there was good and bad news about System 90L. The good news was that it moved further inland and was dissipating so it no longer had a chance to develop into a tropical cyclone. The bad news was that it moved further inland and continued to produce gusty winds and heavy rains along with life-threatening flash flooding over eastern and southeastern Mexico.

A group of scientists believe that a previously unexplained isotopic ratio from deep within the Earth may be a signal from material from the time before the Earth collided with another planet-sized body, leading to the creation of the Moon. This may represent the echoes of the ancient Earth, which existed prior to the proposed collision 4.5 billion years ago. This work is being presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Sacramento, California.

NASA and NOAA satellites are gathering visible, infrared, microwave and radar data on a persistent tropical low pressure area in the southwestern Bay of Campeche. System 90L now has a 50 percent chance for development, according to the National Hurricane Center and continues to drop large amounts of rainfall over southeastern Mexico.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite gathered infrared data on the developing low on June 5 at 18:59 UTC (2:59 p.m. EDT).

A new series of measurements of oxygen isotopes provides increasing evidence that the Moon formed from the collision of the Earth with another large, planet-sized astronomical body, around 4.5 billion years ago. This work will be published in Science* on 6th June, and will be presented to the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in California on 11th June.