Heavens

This event was particularly exciting for the IRIS team, as this was the first X-class flare ever observed by IRIS. IRIS launched in June 2013 to zoom in on layers of the sun, called the chromosphere and transition region, through which all the energy and heat of a flare must travel as it forms. This region, overall is called the interface region, has typically been very hard to untangle – but on March 29, IRIS provided scientists with the first detailed view of what happens in this region during a flare.

There's a tropical low pressure area in the Eastern Pacific Ocean today, about 8 days before the official Eastern Pacific hurricane season begins. NOAA's National Hurricane Center is giving it a 50 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next two days, and NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead to gather infrared data on it.

Move over, Matrix - astronomers have done you one better. They have created the first realistic virtual universe using a computer simulation called "Illustris." Illustris can recreate 13 billion years of cosmic evolution in a cube 350 million light-years on a side with unprecedented resolution.

The work, which has had the participation of the Ikerbasque researcher Javier Gorosabal, co-director of the Associated Unit with the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia/CSIC-UPV/EHU, has been published in the prestigious journal Nature.

There is no other event in the cosmos that can compete in terms of energy and intensity with stellar explosions on the outer reaches of the universe and which are known as LGRBs (Long Gamma-Ray Bursts): in just one second a single GRB can emit as many as hundreds of stars like the Sun during its 10,000-million-year-lifetime.

HOUSTON – (May 7, 2014) – Rice University bioengineers have created a hydrogel that instantly turns from liquid to semisolid at close to body temperature – and then degrades at precisely the right pace.

The gel shows potential as a bioscaffold to support the regrowth of bone and other three-dimensional tissues in a patient's body using the patient's own cells to seed the process.

A tropical low was affecting southern India and Sri Lanka on May 6 at 0809 UTC when the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite called TRMM flew above it. By May 7, System 91B moved over southwestern India and became less organized.

TRMM's Precipitation Radar revealed that rain was falling at a rate of 66 mm (2.6 inches) per hour in the stormy area south of India (5.2 north latitude and 77.1 east longitude). TRMM PR saw the tallest thunderstorm towers over Sri Lanka where heights were pushing to altitudes above 13 km (8 miles).

A number of studies have shown that breastfed babies grow slightly slower and are slightly slimmer than children who are fed with infant formula. Children who are breastfed also have a slightly lower incidence of obesity, allergies, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease later in life. According to a new study by the National Food Institute and the University of Copenhagen this may be due to the fact that breastfeeding promotes the development of beneficial bacteria in the baby's gut.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Changes in tree-ring density in the Arctic may be evidence of changes in light intensity during the trees' growth, according to a new study by San Francisco State University researcher Alexander Stine.

The finding has direct implications for the tree-ring "divergence problem," a phenomenon that has received considerable media attention but has been widely misinterpreted, said Stine, an assistant professor of Earth & climate sciences.

SALT LAKE CITY, May 7, 2014 – A University of Utah-led team discovered a "hypervelocity star" that is the closest, second-brightest and among the largest of 20 found so far. Speeding at more than 1 million mph, the star may provide clues about the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way and the halo of mysterious "dark matter" surrounding the galaxy, astronomers say.

URBANA, Ill. – Of all the starry-eyed just-married couples you know, which couples are likely to stay the happiest? A University of Illinois study says chances for bliss are highest when husband and wife both believe in divvying up the household labor equally. But that happiness won't last long if one partner is perceived as not carrying their fair share of the load.

NEW YORK, May 6, 2014 – Neuronetics, Inc. announced today a new analysis of data at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association that shows Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) administered with the NeuroStar TMS Therapy System resulted in greater symptom improvement than next-choice conventional antidepressant medication among patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) who failed to benefit from prior antidepressant medication.

Neutron stars, the extraordinarily dense stellar bodies created when massive stars collapse, are known to host the strongest magnetic fields in the universe -- as much as a billion times more powerful than any man-made electromagnet. But some neutron stars are much more strongly magnetized than others, and this disparity has long puzzled astrophysicists.

The team—which includes researchers from the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto—created the map using data from the Planck Space Telescope. Since 2009, Planck has charted the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the light from the Universe a mere 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

The SETI project scientists are known for tracking possible extraterrestrial signals, but now they are also considering sending messages from Earth telling of our position. A researcher from the University of Cádiz (Spain) questions this idea in view of the results from a survey taken by students, revealing the general level of ignorance about the cosmos and the influence of religion when tackling these matters.

Orlando, Fla. — Scientists have developed a model that mimics the complex structure of the cornea to enable the transplant of healthy corneal stem cells. The research is being presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) this week in Orlando Fla.