Heavens

A UT Arlington chemistry professor, renowned for his work in the area of chemical separations, is leading an effort to find a more accurate way to measure water content in pharmaceuticals – a major quality issue for drug manufacturers.

Daniel W. Armstrong, UT Arlington's Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry, says the new technique could be 100 times more sensitive than one of the most popular current methods.

New York, NY—April 30, 2014—Researchers at Columbia Engineering announced today that they have successfully grown fully functional human cartilage in vitro from human stem cells derived from bone marrow tissue. Their study, which demonstrates new ways to better mimic the enormous complexity of tissue development, regeneration, and disease, is published in the April 28 Early Online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Gamma-ray bursts are powerful bursts of gamma-ray radiation in connection with the explosive death of massive stars. The bursts themselves are short lived – lasting typically less than a few minutes, but is followed by an afterglow that can be observed for several days after the gamma-ray burst. The afterglow is thought to occur when a shockwave is emitted from the dying star and collides with the surrounding material.

Exoplanet Beta Pictoris b orbits the naked-eye star Beta Pictoris [1], [2], which lies about 63 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Pictor (The Painter's Easel). This planet was discovered nearly six years ago and was one of the first exoplanets to be directly imaged. It orbits its host star at a distance of only eight times the Earth-Sun distance (eso1024) — making it the closest exoplanet to its star ever to be directly imaged [3].

Research from an international team of scientists led by the University of Leicester has discovered for the first time that one of the most powerful events in our universe – Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) – behave differently than previously thought.

The study, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, uses evidence from observation of a GRB to rule out most of the existing theoretical predictions concerning the afterglow of the explosions.

For the first time an international team of astronomers has measured circular polarisation in the bright flash of light from a dying star collapsing to a black hole, giving insight into an event that happened almost 11 billion years ago.

Dr Peter Curran from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) was part of the team that observed Gamma-ray Burst 121024A – a bright flash of light emitted by a dying star collapsing to a black hole – and found a surprising detail in the light they collected.

The galaxy known as M87 has a fastball that would be the envy of any baseball pitcher. It has thrown an entire star cluster toward us at more than two million miles per hour. The newly discovered cluster, which astronomers named HVGC-1, is now on a fast journey to nowhere. Its fate: to drift through the void between the galaxies for all time.

Caltech astronomers have taken unprecedented images of the intergalactic medium (IGM)—the diffuse gas that connects galaxies throughout the universe—with the Cosmic Web Imager, an instrument designed and built at Caltech. Until now, the structure of the IGM has mostly been a matter for theoretical speculation. However, with observations from the Cosmic Web Imager, deployed on the Hale 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, astronomers are obtaining our first three-dimensional pictures of the IGM.

A new study from the University of Toronto Scarborough suggests the search for life on planets outside our solar system may be more difficult than previously thought.

The study, authored by a team of international researchers led by UTSC Assistant Professor Hanno Rein from the Department of Physical and Environmental Science, finds the method used to detect biosignatures on such planets, known as exoplanets, can produce a false positive result.

The Department of Defense needs materials for armor windows that provide essential protection for both personnel and equipment while still having a high degree of transparency. To meet that need, scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have developed a method to fabricate nanocrystalline spinel that is 50% harder than the current spinel armor materials used in military vehicles. With the highest reported hardness for spinel, NRL's nanocrystalline spinel demonstrates that the hardness of transparent ceramics can be increased simply by reducing the grain size to 28 nanometers.

(SAN DIEGO, CA) April 29, 2014 – Recommendations to increase the intake of potassium and dietary fiber among young children should be a priority for the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, according to a new study by the Alliance for Potato Research and Education (APRE) presented today at Experimental Biology 2014.

Tropical Storm Tapah strengthened since April 28 and early on April 29, the storm reached typhoon strength. From its orbit in space, NASA's Aqua satellite zoomed over Tapah and the AIRS instrument captured infrared data on the storm that showed the location of its strongest thunderstorms.

The U.S. National Weather Service in Guam noted that a tropical storm warning and a typhoon watch continues for Alamagan and Pagan. For details on the advisory, visit: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/data/GUM/HLSPQ1

WASHINGTON — April 29, 2014 - According to a new study by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Policy Program, a risk management framework can improve the resilience of healthcare facilities and services to high-impact weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes. The report is based on a recent AMS Policy Program workshop, A Prescription for the 21st Century: Improving Resilience to High-Impact Weather for Healthcare Facilities and Services, held in Washington, DC in October 2013.

Streaming jets of high-speed matter produce some of the most stunning objects seen in space. Astronomers have seen them shooting out of young stars just being formed, X-ray binary stars and even the supermassive black holes at the centers of large galaxies.

Theoretical explanations for what causes those beam-like jets have been around for years, but now an experiment by French and American researchers using extremely high-powered lasers offers experimental verification of one proposed mechanism for creating them.

Gimmicky contest ads and flashy free-prize messages may be an instant turnoff for mobile users, according to Penn State researchers.

In a study, a tempting offer of a free prize drawing for registering on a mobile website led users to distrust the site, said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory.