Heavens

Most stars with masses similar to that of our Sun will end their lives as white dwarfs — small, very dense, and hot bodies that slowly cool down over billions of years. On the way to this final phase of their lives the stars throw their atmospheres out into the space and create planetary nebulae, colourful glowing clouds of gas surrounding the small, bright stellar relics.

When people in North America look up at the sky in the early morning hours of April 15, they can expect the moon to look a little different.

A total lunar eclipse is expected at this time, a phenomenon that occurs when the Earth, moon and sun are in perfect alignment, blanketing the moon in the Earth's shadow.

Tropical Cyclone Ita's maximum sustained winds have increased over the last day and NASA's Aqua satellite provided forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center with a visible look at the storm on April 8.

As Tropical Depression Peipah continues moving toward the central Philippines, NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and took an infrared look at the cloud top temperatures for clues about its strength.

WASHINGTON D.C., April 8, 2014 -- Some 90 years ago, British polymath J.B.S. Haldane proposed that for every animal there is an optimal size -- one which allows it to make best use of its environment and the physical laws that govern its activities, whether hiding, hunting, hoofing or hibernating. Today, three researchers are asking whether there is a "right" size for another type of huge beast: the U.S. power grid.

Materials scientists have long known that introducing defects into three-dimensional materials can improve their mechanical and electronic properties. Now a new Northwestern study finds how defects affect two-dimensional crystalline structures, and the results hold information for designing new materials.

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), pioneered the use of quasars to map density variations in intergalactic gas at high redshifts, tracing the structure of the young universe. BOSS charts the history of the universe's expansion in order to illuminate the nature of dark energy, and new measures of large-scale structure have yielded the most precise measurement of expansion since galaxies first formed.

Passwords, gestures and fingerprint scans are all helpful ways to keep a thief from unlocking and using a cell phone or tablet. Cybersecurity researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have gone a step further. They've developed a new security system that continuously monitors how a user taps and swipes a mobile device. If the movements don't match the owner's tendencies, the system recognizes the differences and can be programmed to lock the device.

The twenty-third tropical cyclone of the Southern Pacific tropical cyclone season has developed near the Solomon Islands and strengthened into Tropical Storm Ita on April 5. NASA satellite imagery showed the center of circulation just southwest of Sudest Island. Sudest is a volcanic island within Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea.

GOVERNMENT plans to overhaul the centuries-old coroner system in England and Wales have been bolstered by the findings of a leading police officer who has become a PhD researcher at the University of Huddersfield. Detailed analysis by ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Max Mclean has shown that there are huge disparities between the decisions made by coroners in differing districts, with the troubling discovery that the deaths of women are considerably less likely to be investigated at an inquest.

Tropical Cyclone Peipah passed the island of Palau on April 5 moving through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean as it heads for a landfall in the Philippines. Peipah was formerly known as Tropical Cyclone 05W and was renamed when it reached tropical storm-force. Since then, however, wind shear has weakened the storm to a tropical depression.

New research reports that women who frequently consume fat-free or low-fat milk may delay the progression of osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee. Results published in the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) journal, Arthritis Care & Research, show that women who ate cheese saw an increase in knee OA progression. Yogurt did not impact OA progression in men or women.

The superlattice was studied first using quantum-mechanical molecular dynamics simulations conducted in Landman's lab. The system was also studied experimentally by a research group headed by Terry Bigioni, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Toledo.

Irvine, Calif., April 4, 2014 – All that's gold does not glitter, thanks to new work by UC Irvine scientists that could reduce glare from solar panels and electronic displays and dull dangerous glints on military weapons.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Tropical Depression 05W on April 4 at 07:09 UTC/3:09 a.m. EDT. The VIIRS instrument captured a visible picture of the storm, revealing most of the clouds and thunderstorms were west of the center.