Heavens

Washington, D.C.—The Solar System has a new most-distant member, bringing its outer frontier into focus.

Data from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments were used to create a rainfall analysis. TRMM PR revealed that Gillian had very intense storms in a well defined eye wall producing rain at a rate of over 100mm/3.9 inches per hour. TRMM PR showed that some of the tall storms on the southwestern side of Gillian's eye were reaching heights of about 14 km/8.7 miles.

Quintessence and phantom fields, two hypotheses formulated using data from satellites, such as Planck and WMAP, are among the many theories that try to explain the nature of dark energy. Now researchers from Barcelona and Athens suggest that both possibilities are only a mirage in the observations and it is the quantum vacuum which could be behind this energy that moves our universe.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study shows that teenagers can be persuaded to cut back on sugary soft drinks – especially with a little help from their friends.

A 30-day challenge encouraging teens to reduce sugar-sweetened drink use lowered their overall consumption substantially and increased by two-thirds the percentage of high-school students who shunned sugary drinks altogether.

NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have released the first images captured by their newest Earth-observing satellite, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, which launched into space Feb. 27.

In early 2010, LANXESS decided to enter a new field of business, water purification: A production facility for Lewabrane reverse osmosis membrane filter elements was supposed to be built by the fall of 2011. Together with the company's experts, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg designed and had the manufacturing technology ready for production in just nine months. Afterward, they built a second, fully automatic and, therefore, more complex plant in just one year.

A new report published online in The FASEB Journal may lead the way toward new treatments or a cure for a common cause of blindness (proliferative retinopathies). Specifically, scientists have discovered that the body's innate immune system does more than help ward off external pathogens. It also helps remove sight-robbing abnormal blood vessels, while leaving healthy cells and tissue intact.

A decades old space mystery has been solved by an international team of astronomers led by Professor Martin Barstow of the University of Leicester and President-elect of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Scientists from the University of Leicester and University of Arizona investigated hot, young, white dwarfs — the super-dense remains of Sun-like stars that ran out of fuel and collapsed to about the size of the Earth. Their research is featured in MNRAS- the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, published by Oxford University Press.

AMES, Iowa – Let's say plant scientists want to develop new lines of corn that will better tolerate long stretches of hot, dry weather.

How can they precisely assess the performance of those new plants in different environmental conditions? Field tests can provide some answers. Greenhouse tests can provide some more. But how can plant scientists get a true picture of a plant's growth and traits under a wide variety of controlled environmental conditions?

Marked in red, hundreds of land use fires burn in the fields across Sierra Leone. Most fires in this region are deliberately set for a variety of reasons, including slash and burn agriculture. When a plot of land becomes exhausted, farmers shift cultivation to another plot where they cut the trees and brush at the beginning of the dry season in January and February. Once the dead plant material has dried, they set fire to it. Such fires peak in March and April right before farming season begins.

A visible image from NASA's Aqua satellite provides a clear picture that wind shear is responsible for weakening the once mighty Tropical Cyclone Gillian from hurricane to tropical storm strength.

When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Gillian on March 25 at 06:30 UTC/2:30 a.m. EDT, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument took a visible picture of the storm. That image showed that wind shear has pushed clouds and showers away from the center as the storm weakened to a tropical storm.

The remnants of Tropical Depression 04W moved away from Palawan and into the South China Sea on March 25 as NASA's TRMM satellite passed overhead.

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA — Commercial demand is driving high-tech research and development in micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS) for diverse applications such as space exploration, wireless systems, and healthcare. A new special section on Emerging MOEMS Technology and Applications in the current issue of the Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS (JM3) gathers recent breakthrough achievements and explains how such innovations in the photonics field are poised to emerge in the marketplace.

Scientists searching for habitable planets beyond Earth shouldn't overlook F-type stars in favor of their more abundant, smaller and cooler cousins, according to new research from University of Texas at Arlington physicists.

Lick Observatory's newest telescope, the Automated Planet Finder (APF), has been operating robotically night after night on Mt. Hamilton since January, searching nearby stars for Earth-sized planets. Every night the fully autonomous system checks the weather, decides which stars to observe, and moves the telescope from star to star throughout the night, collecting measurements that will reveal the presence of planets. Its technical performance has been outstanding, making it not only the first robotic planet-finding facility but also one of the most sensitive.