Heavens

WASHINGTON D.C., March 25, 2014 -- A research team in Spain has the enviable job of testing out new electromechanical gear for potential use in future missions to the "Red Planet." They do it within their Mars environmental simulation chamber, which is specially designed to mimic conditions on the fourth planet from the sun -- right down to its infamous Martian dust.

Mars is a key target for future space exploration, thanks to indications that the planet may have either been capable of supporting life in the past or is possibly even supporting it right now within its subsurface.

In how many ways can one describe an object? Take an apple: by just looking at it we can easily estimate its weight, shape and colour but we are unable to describe it at any other level, for example, to evaluate the chemical composition of its flesh. Something similar also applies to astronomical objects: until today one of the challenges facing scientists was to describe neutron stars at the nuclear physics level. The matter these stars are made up of is in fact extremely complex, and several complicated equations of state have been proposed.

"Wind, solar and biogas are all energy sources with their own strengths and weaknesses. And it's by combining the strengths of each in a smart way that we'll be able to guarantee Germany's energy supply into the future," says Dr. Kurt Rohrig, deputy director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES in Kassel. But what happens when, instead of a big power plant, you have a host of individual small energy producers feeding in energy to the grid at varying times? Is reliable operation of the grid still technically feasible?

Washington, D.C.— Plants convert energy from sunlight into chemical energy during a process called photosynthesis. This energy is passed on to humans and animals that eat the plants, and thus photosynthesis is the primary source of energy for all life on Earth. But the photosynthetic activity of various regions is changing due to human interaction with the environment, including climate change, which makes large-scale studies of photosynthetic activity of interest.

Computer chips have stopped getting faster: The regular performance improvements we've come to expect are now the result of chipmakers' adding more cores, or processing units, to their chips, rather than increasing their clock speed.

In theory, doubling the number of cores doubles the chip's efficiency, but splitting up computations so that they run efficiently in parallel isn't easy. On the other hand, say a trio of computer scientists from MIT, Israel's Technion, and Microsoft Research, neither is it as hard as had been feared.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Recently physicists have been poking holes again in Stephen Hawking's black hole theory – including Hawking himself. For decades physicists across the globe have been trying to figure out the mysteries of black holes – those fascinating monstrous entities that have such intense gravitational pull that nothing – not even light – can escape from them. Now Professor Chris Adami, Michigan State University, has jumped into the fray.

Tropical Cyclone Gillian's eye was starting to "close" or become cloud-filled when NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean on March 23.

On March 23, Gillian's maximum sustained winds peaked near 140 knots/161.1 mph/259.3 kph making it a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Fortunately, Gillian pulled away from Indonesia, so all of the regional warnings were canceled on March 23.

Tropical Depression 04W formed in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean on March 23 and marched across the southern Philippines. NASA's TRMM satellite spotted moderate rainfall occurring near Palawan the next day from the storm's remnants.

The world population is rapidly ageing, which means the number of disabled and dependent people is increasing since these rates increase with age, particularly after the age of 80. This is the context in which the Tecnalia centre for applied research has designed a system of sensors which when fitted in a home, allows a person's habits and activities to be monitored and any changes in his/her habits and activities that could be a symptom of disorders relating to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's to be detected.

In the world of quantum science, Alice and Bob have been talking to one another for years. Charlie joined the conversation a few years ago, but now with spacelike separation, scientists have measured that their communication occurs faster than the speed of light.

For the first time, physicists at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo have demonstrated the distribution of three entangled photons at three different locations (Alice, Bob and Charlie) several hundreds of metres apart, proving quantum nonlocality for more than two entangled photons.

Researchers tracked 501 American women ages 18 to 40 years who were free from known fertility problems and had just started trying to conceive, and followed them for 12 months or until they became pregnant as part of the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study. Saliva samples were collected from participants the morning following enrollment and again the morning following the first day of their first study-observed menstrual cycle.

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) in Boston have estimated that around one million children suffer from tuberculosis (TB) annually— twice the number previously thought to have tuberculosis and three times the number that are diagnosed every year. The researchers also estimated that around 32,000 children suffer from multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) annually. These findings are published in The Lancet on March 23, 2014.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the reborn tropical cyclone known as Gillian on March 21 and captured a visible image of the storm, located just south of the island of Java.

Java is highly populated island of Indonesia that includes the capital city of Jakarta. Java is divided into four provinces, East, West and Central Java and Banten. There are also two special regions of Java called Jakarta and Yogyakarta.

The tropical low pressure area centered just east of the southern Philippines appeared more organized on visible imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite on March 21. System 94W appears to be developing and the Philippine authorities have already issued warnings on the system locally designated as "Caloy."

Denver, CO (March 21, 2014) – Research presented by P&G Beauty scientists at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) offers insights into new ingredient formulations and effective skin care routines. P&G Beauty will showcase several studies that address a range of topics including cellular bioenergetics, anti-aging technologies, microdermabrasion systems and sensitive skin body wash efficacy.