Heavens

Infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite shows that Hurricane Darby is losing its punch.

NASA's Aqua satellite saw an almost well-rounded Tropical Storm Estelle and identified the locations of the strongest convection in the developing eyewall.

BINGHAMTON, NY - When it comes to messaging users on dating websites, men tend to be more aggressive and contact users they are interested in, whereas women tend to be more conscious of their own attractiveness to other users, according to new research.

This summer, with sea ice across the Arctic Ocean shrinking to below-average levels, a NASA airborne survey of polar ice just completed its first flights. Its target: aquamarine pools of melt water on the ice surface that may be accelerating the overall sea ice retreat.

NASA's Operation IceBridge completed the first research flight of its new 2016 Arctic summer campaign on July 13. The science flights, which continue through July 25, are collecting data on sea ice in a year following a record-warm winter in the Arctic.

Infrared data from the Suomi NPP satellite showed that Tropical Cyclone Abela continues to weaken in the Western Pacific Ocean.

On Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT), Tropical Cyclone Abela was centered near 14.7 degrees south latitude and 54.7 degrees east longitude. That's about 540 nautical miles east-northeast of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Abela was a minimal tropical storm with maximum sustained winds near 35 knots (40 mph/62 kph). Abela was moving to the west at 17 knots (19.5 mph/31.4 kph).

MINNEAPOLIS - Contrary to popular belief, taking estrogen after menopause may not affect the memory and thinking abilities of healthy women no matter when the treatment is started. The research is published in the July 20, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The recent study is among the first large, long-term clinical trial to examine the cognitive effects of estradiol, a type of estrogen, on women both close to and long after menopause.

Mercury exposure is common in communities in Canada's north, especially in indigenous peoples who consume fish and other wild food with high mercury content, yet current clinical guidelines are not adequate for this population. A review in CMAJ Canadian Medical Association Journal provides guidance for health care providers on the effects of mercury exposure and how to manage it in patients who consume diets high in fish and marine animals.

Two key climate change indicators -- global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent -- have broken numerous records through the first half of 2016, according to NASA analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data.

A project led by archaeologists from the British Museum and the University of Leicester has discovered remarkable evidence which shows how the first generations of Europeans to arrive in the Americas engaged with indigenous peoples and their spiritual beliefs deep inside the caves of a remote Caribbean island.

Recent fieldwork by a collaborative Anglo-Puerto Rican* team has uncovered new evidence in the Caribbean of an early religious dialogue between Europeans and Native Americans.

An international team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona has discovered and confirmed a treasure trove of new worlds using NASA's Kepler spacecraft on its K2 mission. Among the findings tallying 197 initial planet candidates, scientists have confirmed 104 planets outside our solar system. Among the confirmed is a planetary system comprising four promising planets that could be rocky.

In a recent work published in Nature Communications, the research group led by ICREA Professor at ICFO Frank Koppens demonstrate a novel way to detect low-energy photons using vertical heterostructures made by stacking graphene and other 2D semiconducting materials. By studying the photoresponse of these atomically thin sandwiches, the researchers have shown that it is possible to generate a current by heating electrons in graphene with infrared light and extracting the hottest electrons over a vertical energy barrier.

For the first time, researchers have successfully measured in detail the flow of solar energy, in and between different parts of a photosynthetic organism. The result is a first step in research that could ultimately contribute to the development of technologies that use solar energy far more efficiently than what is currently possible.

Nanoparticles are being studied as drug delivery systems to treat a wide variety of diseases. New research delves into the physical properties of nanoparticles that are important for successfully delivering therapeutics within the body, with a primary focus on size. This is especially important as relatively subtle differences in size can affect cell uptake and determine the fate of nanoparticles once within cells.

New York -- July 18, 2016 -- Columbia Engineering researchers, working with colleagues at Disney Research and MIT, have developed a new method to control sound waves, using a computational approach to inversely design acoustic filters that can fit within an arbitrary 3D shape while achieving target sound filtering properties. Led by Computer Science Professor Changxi Zheng, the team designed acoustic voxels, small, hollow, cube-shaped chambers through which sound enters and exits, as a modular system.

PITTSBURGH--Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering researchers have concluded that the public could derive economic and social benefits today if safety-oriented, partially automated vehicle technologies were deployed in all cars. The researchers examined forward collision warning, lane departure warning and blind spot monitoring systems. These technologies can include partially autonomous braking or controls to help vehicles avoid crashes.