Heavens

For the past eight years, scientists have been working to make sense of why some satellite data seemed to show the Amazon rain forest "greening-up" during the region's dry season each year from June to October. The green-up indicated productive, thriving vegetation in spite of limited rainfall.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A team of scientists last year presented evidence of a correlation between the migration patterns of ocean salmon and the Earth's magnetic field, suggesting it may help explain how the fish can navigate across thousands of miles of water to find their river of origin.

NASA's Terra satellite saw Tropical Cyclone Edilson pulling away from the island of Mauritius in the Southern Indian Ocean when it passed overhead on February 6, 2014.

Fires in and around Snowy River National Park in Victoria, Australia were captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on February 06, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.

Fires dot the coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, in this Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite image collected on February 06, 2014. The MODIS instrument is aboard the Terra satellite and actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.

Over the past two decades, ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet increased four-fold contributing to one-quarter of global sea level rise. However, the chain of events and physical processes that contributed to it has remained elusive. One likely trigger for the speed up and retreat of glaciers that contributed to this ice loss is ocean warming.

Similar to wings and fins with self-adaptive flaps, the feathers on a diving peregrine falcon's feathers may pop-up during high speed dives, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on February 5, 2014 by Benjamin Ponitz from the Institute of Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics in Germany and colleagues.

MISSOULA – University of Montana researchers examined the impact that converting natural land to cropland has on global vegetation growth, as measured by satellite-derived net primary production, or NPP. They found that measures of terrestrial vegetation growth actually decrease with agricultural conversion, which has important implications for terrestrial carbon storage.

Ab initio: "From the beginning."

It's a term used in science to describe calculations that rely on established mathematical laws of nature, or "first principles," without additional assumptions or special models.

But when it comes to the phenomena that Milos Milosavljevic is interested in calculating, we're talking really ab initio, as in from the beginning of time onward.

A new study from Tel Aviv University reveals that black holes, formed from the first stars in our universe, heated the gas throughout space later than previously thought. They also imprinted a clear signature in radio waves which astronomers can now search for. The work is a major new finding about the origins of the universe.

In a Nature Commentary he proposes a community effort to collect economic data on the new website zeean.net. The aim is to better understand economic flows and to thereby induce a transformation of our supply chains into a stable, climate-smart network that renders our societies less vulnerable to future climate impacts.

The thirteenth tropical cyclone of the Southern Pacific Ocean season formed into a tropical storm named Edilson on February 5 shortly before NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead. Edilson is threatening several land areas.

A Class I Cyclone Warning is now in effect for Rodrigues Island and a Class II Cyclone Warning is in effect for Mauritius. Edilson formed to the northern of Mauritius and is moving south.

NASA's Aqua satellite captured two low pressure areas from different ocean basins in one infrared image. Aqua saw System 94P or Fletcher in the Gulf of Carpentaria and western Queensland and low pressure System 95S in the Northern Territory.

Using very precise ground-based observations, Stephen Lowry (University of Kent, UK) and colleagues have measured the speed at which the near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa spins and how that spin rate is changing over time. They have combined these delicate observations with new theoretical work on how asteroids radiate heat.

ENERGY – LEDs to light UT arena . . .