Heavens

Boulder, Colorado, USA – In the February issue of GSA Today, Lorena Moscardelli of the University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences documents evidence in support for the existence of a martian ocean during the late Hesperian–early Amazonian by showcasing a new terrestrial, deep-water analogy.

PITTSBURGH—Facebook, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, is a proven success in what the late Nobel laureate Herbert Simon called "the marketplace of attention." A new model devised at Carnegie Mellon University assesses the viability of websites and social networks in this new attention economy to predict which sites are sustainable and which are not.

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, beginning at 11:57 p.m. EST on Feb. 3, 2014, and peaking at midnight EST. NASA released images of the flare as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

The global economic crisis has wrought havoc to economies on both sides of the Atlantic, but new research in Social Science Quarterly suggests it has also made both North Americans and Europeans more reluctant to seek out routine medical care.

"The global economic crisis, weakened national economies and household finances globally," said Dr. Annamaria Lusardi from George Washington University. "These economic conditions can have effects in many areas, including health."

Cambridge, UK, February 4, 2014 - A recent prospective study published in Reproductive BioMedicine Online comparing conventional IVF with a novel simplified laboratory method of culturing embryos suggested that fertilization and implantation rates were similar for the simplified system when compared with those reported by conventional IVF programs. Sixteen healthy babies have already been born with this new method. According to the results of this study, IVF may be offered at a more reasonable price and made available to a larger part of the world population.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Digital mammography screening with new photon-counting technique offers high diagnostic performance, according to a study published online in the journal Radiology.

As mammography screening has shifted to digital technology, a range of computed radiography (CR) and direct radiography (DR) systems have emerged. The photon-counting technique is a promising DR approach that uses a unique detector to decrease scattered radiation and noise, enabling dose reduction and making it a promising tool for screening.

NASA's Aqua satellite captured one of the last images of Tropical Storm Kajiki as it began moving over the central Philippines on Jan. 31. The storm, known locally as Basyang, dissipated over the South China Sea today, Feb. 3.

On January 31 at 04:45 UTC/Jan. 30 at 11:45 p.m. EST, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer known as the MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Kajiki. At the time Aqua was flying over the storm, it was making landfall in the Visayas region of the Philippines.

A tropical low pressure area known as "System 94P" has tracked across western Queensland and moved into the Gulf of Carpentaria between Karumba and Gilbert River Mouth on February 3 as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead.

For asymptomatic adults with chronic kidney disease who will need dialysis, an intent-to-defer approach is recommended over an earlier start, according to a new guideline from the Canadian Society of Nephrology published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

It's a sci-fi concept that's at the center of a 25-year exploratory project: building a hypersonic aircraft that takes off from the runway and doesn't need a rest, inspection or repair after it lands – unlike the space shuttle – but can zip back around the world within an hour's landing. University of Cincinnati researchers are developing the validation metrics that could help predict the success or failure of such a model before it is even built, as test data becomes available from component, to sub-system, to the completely assembled air vehicle.

Arctic lakes have been freezing up later in the year and thawing earlier, creating a winter ice season about 24 days shorter than it was in 1950, a University of Waterloo study has found.

The research, sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) and published in The Cryosphere, also reveals that climate change has dramatically affected the thickness of lake ice at the coldest point in the season: In 2011, Arctic lake ice was up to 38 centimetres thinner than it was in 1950.

Jakobshavn Isbræ (Jakobshavn Glacier) is moving ice from the Greenland ice sheet into the ocean at a speed that appears to be the fastest ever recorded. Researchers from the University of Washington and the German Space Agency (DLR) measured the dramatic speeds of the fast-flowing glacier in 2012 and 2013. The results are published today in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Tropical Storm Kajiki developed from the second tropical depression of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean season and quickly moved over the central Philippines. NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and captured infrared data on the storm as it drops more rainfall on an already soggy area.

NASA's Aqua satellite provided infrared data on System 91S in the Mozambique Channel that showed a system battered by wind shear, stretched out, with broken convection.

As Tropical Storm Dylan was making landfall in Queensland on January 30, NASA's TRMM satellite was capturing rainfall data on the storm.