Heavens

University of California, San Diego electrical engineering professor Zhaowei Liu and colleagues have taken the first steps in a project to develop fast-blinking LED systems for underwater optical communications.

In the January 6 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, Liu and colleagues show that an artificial metamaterial can increase the light intensity and "blink speed" of a fluorescent light-emitting dye molecule.

Currently approved flu vaccines are less effective in the elderly, yet an estimated 90% of influenza-related deaths occur in people over 65. A paper published on January 23rd in PLOS Pathogens reports on the challenges scientists encountered when they were trying to develop a better flu vaccine.

"But operating at 100 to 200 megabits per sol, we've attempted to reconstruct the past environment from the geologic record just as a field geologist would do. (Sols, or Martian days, are 39 minutes longer than Earth days.)

"We lost Spirit, Opportunity's twin, back in 2010," Arvidson said. Stuck in the sand, it was unable to point its solar arrays in the correct direction to survive winter, and it went quiet March 22, 2010, or sol 2,210.

Various microstructures including straight filaments, layer-by-layer scaffolds and freeform helical spirals are fabricated by a solvent-cast three-dimensional printing technique, as reported by Professor Therriault and his co-researchers on page 4118. The fabrication capabilities of this powerful and flexible process are demonstrated by the printing of three microsystems featuring mechanical, microfluidic and electrical functionalities, such as a high-toughness microstructured fibre, a 3D microchannel and a Ka band antenna.

The accuracy and range of radio frequency identification (RFID) systems, which are used in everything from passports to luggage tracking, could be vastly improved thanks to a new system developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

The vastly increased range and accuracy of the system opens up a wide range of potential monitoring applications, including support for the sick and elderly, real-time environmental monitoring in areas prone to natural disasters, or paying for goods without the need for conventional checkouts.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new national study provides surprising evidence of how cohabitation contributes to the number of long-term relationships lasting eight years or longer.

It is well-known that couples who live together are much more likely to end their relationships within a short-term period than are married couples.

Texting on your phone while walking alters posture and balance according to a study published in PLOS ONE on January 22, 2014 by Siobhan Schabrun and colleagues from the University of Queensland.

Sometimes solving a problem doesn't require a high-tech solution. Sometimes, you have to look no farther than your desktop.

Three students from Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering — an undergraduate, a master's student, and their teaching assistant — have proven that pencils and regular office paper can be used to create functional devices that can measure strain and detect hazardous chemical vapors.

For decades, astrophysicists have encountered a puzzling contradiction: although many galactic-wind models—simulations of how matter is distributed in our universe—predict that the majority of the "normal" matter exists in stars at the center of galaxies, in actuality these stars account for less than 10 percent of the matter in the universe. A new set of simulations offer insight into this mismatch between the models and reality: the energy released by individual stars within galaxies can have a substantial effect on where matter is located in the universe.

A team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists are using mini-satellites that work as "space cops" to help control traffic in space.

The scientists used a series of six images over a 60-hour period taken from a ground-based satellite to prove that it is possible to refine the orbit of another satellite in low earth orbit.

Regular exposure to mild cold may be a healthy and sustainable way to help people lose weight, according to researchers writing in the Cell Press publication Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism on January 22nd. On the flip side, that means our warm and cozy homes and offices might be partly responsible for our expanding waistlines.

In the U.S., someone suffers a heart attack every 34 seconds — their heart is starved of oxygen and suffers irreparable damage. Engineering new heart tissue in the laboratory that could eventually be implanted into patients could help, and scientists are reporting a promising approach tested with rat cells. They published their results on growing cardiac muscle using a scaffold containing carbon nanofibers in the ACS journal Biomacromolecules.

By studying the star around which the planet revolves, they found that the star's rotation appears to be well-aligned with the planetary movement. The object can be well-studied because the star is relatively bright, it can be seen if strong binoculars are used. The planet orbits one star of what appears to be a binary star, and the orbit is not circular but slightly eccentric. The planet is a bit larger than our Earth, with a radius of about 2.8 times that of our planet.

The tropical low pressure area known as System 94S continues to soak Australia and NASA satellites continue to track its movements. NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites captured visible and infrared data on the stubborn storm as warnings for heavy rainfall remain in effect for parts of Western Australia.

After dropping rainfall that brought a number of casualties to the central and southern Philippines, the tropical cyclone known as Lingling, and locally as Agaton in the Philippines has finally wound down.