Heavens

Rain, crucial to sustaining life on Earth, is proving deadly for young peregrine falcons in Canada's Arctic.

A University of Alberta study recently published in Oecologia has found that an increase in the frequency of heavy rain brought on by warmer summer temperatures is posing a threat not seen in this species since before pesticides such as DDT were banned from use in Canada in 1970.

The study is among the first to directly link rainfall to survival of wild birds in Canada.

Scientists were able to reliably predict the timing of the 2012-2013 influenza season up to nine weeks in advance of its peak. The first large-scale demonstration of the flu forecasting system by scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health was carried out in 108 cities across the United States.

Results are published online in the journal Nature Communications.

The bedrock hidden beneath the thick ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica has intrigued researchers for years. Scientists are interested in how the shape of this hidden terrain affects how ice moves -- a key factor in making predictions about the future of these massive ice reservoirs and their contribution to sea level rise in a changing climate.

After several days of continued observations, scientists continue to work to determine and to understand the fate of Comet ISON: There's no doubt that the comet shrank in size considerably as it rounded the sun and there's no doubt that something made it out on the other side to shoot back into space. The question remains as to whether the bright spot seen moving away from the sun was simply debris, or whether a small nucleus of the original ball of ice was still there. Regardless, it is likely that it is now only dust.

NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel airborne mission known as HS3 wrapped up for the 2013 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season at the end of September, and had several highlights. HS3 will return to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., for the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season.

A unique system that merges the virtual and real worlds to train Sailors for combat scenarios was unveiled Dec. 2 in Orlando.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is demonstrating the Fleet Integrated Synthetic Training/Testing Facility (FIST2FAC) at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference, commonly referred to as I/ITSEC. Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Matthew L. Klunder will discuss FIST2FAC and training technologies for the future during a special panel 2 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 3.

The Bagrada bug, an invasive stink bug, was discovered in the western hemisphere in 2008 near Los Angeles, CA, presumably introduced via container shipments arriving at the Port of Long Beach. Since then it has spread throughout southern California, southern areas of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, southern and west-central New Mexico, and western Texas.

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA -- Scientists at a massive underground particle detector in Antarctica called the IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory have detected high-energy neutrinos, ideal for the future of "extreme astronomy" because they can be used to detect the sources of cosmic rays and provide information about our universe's most violent and least-understood phenomena.

A combination of pop songs, talkback radio and cutting-edge science has enabled Australian astronomers to identify a way to prevent catastrophic, multi-billion dollar space junk collisions, a new study has revealed.

The inaugural research project spearheaded by Curtin University in Western Australia, will use the newly operational Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), one of three precursor telescopes for the $2billion Square Kilometre Array project, to detect radio waves reflecting off thousands of objects orbiting the earth.

Until now, scientists were pretty sure they knew how the surface of a neutron star – a super dense star that forms when a large star explodes and its core collapses into itself – can heat itself up.

However, research by a team of scientists led by a Michigan State University physicist has researchers rethinking that.

Scientists had long thought that nuclear reactions within the crust, the thick, solid, outermost layer of the star, contributed to the heating of the star's surface.

At times observations have suggested ISON was getting dimmer and might already be in pieces. However, over Nov. 26-27, 2013, the comet once again brightened. In the early hours of Nov. 27, the comet appeared in the view of the European Space Agency/NASA mission the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory in the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph instrument. Coronagraphs block out the bright light of the sun in order to better see the dimmer solar atmosphere, the corona. In these images, the comet looks quite bright as it moves in from the lower right of the image.

Boulder, Colorado, USA – A new study published in the December issue of GSA Today examines the geological legacy of Hurricane Irene, not only in terms of its impact on current coastal conditions but also in what it can tell geoscientists about the past. Hurricane Irene made landfall in Onslow Bay, North Carolina, USA, on 27 August 2011, at which time it had been downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane after hitting the Bahamas at Category 3 strength.

The research team had subjects complete a set of tasks commonly used in similar clinical trials. Subjects in the trials were either able-bodied or people with tetraplegia.

"By the end of the trials, everybody preferred the Tongue Drive System over their current assistive technology," said Joy Bruce, manager of Shepherd Center's Spinal Cord Injury Lab and co-author of the study. "It allows them to engage their environment in a way that is otherwise not possible for them."

This news release is available in Spanish.

The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, discovered two subglacial lakes 800 metres below the Greenland Ice Sheet. The two lakes are each roughly 8-10 km2, and at one point may have been up to three times larger than their current size.

Subglacial lakes are likely to influence the flow of the ice sheet, impacting global sea level change. The discovery of the lakes in Greenland will also help researchers to understand how the ice will respond to changing environmental conditions.