Heavens

Tropical Cyclone Lehar is weakening as it heads for a landfall in eastern India. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the storm nearing the coast today, November 27.

Warnings were in effect in India for northern Andhra Pradesh and southern Odisha as Lehar approaches. Lehar will bring winds, heavy rainfall and storm surge to those Indian states today, and tomorrow. A storm surge of up to 3 meters is possible.

DARIEN, IL – A new analysis of National Football League results suggests that the body's natural circadian timing gives a performance advantage to West Coast teams when they play East Coast teams at night.

The former tropical storm Alessia reclaimed her title on November 27 in the Gulf of Carpentaria, as NASA's TRMM satellite passed overhead and observed heavy rainfall occurring in bands of thunderstorms around the storm's center.

Two months ago astronomers created a new 3D map of stars at the centre of our Galaxy (the Milky Way), showing more clearly than ever the bulge at its core. Previous explanations suggested that the stars that form the bulge are in banana-like orbits, but a paper published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that the stars probably move in peanut-shell or figure of eight-shaped orbits instead.

Located only about 160 000 light-years from us (eso1311 - http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1311/) in the constellation of Dorado (The Swordfish), the Large Magellanic Cloud is one of our closest galactic neighbours. It is actively forming new stars in regions that are so bright that some can even be seen from Earth with the naked eye, such as the Tarantula Nebula (eso1033 - http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1033/).

RICHLAND, Wash. -- A new study reveals how pollution causes thunderstorms to leave behind larger, deeper, longer lasting clouds. Appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences November 26, the results solve a long-standing debate and reveal how pollution plays into climate warming. The work can also provide a gauge for the accuracy of weather and climate models.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Having human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, can create many challenges for individuals physically, socially and emotionally. A University of Missouri researcher found that participating in photovoice, a process by which individuals document their lives by taking pictures, empowered women living with HIV to realize their strengths in the midst of their struggles.

Tropical cyclone Lehar, located in the Bay of Bengal, continues to gain intensity while heading toward the same area of India where a much weaker tropical cyclone Helen recently came ashore. NASA's TRMM satellite passed over Lehar and measured rainfall and cloud heights to give scientists an understanding of how the storm is behaving.

After making landfall near Darwin on Nov. 24, the remnants of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alessia worked its way over to Australia's Northern Territory where it was seen from NASA's Aqua satellite. Aqua passed over the remnant low and captured infrared data on it that revealed that although the low remains disorganized, some strong thunderstorms were over the northwestern coast of the Northern Territory.

A study has shown that a daily probiotic drink changed how cells lining the nasal passages of hay fever sufferers reacted to a single out-of-season challenge. However, it did not lead to significant changes in hay fever symptoms, although this challenge test may not have accurately represented natural allergen exposure.

A week after launching a new orbiter to investigate the upper atmosphere of Mars, NASA is sending a sounding rocket to probe the atmosphere of Venus.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Nov. 18. Now, the Venus Spectral Rocket, VeSpR for short, is scheduled to lift off from White Sands, N.M., on Nov. 25.

Scientists should take the conservative approach when searching for habitable zones where life-sustaining planets might exist, according to James Kasting, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, including when building Terrestrial Planet Finders.

When a star explodes as a supernova, it shines brightly for a few weeks or months before fading away. Yet the material blasted outward from the explosion still glows hundreds or thousands of years later, forming a picturesque supernova remnant. What powers such long-lived brilliance?

In the case of Tycho's supernova remnant, astronomers have discovered that a reverse shock wave racing inward at Mach 1000 (1000 times the speed of sound) is heating the remnant and causing it to emit X-ray light.

The Andaman Islands received an unwelcome visitor on November 25 in the form of Tropical Cyclone Lehar. NASA's Terra satellite captured a picture of the visitor as it was making its exit from the islands and into the Bay of Bengal.

Bethesda, MD – Shanghai's health care reforms as well as the findings of an eleven-country health care survey are published as Web First articles on Health Affairs' web site in November.

Shanghai's Health Care Reforms Explained.