Heavens

Fish skin is unique in that it lacks keratin, the fibrous protein found in mammalian skin that provides a barrier against the environment. Instead, the epithelial cells of fish skin are in direct contact with the immediate environment: water. Similarly, the epithelial cells that line the gastrointestinal tract are also in direct contact with their immediate milieu.

"I like to think of fish as an open gut swimming," said J. Oriol Sunyer, a professor in the the Department of Pathobiology of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine.

NASA and NOAA satellites have been tracking the progression of low pressure System 93L through the Caribbean Sea and into the southwestern Gulf of Mexico over a week's time, and it became Tropical Storm Ingrid mid-day on Sept. 13. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured an image of Ingrid's center over the Bay of Campeche.

In 2005 the Hubble Space Telescope spotted unusually small galaxies densely packed with red stars in the distant, young universe. They were nicknamed "red nuggets," not only because they are small and red but also their existence challenged current theories of galaxy formation, making them precious in astronomers' eyes.

Since no "red nuggets" were seen nearby, astronomers wondered why they had disappeared over time. New research shows that they didn't disappear completely. In fact, they were simply hidden within the data of previous surveys.

NASA's Terra satellite passed over newborn Tropical Storm Man-yi and captured and image that clearly showed two vortices rotating around a large center of circulation. Man-yi formed on Sept. 12 in the northwestern Pacific Ocean as the sixteenth tropical depression and by Sept. 13 it strengthened into a tropical storm.

Southwesterly wind shear has taken its toll on hurricane Humberto, and NASA's TRMM satellite noticed that in rainfall data.

When NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite passed over Hurricane Humberto on September 12, 2013 at 1625 UTC/12:25 p.m. EDT the eye was no longer visible. An analysis derived from

TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) data showed that most of the precipitation with Humberto was located in the northwestern quadrant, pushed there by the strong southwesterly wind shear.

TheSkyNet is celebrating its two year anniversary today with the official launch of a new research project, as well as a range of improvements and new features to make contributing to astronomical research at home more enjoyable, and even easier.

Launched on September 13th 2011, theSkyNet is a community computing project dedicated to astronomy, initiated by the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Perth, Western Australia.

The average American today can look forward to over two more years of healthy life than they could just a generation ago, Harvard researchers have found.

The MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Hurricane Humberto that showed it's eye was cloud-filled. Humberto was moving away from the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

Microbes that live in rice paddies, northern peat bogs and other previously unexpected environments are among the bacteria that can generate highly toxic methylmercury, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have learned.

How social media users create and monitor their online personas may hint at their feelings of self-esteem and self-determination, according to an international team of researchers.

"The types of actions users take and the kinds of information they are adding to their Facebook walls and profiles are a refection of their identities," said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Penn State. "You are your Facebook, basically, and despite all its socialness, Facebook is a deeply personal medium."

An expedition of international scientists to the far reaches of Antarctica's remote Pine Island Glacier has yielded exact measurements of an undersea process glaciologists have long called the "biggest source of uncertainty in global sea level projections."

The research, which appears in the latest issue of Science magazine, was conducted by scientists at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, Calif., the University of Alaska, Pennsylvania State University, NASA, and the British Antarctic Survey.

This news release is available in Spanish.

University of Iowa space physicist Don Gurnett says there is solid evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to reach interstellar space, more than 11 billion miles distant and 36 years after it was launched.

The finding is reported in a paper published in the Sept. 12 online issue of the journal Science.

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and Green Bank Telescope (GBT) spotted the faint radio glow from NASA's famed Voyager 1 spacecraft -- the most distant man-made object.

According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the VLBA imaged the signal from Voyager 1's main transmitter after the spacecraft had already passed beyond the edge of the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles from the Sun that surrounds our Solar System.

The location, widespread nature, and number of fires in this satellite image suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land. Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants. While fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality. In Mozambique and Madagascar, the growing season runs from the first rains in October – November. Thus, the clearing of lands in early September heralds the new growing season.