Heavens

IBEX spacecraft images the heliotail, revealing an unexpected structure

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft recently provided the first complete pictures of the solar system's downwind region, revealing a unique and unexpected structure.

Jagged graphene edges can slice into cell membranes

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University have shown how tiny graphene microsheets — ultra-thin materials with a number of commercial applications — could be big trouble for human cells.

Quebec fires continue raging

Fires around James Bay continue raging in Canada due to the driest summer the region has seen in 40 years as seen in this Aqua satellite photo from July 09, 2013. These fires have been raging for several weeks now and are also causing other problems besides burning land and causing pollution. About 10 per cent of Quebecers lost electricity on July 5, on the second day of blackouts triggered by the powerful forest fires. Hydro-Quebec said 500,000 households or businesses were affected at the peak of the blackout.

Wind power does not strongly affect greater prairie chickens, 7-year study finds

MANHATTAN -- Wind power development does not ruffle the feathers of greater prairie chicken populations, according to the results of a seven-year study from a Kansas State University ecologist and his team.

Huge iceberg breaks away from the Pine Island glacier in the Antarctic

On 8 July 2013 a huge area of the ice shelf broke away from the Pine Island glacier, the longest and fastest flowing glacier in the Antarctic, and is now floating in the Amundsen Sea in the form of a very large iceberg. Scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute - Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research have been following this natural spectacle via the earth observation satellites TerraSAR-X from the German Space Agency (DLR) and have documented it in many individual images. The data is intended to help solve the physical puzzle of this "calving".

Astronomers witness birth of Milky Way's most massive star

Scientists have observed in unprecedented detail the birth of a massive star within a dark cloud core about 10,000 light years from Earth.

The team used the new ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array) telescope in Chile – the most powerful radio telescope in the world – to view the stellar womb which, at 500 times the mass of the Sun and many times more luminous, is the largest ever seen in our galaxy.

NTU invention transforms plain surfaces into low-cost touch screens

Imagine turning a whiteboard, glass window or even a wooden table top into a responsive, touch sensitive surface.

A low cost system developed by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), based on the principles of vibration and imaging that is able to track the movements of multiple fingers and of objects, can do just that.

Retrofitting the system onto existing flat-panel TVs will transform it into new, touch sensitive display screens, at only a fraction of the cost of new touch-sensitive display screens, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Cloud brightening to cool seas can protect coral reefs

The seeding of marine clouds to cool sea surface temperatures could protect threatened coral reefs from being bleached by warming oceans. Research, published in Atmospheric Science Letters, proposes that a targeted version of the geo-engineering technique could give coral a fifty year 'breathing space' to recover from acidification and warming.

Cool it, quick: Rapid cooling leads to stronger alloys

Oxford -- A team of researchers from the University of Rostock in Germany has developed a new way to rapidly produce high strength metallic alloys, at a lower cost using less energy than before. It's expected that this breakthrough will profoundly change how we produce components used in a diverse range of applications; including transport and medical devices.

ALMA prenatal scan reveals embryonic monster star

The most massive and brightest stars in the galaxy form within cool and dark clouds but the process remains not just shrouded in dust, but also in mystery [1]. An international team of astronomers has now used ALMA to perform a microwave prenatal scan to get a clearer look at the formation of one such monster star that is located around 11 000 light-years away, in a cloud known as the Spitzer Dark Cloud (SDC) 335.579-0.292.

Improvement needed of prescription drug postmarketing studies

"Because rare but potentially serious adverse events of prescription drugs are often discovered only after market approval, observational postmarketing studies constitute an important part of the U.S. drug safety system," write Kevin Fain, J.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues. "In 2007, Congress passed the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA), which authorized the FDA to require postmarketing studies for a prescription drug's approval and mandate adherence to study deadlines.

NASA sees Tropical Storm Chantal's heavy rainfall and towering thunderstorms

As of 8 a.m. EDT on July 9, a tropical storm warning was in effect for: Barbados, Dominica, St Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico and southern coast of the Dominican Republic from Cabo Engano to the border with Haiti. In addition, a tropical storm watch was in effect for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Saint Vincent, Vieques and Culebra, Haiti, the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos and the southeastern Bahamas.

NASA satellites see strong thunderstorms surround Typhoon Soulik's center

Visible and infrared satellite data show strong thunderstorms surrounding the low-level center of the tropical storm turned Typhoon Soulik. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Soulik in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean on July 9 and two instruments showed the power in the typhoon's center.

NASA infrared data shows a shrunken Tropical Depression Erick

Infrared imagery from the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite revealed that Erick, now a tropical depression has reduced in strength and size and continues to weaken.

GR20/Amaldi10: Space-time is not the same for everyone

Before the Big Bang, space-time as we know it did not exist. So how was it born? The process of creating normal space-time from an earlier state dominated by quantum gravity has been studied for years by theorists at the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw. Recent analyses suggest a surprising conclusion: not all elementary particles are subject to the same space-time.