Heavens

In the past decade, China as sunk some impressive numbers to preserve its forests, but until now there hasn't been much data to give a true picture of how it has simultaneously affected both the people and the environment.

Michigan State University, partnered with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has capitalized on their long history of research in the Wolong Nature Reserve to get a complete picture of the environmental and socioeconomic effects of payments for ecosystem services programs.

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Chemists have discovered that an 'impossible' reaction at cold temperatures actually occurs with vigour, which could change our understanding of how alcohols are formed and destroyed in space.

To explain the impossible, the researchers propose that a quantum mechanical phenomenon, known as 'quantum tunnelling', is revving up the chemical reaction. They found that the rate at which the reaction occurs is 50 times greater at minus 210 degrees Celsius than at room temperature.

Investigators at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, have developed an automated technique for analyzing the patterns of play of field hockey teams, providing a new tool for coaches and commentators who must make sense of mountains of video and other game data.

The double delta wing is a simplified configuration used for studying aircraft aerodynamics. It is composed of a highly-swept delta wing connected in front of the main delta wing with a smaller sweep, reflecting the combination of a leading edge extension and the swept main wing. The aerodynamic performance of such wings, which includes the behavior of the leeside vortical flows at moderate and high angles of attack (AoA) at low speed, is of research interest.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.

Gemini Observatory's Planet-Finding Campaign finds that, around many types of stars, distant gas-giant planets are rare and prefer to cling close to their parent stars. The impact on theories of planetary formation could be significant.

We know it's out there, debris from 50 years of space exploration — aluminum, steel, nylon, even liquid sodium from Russian satellites — orbiting around the Earth and posing a danger to manned and unmanned spacecraft.

According to NASA, there are more than 21,000 pieces of 'space junk' roughly the size of a baseball (larger than 10 centimeters) in orbit, and about 500,000 pieces that are golf ball-sized (between one to 10 centimeters).

New observations of a star known as Gliese 667C have revealed a system with at least six planets, including a record-breaking three super-Earths orbiting in the star's "habitable zone" where liquid water could exist on the planets. This is the first planetary system found to have a fully packed habitable zone.

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2013—Contact lenses correct many people's eyesight but do nothing to improve the blurry vision of those suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness among older adults in the western world. That's because simply correcting the eye's focus cannot restore the central vision lost from a retina damaged by AMD.

Let's all fist bump: Spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way appear to be much larger and more massive than previously believed, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite captured the third named Eastern Pacific tropical cyclone as it grew to hurricane strength. Hurricane Cosme was bringing those winds to Clarion Island, Mexico on June 26 and its northernmost clouds extended over southern Baja California.

Thick smoke billows across the landscape in these digital photographs of the western United States. Both photographs were taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on June 19, 2013.

The images show a plume wafting from the West Fork Complex fire, which was burning explosively in southwestern Colorado near Pagosa Springs. To the northwest, a smaller plume from the Wild Rose fire is also visible (upper image).

On June 22, 2013, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured a false-color image of the East Peak fire burning in southern Colorado near Trinidad. Burned areas appear dark red, while actively burning areas look orange. Dark green areas are forests; light green areas are grasslands. Lightning ignited the blaze on June 19, 2013. By June 25, it had burned nearly 13,500 acres (5,500 hectares).

As the world becomes increasingly connected, the need to ensure the proper functioning of its many underlying networks -- such as the Internet, power grids, global air transportation and ecological networks -- also is increasing. But controlling networks is very difficult.

Now a Northwestern University research team has developed the first broadly applicable computational approach identifying interventions that can both rescue complex networks from the brink of failure and reprogram them to a desired task.