Heavens

A push to replace old, heat-trapping paving materials with new, cooler materials could actually lead to higher electricity bills for surrounding buildings, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. Researchers published their findings Oct. 29 in the new Journal of Urban Climate.

The new paving materials are designed to lower the overall temperature of the areas where they are used—something that the study, which was focused on local solar radiation and energy consumption, was not designed to measure.

Washington, D.C.—Astronomers have discovered a new super-Earth in the habitable zone, where liquid water and a stable atmosphere could reside, around the nearby star HD 40307. It is one of three new super-Earths found around the star that has three other low-mass planets orbiting it.

HD 40307 is a dwarf star that is somewhat smaller and less luminous than the Sun that is about 42 light years away (12.88 parsecs). The previously discovered planets around it are called hot super-Earths because they orbit too close to the star to support life.

In order to contribute to the development of the primary sector and environmental care, the Basque Institute of Agricultural Research and Development, NEIKER-Tecnalia, has analysed various ways of spreading slurry on arable land to determine the most appropriate way of cutting the amount of ammonia that is released into the atmosphere.

JERUSALEM, Israel, November 6, 2012 – Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. announced today that additional data from the Phase III clinical program for QNASL® (beclomethasone dipropionate) Nasal Aerosol will be presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) in Anaheim, CA on November 8-13, 2012. QNASL® is a recently approved "dry" nasal aerosol corticosteroid that treats seasonal and year-round nasal allergy symptoms in adults and adolescents 12 years of age and older.

Researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, have now discovered an important mechanism behind one of our most fundamental lines of immune function. The discovery has been published in the esteemed scientific journal, The Journal of Immunology, where it has been highlighted as a top story.

BINGHAMTON, NY -- Binghamton University researcher Ron Miles invented a tiny directional microphone — suitable for use in hearing aids — that filters out unwanted sounds. Now, with help from the SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund, he hopes to bring the idea to the marketplace.

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, November 5th, 2012—Watching a 3 dimensional (3D) film at home can be just as real and fun as going to a movie theater. Professor Yang-Hann Kim and Research Professor Jung-Woo Choi from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST, have succeeded in building an audio rendering system that will considerably improve the current 3D audio effects technology.

Europeans spend much time with their grandchildren. And past 70, the grandfather takes the lead.

Norwegian sociologist Knud Knudsen sets great store by his grandchildren. In that respect, he is typical of the grandparents in Europe who are the subjects of his recent research.

"Europeans with grandchildren generally opt to spend a good deal of time with them," says 67-year-old Knudsen, who is professor of sociology at the University of Stavanger (UiS).

Satellite imagery from Nov. 2 showed that Sandy's remnant clouds continue to linger over Canada and the northeastern U.S.

The National Weather Service map for Nov. 2, 2012 showed two areas of low pressure over eastern Canada, near Quebec. That's where the remnants of Sandy are located and the storm's massive cloud cover continues to linger over a large area. That low pressure area is associated with Sandy's remnants.

Some 4.567 billion years ago, our solar system's planets spawned from an expansive disc of gas and dust rotating around the sun. While similar processes are witnessed in younger solar systems throughout the Milky Way, the formative stages of our own solar system were believed to have taken twice as long to occur. Now, new research lead by the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, suggests otherwise. Indeed, our solar system is not quite as special as once believed.

After Tropical Cyclone Nilam made landfall in southeastern India NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and saw the storm's clouds blanket the entire southern portion of the country from Chennai southward.

On Nov. 1 at 05:50 UTC (1:50 a.m. EDT), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Depression Nilam.

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellitecaptured a night-time view of New York City, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania that revealed the extent of the power outages caused from Hurricane Sandy's landfall on October 29. Suomi NPP is a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Occasionally, a gamma ray collides with starlight and transforms into a pair of particles -- an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. Once this occurs, the gamma ray light is lost. In effect, the process dampens the gamma ray signal in much the same way as fog dims a distant lighthouse.

From studies of nearby blazars, scientists have determined how many gamma rays should be emitted at different energies. More distant blazars show fewer gamma rays at higher energies -- especially above 25 GeV -- thanks to absorption by the cosmic fog.

Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

They suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the sun's protoplanetary disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant Jupiter-like planet, may determine whether complex life will evolve on an Earth-like planet.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM, satellite acts as a rain gauge in space as it orbits the Earth's tropics. As TRMM flew over Hurricane Sandy since its birth on Oct. 21 it was gathering data that has now been mapped to show how much rain the storm dropped along the U.S. eastern seaboard.