Heavens

AMES, Iowa - Low-income mothers in rural communities say participating in outdoor activities as a family is a primary need for their physical and emotional well-being. But a new paper co-authored by Iowa State University's Kimberly Greder and published in the Journal of Leisure Research demonstrates many of these families aren't getting time together.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a national vaccine safety reporting system that collects information about possible side effects that may occur after inoculation. Developed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and available online, anyone can report possible adverse reactions to vaccines for any reason, making it a rich source of information about possible vaccine harms. Recently, University of Missouri researchers proposed that open communication about VAERS could improve public trust that vaccines are safe, thereby increasing vaccine acceptance.

Photosynthesis, one of the most important biochemical and biophysical processes on earth, provides food and energy for nearly all living organisms (including human beings) in the biosphere. Studying the structures and mechanisms of various aspects of photosynthesis will potentially offer illuminating methods for solving increasingly pressing problems concerning energy, food and the environment. These problems create major restraints on the sustainable development of human society.

The extremely difficult conditions in which University of the Witwatersrand's (Wits) Professor Lee Berger's Rising Star team was forced to work, gave rise to the use of space-age technology to map the Dinaledi chamber and Rising Star Cave, in which over 1500 Homo naledi fossils were found.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 31, 2016 -- Much of modern life is deeply impacted by the behavior of ice.

The prices and affordability of recently developed and highly effective direct-acting antivirals for treating hepatitis C (HCV) vary greatly among countries worldwide, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. Suzanne Hill and colleagues from the World Health Organization undertook an economic analysis of prices for a 12-week course of treatment with sofosbuvir and ledipasvir/sofosbuvir in 30 countries - mostly European as well as Egypt and Mongolia, adjusting for average 2015 exchange rates and purchasing power parity (PPP).

A type of flatworm could be a new weapon in the hunt for better ways to treat a group of diseases that can cause extreme sensitivity to light, facial hair growth, and hallucinations, according to a study published in the journal eLife.

Porphyrias are a group of rare metabolic disorders characterized by red and purple pigments accumulating in the body. With the accidental discovery that the skin color of the flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea (S. mediterranea) changes under prolonged exposure to sunlight, these animals could provide a new model for studying the diseases.

What is the most optimal energy behaviour in everyday life with variable electricity prices? Researchers at Aarhus University have carried out extensive theoretical mapping of the way private consumers can save money for heating in a modern supply system based on electricity.

Surprisingly enough, the mapping shows that by using approximately 10 per cent more energy for heating, it is possible to save about 10 per cent on the heating bill, at the same time as protecting the environment with lower carbon dioxide emission.

Use energy and save money

HAMILTON, May 31, 2016 - It is a galactic challenge, to be sure, but Gwendolyn Eadie is getting closer to an accurate answer to a question that has defined her early career in astrophysics: what is the mass of the Milky Way?

The short answer, so far, is 7 X 1011 solar masses. In terms that are easier to comprehend, that's about the mass of our Sun, multiplied by 700 billion. The Sun, for the record, has a mass of two nonillion (that's 2 followed by 30 zeroes) kilograms, or 330,000 times the mass of Earth.

"And our galaxy isn't even the biggest galaxy," Eadie says.

Through a computer-simulated study, astronomers at Lund University in Sweden show that it is highly likely that the so-called Planet 9 is an exoplanet. This would make it the first exoplanet to be discovered inside our own solar system. The theory is that our sun, in its youth some 4.5 billion years ago, stole Planet 9 from its original star.

The PhD student Margherita Bettinelli, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), together with an international team of astrophysicists has recently discovered an unusual astronomical object: an Einstein ring. These phenomena, predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity, are quite rare but scientifically interesting. The interest is sufficiently strong that this object has been given its own name: the "The Canarias Einstein ring".

Known for snow rather than sun, Michigan's Upper Peninsula could still support a significant network of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy systems. Solar energy alone in the region is seasonally restricted. However, solar coupled with cogeneration and batteries could overcome any cloudy, cold winter day.

Manufacturers, retailers, governments and other buyers are under a lot of pressure these days to preferentially purchase products with relatively low environmental footprints. But options can be overwhelming: Is it better to favor suppliers who use renewable electricity to produce their products, or those that use recycled cardboard for the boxes that contain them? Until now there has been no easy way to answer that, since measuring the impact of green products can be costly and comparing the relative environmental and economic merits of different products is next to impossible.

ANN ARBOR -- Countries that implement government-mandated vaccinations for chickenpox see a sharp drop in the number of Google searches for the common childhood disease afterward, demonstrating that immunization significantly reduces seasonal outbreaks.

That's one of the findings from a new University of Michigan-led study that analyzed thousands of Google searches for "chickenpox." The researchers downloaded and analyzed freely available Google Trends data from 36 countries on five continents, covering an 11-year period starting in 2004.

The low pressure area located between Bermuda and the Bahamas, designated as System 91L became a little better defined today. NASA's RapidScat analyzed the system's winds, and NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided a visible look at the developing system.