Heavens

A panoramic satellite image shows an active eastern Pacific Ocean with three tropical systems that appear to be chasing each other. Tropical Storm Daniel approaching the central Pacific Ocean, with major Hurricane Emilia further east, and a developing low pressure area east of Emilia.

ARLINGTON, Va.—A new sensor and software suite sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) recently returned from West Africa after helping partner nations track and identify target vessels of interest as part of an international maritime security operation, officials announced July 10.

Astronomers have puzzled over why some extremely faint dwarf galaxies spotted in our Milky Way galaxy's backyard contain so few stars. The galaxies are thought to be some of the tiniest, oldest, and most pristine galaxies in the Universe. They have been discovered over the past decade by astronomers using automated computer techniques to search through the images of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. But an international team of astronomers needed the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to help solve the mystery of why these galaxies are starved of stars, and why so few of them have been found.

The 'Civil Space Strategy' setting out the direction for the UK space sector over the next four years has been launched today, Tuesday 10th July, at the Farnborough International Airshow. The Strategy sets out the UK Space Agency's framework supporting the growth of the sector over the next four years.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 9, 2012 – A San Francisco State University biologist has released the initial results of her nationwide citizen science project to count bee populations and has found low numbers of bees in urban areas across America, adding weight to the theory that habitat loss is one of the primary reasons for sharp declines in the population of bees and other important pollinators.

There are two hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific today, Daniel and Emilia. NASA's TRMM satellite passed over both storms in pinpointed the intensity of the rainfall within each storm, indicative of their power. Emilia is dropping rain at a greater rate than Daniel according to satellite data.

PITTSBURGH—Drivers can struggle to see when driving at night in a rainstorm or snowstorm, but a smart headlight system invented by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute can improve visibility by constantly redirecting light to shine between particles of precipitation.

The system, demonstrated in laboratory tests, prevents the distracting and sometimes dangerous glare that occurs when headlight beams are reflected by precipitation back toward the driver.

MAYWOOD, IL. -- A Loyola study of high school students provides new evidence that a person's circle of friends may influence his or her weight.

Students were more likely to gain weight if they had friends who were heavier than they were. Conversely, students were more likely to get trimmer -- or gain weight at a slower pace -- if their friends were leaner than they were.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A new monitoring approach developed by researchers from The Miriam Hospital could close a major gap by providing the ability to track whether HIV-positive prisoners are getting the community-based HIV care they need once they are released.

Reporting in the journal Virulence, researchers say this new tool could play a major role in preventing the spread of the disease and could guide future strategies to improve the quality of care for prisoners, a population disproportionately affected by HIV.

Observations with CSIRO's Australia Telescope Compact Array have confirmed that astronomers have found the first known "middleweight" black hole.Outbursts of super-hot gas observed with a CSIRO radio telescope have clinched the identity of the first known "middleweight" black hole, Science Express reports online today.

Called HLX-1 ("hyper-luminous X-ray source 1"), the black hole lies in a galaxy called ESO 243-49, about 300 million light-years away.

A team of scientists has created an "MRI" of the Sun's interior plasma motions, shedding light on how it transfers heat from its deep interior to its surface. The result, which appears in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, upends our understanding of how heat is transported outwards by the Sun and challenges existing explanations of the formation of sunspots and magnetic field generation.

Real-time data that will be used in everything from weather forecasts to disaster response is now being beamed down to Earth from a cone-shaped appendage aboard the nation's newest Earth-observing satellite.

On July 11, NASA scientists will launch into space the highest resolution solar telescope ever to observe the solar corona, the million degree outer solar atmosphere. The instrument, called HI-C for High Resolution Coronal Imager, will fly aboard a Black Brant sounding rocket to be launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The mission will have just 620 seconds for its flight, spending about half of that time high enough that Earth's atmosphere will not block ultraviolet rays from the sun.

NASA's TRMM satellite revealed that Tropical Storm Daniel's most concentrated rainfall is occurring around the storm's center.

When the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over Tropical Storm Daniel on July 6, 2012 at 0034 UTC, data revealed heavy rain falling around the southern periphery of the center of circulation. The heavy rain was falling at a rate of more than 2 inches/50 mm per hour. TRMM is jointly managed by both NASA and the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA.

Dr Changfa Guo, Professor Chunsheng Wang and their co-investigators from Zhongshan hospital Fudan University, Shanghai, China have established a novel hyperbranched poly(amidoamine) (hPAMAM) nanoparticle based hypoxia regulated vascular endothelial growth factor (HRE-VEGF) gene therapy strategy which is an excellent substitute for the current expensive and uncontrollable VEGF gene delivery system. This discovery, reported in the June 2012 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, provides an economical, feasible and biocompatible gene therapy strategy for cardiac repair.