Heavens

In order for Hermine or any other tropical depression, to intensify there must be a pathway for heat energy from the ocean surface to enter the atmosphere. For Hermine, the conduit may have been one of the two "hot towers" that the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite observed on Aug. 31 at 4:09 p.m. EDT (2009 UTC).

This disruption to the wind pattern - called the "quasi-biennial oscillation" - did not have any immediate impact on weather or climate as we experience it on Earth's surface. But it does raise interesting questions for the NASA scientists who observed it: If a pattern holds for six decades and then suddenly changes, what caused that to happen? Will it happen again? What effects might it have?

NASA's Terra satellites provided a visible view of Typhoon Namtheun when it was moving through Japan's Ryukyu Islands. Namtheun is expected to make landfall in Japan's large island of Kyushu on Sept. 3.

Great Tits (Parus major) are synanthropes who have followed humans into large cities. A team led by Philipp Sprau at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology in Seewiesen has investigated the adaptive mechanisms needed by the birds for urban life. Their study has shown that while Great Tits begin to breed earlier in cities, their clutches are smaller and nestlings weigh less than their rural counterparts upon leaving the nest.

Differences between cities and rural environments

Although Tropical Storm Madeline weakened to a depression, infrared satellite imagery showed a small burst of strength in the storm as strong thunderstorms developed near the center of the storm.

Early in the morning of Sept. 1, 2016, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, caught both Earth and the moon crossing in front of the sun. SDO keeps a constant eye on the sun, but during SDO's semiannual eclipse seasons, Earth briefly blocks SDO's line of sight each day - a consequence of SDO's geosynchronous orbit. On Sept. 1, Earth completely eclipsed the sun from SDO's perspective just as the moon began its journey across the face of the sun. The end of the Earth eclipse happened just in time for SDO to catch the final stages of the lunar transit.

A new study of science PhDs who embarked on careers between 2004 and 2014 showed that while nearly two-thirds chose employment outside academic science, their reasons for doing so had little to do with the advice they received from faculty advisors, other scientific mentors, family, or even graduate school peers. The 3,669 PhDs, including 225 from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds, said that they made the decision to stay or leave academia primarily on their own.

NASA's Terra satellite passed over Hurricane Gaston and provided a visible look at powerful Hurricane Gaston as it headed toward the Azores Islands in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. The satellite provided an image that showed Gaston still maintained its eye.

NASA's Terra satellite provided an infrared image of Tropical Depression 8 as it was dissipating about 400 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

BROOKLYN, New York -- Many of today's automobiles leave the factory with secret passengers: prototype software features that are disabled but that can be unlocked by clever drivers.

In what is believed to be the first comprehensive security analysis of its kind, Damon McCoy, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and a group of students at George Mason University found vulnerabilities in MirrorLink, a system of rules that allow vehicles to communicate with smartphones.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission known as GPM found intense storms in Tropical Storm Hermine as it continued to strengthen and organize in the Gulf of Mexico. On Sept. 1 there are many warnings and watches posted along the Florida coast as Hermine is forecast to track toward the state.

A popular belief that there is a higher number of births around the full moon has been shown to be true for dairy cows by a group of University of Tokyo researchers.

Previous studies have found conflicting evidence on the moon cycle affecting the timing of human births and many researchers remain unconvinced that the moon influences human births.

TORONTO, August 31, 2016 -- Almost half a million British Columbians experienced some level of household food insecurity in 2011-2012, according to a new report from PROOF, a research group based at the University of Toronto.

Drawing on data from Statistic Canada's Canadian Community Health Survey, the report finds over one in ten B.C. households struggling to put food on the table in 2011-12. Families with children under the age of 18 were at an even greater risk of food insecurity, with one in six B.C. children living in a food insecure household.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- In the southern United States, an afternoon thunderstorm is part of a regular summer day. But new research shows those storms might be doing more than bringing some scary thunder and lightning.In fact, these storms are moving significant amounts of mercury to the ground.

In a new study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, Assistant Professor of Meteorology Christopher Holmes writes that thunderstorms have 50 percent higher concentrations of mercury than other rain events.

Washington, DC-- A team of Carnegie scientists has discovered three giant planets in a binary star system composed of stellar ''twins'' that are also effectively siblings of our Sun. One star hosts two planets and the other hosts the third. The system represents the smallest-separation binary in which both stars host planets that has ever been observed. The findings, which may help explain the influence that giant planets like Jupiter have over a solar system's architecture, have been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.