Heavens

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite called TRMM measures how much rain can fall per hour in storms. Between June 6 and 7, TRMM noticed the rainfall rate within Tropical Depression Kuena had lessened.

Scientists at A*STAR's Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) uncovered the origin of a group of skin-deep immune cells that act as the first line of defence against harmful germs and skin infections. SIgN scientists discovered that these sentry cells of the skin, called the Langerhans cells (LCs), originate from two distinct embryonic sites - the early yolk sac and the foetal liver.

A new study finds that Caribbean seaweeds are far better competitors than their equivalents in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. But this triumph is bad news for Caribbean coral reefs.

Future prospects for clean, green, renewable energy may hinge upon our ability to mimic and improve upon photosynthesis – the process by which green plants, algae and some bacteria convert solar energy into electrochemical energy. An artificial version of photosynthesis, for example, could use sunlight to produce liquid fuels from nothing more than carbon dioxide and water. First, however, scientists need a better understanding of how a large complex of proteins, called photosystem II, is able to split water molecules into oxygen, electrons and hydrogen ions (protons).

DETROIT – People with insomnia may now have one more thing to keep them up at night: an increased likelihood of developing hypertension, according to a study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Researchers at the Henry Ford Center for Sleep Disorders found that the prevalence of hypertension was greater in insomniacs compared to normal sleepers.

(Edmonton) An educational program designed to rid schools of bullying behaviour directed at students who stutter is proving effective at changing attitudes in the classroom, according to research from the University of Alberta.

A new voyage into "chemical space" – occupied not by stars and planets but substances that could become useful in everyday life – has concluded that scientists have synthesized barely one tenth of 1 percent of the potential medicines that could be made. The report, in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience, estimates that the actual number of these so-called "small molecules" could be 1 novemdecillion (that's 1 with 60 zeroes), 1 million billion billion billion billion billion billion, which is more than some estimates of the number of stars in the universe.

People who restrict their caloric intake in an effort to live longer have hearts that function more like those in people who are 20 years younger.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a key measure of the heart's ability to adapt to physical activity, stress, sleep and other factors that influence the rate at which the heart pumps blood, doesn't decline nearly as rapidly in people who have significantly restricted their caloric intake for an average of seven years.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Aqua satellites are just two in NASA's fleet that have been providing data on the evolving and now devolving tropical cyclone. TRMM provided rainfall and other data, while the AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite provided cloud temperature and extent.

When Venus transits the sun on June 5th and 6th, an armada of spacecraft and ground-based telescopes will be on the lookout for something elusive and, until recently, unexpected: The Arc of Venus.

"I was flabbergasted when I first saw it during the 2004 transit," recalls astronomy professor Jay Pasachoff of Williams College. "A bright, glowing rim appeared around the edge of Venus soon after it began to move into the sun."

For a brief instant, the planet had turned into a "ring of fire."

Over the weekend of June 2 and 3, Typhoon Mawar skirted the east coast of the Philippines bringing heavy surf, heavy rainfall and gusty winds that led to several missing and injured people. NASA's TRMM satellite and Aqua satellite showed heavy rainfall and cloud extent of the storm.

The RHESSI (Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) satellite focuses on the highest energy x-rays and gamma-rays produced by the sun, helping to observe solar flares of all shapes and sizes. The satellite is pointed toward the sun, and constantly in rotation, which provides a serendipitous bit of side research: by monitoring the limb of the sun on its four second rotation cycle, RHESSI's Solar Aspect System (SAS) has produced ten years worth of precise measurements of the sun's diameter.

Astronomers have found strong evidence that a massive black hole is being ejected from its host galaxy at a speed of several million miles per hour. New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest that the black hole collided and merged with another black hole and received a powerful recoil kick from gravitational wave radiation.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Police and security teams guarding airports, docks and border crossings from terrorist attack or illegal entry need to know immediately when someone enters a prohibited area, and who they are. A network of surveillance cameras is typically used to monitor these at-risk locations 24 hours a day, but these can generate too many images for human eyes to analyze.

Archaeologists in the eastern Mediterranean region have been unearthing spherical jugs, used by the ancients for storing and trading oil, wine, and other valuable commodities. Because we're used to the metric system, which defines units of volume based on the cube, modern archaeologists believed that the merchants of antiquity could only approximately assess the capacity of these round jugs, says Prof. Itzhak Benenson of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geography.