Heavens

30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighbourhood and home to the most massive stars ever seen. The nebula resides 170 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

New research has analysed the mood of Twitter users in the UK and detected various changes in the mood of the public. In particular, the researchers observed a significant increase in negative mood, anger and fear, coinciding with the announcement of spending cuts and last summer's riots together with a possibly calming effect during the royal wedding.

The study by academics at the University of Bristol's Intelligent Systems Laboratory is presented at the International Workshop on Social Media Applications in News and Entertainment (SMANE 2012) held in Lyon, France.

Unintentional poisonings from medicines cause more emergency room visits for young children each year than do car accidents.

One key reason may be that nearly 1 of every 4 grandparents says that they store prescription medicines in easy-access ways, according to a new poll.

The University of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health recently asked parents and grandparents of children aged 1 to 5 years about the presence of medicines in their homes and how they arestored.

Scientists have for the first time visualised the transformation of powder mixtures into molten glass. A better understanding of this process will make it possible to produce high quality glass at lower temperatures, leading to significant energy savings in industrial glass manufacturing. The results are published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

For the last 1000 days the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, has been operating continuously to probe the universe from its most distant regions to our local solar neighborhood. The IRAC "warm" program began once Spitzer used up its liquid helium coolant, thus completing its "cold" mission. To commemorate 1000 days of infrared wonders, the program is releasing a gallery of the 10 best IRAC images.

A University of British Columbia researcher has piloted a tool to help elementary and secondary school science teachers get the most out of new classroom technologies.

One of the most frequently used tools is the remote control "clicker." Students use them to answer multiple-choice questions throughout their lesson, allowing for continuous feedback on their progress. This type of interaction has been found to increase overall student academic achievement, especially in the areas of science and mathematics.

Philadelphia, PA, April 15, 2012 – Researchers have developed a novel, easy-to-use system for three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction and examination of tissues at microscopic resolution, with the potential to significantly enhance the study of normal and disease processes, particularly those involving structural changes. The new approach, using conventional histopathological methods, is described in the May issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

An outbound comet that provided a nice show for skywatchers late last year is the target of an ongoing investigation by NASA's Swift satellite. Formally designated C/2009 P1 (Garradd), the unusually dust-rich comet provides a novel opportunity to characterize how cometary activity changes at ever greater distance from the sun.

There are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than was previously thought, according to a new study released today by an international team of researchers using high-resolution satellite mapping technology. This first-ever count of an entire species from space provides an important benchmark for monitoring the impact of environmental change on the population of this iconic bird.

On April 5, 2010, the sun spewed a two million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles toward the invisible magnetic fields surrounding Earth, known as the magnetosphere. As the particles interacted with the magnetic fields, the incoming stream of energy caused stormy conditions near Earth. Some scientists believe that it was this solar storm that interfered with commands to a communications satellite, Galaxy-15, which subsequently foundered and drifted, taking almost a year to return to its station.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida astronomers have found compelling evidence for two low-mass planets orbiting the nearby star Fomalhaut, just 25 light years from Earth.

Twice as massive as the sun and 20 times brighter, Fomalhaut is surrounded by a ring of dust and debris, making it a favorite system for astronomers to study and a natural laboratory for testing planet formation theories.

Using a combination of powerful observatories in space and on the ground, astronomers have observed a violent collision between two galaxy clusters in which so-called normal matter has been wrenched apart from dark matter through a violent collision between two galaxy clusters.



URBANA -- Crop yield can be improved by ensuring adequate nutrient availability. But how should you place the fertilizer and what cropping system gives the best yields?

Research conducted by University of Illinois assistant professor of crop sciences Fabián Fernández, professor of crop sciences Emerson Nafziger, and graduate student Bhupinder Farmaha looked at how tillage, and phosphorus and potassium placement and rates, affected the distribution of soybean roots and the levels of water and nutrients in the soil.

The discovery was made possible by exceptionally sharp ALMA images of a disc, or ring, of dust orbiting Fomalhaut, which lies about 25 light-years from Earth. It helps resolve a controversy among earlier observers of the system. The ALMA images show that both the inner and outer edges of the thin, dusty disc have very sharp edges. That fact, combined with computer simulations, led the scientists to conclude that the dust particles in the disc are kept within the disc by the gravitational effect of two planets — one closer to the star than the disc and one more distant [1].

Astronomers using ESA's Herschel Space Observatory have studied a ring of dust around the nearby star Fomalhaut and have deduced that it is created by the collision of thousands of comets every day.