Heavens

AMES, Iowa - Not long after Marriott announced plans to buy Starwood Hotels and Resorts, a Chinese insurance group offered to sweeten the deal setting off a brief bidding war. Marriott eventually secured the merger, but only after agreeing to pay more than its original offer.

For the first time, scientists are looking at real data -- not computer models, but direct observation -- about what is happening in the fascinating region where the Earth's magnetic field breaks and then joins with the interplanetary magnetic field.

They don't know exactly what this new window of science will open to us -- that's the thrill of discovery and, for some, the scary part, too.

Pasadena, CA-- Carnegie's Allan Sandage, who died in 2012, was a tremendously influential figure in the field of astronomy. His final paper, published posthumously, focuses on unraveling a surprising historical mystery related to one of his own seminal discoveries.

While preparing a centennial history of the Carnegie Observatories in the early 2000s, Sandage came across an unpublished 1944 exchange between two prominent astronomers that piqued his interest. The conversation seemed to predate by a decade Sandage's own work on stellar evolution in the mid-1950s.

WASHINGTON, DC -- The ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa could have the necessary balance of chemical energy for life, even if the moon lacks volcanic hydrothermal activity, finds a new study.

URBANA, Ill. - Research at the University of Illinois is finding ways to make rice bran, an abundant co-product of the production of white rice for human consumption, more efficient as a feed ingredient for pigs.

In this image from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), light from blazing blue stars energises the gas left over from the stars' recent formation. The result is a strikingly colourful emission nebula, called LHA 120-N55, in which the stars are adorned with a mantle of glowing gas. Astronomers study these beautiful displays to learn about the conditions in places where new stars develop.

Philadelphia, PA, May 16, 2016 - Dairies use intermittent sprinkler systems to cool cows in warm weather, but little experimental work has been done to determine how much water is needed to achieve beneficial effects. A group of dairy scientists conducted a study at the University of California, Davis, to examine the effects of using low-flow sprinkler systems that cut water use for this purpose by nearly 75%. Their research is published in the current issue (June 2016) of the Journal of Dairy Science®.

On May 12, 2016, a total of 17 wildfires were still burning in the vicinity of Fort McMurray, Canada. Provincial authorities still considered one of those fires to be "out of control." As of May 12, fires in that part of Alberta had burned up at least 2,410 square kilometers (930 square miles) of land.

On May 16, 2016, the bread loaf-sized Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer, or MinXSS, CubeSat deployed from an airlock on the International Space Station to begin its journey into space. The NASA-funded MinXSS studies emissions from the sun that can affect our communications systems.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are invaluable in today's military and civilian initiatives. However, most unmanned systems are being designed to execute the long-running mission. Thus, it is necessary for UAVs returning to the base for refueling. Under this circumstance, autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) becomes an important capability for the future employment of UAVs. Vision based sensor and navigation system are widely used in AAR, while experiments are done for both probe-and-drogue refueling system and boom approach.

ANN ARBOR--The discovery of stone tools found in a Florida river show that humans settled the southeastern United States far earlier than previously believed--perhaps by as much as 1,500 years, according to a team of scientists that includes a University of Michigan paleontologist.

Scientists have calculated that the present day ice sheets keep vast amounts of climate gas methane in check. Ice sheets are heavy and cold, providing pressure and temperatures that contain methane in form of ice-like substance called gas hydrate. If the ice sheets retreat the weight of the ice will be lifted from the ocean floor, the gas hydrates will be destabilised and the methane will be released.

Together with irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60 percent of the galaxies in the local universe. However, despite their prevalence, each spiral galaxy is unique -- like snowflakes, no two are alike. This is demonstrated by the striking face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6814, whose luminous nucleus and spectacular sweeping arms, rippled with an intricate pattern of dark dust, are captured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image.

Physicists and astronomers from the University of Texas at Arlington have used advanced astronomical software to accurately date lyric poet Sappho's "Midnight Poem," which describes the night sky over Greece more than 2,500 years ago.

The scientists described their research in the article "Seasonal dating of Sappho's 'Midnight Poem' revisited," published today in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. Martin George, former president of the International Planetarium Society, now at the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, also participated in the work.

High-resolution measurements from NASA spacecraft have unraveled the mysteries of magnetic reconnection around Earth - a phenomenon whereby magnetic field lines break and reconnect, releasing energy and accelerating particles. Because of the importance of magnetic reconnection in many laboratory and space environments, this result has opened up a new window into this universal process, the authors say, one that is otherwise poorly understood.