Heavens

WASHINGTON -- Data products from the Special Sensor Ultraviolet Limb Imager (SSULI) developed by the NRL Spacecraft Engineering Department and Space Science Division were officially transitioned for use in operational systems at the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) on June 9, 2011.

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — With the BeeSpace Navigator, University of Illinois researchers have created both a curation tool for genetic biologists and a new approach to searching for information.

The project was a collaboration between researchers at the Institute for Genomic Biology and the department of computer science. Led by Bruce Schatz, professor and head of medical information science at the U. of I., the team described the software and its applications in the web server issue of the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

Hurricane Beatriz is skirting the southwestern Mexican coast today, June 21 and bringing heavy rains and high surf to coastal areas, including Mexico's biggest port. NASA satellite imagery showed that Beatriz seemed to develop an eye that opened on microwave imagery and closed on visible imagery, appearing to give satellites a "wink."

Tropical Depression 06W is still slowing, making its way through the South China Sea today and has weakened overnight. NASA infrared satellite imagery showed a much more disorganized storm with scattered convection, which accounts for its weakened status from tropical storm to tropical depression.

AMARILLO – One potato field west of Bushland hosts three separate studies, all aimed at helping growers nationwide, even internationally, understand the habits and controls of the potato psyllid.

The potato psyllid is the insect that transmits a bacterium that causes the relatively new disease in potatoes known as zebra chip, according to Dr. Charlie Rush, Texas AgriLife Research plant pathologist.

New Haven, Conn.—Astronomers have probed into the distant universe and discovered that galaxies display one of two distinct behaviors: they are either awake or asleep, actively forming stars or are not forming any new stars at all.

PITTSBURGH—Driver assistance technologies, such as adaptive cruise control and automatic braking, promise to someday ease traffic on crowded routes and prevent accidents. Proving that these automated systems will work as intended is a daunting task, but computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have now demonstrated it is possible to verify the safety of these highly complex systems.

Tropical Storm Beatriz developed from a low pressure area that NASA was watching last week. Beatriz is now expected to reach hurricane force and hit western coastal Mexico today and tomorrow. NASA satellite imagery today revealed powerful thunderstorms bubbling within, indicating further strengthening is occurring.

Johns Hopkins graduate students have invented a system to significantly boost the number of stem cells collected from a newborn's umbilical cord and placenta, so that many more patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood disorders can be treated with these valuable cells.

Fathers stumbling through child-rearing are a familiar sitcom theme. But a growing body of research at the University of California, Berkeley, is challenging the perception that dads are goofy, uncaring or incompetent caregivers. On the contrary, preliminary findings suggest their parenting skills are crucial to their kids' social and academic success, and that teamwork in parenting is the ideal.

Fairbanks, Alaska—Nearly one year ago, a repurposed NASA spacecraft flew by the comet Hartley 2. As a result, a multitude of high-resolution images were gathered over 50 days that allow scientists to understand the nature of the comet's surface and it's hidden interior.

New research from the University of Warwick and the IZA Institute in Bonn shows that 10% of middle-aged Europeans took antidepressants in 2010. The researchers looked in detail at the lives of a randomly selected sample of nearly 30,000 Europeans. The study covered 27 countries.

Earlier this month, ESA's Mars Express performed a special manoeuvre to observe an unusual alignment of Jupiter and the martian moon Phobos. The impressive images have now been processed into a movie of this rare event.

At the moment when Mars Express, Phobos, and Jupiter aligned on 1 June 2011, there was a distance of 11 389 km between the spacecraft and Phobos, and a further 529 million km to Jupiter.

The first six of 18 segments that will form NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror for space observations completed final cryogenic testing this week. The ten week test series included two tests cycles where the mirrors were chilled down to -379 degrees Fahrenheit, then back to ambient temperature to ensure the mirrors respond as expected to the extreme temperatures of space.

A second set of six mirror assemblies will arrive at Marshall in late July to begin testing, and the final set of six will arrive in the fall.

A low pressure area in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, located off the western coast of Mexico, is still getting organized, and System 92E and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite spotted heavy rain and strong thunderstorms within.