Heavens

NASA Peered into Category Four Hurricane Lester using instruments aboard the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite as it continued tracking through the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

NASA got a look at Tropical Depression 8 in infrared and visible light as it started moving away from the coast of North Carolina.

Tropical Depression 15W has formed in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean and NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and analyzed the storm in infrared light.

At 9:35 a.m. EDT (1335 UTC) on Aug. 31, infrared data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA's Terra satellite showed cloud tops southeast and southwest of the center as cold as minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 degrees Celsius). Cold cloud tops indicate the area of strongest storms that stretch highest into the troposphere. The higher they are, the colder the air temperature.

Autism could be diagnosed by allowing children to play games on smart phones and tablets, a study involving the University of Strathclyde has found.

Dr Jonathan Delafield-Butt, of Strathclyde's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and colleagues at start-up company Harimata, used fun iPad games to track players' hand movements - gathering information that can help identify autism.

The solar system could be thrown into disaster when the sun dies if the mysterious 'Planet Nine' exists, according to research from the University of Warwick.

Dr Dimitri Veras in the Department of Physics has discovered that the presence of Planet Nine - the hypothetical planet which may exist in the outer Solar System - could cause the elimination of at least one of the giant planets after the sun dies, hurling them out into interstellar space through a sort of 'pinball' effect.

A new economic study by the University of Stirling and Royal Holloway, University of London has found evidence that there is a big difference in cash flow problems faced by men and women in the UK. They found single women face more severe constraints to their incomings and outgoings, but that those single women whose personal wealth increases unexpectedly through an inheritance are more likely to start a new business than their male counterparts.

When farmers spray their fields with pesticides or other treatments, only 2 percent of the spray sticks to the plants. A significant portion of it typically bounces right off the plants, lands on the ground, and becomes part of the runoff that flows to streams and rivers -- often causing serious pollution. But a team of MIT researchers aims to fix that.

Pasadena, CA--An international team of astronomers, including Carnegie's Eric Persson, has charted the rise and fall of galaxies over 90 percent of cosmic history. Their work, which includes some of the most sensitive astronomical measurements made to date, is published by The Astrophysical Journal.

Birds that have to work harder during breeding season will feel the effects of their exertions the following year, according to research by Oxford University scientists.

A new study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology found that migratory seabirds suffered negative repercussions when they had to spend more time rearing chicks, including decreased breeding success when they returned to the colony the following spring.

Tropical Storm Lionrock moved over Honshu, the big island of Japan and then proceeded over the Hokkaido, the northernmost island, when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and analyzed the storm's cloud top temperatures.

Trying to understand a system of atoms is like herding gnats - the individual atoms are never at rest and are constantly moving and interacting. When it comes to trying to model the properties and behavior of these kinds of systems, scientists use two fundamentally different pictures of reality, one of which is called "statistical" and the other "dynamical."

The two approaches have at times been at odds, but scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory announced a way to reconcile the two pictures.

Snowy Owls capture the imagination, but ornithologists know surprisingly little about how these birds of the far north fare during the harsh winters they endure. The researchers behind a new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances trapped and tracked Snowy Owls wintering in Canada and found that while age and sex affect the birds' condition, most do fairly well, showing few signs of starvation and some even putting on weight over the winter months.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel ...August 30, 2016 - Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have determined that a child pedestrian's ability to safely cross the road is hindered more during a cell phone conversation than an adult's. The study will be published in the November, 2016 issue of Safety Science (Elsevier).

In making decisions about infrastructure development and resource allocation, city planners rely on models of how people move through their cities, on foot, in cars, and on public transportation. Those models are largely based on surveys of residents' travel habits.

But conducting surveys and analyzing their results is costly and time consuming: A city might go more than a decade between surveys. And even a broad survey will cover only a tiny fraction of a city's population.

For years, astronomers have puzzled over a massive star lodged deep in the Milky Way that shows conflicting signs of being extremely old and extremely young.

Researchers initially classified the star as elderly, perhaps a red supergiant. But a new study by a NASA-led team of researchers suggests that the object, labeled IRAS 19312+1950, might be something quite different - a protostar, a star still in the making.