Heavens

Stardust NExT must love comets. On Valentine's Day the spacecraft will get up close and personal with its second.

It's been seven years since the original Stardust danced with Wild 2 out beyond the orbit of Mars, capturing a thimbleful of comet dust in its collector. It's been five years since the craft jettisoned its sample-return capsule and its precious cargo for a landing in the Utah desert.

KNOXVILLE -- How do you measure charisma? That's the question UT professor Kenneth Levine seeks to answer.

Much has been written in business management textbooks and self-help guides about the role that personal charisma plays in leadership. But according to a newly published study co-authored by Levine, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, communications studies professor, until recently no one was able to describe and measure charisma in a systematic way.

Beginning on February 6, 2011, the two STEREO spacecraft are 180 degrees apart providing Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientists with a 360-degree view of the Sun. NASA's STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft were launched on October 25, 2006, and have been gathering spectacular images of solar activity, especially solar storms, since the mission began.

Up until now it was unknown whether males of the great bustard (Otis tarda), an emblematic bird in Spain and endangered at a global level, transmit information on their weight, size, and age through their plumage. For the first time a study shows that the 'beards' and the design of the neck are "reliable" indicators of the weight and age of their bearers, and are used to both avoid fights with competitors and to attract females.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – People who spend more time in the sun and those with higher vitamin D levels may be less likely to develop multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study published in the February 8, 2011, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. MS is a chronic disease of the brain and spinal cord, usually with recurrent flare-ups of symptoms. It is often preceded by a first episode (or event) of similar symptoms lasting days to weeks.

Men and women who have had contact with the criminal justice system—even if they have never received a jail or prison sentence or a guilty verdict—appear to have a significantly higher rate of suicide than the general population, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the June print issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Physicists, led by a researcher at the University of Warwick, studying new images of clouds of material exploding from the Sun have spotted instabilities forming in that exploding cloud that are similar to those seen in clouds in Earth's atmosphere.

These results could greatly assist physicists trying to understand and predict our Solar System's "weather".

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a little bomb that promises a big bang for cancer patients.

Preliminary tests show an anti-cancer drug loosely attached to gold nanoparticles starts accumulating deep inside tumors within minutes of injection and can be activated for an effective treatment within two hours. The same drug injected alone takes two days to gather and attacks the tumor from the surface – a far less effective route.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A NASA team including three University of Florida astronomers has found six new planets in a distant solar system that in some ways resembles our own.

The NASA team, including UF associate professor Eric Ford, postdoctoral associate Althea Moorhead and graduate student Robert Morehead, will announce its findings in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"This is the new prototype for a system of rocky planets beyond our own," Ford said. "It changes our understanding of the frequency of solar systems like our own in deep space."

Sand dunes in a vast area of northern Mars long thought to be frozen in time are changing with both sudden and gradual motions, as revealed by images from a high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO.

DURHAM, N.C. – Timing is everything in the long-standing arms race between the flowering plant Arabidopsis and Hyaloperonospora, a downy mildew pathogen.

Duke University researchers have found that the little mustard plant cranks up its immune system in the morning to prepare for the greatest onslaught of infectious spores released by the mildew.

Massive Art Multimedia in Austria and CoSi Elektronik in Germany have a history of collaboration on successful technical projects. A brainstorming session between their developers produced the idea of bringing together many aspects of the modern computing world and applying them specifically to the one group in society that is least likely to already feel those benefits - senior citizens. As with so many projects of this nature, the funding for development was out of reach of two SMEs.

Earth observation scientists at the University of Leicester have recorded stunning images of tropical cyclone Yasi by orbiting satellites.

Japanese Meteorological Agency and European Space Agency satellite instruments have been observing the intense storm over Australia from their vantage points in space.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Starbucks recently announced a new-sized 31-ounce drink, the "Trenta," which will be in stores this spring. The mega-sized coffee joins the ranks of other energy drinks that can pack plenty of caffeine and calories. Ellen Schuster, a University of Missouri nutrition expert, says that Americans should be wary of extra calories and sugar in the quest for bigger, bolder drinks.