Heavens

A mounting tide of scientific evidence suggests that the old adage from Aesop's fables — "You are known by the company you keep" — also applies to the trillions of microscopic bacteria and viruses that live on the human body. Humanity's invisible but constant companions — more bacteria hang out on the palms of your hands than there are people on Earth — is the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

Researchers from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) have been monitoring a cyclone on Saturn for more than five years. This makes it the longest-lasting cyclone detected to date on any of the giant planets of the Solar System. Images from the Cassini probe were used to carry out this study.

Invisible to the naked eye, yet massive in structure around the Earth is the magnetosphere, the region of space around the planet that ebbs and flows in response to the million-mile-per-hour flow of charged particles continually blasting from the Sun. NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, designed to image the invisible interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, captured images of magnetospheric structures and a dynamic event occurring in the magnetosphere as the spacecraft observed from near lunar distance.

TUCSON, Ariz. (Nov. 10, 2010) -- A unique underground surveillance system tested by UA researchers could be used to watch the entire U.S.-Mexico border continuously.

Early years initiatives for pre-school children are not delivering improvements in language and numeracy development, according to leading education experts.

Experts, conducting one of the largest surveys to date of the development of 117,000 children starting primary school in England over eight years, found that despite a raft of early years' initiatives, such as 'Sure Start', basic levels of development in early reading, vocabulary and maths have remained largely unchanged.

GREENBELT, Md. -- The size, background ecology, and development patterns of major northeastern cities combine to make them unusually warm, according to NASA scientists who presented new research today at an American Geophysical Union meeting, in San Francisco, Calif.

Researchers from the Peninsula Technology Assessment Group (PenTAG) at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry have contributed to new National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance on preventing unintentional injury to the under-15s.

Simulations performed at Southwest Research Institute may explain how Saturn's majestic rings and icy inner moons formed following the collision of a Titan-sized satellite with the planet, according to a paper published in Nature magazine's Dec. 12 Advance Online Publication.

For centuries, people wondered how the leopard got its spots. The consensus is pretty solid that evolution played a major role.

December 13, 2010 – The human body is home to a complex ecosystem of microbes increasingly recognized as having a critical role in both health and disease. Viruses can attack and change the composition of bacterial communities, yet little is known about how this might influence human health.

Simulations performed at Southwest Research Institute may explain how Saturn's majestic rings and icy inner moons formed following the collision of a Titan-sized satellite with the planet, according to a paper published in Nature magazine's Dec. 12 Advance Online Publication.

The small crater embedded in the northwestern rim of the Schiaparelli impact basin features prominently in this new image from ESA's Mars Express. All around is evidence for past water and the great martian winds that periodically blow.