Heavens

Fog is a relatively frequent phenomenon in the Po Valley and constitutes a major issue for all road traffic. The new fog warning system covers and benefits the entire Venice Region, combining VTT`s know-how on intelligent transport and evaluation of information services. The system is expected to provide services for regular and professional motorists and transport companies as well as authorities. These types of warning solutions are expected to be in demand on a larger scale in the future as they have positive safety effects and are very profitable socio-economically.

Typhoon Megi has run into winds that are weakening the storm, but it is forecast to make landfall in southeastern China late at night (EDT) on Oct. 22 (11 a.m. local time Hong Kong, Oct. 23) as a Category One Typhoon. NASA satellites have been monitoring the storm's rainfall, changing cloud cover, and changing eye as it weakens.

Tropical Storm 04B grew quickly into powerful Cyclone Giri and was making landfall in Burma today as a powerful Category Four Cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson scale. NASA's TRMM satellite noticed that the storm contained some heavy rainfall in addition to the powerful winds.

The following are highlights of new cancer research being released at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO) 52nd Annual Meeting to be held October 31 through November 4, 2010, in San Diego.

For full copies of the abstracts and press releases, contact Nicole Napoli at nicolen@astro.org or Beth Bukata at bethb@astro.org. Studies are embargoed until October 25, 2010, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time.

Scientists from NASA's Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment team have detected the widespread presence of water ice in large areas of the moon's south pole.

Their findings appear Oct. 22 in two papers published in the journal Science. The research was funded by NASA.

Diviner, an infrared spectrometer aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), has made the first infrared measurements of temperatures in the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's poles.

The landscape of Central Africa 65 million years ago was a low-elevation tropical belt, but the jury is still out on whether the region's mammals browsed and hunted beneath the canopy of a lush rainforest.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and its sophisticated suite of instruments have determined that hydrogen, mercury and other volatile substances are present in permanently shaded soils on the Moon, according to a paper published today in Science.

PITTSBURGH—Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have devised an innovative and elegantly concise algorithm that can efficiently solve systems of linear equations that are critical to such important computer applications as image processing, logistics and scheduling problems, and recommendation systems.

Settling decades of scientific debate, researchers from UCLA and the British Antarctic Survey have discovered the final link between electrons trapped in space and the glow of light from the upper atmosphere known as the diffuse aurora.

The finding will help scientists better understand space weather and how space storms affect the Earth's atmosphere from the top down, with potential benefits for the satellite, power-grid and aviation industries, the researchers said.

Their research appears Oct. 21 in the journal Nature.

An international CSIRO-led team of astronomers has developed a new way to weigh the planets in our Solar System – using radio signals from the small spinning stars called pulsars."This is first time anyone has weighed entire planetary systems – planets with their moons and rings," said team leader Dr David Champion from Germany's Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie.

"And we've provided an independent check on previous results, which is great for planetary science."

Measurements of planet masses made this new way could feed into data needed for future space missions.

Conventional wisdom has long been negative on Africa. Historically, it has been seen as a failing continent, plagued by deep-rooted problems — poverty, corruption, war, and disease. But after four decades of relative stagnation, Africa has been growing rapidly. Since the 1990s, many African countries have seen economic and political improvements, more transparent elections, increased democracy and freedom of press. But these successes are not well understood.

In a galaxy far away, an exceptionally massive black hole is traveling around a massive star in an unusually tight orbit. Also odd, the star is not as bright as it should be.

Astronomers have puzzled over this X-ray binary system, named M33 X-7, but no one could explain all of its features. Now a Northwestern University research team has.