Heavens

Tropical cyclone Oli has attained hurricane strength today, February 3, with maximum sustained winds near 74 mph.

At 10 a.m. ET (1500 UTC), Oli was located approximately 200 nautical miles west-northwest of Bora Bora, near 15.9 South and 154.9 West. It was moving east at 14 mph (12 knots).

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared images of Oli as it passed by early this morning.

Most, if not all, large galaxies, such as our galaxy the Milky Way, host super-massive black holes at their centers. Because galaxies regularly interact and merge, astronomers have assumed that binary super-massive black holes have been common in the Universe, especially during its early history. Black holes can only be detected as quasars when they are actively accreting matter, a process that releases vast amounts of energy. A leading theory is that galaxy mergers trigger accretion, creating quasars in both galaxies.

The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera has imaged craters both young and old in this view of the Southern Highlands of Mars.

Part of the Sirenum Fossae region in the Southern Highlands, the area in this image is centred at about 28°S / 185°E. The image captures an area to the north of the Magelhaens Crater. It extends some 230 km by 127 km and covers about 29 450 sq km, roughly the size of Belgium. The image resolution is approximately 29 metres per pixel.

NGC 3603 is a starburst region: a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astronomers with a local test bed for studying intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their great distance from us.

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – A group of Marshall University researchers and their colleagues in Japan are conducting research that may lead to new ways to move or position single molecules—a necessary step if man someday hopes to build molecular machines or other devices capable of working at very small scales.

Dr. Eric Blough, a member of the research team and an associate professor in Marshall University's Department of Biological Sciences, said his group has shown how bionanomotors can be used some day to move and manipulate molecules at the nanoscale.

The month of your birth influences your chances of becoming a professional sportsperson, an Australian researcher has found.

Senior research fellow Dr. Adrian Barnett from Queensland University of Technology's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation studies the seasonal patterns of population health and found the month you were born in could influence your future health and fitness. The results of the study are published in the Springer book Analysing Seasonal Health Data¹, by Barnett, co-authored by researcher Professor Annette Dobson from the University of Queensland.

Australians in three of five territories have had enough of Tropical Cyclone Olga. After two landfalls, and three times a tropical storm, and traveling through Queensland and the Northern Territory, Olga's remnants are now raining on Australia's New South Wales Territory today, February 1.

The twelfth tropical cyclone in the Southern Pacific Ocean has formed today, February 1, 2010, and because of its proximity to the Fiji islands, it has been dubbed "Oli." The GOES-11 satellite passed over Oli early this morning and captured an infrared image of the storm's clouds.

BOULDER--An innovative computational technique that draws on statistics, imaging, and other disciplines has the capability to detect errors in sensitive technological systems ranging from satellites to weather instruments. The patented technique, known as the Intelligent Outlier Detection Algorithm, or IODA, is described this month in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology.

Researchers writing in the February issue of BioScience propose reintroducing small, managed populations of wolves into national parks and other areas in order to restore damaged ecosystems. The populations would not be self-sustaining, and may consist of a single pack. But the BioScience authors suggest that even managed populations could bring ecological, educational, recreational, scientific, and economic benefits.

GALVESTON, Texas — The development of antibiotics gave physicians seemingly miraculous weapons against infectious disease. Effective cures for terrible afflictions like pneumonia, syphilis and tuberculosis were suddenly at hand. Moreover, many of the drugs that made them possible were versatile enough to knock out a wide range of deadly bacterial threats.

Nisha is not expected to maintain its tropical storm status this weekend, because it is being battered by wind shear.

At 10 a.m. ET, January 29, Tropical Storm Nisha was barely hanging onto its status as a tropical storm, with maximum sustained winds near 39 mph (35 knots). It was located 150 nautical miles west-northwest of Rarotonga, near 19.8 South and 161.9 West. It was moving east-northeast near 11 mph.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite and NASA's Aqua satellite have observed the rainfall patterns and temperatures within Tropical Depression 11S, and they indicate the storm is becoming extra-tropical.

Tropical Depression 11S (TD 11S) had maximum sustained winds near 34 mph (30 knots) on January 29 at 09:00 UTC (4 a.m. ET). It was located about 320 nautical miles southeast of La Reunion Island, near 25.5 South and 59.8 East. It was moving southeast near 11 mph (10 knots).

The tenth tropical depression in the Southern Pacific Ocean has strengthened overnight and has been dubbed "Tropical Storm Nisha" and NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission has watched the storm's precipitation increase since yesterday.

People being treated for schizophrenia are more likely than the general population to have encounters with the criminal justice system in the US. A study published in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry has shown that schizophrenia patients' involvement with the criminal justice system is primarily driven by their being victims of crime and that the average annual per-patient cost of involvement with the criminal justice system was $1429.