Heavens

Conventional wisdom in strategy holds that companies need to choose between cost-cutting or revenue growth. Pursuing both strategies at the same time can result in incoherence -- or getting stuck in the middle, some argue.

That conventional wisdom, however, is challenged by a new study from the Robert H. Smith School of Business, at the University of Maryland, which suggests that information technology investments can enable firms to pursue dual-focus or ambidextrous IT strategies successfully. In other words, you can walk and chew gum at the same time.

New research has identified how liquid-like materials can change into a solid-like state without the addition of extra particles or changes in volume.

Liquid-like materials with particles in, known as dense suspensions, are found in the food industry (for example molten chocolate) and clay deposits on the bottom of oceans or rivers.

Last February a team of astronomers reported detecting an afterglow from a mysterious event called a fast radio burst, which would pinpoint the precise position of the burst's origin, a longstanding goal in studies of these mysterious events. These findings were quickly called into question by follow-up observations. New research by Harvard astronomers Peter Williams and Edo Berger shows that the radio emission believed to be an afterglow actually originated from a distant galaxy's core and was unassociated with the fast radio burst.

Boston, MA-- A combined vaccine therapy including live Salmonella is a safe and effective way to prevent diabetes in mice and may point to future human therapies, a new study finds. The results will be on Sunday, April 3, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

Boston, MA--As skin tans, it darkens to protect itself against harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation, but the increasing pigment blocks vitamin D synthesis, limiting the skin's ability to produce more vitamin D, a new study from Brazil finds. The results will be presented in a poster Saturday, April 2, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

Even people exposed to high levels of sunlight may be deficient in serum vitamin D because it is mainly induced by UV irradiation and synthesized in the skin.

The Global Precipitation Measurement, or GPM, mission core satellite, a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, measured heavy rainfall in severe storms early on Friday, April 1, in the southern U.S.

The 54,070 research doctorate degrees awarded by U.S. institutions in 2014 represent the highest total ever recorded in the 58-year history of the Survey of Earned Doctorates, (SED) an annual census of research degree recipients.

The report, published by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) at the National Science Foundation (NSF), supplies data and analysis for a vital U.S. economic interest: the American system of doctoral education.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have overcome experimental challenges to demonstrate a new way for getting a full picture of twisted light: characterizing the Wigner distribution.

Agricultural expansion in Brazil's Cerrado is quickly chewing up rainforests and savannas - even altering the region's water cycle, a new study finds.

The study shows that dramatic deforestation, previously prevalent in the Amazon, has shifted to the neighboring Cerrado, where cropland is rapidly replacing native vegetation.

TORONTO, April 1, 2016 - A new study by researchers from Denmark and Canada's York University, published in Geophysical Research Letters, has found that the climate models commonly used to simulate melting of the Greenland ice sheet tend to underestimate the impact of exceptionally warm weather episodes on the ice sheet.

Boston, MA-- Many ultraviolet (UV)-filtering chemicals commonly used in sunscreens interfere with the function of human sperm cells, and some mimic the effect of the female hormone progesterone, a new study finds. Results of the Danish study will be presented Friday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.

Not all raindrops are created equal. The size of falling raindrops depends on several factors, including where the cloud producing the drops is located on the globe and where the drops originate in the cloud. For the first time, scientists have three-dimensional snapshots of raindrops and snowflakes around the world from space, thanks to the joint NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT researchers have developed a compact, portable pharmaceutical manufacturing system that can be reconfigured to produce a variety of drugs on demand.

Just as an emergency generator supplies electricity to handle a power outage, this system could be rapidly deployed to produce drugs needed to handle an unexpected disease outbreak, or to prevent a drug shortage caused by a manufacturing plant shutdown, the researchers say.

Peering deep into the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a rich tapestry of more than half a million stars. Except for a few blue foreground stars, the stars are part of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster, the most massive and densest star cluster in our galaxy. So packed with stars, it is equivalent to having a million suns crammed between us and our closest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. At the very hub of our galaxy, this star cluster surrounds the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, which is about 4 million times the mass of our sun.

Researchers have developed a system the size of a household fridge that can synthesize a variety of pharmaceuticals in short periods of time, including an antihistamine, an antidepressant, a common local anesthetic, and a central nervous system depressant. Pharmaceutical manufacturing often requires multiple compounds and steps of synthesis at different sites, making the production process slow, inefficient and cumbersome. This disjointed process means that pharmaceuticals are often produced in batches, a main contributing factor to drug shortages.