Heavens

The latest skirmishes over hydraulic fracturing in Florida and California are, at their core, about water. Many fracking-related spills have been recorded, and opponents say that such incidents pose unacceptable threats to water supplies. But the issue is fraught with uncertainties. Scientists review what's known about the fluids in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology and conclude that a comprehensive assessment of potential risks requires full disclosure of fracking fluid contents.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- One of the main predictions of the current model of the creation of structures in the universe, known at the Lambda Cold Dark Mattermodel, is that galaxies are embedded in very extended and massive halos of dark matter that are surrounded by many thousands of smaller sub-halos also made from dark matter.

NASA's commercial partner Orbital ATK plans to launch its Cygnus spacecraft into orbit on March 22, 2016 atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for its fifth contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station. The flight, known as Orbital ATK CRS-6, will deliver investigations to the space station to study fire, meteors, regolith, adhesion, and 3-D printing in microgravity.

Saffire-I

WASHINGTON - The best indicator of whether a disabled adult who receives Social Security benefits is capable of managing his or her benefits is evidence of real-world performance of meeting his or her own basic needs, rather than an office-based assessment of financial competence, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Disney Research scientists are adapting low-cost depth-sensing cameras for use underwater, with the goal of capturing 3-D models of marine flora and fauna with a high degree of accuracy.

The scientists developed a method that corrects for refraction effects that occur when infrared light used by the depth camera's sensor passes through the waterproof housing of the underwater system. This experiment marks the first successful demonstration of applying a commercial low-cost depth sensor for underwater capture of depth images.

As they approach the ends of their lives many stars develop stable discs of gas and dust around them. This material was ejected by stellar winds, whilst the star was passing through the red giant stage of its evolution. These discs resemble those that form planets around young stars. But up to now astronomers have not been able to compare the two types, formed at the beginning and the end of the stellar life cycle.

The first U.S. mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth for study is undergoing a major milestone in its environmental testing.

NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is in thermal vacuum testing, designed to simulate the harsh environment of space and see how the spacecraft and its instruments operate under 'flight-like' conditions.

NASA's first wide-field soft X-ray camera, which incorporated a never-before-flown focusing technology when it debuted in late 2012, is a gift that keeps giving.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Microscopic dust particles have been found in meteoritic material on Earth, particles that were likely formed in stellar explosions that occurred long before the creation of our star, the sun.

Whether some of these particles of stardust, known as "pre-solar grains," came from classical nova explosions is the focus of ongoing experimental nuclear physics research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron laboratory at Michigan State University.

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new system that allows Web users to share self-selected aspects of their online activity with their friends and the general public. The hope is to give users themselves, as well as academics and other scientists conducting research in the public interest, access to the same type of browsing data that big Web companies currently collect and mine to better target products to individual consumers.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - In 2012, Americans sent more than 14 million tons of textile waste to trash dumps around the country, despite many options for consumers to repurpose or recycle textile waste, including donating old clothes to charities and recycling the materials to be remade into other products. Pamela Norum, professor and interim department chair of textile and apparel management at the University of Missouri, found that younger adults from ages 18-34 are much less likely to throw old clothes and other textile waste into the garbage than older adults.

New University of Warwick research indicates cause of recurrent miscarriage Stem cell research to start to help end heartache for thousands of women

Scientists at the University of Warwick have discovered that a lack of stem cells in the womb lining is causing thousands of women to suffer from recurrent miscarriages.

The academics behind the breakthrough are now to start research into a treatment which they believe could bring hope to those who have suffered failed pregnancies.

Space weather scientist Liz MacDonald has seen auroras more than five times in her life, but it was the aurora she didn't see that affected her the most.

On the evening of Oct. 24, 2011, MacDonald was sitting in front of her computer at her home in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Forecasts predicted a geomagnetic storm would hit Earth that night and potentially create beautiful aurora. The aurora didn't come to Los Alamos, but MacDonald was still amazed -- not by any bright, dancing lights in the sky, but by the number of aurora-related tweets on her computer screen.

The sole secondary mirror that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope was installed onto the telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on March 3, 2016.

The Webb telescope uses many mirrors to direct incoming light into the telescope's instruments. The secondary mirror is called the secondary mirror because it is the second surface the light from the cosmos hits on its route into the telescope.

The Universe is constantly expanding. It changes, creating new structures that merge. But how does our Universe evolve? Physicists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have developed a new code of numerical simulations that offers a glimpse of the complex process of the formation of structures in the Universe. Based on Einstein's equations, they were able to integrate the rotation of space-time into their calculations and calculate the amplitude of gravitational waves, whose existence was confirmed for the first time on February 12, 2016.