Heavens

During this season of El Nino influenced Pacific storms, NASA has been analyzing the storms that brought rain and snow to the U.S. West Coast.

NASA's RapidScat instrument spied tropical-storm-force winds in a weather system affecting the Pacific Northwestern U.S. and southwestern Canada on Sunday, March 6 and Monday, March 7. NOAA's GOES-West satellite provided an infrared look at the clouds associated with the system that blanketed the U.S. West Coast.

BYU mechanical engineering professors Larry Howell and Spencer Magleby have made a name for themselves by applying the principles of origami to engineering. Now they're applying their origami skills to a new realm: the human body.

The duo, along with professor Brian Jensen and their students, are working toward surgical technology that will allow for the manufacturing of instruments so small that the size of incisions necessary to accommodate the tools can heal on their own--without sutures.

If you live in one of four major U.S. cities chances are you're letting the benefits of a ubiquitous natural resource go right down the drain -- when it could be used to cut down your water bill. Research by a team of Drexel University environmental engineers indicates that it rains enough in Philadelphia, New York, Seattle and Chicago that if homeowners had a way to collect and store even just the rain falling on their roofs, they could flush their toilets often without having to use a drop of municipal water.

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.

Washington, D.C.--Scientists have long been puzzled about what makes Mercury's surface so dark. The innermost planet reflects much less sunlight than the Moon, a body on which surface darkness is controlled by the abundance of iron-rich minerals. These are known to be rare at Mercury's surface, so what is the "darkening agent" there?

The cruise ship Oriental Star, with 454 people on board, capsized on the Yangtze River of China at ~2131 LST(Local Standard Time, LST=UTC+0800) on 1 June 2015, leaving 442 fatalities (Fig.1a and c). A recent study revealed the weather and wind situation when the shipwreck occurred.

Boston, MA - There will be a significant shortfall in the funding needed for HIV control in sub-Saharan Africa in the coming years and those countries with the highest HIV burden will be unable to meet their obligations on their own to sustain control efforts, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

• Since the financial crisis, across Europe, job security has been reduced
• EU states have increased labour market flexibility by weakening employee protections
• Bailed-out Eurozone countries have come under significant pressure to introduce labour market reforms

New research from the University of Sheffield has found that across the EU there has been a significant shift towards weaker job security and employment support since the global financial crisis.

Orlando, FL - NCAA tackling rule changes that penalize head to head contact, and encourage tackling of the lower extremity have had some proven impacts in collegiate football. However, according to researchers presenting their work at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Specialty Day, an unintended consequence of these rule changes may be higher rates of knee, ankle and thigh injuries.

University of Chicago scientists have discovered evidence in a meteorite that a rare element, curium, was present during the formation of the solar system. This finding ends a 35-year-old debate on the possible presence of curium in the early solar system, and plays a crucial role in reassessing models of stellar evolution and synthesis of elements in stars. Details of the discovery appear in the March 4 edition of Science Advances.

„Beam me up, Scotty" - even if Captain Kirk supposedly never said this exact phrase, it remains a popular catch-phrase to this day. Whenever the chief commander of the television series starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) wanted to go back to his control centre, this command was enough to take him back to the control centre instantly - travelling through the infinity of outer space without any loss of time.

Drinking a lot of coffee every day--more than 900 ml (30 fluid ounces) or around six cups--is linked to a reduced risk of multiple sclerosis (MS), finds research published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

Caffeine, a central nervous system stimulant, has neuroprotective properties and can suppress the production of chemicals involved in the inflammatory response, which may explain the association found, suggest the researchers.

Heavy rainfall recently caused flooding, landslides and power outages in some areas of Peru. NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) measured that rainfall by using a merged precipitation product from a constellation of satellites.

GPM is the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, which is a satellite co-managed by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and is used in NASA's IMERG data. GPM provides next-generation observations of rain and snow worldwide every three hours.

RICHLAND, Wash. - Airborne particles known as "aerosols" strongly impact the way clouds form and change, but accurately capturing this effect in computer climate models has proved to be notoriously difficult. A new study in the Proceedings on the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition online Feb. 26 suggests why -- either the models are failing to capture in sufficient detail the processes at work in clouds, or aerosols are now so pervasive in the atmosphere thanks to modern-day pollution that their specific effects on clouds are hard to pin down.

By pushing NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. GN-z11 is located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major.