Heavens

A team of researchers from Japan's Tohoku University has developed a new method for the pretreatment of organic material, or "biomass", which could lead to more efficient production of biofuels and biochemicals.

Pretreating biomass improves the formation of sugars that are then used to develop biofuels and biochemicals. But current pretreatment processes leave much to be desired.

Nagoya, Japan - Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are massive expulsions of magnetic flux into space from the solar corona, the ionized atmosphere surrounding the sun. Magnetic storms arising from CMEs pose radiation hazards that can damage satellites and that can negatively impact communications systems and electricity on Earth. Accurate predictions of such events are invaluable in space weather forecasting.

Research from the University of Washington-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory published Feb. 26 in Astrophysical Journal Letters will help astronomers better identify -- and thus rule out -- "false positives" in the search for life beyond Earth.

HAMILTON, March 1, 2016 - As scientists step up their search for other life in the universe, two astrophysicists are proposing a way to make sure we don't miss the signal if extraterrestrial observers try to contact us first.

René Heller and Ralph Pudritz say the best chance for us finding a signal from beyond is to presume that extraterrestrial observers are using the same methods to search for us that we are using to search for life beyond Earth.

NASA scientists are closer to solving the mystery of how Mars' moon Phobos formed.

In late November and early December 2015, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission made a series of close approaches to the Martian moon Phobos, collecting data from within 300 miles (500 kilometers) of the moon.

Among the data returned were spectral images of Phobos in the ultraviolet. The images will allow MAVEN scientists to better assess the composition of this enigmatic object, whose origin is unknown.

Brooklyn, NY - A study led by SUNY Downstate Medical Center has found increased risk of obesity among Filipino immigrants living in the New York City metropolitan area. The findings were published in the January/March issue of the journal, Family & Community Health.

Boulder, Colo., USA - On 25 May 2014, a rain-on-snow-induced rock avalanche occurred in the West Salt Creek valley on the northern flank of Grand Mesa in western Colorado (United States). The avalanche mobilized from a preexisting rock slide in the Green River Formation and traveled 4.6 km down the confined valley, killing three people.

The 54.5 million cubic meter slide traveled those 4.6 km in about 3.5 minutes, with average velocities ranging up to 36 meters per second. The mobility of the avalanche was likely enhanced by liquefied valley-floor sediment.

Medical implants and spacecraft can suddenly go dead, often for the same reason: cracks in ceramic capacitors, devices that store electric charge in electronic circuits. These cracks, at first harmless and often hidden, can start conducting electricity, depleting batteries or shorting out the electronics.

Now, after years of effort by manufacturers and researchers, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators have demonstrated a nondestructive approach for detecting cracks in ceramic capacitors before they go bad.

Human voices are individually recognizable because they're generated by the unique components of each person's voice box, pharynx, esophagus and other physical structures.

An international team led by researchers at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) has used a new infrared imaging technique to reveal dramatic moments in star and planet formation. These seem to occur when surrounding material falls toward very active baby stars, which then feed voraciously on it even as they remain hidden inside their birth clouds. The team used the HiCIAO (High Contrast Instrument for the Subaru Next-Generation Adaptive Optics) camera on the Subaru 8-meter Telescope in Hawaii to observe a set of newborn stars.

An international team of scientists using a combination of radio and optical telescopes identified the distant location of a fast radio burst (FRB) for the first time. This discovery has allowed them to confirm the current cosmological model of the distribution of matter in the universe.

A two-year clinical trial that compared three drugs for diabetic macular edema (DME) found that gains in vision were greater for participants receiving the drug Eylea (aflibercept) than for those receiving Avastin (bevacizumab), but only among participants starting treatment with 20/50 or worse vision. Gains after two years were about the same for Eylea and Lucentis (ranibizumab), contrary to year-one results from the study, which showed Eylea with a clear advantage. The three drugs yielded similar gains in vision for patients with 20/32 or 20/40 vision at the start of treatment.

Immediately after its 2008 launch, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spotted a curiosity in a thin slice of space: More particles streamed in through a long, skinny swath in the sky than anywhere else. The origin of the so-called IBEX ribbon was unknown - but its very existence opened doors to observing what lies outside our solar system, the way drops of rain on a window tell you more about the weather outside.

Tropical Cyclone Yalo formed yesterday and is expected to come to an end today, Feb. 26. NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the young storm that showed strong wind shear was already tearing the storm apart.

Virtual game characters can leap, roll and climb so realistically that simply watching them could seemingly exhaust a player. Generating the precise instructions that govern such characters in increasingly complex environments is also quite labor intensive and, unlike a game, downright tedious.

Scientists at Disney Research, however, have developed an automated approach to generating life-like character motions in interactive environments, helping game designers by both easing their workload and by providing instant feedback on how characters will perform in 3-D space.