Heavens

Nine weekly sessions of individually tailored acupuncture lessen perceived pain intensity, and improve functional capacity and quality of life, in people with the chronic pain condition, fibromyalgia, finds research published online in Acupuncture in Medicine.

The beneficial effects were still evident a year later, the findings show.

Fibromyalgia is primarily characterised by chronic widespread pain that is associated with fatigue, disordered sleep patterns, and/or depression. It affects up to one in 20 people.

Raising a child together has a greater effect on your immune system than the seasonal 'flu vaccine or travellers' gastroenteritis, a study by researchers at VIB and KU Leuven in Belgium and the Babraham Institute in the UK has found.

Three academic experts from Asia, Europe, and the United States address the complexity of food systems during the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. Applying resilience thinking to food systems is a novel concept pioneered at ETH Zurich, The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. They demonstrate how to build resilience into existing food systems creating a higher level of food security using decision making models, big data, and information technology.

HOUSTON - (Feb. 13, 2016) - A Rice University researcher will discuss images that may show the formation of a planet -- or a planetary system -- around a distant binary star at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., today.

Andrea Isella, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, will present images of the binary system known as HD 142527, captured by the new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile.

Using ALMA, astronomers have taken a new, detailed look at the very early stages of planet formation around a binary star. Embedded in the outer reaches of a double star's protoplanetary disk, the researchers discovered a striking crescent-shape region of dust that is conspicuously devoid of gas. This result, presented at the AAAS meeting in Washington, D.C., provides fresh insights into the planet-forming potential of a binary system.

Breanna Binder, a University of Washington postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and lecturer in the School of STEM at UW Bothell, spends her days pondering X-rays.

As she and her colleagues report in a new paper published Feb. 12, 2016 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, they recently solved a mystery involving X-rays -- a case of X-rays present when they shouldn't have been. This mystery's unusual main character -- a star that is pretending to be a supernova -- illustrates the importance of being in the right place at the right time.

New research shows that promotional messages that use alliteration - the phonetic overlap of the beginnings of words - hold a greater appeal for consumers than non-alliterative messages, even accounting for cost differences.

Imagine digital cameras or smartphones without the bulky lenses or eyeglasses with lenses that are paper thin.

After Tropical Cyclone Winston formed between Vanuatu and Fiji in the Southern Pacific Ocean NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and saw powerful thunderstorms had quickly developed.

Recent increases in the storage of excess groundwater may be helping to offset sea level rise by as much as 15%, a new study finds. While the capacity of land to store water is known to be an important factor affecting sea level rise, the magnitude of its storage contributions are not fully understood. Land masses store water in numerous ways, though some human-induced changes -- including to groundwater extraction, irrigation, impoundment in reservoirs, wetland drainage, and deforestation - are affecting this process, as are climate-driven changes in rainfall, evaporation, and runoff.

As Tropical Cyclone Tatiana was developing in the Coral Sea, east of Queensland, Australia, NASA's RapidScat measured the surface winds in the intensifying tropical cyclone.

RapidScat saw strongest sustained winds near 18 meters per second (40 mph/64 kph) in the western and southern sides of developing Tropical Cyclone Tatiana on Feb. 10. RapidScat flies aboard the International Space Station and can measure winds on the ocean's surface. Forecasters are able to use RapidScat data to pinpoint the strongest winds within a storm, as they are not always equally distributed.

Two of NASA's "eyes" have been watching Tropical Cyclone Daya and providing data to forecasters. As Tropical Cyclone Daya continued to move away from La Reunion Island in the Southern Indian Ocean, NASA's RapidScat instrument and NASA's Aqua satellite gathered visible imagery and infrared temperature data on the developing storm that showed its strength and development.

Black holes are the subject of much fascination, not just in science but also in popular media. For example, the 2014 movie "Interstellar" portrays a fast-rotating, supermassive black hole, into which the protagonist falls in order to probe its center.

News broke earlier today that elusive ripples in space-time--known as gravitational waves--have been detected for the first time here on Earth by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO).

To get behind the scenes of this major discovery, The Kavli Foundation hosted an exclusive roundtable discussion with three key LIGO researchers, who are all part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI).

Research conducted by Rochester Institute of Technology scientists was integral to the breakthrough detection of gravitational waves from binary black holes that was announced today by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration.