CORVALLIS, Ore. – Chemists and students in science and engineering at Oregon State University have created a new type of chemical test, or assay, that's inexpensive, simple, and can tell whether or not one of the primary drugs being used to treat malaria is genuine – an enormous and deadly problem in the developing world.
Heavens
Early on July 15, Typhoon Rammasun began making landfall in the eastern part of the central Philippines and NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites spotted the 20 nautical-mile-wide (23 mile/37 km) eye of the storm close to landfall.
Typhoon Rammasun was making landfall in the Visayas region. Visayas is located in the central Philippines.
NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP Satellite passed over Typhoon Rammasun early on July 14 and captured a visible image of the storm that showed large bands of thunderstorms wrapping into the center as it approached the central Philippines.
The once-powerful Super Typhoon Neoguri weakened to a tropical storm when it dropped heavy rainfall over southern Japan during the week of July 7, 2014. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite measured that soaking from its orbit in space and data was used to create a maps showing the rainfall totals.
Heavy rainfall from Neoguri fell on land that was already soaked earlier this month by a slow moving seasonal frontal system. Neoguri was reported to have caused up to five deaths and 50 injuries in Japan.
An archaeological dig in southeast Turkey has uncovered a large number of clay tokens that were used as records of trade until the advent of writing, or so it had been believed.
But the new find of tokens dates from a time when writing was commonplace – thousands of years after it was previously assumed this technology had become obsolete. Researchers compare it to the continued use of pens in the age of the word processor.
The tokens – small clay pieces in a range of simple shapes – are thought to have been used as a rudimentary bookkeeping system in prehistoric times.
Every full moon, Landsat 8 turns its back on Earth. As the satellite's orbit takes it to the nighttime side of the planet, Landsat 8 pivots to point at the moon. It scans the distant lunar surface multiple times, then flips back around to continue its task of collecting land-cover information of the sunny side of Earth below.
Sea ice in summer looks dramatically different than sea ice in winter, even in the polar Arctic. Summer snowmelt, pools of water on thinning ice and exposed ocean replace vast winter expanses of white snow-covered ice – and this weekend NASA's high-flying laser altimeter begins a campaign to investigate these features.
Astronomers analyzing a long-lasting blast of high-energy light observed in 2013 report finding features strikingly similar to those expected from an explosion from the universe's earliest stars. If this interpretation is correct, the outburst validates ideas about a recently identified class of gamma-ray burst and serves as a stand-in for what future observatories may see as the last acts of the first stars.
There were many fires burning in eastern New South Wales, Australia when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead on July 11.
At 03:35 UTC on July 11 (12:35 p.m. local time/11:35 p.m. EDT on July 10), when Aqua passed over eastern New South Wales (NSW), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard captured a natural-color visible image of the region and spotted smoke (light brown) from various fires. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.
The Mills Canyon fire started near the City of Entiat on Tuesday, July 8, 2014. Despite the efforts of local resources, the fire quickly grew to over 1,000 acres by evening. Three outbuildings were damaged. The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Washington Department of Natural Resources. The fire team is working with existing local resources in developing fire control strategies and tactics. Other cooperators include the U.S.
Southern Japan received a soaking from Tropical Storm Neoguri on July 9 and 10 and data from the TRMM satellite was used to create a map that shows how much rain fell in Kyushu.
Kyushu is the southwestern most and third largest island of Japan. The island is mountainous and is home to Mount Aso. Heavy rainfall from Neoguri fell on land that was already soaked in the past week from a slow moving frontal system.
Typhoon Neoguri made landfall on Kyushu early Thursday, July 10, local time after affecting the Okinawa island chain.
Guam and surrounding areas were under a Tropical Storm Warning and Watch on July 11 as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead. During the early morning hours on July 11, Tropical Depression 09W strengthened into a tropical storm.
For many years scientists have been trying to unravel mechanisms that guide function and differentiation of blood stem cells, those cells that generate all blood cells including our immune system. The study of human blood stem cells is difficult because they can only be found in the bone marrow in specialized "niches" that cannot be recapitulated in a culture dish. Now a group of scientists from Dresden led by stem cell researcher Prof.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed an unusual structure 100,000 light years long, which resembles a corkscrew-shaped string of pearls and winds around the cores of two colliding galaxies.
The unique structure of the star spiral may yield new insights into the formation of stellar superclusters that result from merging galaxies and gas dynamics in this rarely seen process.
Meet the seven new dwarf galaxies.
Yale University astronomers, using a new type of telescope made by stitching together telephoto lenses, recently discovered seven celestial surprises while probing a nearby spiral galaxy. The previously unseen galaxies may yield important insights into dark matter and galaxy evolution, while possibly signaling the discovery of a new class of objects in space.