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Pregnant woman with limited English speaking skills find comfort in prenatal support groups

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Far away from home and family, pregnant Japanese women who met with each other for prenatal group visits felt less anxious and better prepared for childbirth and motherhood, says a new University of Michigan Health System study.

The women, who spoke limited English, were able to connect with peers with similar due dates and cultural backgrounds to discuss such topics as nutrition, labor, breastfeeding and newborn care. A year later, several moms stayed friends and continued to share issues that came up with their babies.

Exploring public perceptions of future wearable computing

As scientists develop the next wave of smartwatches and other wearable computing, they might want to continue focusing their attention on the arms and the wrists. According to a recent Georgia Tech study, portable electronic devices placed on the collar, torso, waist or pants may cause awkwardness, embarrassment or strange looks.

NASA satellites see Super-Typhoon Haiyan lashing the Philippines

Super-Typhoon Haiyan was lashing the central and southern Philippines on Nov. 7 bringing maximum sustained winds of a Category 5 hurricane. NASA is providing visible, infrared and microwave satellite data to forecasters and warnings are in effect for the Philippines and Micronesia as Haiyan moves west.

When is a comet not a comet?

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a unique and baffling object in the asteroid belt that looks like a rotating lawn sprinkler or badminton shuttlecock. While this object is on an asteroid-like orbit, it looks like a comet, and is sending out tails of dust into space.

'Freakish' asteroid discovered, resembles rotating lawn sprinkler

Astronomers have discovered a "weird and freakish object" resembling a rotating lawn sprinkler in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The find, reported online in the Nov. 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, has left them scratching their heads and searching for an explanation for the strange asteroid's out-of-this-world appearance.

Normal asteroids appear simply as tiny points of light. This bizarre asteroid has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

Sun sends out a significant solar flare

The sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 5:12 p.m. EST on Nov. 5, 2013. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

US media consumption to rise to 15.5 hours a day -- per person -- by 2015

A new study by a researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, says that by 2015, the sum of media asked for and delivered to consumers on mobile devices and to their homes would take more than 15 hours a day to see or hear. That volume is equal to 6.9 million-million gigabytes of information, or a daily consumption of nine DVDs worth of data per person per day.

UC's SmartLight more than a bright idea, it's a revolution in interior lighting ready to shine

A pair of University of Cincinnati researchers has seen the light – a bright, powerful light – and it just might change the future of how building interiors are brightened.

In fact, that light comes directly from the sun. And with the help of tiny, electrofluidic cells and a series of open-air "ducts," sunlight can naturally illuminate windowless work spaces deep inside office buildings and excess energy can be harnessed, stored and directed to other applications.

From 1 collapsing star, 2 black holes form and fuse

Black holes—massive objects in space with gravitational forces so strong that not even light can escape them—come in a variety of sizes. On the smaller end of the scale are the stellar-mass black holes that are formed during the deaths of stars. At the larger end are supermassive black holes, which contain up to one billion times the mass of our sun. Over billions of years, small black holes can slowly grow into the supermassive variety by taking on mass from their surroundings and also by merging with other black holes.

NASA sees Tropical Depression 30W stretching out, fading

Tropical Storm 30W weakened into a tropical depression again on Nov. 6 and wind shear stretched out the storm. The storm's elongation was evident in infrared NASA satellite imagery.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Depression 30W on Nov. 5 at 18:23 UTC/1:23 p.m. EST. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument captured infrared data about the storm's cloud top temperatures. The AIRS data also showed wind shear had stretched the system from west to east.

NASA sees heavy rain around Super-Typhoon Haiyan's eye

Satellite data also showed a persistent ring of deep convection around the small eye. Haiyan's eye appeared to be about 8 nautical miles in diameter. The TRMM satellite's microwave data showed an intense convective core (thunderstorms building around the eye) and improved convective banding of thunderstorms in all quadrants of the super-typhoon.

At 1500 UTC/10 a.m. EDT, Super Typhoon Haiyan had maximum sustained winds near 140 knots/161 mph/259 kph. That makes Haiyan equivalent to a Category 5 Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale.

In dual-career couples, mothers still do the most child care

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Even in couples most likely to believe in sharing parenting responsibilities, mothers still bear significantly more of the child care load, a new study reveals.

The study of 182 dual-earner couples found that the mothers' additional parenting burden started early, when their first child was less than a year old.

First study of Russian meteor

The meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February 2013 was "a wake-up call," according to a University of California, Davis scientist who participated in analyzing the event. The work is published Nov. 7 in the journal Science by an international team of researchers.

"If humanity does not want to go the way of the dinosaurs, we need to study an event like this in detail," said Qing-Zhu Yin, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Davis.

Earliest marker for autism found in young infants

Eye contact during early infancy may be a key to early identification of autism, according to a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health. Published this week in the journal Nature, the study reveals the earliest sign of developing autism ever observed—a steady decline in attention to others' eyes within the first two to six months of life.

Burning biomass pellets instead of wood or plants in China could lower mercury emissions

For millions of homes, plants, wood and other types of "biomass" serve as an essential source of fuel, especially in developing countries, but their mercury content has raised flags among environmentalists and researchers. Scientists are now reporting that among dozens of sources of biomass, processed pellets burned under realistic conditions in China emit relatively low levels of the potentially harmful substance. The report was published in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels.