Heavens

When faced with uncertain situations, people are less able to make decisions as they age, according to a new study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine. Published in the Sept. 30 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study also found that older people are more risk-averse than their midlife counterparts when choosing between possible gains, but more risk-seeking when choosing between losses.

Tropical Depression 11 formed in the central Atlantic Ocean and NASA's TRMM satellite passed overhead and gathered information and identified a "hot tower" that indicated it would strengthen. The depression became Tropical Storm Jerry on Sept. 30 at 10:30 a.m. EDT.

The eleventh Atlantic tropical depression formed around 11 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Sept. 28, about 960 miles/1,540 km east-northeast of the Leeward Islands and was moving north at 9 mph.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 2013 – A string of fiber-optic sensors running along a 36-km stretch of high-speed commuter railroad lines connecting Hong Kong to mainland China has taken more than 10 million measurements over the past few years in a demonstration that the system can help safeguard commuter trains and freight cars against accidents. Attuned to the contact between trains and tracks, the sensors can detect potential problems like excessive vibrations, mechanical defects or speed and temperature anomalies.

Tropical Depression Sepat formed in the northwestern Pacific Ocean and NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared data on the storm, revealing some strong thunderstorms.

The twenty-first and twenty-second tropical depressions of the northwestern Pacific Ocean formed on Sept. 30 and while one is headed to the northeast, the other is headed to the northwest.

Tropical Depression 21W also known as Sepat is forecast to turn to the northeast and parallel the coast of eastern Japan, while staying far off-shore. Tropical Depression 22W, however, is taking a different route and heading to the northwest.

Chestnut Hill, MA (September 30, 2013) - It's a long held belief that parental and administrative support helps breed academic success; now there's data to back that up. A new study released today by the IEA and the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College examines what makes up "cultural educational excellence" while quantifying the strengths of best practices at school, and at home.

NASA's Terra satellite passed over Typhoon Wutip on its approach to a landfall in Vietnam and a visible image revealed its 10-mile-wide eye, and large extent. Wutip was making landfall near Dong Hoi Vietnam around 0900 UTC/5 a.m. EDT.

A black hole. A simple and clear concept, at least according to the hypothesis by Roy Kerr, who in 1963 proposed a "clean" black hole model, which is the current theoretical paradigm. From theory to reality things may be quite different. According to a new research carried out by a group of scientists that includes Thomas Sotiriou, a physicist of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste, black holes may be much "dirtier" than what Kerr believed.

Adults who move to farming areas where they experience a wider range of environmental exposures than in cities may reduce the symptoms of their hypersensitivities and allergies considerably. This is the result of new research from Aarhus University.

This pioneering result was recently published online in the esteemed periodical, The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in an article entitled "Become a farmer and avoid new allergic sensitization: Adult farming exposures protect against new-onset atopic sensitization".

Three months after the flight of the solar observatory Sunrise – carried aloft by a NASA scientific balloon in early June 2013 -- scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany have presented unique insights into a layer on the sun called the chromosphere. Sunrise provided the highest-resolution images to date in ultraviolet light of this thin corrugated layer, which lies between the sun's visible surface and the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona.

In the fight against desertification, so-called straw checkerboard barriers (SCB) play a significant role. SCB consists of half -exposed criss-crossing rows of straws of wheat, rice, reeds, and other plants. The trouble is that our understanding of the laws governing wind-sand movement in SCB and their surrounding area is insufficient. Now, Ning Huang and colleagues from Lanzhou University in China have performed a numerical simulation of the sand movement inside the SCB, described in a paper just published in EPJ E.

During the nearly 14 months that it has spent on the red planet, Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, has scooped soil, drilled rocks, and analyzed samples by exposing them to laser beams, X-rays, and alpha particles using the most sophisticated suite of scientific instruments ever deployed on another planet. One result of this effort was evidence reported last March that ancient Mars could have supported microbial life.

The effects of childhood abuse and lack of parental affection can last a lifetime, taking a toll both emotionally and physically.

There are many reports assessing the psychological damage resulting from childhood abuse, and the effects on physical health have also been well documented. For instance, this "toxic" stress has been linked to elevated cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and other physical conditions posing a significant health risk. The research into the physical effects of abuse, however, has focused on separate, individual systems.

Scientists have provided the most comprehensive details yet of the journey energy from the sun takes as it hurtles around Earth's magnetosphere. Understanding the changes energy from the sun undergoes as it travels away and out into space is crucial for scientists to achieve their goal of some day predicting the onset of space weather that creates effects such as the shimmering lights of the aurora or interruptions in radio communications at Earth.

One of the instruments that flew aboard one of two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft during NASA's HS3 mission was the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer known as HIRAD. HIRAD identified an area of heavy rains and and likely strong winds in Hurricane Ingrid by measuring surface wind speeds and rain rates using its rectangular antenna to track activity on the ocean's surface.