Heavens

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Cases of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, are on the rise in the U.S., recently reaching their highest level in 50 years. The disease can be serious or even fatal to newborns who have not yet received vaccinations.

The proposed system (Augmented Lecture Feedback System – ALFs) seeks to improve communication between students and professors during large lecture classes like those frequently given at universities. The way they work is quite intuitive: the professor wears a pair of augmented reality glasses that enable him/her to see symbols above each student; the symbols indicate the person's state while this activity is taking place.

How does a social animal – mouse or human – gain dominance over his or her fellow creatures? A unique experiment conducted by Dr. Tali Kimchi and her team in the Weizmann Institute's Neurobiology Department provides some unusual insight into the social behavior that enables a social hierarchy, complete with a head honcho, to form.

German motorists are willing to accept longer journey times and even detours if it means helping to ease the general traffic situation. This emerged from a recent user study carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS in cooperation with the Technische Universität Berlin.

According to the Australian Government Bureau of Meterology, "In the warm, dry and sunny winter and spring, when grasses are dead and fuels have dried, northern Australia becomes most susceptible to bushfires. Intense high-pressure systems over South Australia producing strong southeast to northeast winds increase the risk of bushfires."

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Chemists at Indiana University Bloomington have created a symmetrical, five-sided macrocycle that is easy to synthesize and has characteristics that may help expand the molecular tool box available to researchers in biology, chemistry and materials sciences.

It is a mystery that has stymied astrophysicists for decades: how do black holes produce so many high-power X-rays?

In a new study, astrophysicists from The Johns Hopkins University, NASA and the Rochester Institute of Technology bridged the gap between theory and observation by demonstrating that gas spiraling toward a black hole inevitably results in X-ray emissions.

A new study by astronomers at NASA, Johns Hopkins University and Rochester Institute of Technology confirms long-held suspicions about how stellar-mass black holes produce their highest-energy light.

Irvine, Calif., June 10, 2013 – New satellite imagery reveals that several areas across the United States are all but certain to suffer water-related catastrophes, including extreme flooding, drought and groundwater depletion.

The paper, to be published in Science this Friday, June 14, underscores the urgent need to address these current and rapidly emerging water issues at the national scale.

Irvine, Calif. – Ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves, not icebergs calving into the sea, are responsible for most of the continent's ice loss, a study by UC Irvine and others has found.

The first comprehensive survey of all Antarctic ice shelves discovered that basal melt, or ice dissolving from underneath, accounted for 55 percent of shelf loss from 2003 to 2008 – a rate much higher than previously thought. Ice shelves, floating extensions of glaciers, fringe 75 percent of the vast, frozen continent.

Washington, D.C.—-A team of researchers has discovered evidence that an extrasolar planet may be forming quite far from its star—- about twice the distance Pluto is from our Sun. The planet lies inside a dusty, gaseous disk around a small red dwarf TW Hydrae, which is only about 55 percent of the mass of the Sun. The discovery adds to the ever-increasing variety of planetary systems in the Milky Way. The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal.*

Researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have proven a new technique that will provide a clearer picture of the Universe's history and be used with the next generation of radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

In research published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, ICRAR PhD Candidate Jacinta Delhaize has studied distant galaxies en masse to determine one of their important properties – how much hydrogen they contain – by 'stacking' their signals.

A series of austerity reforms made by the Spanish government could lead to the effective dismantling of large parts of the country's healthcare system, with potentially detrimental effects on the health of the Spanish people, according to new research published in BMJ.

Researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have proven a new technique that will provide a clearer picture of the Universe's history and be used with the next generation of radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

In research published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, ICRAR PhD Candidate Jacinta Delhaize has studied distant galaxies en masse to determine one of their important properties – how much hydrogen they contain – by 'stacking' their signals.

The teeth of a kangaroo and other extinct marsupials reveal that southeastern Queensland 2.5-5-million-years ago was a mosaic of tropical forests, wetlands and grasslands and much less arid than previously thought. The chemical analysis of tooth enamel that suggests this diverse prehistoric habitat is published June 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Shaena Montanari from the American Museum of Natural History and colleagues from other institutions.