You might not think much about pea aphids, but it turns out they've got skills enough to get aerospace engineers excited. A report in the February 4th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shows that the insects can free fall from the plants they feed on and—within a fraction of a second—land on their feet every time. Oftentimes, the falling aphids manage to cling to a lower part of the plant by their sticky feet on the way down, avoiding the dangerous ground altogether.
Heavens
DENVER (Feb. 4, 2013) – Unfriending someone on Facebook may be as easy as clicking a button, but a new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows the repercussions often reach far beyond cyberspace.
"People think social networks are just for fun," said study author Christopher Sibona, a doctoral student in the Computer Science and Information Systems program at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. "But in fact what you do on those sites can have real world consequences."
On July 18, 2012, a fairly small explosion of light burst off the lower right limb of the sun. Such flares often come with an associated eruption of solar material, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME – but this one did not. Something interesting did happen, however. Magnetic field lines in this area of the sun's atmosphere, the corona, began to twist and kink, generating the hottest solar material – a charged gas called plasma – to trace out the newly-formed slinky shape.
NASA satellite imagery ahowed Cyclone Felleng appear to squeeze between Madagascar and La Reunion island as it moves southward in the Mozambique Channel.
On Jan. 31, 2013 at 2:09am EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 575 miles per second, which is a fairly typical speed for CMEs. Historically, CMEs at this speed are mild.
Not to be confused with a solar flare, a CME is a solar phenomenon that can send solar particles into space and reach Earth one to three days later.
AMHERST, Mass. – Just-forming stars, like growing babies, are always hungry and must "feed" on huge amounts of gas and dust from dense envelopes surrounding them at birth. Now a team of astronomers including Robert Gutermuth, a University of Massachusetts Amherst expert in imaging data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, reports observing an unusual "baby" star that periodically emits infrared light bursts, suggesting it may be twins, that is, a binary star. The discovery is reported this month in Nature.
A new way of measuring the mass of supermassive black holes could revolutionise our understanding of how they form and help to shape galaxies.
The technique, developed by a team including Oxford University scientists, can spot the telltale tracer of carbon monoxide within the cloud of gas (mostly hydrogen) circling a supermassive black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy. By detecting the velocity of the spinning gas they are able to 'weigh' (determine the mass) of the black hole.
The most sensitive patch of mammalian skin known to us isn't human but on the star-shaped tip of the star-nosed mole's snout. Researchers studying this organ have found that the star has a higher proportion of touch-sensitive nerve endings than pain receptors, according to a study published January 30 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Diana Bautista and colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley and Vanderbilt University.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Researchers searching the galaxy for planets that could pass the litmus test of sustaining water-based life must find whether those planets fall in a habitable zone, where they could be capable of having liquid water and sustaining life. New work, led by a team of Penn State researchers, will help scientists in that search.
BEND, Ore. – A new study by Oregon State University researchers finds that Head Start can make a positive impact in the lives of some of its highest risk children, both academically and behaviorally.
Published in the current issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, the study sheds light on how Head Start has helped children living in non-parental care, or living with someone who is not a parent or step-parent by biology or adoption.
NASA satellite imagery revealed that Cyclone Felleng is packing some powerful thunderstorms with overshooting cloud tops.
An overshooting (cloud) top is a dome-like protrusion that shoots out of the top of the anvil of a thunderstorm and into the troposphere. It takes a lot of energy and uplift in a storm to create an overshooting top, because usually vertical cloud growth stops at the tropopause and clouds spread horizontally, forming an "anvil" shape on top of the thunderstorms.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Networks of narrow ridges found in impact craters on Mars appear to be the fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed, according to a new analysis by researchers from Brown University.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Networks of narrow ridges found in impact craters on Mars appear to be the fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed, according to a new analysis by researchers from Brown University.