Astronomy & Astrophysics published the first analysis of a catalog of 84 million individual stars in the Milky Way bulge as a part of the VVV ESO public survey. This gigantic data set allows building the largest, deepest, and most accurate color-magnitude diagram ever produced, containing more than ten times more stars than any previous study.
Heavens
When regulatory systems for medical products in low-and middle-income countries work, people live but when such systems fail, people die, according to experts from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) writing in this week's PLOS Medicine.
Infrared imagery from the AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite revealed that the strongest thunderstorms within the Atlantic Ocean's Tropical Depression 19 seem to form a backwards letter "C" stretching from northeast to southeast around the storm's center. That "C" is a band of thunderstorms around the eastern side of the storm.
The eighteenth tropical depression only took six hours to strengthen into Tropical Storm Sandy, confirming NASA research that sighting of hot towers leads to intensification. Sandy may further intensify into a hurricane and watches and warnings have been posted in the Caribbean Sea. On Oct. 23, a Hurricane Watch and Tropical Storm Warning were in effect for Jamaica, and a tropical storm watch was in effect for Haiti.
ARLINGTON, Va.—Adm. Mark Ferguson, vice chief of naval operations, headlined the opening of the ONR (Office of Naval Research) Naval S&T (science and technology) Partnership Conference and ASNE Expo Oct. 22, 2012, and highlighted the importance of innovative S&T programs being developed by the Navy. He also offered a revealing look at the potential future for the Navy if sequestration, or automatic defense cuts, goes into effect in January.
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. This can disrupt radio signals for anywhere from minutes to hours.
Hubble astronomers have looked at one of the most distant and brightest quasars in the universe and are surprised by what they did not see: the underlying host galaxy of stars feeding the quasar. The best explanation is that the galaxy is shrouded in so much dust that the stars are completely hidden everywhere. Astronomers believe that the James Webb Space Telescope will reveal the galaxy.
ANN ARBOR—Less than half of Generation X adults can identify our home in the universe, a spiral galaxy, according to a University of Michigan report.
"Knowing your cosmic address is not a necessary job skill, but it is an important part of human knowledge about our universe and—to some extent—about ourselves," said Jon D. Miller, author of "The Generation X Report" and director of the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
Tropical Depression 18 (TD18) formed over the southwestern Caribbean Sea at 11 a.m. EDT on Oct. 22, and NASA's TRMM satellite saw a "hot towering" thunderstorm near its center of circulation hinting that it could become a tropical storm soon. A tropical storm watch has been issued for Jamaica.
When NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite flew over the developing TD18 early on Oct. 22 at 0040 UTC (Oct. 21 at 8:40 p.m. EDT), the satellite measured rainfall rates within the low pressure area and measured cloud heights of the thunderstorms that make up the low.
Get ready for a fascinating eating experience in the center of our galaxy.
The event involves a black hole that may devour much of an approaching cloud of dust and gas known as G2.
A supercomputer simulation prepared by two Lab physicists and a former postdoc suggests that some of G2 will survive, although its surviving mass will be torn apart, leaving it with a different shape and questionable fate.
RENO, Nev. – A research team at the University of Nevada, Reno has developed a new environmentally-friendly coating for aluminum to replace the carcinogenic chromate coatings used in aerospace applications. The chromate conversion coatings have been used for more than 50 years to protect aluminum from corrosion.
The team presented their research last week at the international Pacific Rim Meeting on Electrochemical and Solid-State Science in Hawaii.
Most big galaxies fit into one of two camps: pinwheel-shaped spiral galaxies and blobby elliptical galaxies. Spirals like the Milky Way are hip and happening places, with plenty of gas and dust to birth new stars. Ellipticals are like cosmic retirement villages, full of aging residents in the form of red giant stars. Now, astronomers have discovered that one well-known elliptical has a split personality. Centaurus A is hiding a gassy spiral in its center.
Malignant melanoma is as much as 35% more common among people who live in Gothenburg and the region's coastal municipalities than those who live inland. Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have found that the number of malignant melanoma cases in the Västra Götaland region has quadrupled since 1970.
Malignant melanoma has become increasingly common in the Western world over the past few decades. One of the biggest factors has been excessive and unprotected sunbathing despite widespread awareness of the health risks.
Blasting over two million lights years from the centre of a distant galaxy is a supersonic jet of material that looks strikingly similar to the afterburner flow of a fighter jet, except in this case the jet engine is a supermassive black hole and the jet material is moving at nearly the speed of light.
Research published over the weekend in the Astrophysical Journal Letters shows the galaxy-scale jet to have bright and dark regions, similar to the phenomenon in an afterburner exhaust called 'shock diamonds.'
New research indicates an increase in the number of US deaths and hospitalizations related to pulmonary hypertension. A research team from Howard University Hospital, Washington, DC, examined multiple cause of death mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System and hospital discharge data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey for 1999-2009. Results showed that since 1999, the number of deaths and hospitalizations, as well as death rates and hospitalization rates, have increased for pulmonary hypertension, particularly among women and older adults.