Philadelphia, PA, May 16, 2016 - Dairies use intermittent sprinkler systems to cool cows in warm weather, but little experimental work has been done to determine how much water is needed to achieve beneficial effects. A group of dairy scientists conducted a study at the University of California, Davis, to examine the effects of using low-flow sprinkler systems that cut water use for this purpose by nearly 75%. Their research is published in the current issue (June 2016) of the Journal of Dairy Science®.
Heavens
On May 12, 2016, a total of 17 wildfires were still burning in the vicinity of Fort McMurray, Canada. Provincial authorities still considered one of those fires to be "out of control." As of May 12, fires in that part of Alberta had burned up at least 2,410 square kilometers (930 square miles) of land.
On May 16, 2016, the bread loaf-sized Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer, or MinXSS, CubeSat deployed from an airlock on the International Space Station to begin its journey into space. The NASA-funded MinXSS studies emissions from the sun that can affect our communications systems.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are invaluable in today's military and civilian initiatives. However, most unmanned systems are being designed to execute the long-running mission. Thus, it is necessary for UAVs returning to the base for refueling. Under this circumstance, autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) becomes an important capability for the future employment of UAVs. Vision based sensor and navigation system are widely used in AAR, while experiments are done for both probe-and-drogue refueling system and boom approach.
ANN ARBOR--The discovery of stone tools found in a Florida river show that humans settled the southeastern United States far earlier than previously believed--perhaps by as much as 1,500 years, according to a team of scientists that includes a University of Michigan paleontologist.
Scientists have calculated that the present day ice sheets keep vast amounts of climate gas methane in check. Ice sheets are heavy and cold, providing pressure and temperatures that contain methane in form of ice-like substance called gas hydrate. If the ice sheets retreat the weight of the ice will be lifted from the ocean floor, the gas hydrates will be destabilised and the methane will be released.
Together with irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60 percent of the galaxies in the local universe. However, despite their prevalence, each spiral galaxy is unique -- like snowflakes, no two are alike. This is demonstrated by the striking face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6814, whose luminous nucleus and spectacular sweeping arms, rippled with an intricate pattern of dark dust, are captured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image.
Physicists and astronomers from the University of Texas at Arlington have used advanced astronomical software to accurately date lyric poet Sappho's "Midnight Poem," which describes the night sky over Greece more than 2,500 years ago.
The scientists described their research in the article "Seasonal dating of Sappho's 'Midnight Poem' revisited," published today in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. Martin George, former president of the International Planetarium Society, now at the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, also participated in the work.
High-resolution measurements from NASA spacecraft have unraveled the mysteries of magnetic reconnection around Earth - a phenomenon whereby magnetic field lines break and reconnect, releasing energy and accelerating particles. Because of the importance of magnetic reconnection in many laboratory and space environments, this result has opened up a new window into this universal process, the authors say, one that is otherwise poorly understood.
San Antonio -- May 12, 2016 -- A team led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has made the first direct detection of the source of magnetic reconnection. Analyzing data from NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, scientists have observed how this explosive physical process converts stored magnetic energy into kinetic energy and heat.
Most people do not give much thought to the Earth's magnetic field, yet it is every bit as essential to life as air, water and sunlight. The magnetic field provides an invisible, but crucial, barrier that protects Earth from the sun's magnetic field, which drives a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind outward from the sun's outer layers. The interaction between these two magnetic fields can cause explosive storms in the space near Earth, which can knock out satellites and cause problems here on Earth's surface, despite the protection offered by Earth's magnetic field.
For the first time, spacecraft have flown through the heart of a magnetic process that controls Earth's space weather and geomagnetic storms.
The Earth is surrounded by a magnetic bubble, called the magnetosphere, which protects us from harmful radiation from space. The magnetosphere is defined by magnetic field lines, stretching out into space from the Earth. When these lines come up against field lines in different orientations - for example from the Sun - a process called magnetic reconnection occurs.
The search for planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy has revealed an extraordinary family of planets whose orbits are so carefully timed that they provide long-term stability for their planetary system. A paper describing the formation of this planetary system by a research team that includes a Penn State University astrophysicist will be published in the journal Nature on May 11, 2016.
Acropora is able to resist natural environmental influences better than other genera of coral. In fact, it even seems to use challenges such as tropical storms to its advantage in order to increase its ecological success. The delicate branches of Acropora corals are easily broken off by strong waves. The fragments are carried away by the water and deposited elsewhere, where many of them grow and form new colonies over the course of decades and centuries. Acropora corals have been spreading in this way for around 50 million years.