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Suomi NPP satellite continues to monitor Alberta's huge wildfire

The Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada, continues to burn and the smoke and heat from the intense fires are detectable by satellite. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night as well as during the daytime and captured day and night images.

On May 6, 2016 all of Fort McMurray is under a mandatory evacuation order. The Fort McMurray International Airport remains open at this time.

UCI astronomers determine precise mass of a giant black hole

Irvine, Calif., May 5, 2016 - Astronomers from the University of California, Irvine and other universities have derived a highly precise measurement of the mass of a black hole at the center of a nearby giant elliptical galaxy. Working with high-resolution data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile, the scientists were able to determine the speed of a disk of cold molecular gas and dust orbiting the supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy NGC 1332. From there, they calculated the black hole's mass to be 660 million times greater than that of the Sun.

Expanding tropics pushing high altitude clouds towards poles, NASA study finds

A new NASA analysis of 30-years of satellite data suggests that a previously observed trend of high altitude clouds in the mid-latitudes shifting toward the poles is caused primarily by the expansion of the tropics.

Sea star juveniles abundant, but recovery is anything but guaranteed

CORVALLIS, Ore. - An unprecedented number of juvenile sea stars have been observed off the Oregon coast over the past several months - just two years after one of the most severe marine ecosystem epidemics in recorded history nearly wiped the population out.

Measuring a black hole 660 million times as massive as our sun

It's about 660 million times as massive as our sun, and a cloud of gas circles it at about 1.1 million mph.

This supermassive black hole sits at the center of a galaxy dubbed NGC 1332, which is 73 million light years from Earth. And an international team of scientists that includes Rutgers associate professor Andrew J. Baker has measured its mass with unprecedented accuracy.

Significant portion of postdoc researchers eye non-academic careers, study shows

For doctoral students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics, landing a job as a research-oriented college or university faculty member typically requires having spent time as a postdoctoral researcher.

But a new study from a Georgia Tech-Cornell University team shows that the research faculty path isn't the only reason students pursue a postdoc.

In a survey of nearly 6,000 doctoral students in a broad range of fields, more than a third of the students with plans to pursue postdocs said they had more interest in careers outside of academic research.

New method helps diagnose neurological disorder that requires early treatment

Researchers have developed a quick and simple method for measuring bile acids in biological fluids that can be used to rapidly diagnosis a severe fat storage disorder that can lead to liver disease in infancy and neurological dysfunction starting in childhood or early adult life.

Early diagnosis and treatment of the disorder, called Niemann-Pick disease type C, are critical to limit neurological damage.

Floods and coastal erosion may expose contents of UK landfills, study finds

The contents of historic coastal landfill sites could pose a significant environmental threat if they erode, according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

There are 1264 historic coastal landfill sites in England and Wales, all of which are sealed and no longer receive waste, but fall wholly or partially within the Environment Agency's Tidal Flood Zone 3.

ALMA measures mass of black hole with extreme precision

Supermassive black holes, some weighing millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, dominate the centers of their host galaxies. To determine the actual mass of a supermassive black hole, astronomers must measure the strength of its gravitational pull on the stars and clouds of gas that swarm around it.

IU data scientists launch free tools to analyze online trends, memes

p>BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Did more people see #thedress as blue and black or white and gold? How many Twitter users wanted pop star Katy Perry to take the #icebucketchallenge?

The power to explore online social media movements -- from the pop cultural to the political -- with the same algorithmic sophistication as top experts in the field is now available to journalists, researchers and members of the public from a free, user-friendly online software suite released today by scientists at Indiana University.

SkinTrack technology turns arm into smartwatch touchpad

PITTSBURGH -- Ever since the advent of smartwatches, technologists have been looking to expand interactions beyond the confines of the small watch face. A new wearable technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University suggests turning the entire lower arm into a touchpad.

Called SkinTrack and developed by the Human-Computer Interaction Institute's Future Interfaces Group, the new system allows for continuous touch tracking on the hands and arms. It also can detect touches at discrete locations on the skin, enabling functionality similar to buttons or slider controls.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite sees massive Alberta wildfire day and night

NASA-NOAA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite (S-NPP) carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night as well as during the daytime.

On May 5, 2016 at 0956 UTC (5:56 a.m. EDT), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi-NPP acquired a night-time image of the Fort McMurray wildfire by using its "day-night band" to sense the fire in the visible portion of the spectrum. In the image, the brightest parts of the fire appear white while smoke appears light gray.

Recipients of 2016 Gruber Cosmology Prize announced

The 2016 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize recognizes Ronald Drever, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and the entire Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) discovery team for the first observation of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein a century ago.

Star with different internal driving force than the sun

A star like the Sun has an internal driving in the form of a magnetic field that can be seen on the surface as sunspots. Now astrophysicists from the Niels Bohr Institute have observed a distant star in the constellation Andromeda with a different positioning of sunspots and this indicates a magnetic field that is driven by completely different internal dynamics. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature.

Ground-breaking images of nearby star give new insight into Sun's infancy

Pioneering new research that has provided close-up pictures of a nearby star has given a fascinating insight into how the Sun may have behaved billions of years ago.

A team of international astronomers, including Professor Stefan Kraus from the University of Exeter, have used cutting-edge techniques to create the first direct image of surface structures on the star Zeta Andromedae - found 181 light years from Earth.