Heavens | Page 97 | Science Codex

New Geosphere article examines massive 2014 Colorado avalanche

Boulder, Colo., USA - On 25 May 2014, a rain-on-snow-induced rock avalanche occurred in the West Salt Creek valley on the northern flank of Grand Mesa in western Colorado (United States). The avalanche mobilized from a preexisting rock slide in the Green River Formation and traveled 4.6 km down the confined valley, killing three people.

The 54.5 million cubic meter slide traveled those 4.6 km in about 3.5 minutes, with average velocities ranging up to 36 meters per second. The mobility of the avalanche was likely enhanced by liquefied valley-floor sediment.

New NIST method may find elusive flaws in medical implants and spacecraft

Medical implants and spacecraft can suddenly go dead, often for the same reason: cracks in ceramic capacitors, devices that store electric charge in electronic circuits. These cracks, at first harmless and often hidden, can start conducting electricity, depleting batteries or shorting out the electronics.

Now, after years of effort by manufacturers and researchers, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators have demonstrated a nondestructive approach for detecting cracks in ceramic capacitors before they go bad.

Device 'fingerprints' could help protect power grid, other industrial systems

Human voices are individually recognizable because they're generated by the unique components of each person's voice box, pharynx, esophagus and other physical structures.

Subaru-HiCIAO spots young stars surreptitiously gluttonizing their birth clouds

An international team led by researchers at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) has used a new infrared imaging technique to reveal dramatic moments in star and planet formation. These seem to occur when surrounding material falls toward very active baby stars, which then feed voraciously on it even as they remain hidden inside their birth clouds. The team used the HiCIAO (High Contrast Instrument for the Subaru Next-Generation Adaptive Optics) camera on the Subaru 8-meter Telescope in Hawaii to observe a set of newborn stars.

New fast radio burst discovery finds 'missing matter' in the universe

An international team of scientists using a combination of radio and optical telescopes identified the distant location of a fast radio burst (FRB) for the first time. This discovery has allowed them to confirm the current cosmological model of the distribution of matter in the universe.

Eylea outperforms Avastin for diabetic macular edema with moderate or worse vision loss

A two-year clinical trial that compared three drugs for diabetic macular edema (DME) found that gains in vision were greater for participants receiving the drug Eylea (aflibercept) than for those receiving Avastin (bevacizumab), but only among participants starting treatment with 20/50 or worse vision. Gains after two years were about the same for Eylea and Lucentis (ranibizumab), contrary to year-one results from the study, which showed Eylea with a clear advantage. The three drugs yielded similar gains in vision for patients with 20/32 or 20/40 vision at the start of treatment.

NASA's IBEX observations pin down interstellar magnetic field

Immediately after its 2008 launch, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spotted a curiosity in a thin slice of space: More particles streamed in through a long, skinny swath in the sky than anywhere else. The origin of the so-called IBEX ribbon was unknown - but its very existence opened doors to observing what lies outside our solar system, the way drops of rain on a window tell you more about the weather outside.

NASA's Terra satellite sees Tropical Cyclone Yalo coming to a quick end

Tropical Cyclone Yalo formed yesterday and is expected to come to an end today, Feb. 26. NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the young storm that showed strong wind shear was already tearing the storm apart.

Disney automated system lets characters leap and bound realistically in virtual worlds

Virtual game characters can leap, roll and climb so realistically that simply watching them could seemingly exhaust a player. Generating the precise instructions that govern such characters in increasingly complex environments is also quite labor intensive and, unlike a game, downright tedious.

Scientists at Disney Research, however, have developed an automated approach to generating life-like character motions in interactive environments, helping game designers by both easing their workload and by providing instant feedback on how characters will perform in 3-D space.

NASA maps El Niño's shift on US precipitation

This winter, areas across the globe experienced a shift in rain patterns due to the natural weather phenomenon known as El Niño. A new NASA visualization of rainfall data shows the various changes in the United States with wetter, wintery conditions in parts of California and across the East Coast.

NASA sees a different kind of El Niño

A new NASA visualization shows the 2015 El Niño unfolding in the Pacific Ocean, as sea surface temperatures create different patterns than seen in the 1997-1998 El Niño. Computer models are just one tool that NASA scientists are using to study this large El Nino event, and compare it to other events in the past.

Water-cleaning chemical made 'on-demand' with new group of catalysts

A quick, cheap and highly efficient method for producing a water-purifying chemical has been developed by researchers at Cardiff University.

The team, from the Cardiff Catalyst Institute, Lehigh University and the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the USA, have developed a new group of catalysts that can produce hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) on-demand in a simple one-step process, opening up the possibility of manufacturing the chemical in some of the poorest, remote and disaster-stricken areas of the world.

NASA's Aqua satellite catches the birth of Tropical Cyclone Yalo

The fourteenth tropical cyclone in the Southern Pacific Ocean developed as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead. The AIRS instrument aboard Aqua captured infrared, near-visible and microwave data on Tropical Cyclone Yalo early on Feb. 25.

Let it go: Reaction to stress more important than its frequency

How you perceive and react to stressful events is more important to your health than how frequently you encounter stress, according to health researchers from Penn State and Columbia University.

It is known that stress and negative emotions can increase the risk of heart disease, but the reasons why are not well understood. One potential pathway linking stress to future heart disease is a dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system -- a case of a person's normally self-regulated nervous system getting off track.

Object located around a black hole 5 billion light-years from Earth has been measured

A team of Spanish researchers, with the participation of the University of Granada (UGR), has accurately detected a structure in the innermost region of a quasar (small, very far objects that emit huge amounts of energy, comparable to that emitted by a whole galaxy) at a distance of more than five billion light-years from Earth.