Heavens

Researchers know that exercise increases a person's chances of surviving a heart attack. Now it turns out that exercise habits also affect how the body handles a heart attack's aftermaths.

Depression is three times more common among people who have experienced a heart attack compared to people who have never been afflicted by one. But the new study shows that people who exercise regularly for a long time before a heart attack occurs are far less likely to be depressed afterwards.

Three years after its explosion, a type Ia supernova continues to shine brighter than expected, new research finds. The observations, made with the Hubble Space Telescope and published today in The Astrophysical Journal, suggest that the powerful explosions produce an abundance of a heavy form of cobalt that gives the heat from nuclear decay an extra energy boost. The work could help researchers pinpoint the parents of type Ia supernovae--a type of stellar explosion that is frequently used to measure distances to faraway galaxies--and reveal the mechanics behind these explosions.

Tropical Cyclone Winston has moved into an area with strong vertical wind shear in the Southern Pacific Ocean. The wind shear is battering the storm and has weakened it significantly. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Winston and infrared data showed that the northerly wind shear had pushed the bulk of strongest storms to the south of the center.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center upper-level analysis showed Winston had moved into an unfavorable environment with strong (30 to 40 knots/34.5 to 46 mph/55.5 to 74 kph) vertical wind shear.

A new storymap developed by U.S. Forest Service researchers allows users to interactively chart the ebb and flow of forest products across the southern states -- and visually tells the story of the decline of the forest products industry in the South over the last decades.

New research highlights the robust presence of antibiotic stewardship practices in most Veterans Administration-affiliated facilities, manifested in both formal and informal policies. The study was published online today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

Nanoparticles - tiny particles 100,000 times smaller than the width of a strand of hair - can be found in everything from drug delivery formulations to pollution controls on cars to HD TV sets. With special properties derived from their tiny size and subsequently increased surface area, they're critical to industry and scientific research.

They're also expensive and tricky to make.

On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun. Such an event is expected to be dark, but the Fermi Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst just a fraction of a second after LIGO's signal. New research suggests that the two black holes might have resided inside a single, massive star whose death generated the gamma-ray burst.