Darker skin also prone to skin cancer

Fair skinned people are known to be at higher risk for skin cancer and other problems associated with too much exposure to the sun, but experts say people of color also are vulnerable to the harmful effects of ultraviolet (UV) rays emitted by the sun and indoor tanning beds. Darker skin has more pigment-making cells, which provide some inherent protection against UV rays, but not enough, said ...

Astronomers Awaiting Comet ISONs Year-End Spectacular

Excitement has been growing in recent months over the approach of Comet ISON. Like other comets, this chunk of rock and ice is following a long, elliptical orbit around the Sun, and like other comets, when it nears the Sun later this year, its trailing stream of dust and vapor will catch the sunlight and become a long, luminous, tail. Many astronomers are predicting that when this celestial ...

Sun unleashes earth-directed solar particles into space

At 5:24 am EDT on May 17, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later and affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, ...

Near-Earth asteroids and Mars 2 moons considered for future space missions

Researchers from the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, and the space robotics company Honeybee Robotics, have successfully completed a first series of field tests aimed at investigating how humans will explore and work on near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and eventually the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. From April 13 to 15, field experiments were conducted at the ...

Does Prozac help artists be creative

More than 40 million people globally take an SSRI antidepressant, among them many writers and musicians. But do they hamper the creative process, extinguishing the spark that produces great art, or do they enhance artistic ...