Katia was a tropical storm gathering energy over the Atlantic Ocean when one of the Expedition 28 crew took this photo on Aug. 31, 2011, from aboard the International Space Station. The picture, taken with a 12-mm focal length, was captured at 14:09:01 GMT. Later in the day Katia was upgraded to hurricane status. Two Russian spacecraft — a Progress and a Soyuz –can be seen parked at the orbital outpost on the left side of the frame. Image Credit: NASA

(National Radio Astronomy Observatory) The superconducting receivers of ALMA’s telescopes in the Chilean Andes now have their own cryogenic catering service — a customized truck, inspired by airline catering vehicles, that cuts maintenance disruptions to the upcoming astronomy schedule and greatly reduces ALMA’s carbon footprint.

(University of California – Santa Barbara) A new paradigm in quantum information processing has been demonstrated by physicists at UC Santa Barbara. Their results are published in this week’s issue of Science Express online.

(Salk Institute) If you think today’s political rhetoric is overheated, imagine what goes on inside a vertebrate embryo. There, two armies whose agendas are poles apart, engage in a battle with consequences much more dire than whether the economy will recover — they are battling for whether you (or frogs or chickens) will have a forebrain.

(Rochester Institute of Technology) The New York State Office of Emergency Management is using imagery of the widespread flooding from Tropical Storm Irene in Schoharie County captured by Rochester Institute of Technology and Kucera International Inc.

(Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News) Scientists involved in DNA vaccine research are currently focused on two major issues: the creation of effective delivery systems and the development of more efficient biomanufacturing strategies, reports Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN).

(Stevens Institute of Technology) To help engineers design longer-lasting high-performance plastics, the forthcoming book, Long-Term Durability of Polymeric Matrix Composites, presents a holistic guide to environmental degradation, damage evolution, design, and application specific issues of long term structural durability.

(CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) The electron transport through porphyrin molecules is led by the tunneling effect described by the laws of quantum mechanics, according to an international research that has counted on the participation of a center of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). The article, published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, dismisses the belief that this transport is via hopping between regions of the molecule.

(Optical Society of America) Current blood testing procedures are expensive and time-consuming, while sophisticated test equipment is bulky and difficult to transport. A team of researchers from the University of Toledo in Ohio has addressed all these drawbacks in a new low-cost, portable blood testing technique using Surface Plasmon Resonance. Described in Biomedical Optics Express, this could help in a wide range of medical sensing applications, including diagnosing diseases like cancer and diabetes long before clinical symptoms arise.

(Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology) Max Planck researchers from Jena and Tuebingen, Germany, elucidated the structure of an enzyme from Microbacterium arborescens able to accumulate several hundred iron ions, depending on the iron supply situation in its environment: for example in the larval gut of the Beet Armyworm Spodoptera exigua. Moreover, it catalyzes the formation of N-acyl glutamines (glutamine/fatty acid conjugates). Plants recognize the caterpillar with the help of these conjugates and initiate their chemical defense against the invader.