Scientists and engineers have been waging a quiet but determined battle against an unlikely problem: the build-up of ice on different structures.

By delivering strands of genetic material known as messenger RNA (mRNA) into cells, researchers can induce the cells to produce any protein encoded by the mRNA. This technique holds great potential for administering vaccines or treating diseases such as cancer, but achieving efficient delivery of mRNA has proven challenging.

NASA looked into Hurricane Maria and found that powerful convective storms within the hurricane were dropping heavy rainfall. Maria brought that heavy rainfall to Puerto Rico and made landfall on Sept. 20 at 6:15 a.m. EDT.

The Southern Ocean is key to Earth’s climate, but the same gusting winds, big waves and strong currents that are important to ocean physics make it perilous for oceanographers.

Satellite imagery shows that Jose is a large storm, with a large reach. NASA’s Aqua satellite captured cloud top temperatures of Tropical Storm Jose that revealed the strongest storms were in the northeastern part of the tropical cyclone but the storm is so large that it is causing dangerous ocean conditions from Bermuda to the U.S. East coast.

In the faint southern constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump) the careful observer with binoculars will spot a very red star, which varies slightly in brightness from week to week. This very unusual star is called U Antliae and new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are revealing a remarkably thin spherical shell around it.

Domesticating plants to grow as crops can turn out to be a double-edged scythe.

Forest fires in Southeast Asia during the El Niño droughts of 2015 caused considerable disruption to the biodiversity of the region due to the smoke-induced ‘haze’ they created, according to new research led by Benjamin Lee at the University of Kent and the National Parks Board in Singapore.

Opening up a new pathway to fight cancer, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a way to target an enzyme that is crucial to tumor growth while also blocking the mechanism that has made past attempts to target that enzyme resistant to treatment. Researchers were able to use this finding to develop a drug that successfully inhibits tumor growth of melanoma as well as pancreatic and colorectal cancer in mice. The journal Cancer Discovery published the findings online this month.

The most-studied galaxy in the universe — the Milky Way — might not be as “typical” as previously thought, according to a new study.