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On Jan. 20, 2018, amateur astronomer Scott Tilley detected an unexpected signal coming from what he later postulated was NASA’s long-lost IMAGE satellite, which had not been in contact since 2005. On Jan. 30, NASA — along with help from a community of IMAGE scientists and engineers — confirmed that the signal was indeed from the IMAGE spacecraft. Whatever the next steps for IMAGE may be, the mission’s nearly six years in operation provided robust research about the space around Earth that continue to guide science to this day.

U.S. mines produced an estimated $75.2 billion of raw mineral materials in 2017 – a 6 percent increase over 2016 – the U.S. Geological Survey announced Wednesday, January 31, in its annual Mineral Commodity Summaries.

Tropical forests all over the world are at risk. Two of the main threats are the deforestation for arable land and climate change. Scientists from Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Thünen-Institute compared the losses due to deforestation with those that would result in extreme climate change scenarios in Ecuador. Although global warming is likely to change the distribution of species, deforestation will result in the loss of more dry forests than predicted by climate change damage.

Clostridium Difficile, or C. difficile, strikes fear into the hearts of many. This life-threatening infection, caused through contact with bacteria, can develop rapidly even under the watchful eye of hospital staff. In fact, it is often spread in health care facilitates or nursing homes due to proximity of the bacteria.

The remnants of Tropical Cyclone Fehi brought rain to New Zealand before it fizzled out. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s GPM core satellite provided a look at the rainfall from its vantage point in space.