The governors of Florida and South Carolina have warned all residents in areas that may be affected by Hurricane Matthew  to evacuate or make appropriate preparations. The storm has crossed Haiti, but with communications down over most of the island, damage and casualties are unknown.

Life-threatening surf and rip-currents are now a danger over a wide area from Puerto Rico to Venezuela and north into the Bahamas. In their 8 a.m. Tuesday advisory, National Hurricane Center forecasters said the storm’s sustained winds are 145 mph. Matthew is now tracking slightly westward of its original course and should begin to affect Florida on Thursday, while passing directly over the Bahamas.
read more

As the data being transmitted by the New Horizons space probe continues to flow back to Earth, scientists poring over the information continue to find new surprises, including possible evidence that Pluto has a subsurface ocean of liquid water. Scans of the western lobe of the dwarf planet’s "heart" show that, for some unknown reason, there is extra mass in the region. This came as a surprise to the researchers: the area, dubbed Sputnik Planum, is thought to have been formed by a meteor impact, meaning that it should have negative mass, as one would assume from an impact crater.
read more

As counter-intuitive as it may sound, a baby has been born that has the DNA of three separate people. While we’re quite familiar with the traditional combination of genetic material from two reproductive cells — ovum and sperm — this combination came from the DNA of the baby’s mother, father, and a separate egg donor.

This new procedure was employed because the baby’s mother carries the gene for Leigh syndrome, a neurological disorder that can be fatal to the infant within a few years after birth. Two previous children born to this individual succumbed to the disease, prompting her to seek help in avoiding passing the deadly gene on to yet another child.
read more