Heavens

Its head and pronotum are usually rusty red, and its abdomen blue or shiny green: the bombardier beetle is approximately one centimetre long and common to Central Europe. At first glance, it appears harmless, but it possesses what is surely the most aggressive chemical defence system in nature. When threatened, the bombardier beetle releases a caustic spray, accompanied by a popping sound. This spray can kill ants or scare off frogs. The beetle produces the explosive agent itself when needed. Two separately stored chemicals are mixed in a reaction chamber in the beetle's abdomen.

A tabletop display with personal screens made from a curtain of mist that allow users to move images around and push through the fog-screens and onto the display, will be unveiled at an international conference later this month.

The research paper, to be presented at one of the world's most important conferences on human-computer interfaces - ACM CHI 2014 [26 April-1 May], could change the way people interact and collaborate in the future.

ANN ARBOR—A different kind of jet-lag mobile app released today by University of Michigan mathematicians reveals previously unknown shortcuts that can help travelers snap their internal clocks to new time zones as efficiently as possible.

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers now can precisely measure the distance of stars up to 10,000 light-years away -- 10 times farther than previously possible.

Astronomers have developed yet another novel way to use the 24-year-old space telescope by employing a technique called spatial scanning, which dramatically improves Hubble's accuracy for making angular measurements. The technique, when applied to the age-old method for gauging distances called astronomical parallax, extends Hubble's tape measure 10 times farther into space.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Ita approaching Australia on April 10 at 00:25 UTC. The image showed a cloud-shrouded eye with a thick band of powerful thunderstorms around the center of circulation.

First spotted in 1885, silvery blue clouds sometimes hover in the night sky near the poles, appearing to give off their own glowing light. Known as noctilucent clouds, this phenomenon began to be sighted at lower and lower latitudes -- between the 40th and 50th parallel -- during the 20th century, causing scientists to wonder if the region these clouds inhabit had indeed changed -- information that would tie in with understanding the weather and climate of all Earth.

Research on gigabit wireless communications has been presented by researchers from the University of Bristol at the world's leading wireless communications and networking conference, IEEE WCNC 2014, in Turkey earlier this week [Monday 6 to Wednesday 9 April].

Why does the second hour of a journey seem shorter than the first? According to research from University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) and the Rotman School of Management, the answer lies in how we're physically oriented in space.

In a series of six studies, Sam Maglio, an assistant professor in UTSC's Department of Management, demonstrated that a person's orientation — the direction they are headed — changed how they thought of an object or event.

The research is forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

TEMPE, Ariz. - If desert mirages occur on Mars, "Lake Gusev" belongs among them. This come-and-go body of ancient water has come and gone more than once, at least in the eyes of Mars scientists.

Now, however, it's finally shifting into sharper focus, thanks to a new analysis of old data by a team led by Steve Ruff, associate research professor at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility in the School of Earth and Space Exploration. The team's report was just published in the April 2014 issue of the journal Geology.

Ita was still over 400 miles from Cairns, Australia at 0900 UTC/5 a.m. EDT. It was centered near 11.5 south and 150.2 east and moving to the west at 9 knots/10.3 mph/16.6 kph. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that Ita is generating 25-foot/7.6 -meter high waves in the Coral Sea.

On April 9, animated multispectral satellite imagery showed Ita has tightly curved bands of thunderstorms wrapping into a consolidating low level circulation center. TRMM microwave imagery revealed a well-formed eye around that consolidating center.

On the less glamorous side of space exploration, there's the more practical problem of waste — in particular, what to do with astronaut pee. But rather than ejecting it into space, scientists are developing a new technique that can turn this waste burden into a boon by converting it into fuel and much-needed drinking water. Their report, which could also inspire new ways to treat municipal wastewater, appears in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over the remnants of Tropical Depression Peipah on April 9 as the storm slowly approached the Philippines from the east. According to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Peipah is now not expected to make landfall in eastern Visayas until April 12.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite or VIIRS instrument aboard Suomi NPP captured a visible, high-resolution image of the storm as it continued moving through the Philippine Sea. The storm appeared disorganized in the image, and the center was difficult to pinpoint on the visible imagery.

Physical function and sense of autonomy are independent determinants of life-space mobility in older people. This was found in a study conducted at the Gerontology Research Center of the University of Jyväskylä. In this project, 848 older men and women that lived independently in the Jyväskylä region in Central Finland were interviewed at their own home.

The most comprehensive study ever to be carried out into adoption in England has confirmed that the rate of breakdown is lower than anticipated, but it also reveals a stark picture of the problems faced by families.

Researchers from the University of Bristol analysed national data on 37,335 adoptions over a 12 year period to show that 3.2 per cent of children – around three in 100 - move out of their adoptive home prematurely, known as a 'disruption'.

One of the greatest mysteries facing humans is how life originated on Earth. Scientists have determined approximately when life began (roughly 3.8 billion years ago), but there is still intense debate about exactly how life began. One possibility - that simple metabolic reactions emerged near ancient seafloor hot springs, enabling the leap from a non-living to a living world – has grown in popularity in the last two decades.