Heavens

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- At first glance, Mars' clouds might easily be mistaken for those on Earth: Images of the Martian sky, taken by NASA's Opportunity rover, depict gauzy, high-altitude wisps, similar to our cirrus clouds. Given what scientists know about the Red Planet's atmosphere, these clouds likely consist of either carbon dioxide or water-based ice crystals. But it's difficult to know the precise conditions that give rise to such clouds without sampling directly from a Martian cloud.

A system that allows users to experience multi-point haptic feedback above an interactive surface without having to touch or hold any device will be unveiled this week [Friday 11 October] at one of the world's most important conferences for innovations in human-computer interfaces.

PITTSBURGH—Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research Pittsburgh have devised a motion tracking technology that could eliminate much of the annoying lag that occurs in existing video game systems that use motion tracking, while also being extremely precise and highly affordable.

Monitoring a dog's behaviour could be used as an early warning sign that an older owner is struggling to cope or their health is deteriorating.

Experts at Newcastle University, UK, are using movement sensors to track normal dog behaviour while the animals are both home alone and out-and-about.

Providing a unique insight into the secret life of man's best friend, the sensors show not only when the dog is on the move, but also how much he is barking, sitting, digging and other key canine behaviours.

Scientists have discovered huge ice channels beneath a floating ice shelf in Antarctica. At 250 metres high, the channels are almost as tall as the Eiffel tower and stretch hundreds of kilometres along the ice shelf. The channels are likely to influence the stability of the ice shelf and their discovery will help researchers understand how the ice will respond to changing environmental conditions.

NASA's footage of the first moon landing promised a future of sci-fi heroism that never came to pass, according to a new study.

The paper, by Professor Steve Brown and Professor Martin Parker, of the University of Leicester's School of Management, and Dr Lewis Goodings, of the University of Roehampton, is published in the International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy.

HOUSTON – Children of melanoma survivors were more likely to wear hats and re-apply sunscreen after receiving a multi-media informational program designed specifically for them. These new findings were included in research published in the journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention – a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The nearby star system Fomalhaut – of special interest for its unusual exoplanet and dusty debris disk – has been discovered to be not just a double star, as astronomers had thought, but one of the widest triple stars known.

In a paper recently accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal and posted today to the preprint server arXiv, researchers show that a previously known smaller star in its vicinity is also part of the Fomalhaut system.

Rising ocean surface temperatures caused by climate change could make fish accumulate more mercury, increasing the health risk to people who eat seafood, Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues report in a study in the journal PLOS ONE.

A new picture of how the nervous system interacts with the immune system to cause the itch and inflammation associated with eczema, a chronic skin disease, could lead to new therapies for the condition, according to University of California, Berkeley, scientists.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — On the exoplanet Kepler 7b, the weather is highly predictable, an international team of scientists has found: On any given day, the exoplanet, which orbits a star nearly 1,000 light-years from Earth, is heavily overcast on one side, while the other side likely enjoys clear, cloudless weather.

Wealth inequality can encourage people to cooperate when they would otherwise have no incentive to do so, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.

New classification criteria for systemic sclerosis have just been published and are more sensitive than the 1980 criteria, enabling earlier identification and treatment of this disabling autoimmune disease. The 2013 criteria, developed by a joint committee commissioned by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR), are published in the ACR journal, Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Philadelphia, PA—A photo captures only as much as the camera in use will allow, and is therefore limited by the field of view of the camera's lens. In the case of smartphones and many advanced cameras, the view from the lens is much smaller than the view from your own eyes.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2013—For hundreds of years, optical devices like telescopes and microscopes have relied on solid lenses that slide up and down to magnify and to focus. To tune how much light is received, conventional devices use mechanical contraptions like the blades that form the adjustable aperture in cameras. To meet demands for ever smaller imaging systems, researchers are working to create entirely unconventional ways of focusing light.