Mathematicians have introduced a new element of uncertainty into an equation used to describe the behavior of fluids, which might make it possible to better reflect the inherent uncertainties of the natural world.

Norway to the rescue? Credit: Travis Lupick, CC BY-NC-SA

By Steffen Böhm, University of Essex and Katharine Rockett, University of Essex

Planetary geologists have speculated for decades that glaciers might once have crept through Valles Marineris, the 2,000-mile-long chasm that constitutes the Grand Canyon of Mars.

Using satellite images, astronomers have identified features they say might have been carved by past glaciers as they flowed through the canyons but those claims have remained highly controversial and contested. 

Now, a joint team from Bryn Mawr College and the Freie Universitaet Berlin has identified what could be the first mineralogical evidence of past glaciers within the Valles Marineris: a layer of mixed sulfate minerals halfway up the three-mile-high cliffs of Ius Chasma at the western end of the canyon system.

Just don't forget to listen scientists too. Credit: EPA

By Toby Miller, Cardiff University

Who should political leaders follow when it comes to climate change: environmental scientists, powerful corporations, or a million marchers? Sometimes the three groups disagree, sometimes they concur; but even then, their claims to authority are based on different and frequently conflicting ideas. The recent United Nations climate summit highlighted the confusion over how best to make progress.

By Joel N. Shurkin, Inside Science -- The enemy of archeology everywhere is salt. It destroys buildings, disassembles art works, and can turn ancient pottery into piles of dust.

How salt lays waste to these artifacts is well known, but scientists in Switzerland have monitored the process in a laboratory. Their observations could help preserve the buildings, art, and treasured relics of humanity.

Can hamstring injury be predicted? 

Hamstring strains account for most non-contact injuries in Australian rules football, football and rugby union, as well as track events like sprinting, and a team led by Dr. Anthony Shield, from
Queensland University of Technology,
and Dr. David Opar of Australian Catholic University, measured the eccentric hamstring strength of more than 200 AFL players from five professional clubs and may have a new metric for predicting problems.

Analysis of more than 8,000 women who participated in the world's largest study of two treatments for HER2-positive breast cancer reinforces clinical trial findings showing that trastuzumab (Herceptin) should remain the standard of care for this cancer.

Optical sensors are used all around the world to monitor the condition of difficult-to-access places like the underbellies of bridges, the exterior walls of tunnels, the feet of dams, long pipelines and railways in remote areas.

Though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has asked climate scientists not to attribute weather conditions to climate change, a new paper is doing just that. 

A team writing in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society says that the atmospheric conditions associated with the unprecedented drought currently afflicting California are "very likely" linked to human-caused climate change.

A team of researchers has proposed a solution to the problematic chemical composition of Neptune and Uranus, perhaps providing clues for understanding their formation.

Uranus and Neptune, which post-Pluto are considered the outermost planets in the Solar System by the International Astronomical Union, each have a mass approximately fifteen times that of the Earth and consist of up to 90% ice, with highly enriched in carbon.