Touchable Holography

A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo led by Hiroyuki Shinoda has developed a display that lets users "touch" objects that appear to float in space in front of them.The virtual objects appear in mid-air thanks to an LCD and a concave mirror. The sensation of touching the objects is created using an ultrasound device positioned below the LCD and mirror. The airborne ultrasound tactile device used to produce the sensation of touch was demoed at SIGGRAPH in 2008.

Top 10 Dead Persons Still Said To Be Alive After Death --> 34 We’ve all heard of people faking their deaths and later being found to be alive.

We’ve all heard of people faking their deaths and later being found to be alive. Some do it for attention, others as a publicity stunt, and others to just get out of the spotlight, but in the end realize they soon return to the spotlight. In any case, people who intentionally go “missing” are usually found guilty or some other crime.

We’ve all probably heard of conspiracies and skeptics as well. Put death and skepticism together and what do you get? A bunch of conspirators that start to believe people who are more than likely dead are actually alive and well. Crazy or not, there are people who believe others said to be dead just may be alive. Here is a list of ten people who have become the center of fake death conspiracies.

10. Alexander I of Russia (12/23/1777 – 11/19/1825)

Alexander I was able to start off as a successful king, but due to family circumstances, he soon became very suspicious and paranoid of others. In 1825 Alexander was on a trip to the Crimea during the winter when he developed a cold that turned into typhus and in the end killed him. He died suddenly and was given a funeral with a closed casket. Because of his sudden death, many found the circumstances of his death to be questionable. Many believed he wanted to give up the throne quietly and that this was his cover up to do so. Some think he took on the name Feodor Kuzmich and became a hermit. To add even more suspense, in 1925 Alexander’s tomb was open, but a body was not found.

9. Princess Diana of Wales (07/01/1961 – 08/31/1997)

Born into royalty, Princess Diana was most definitely a member of the royal family who was able to become a worldwide icon, bringing the issue of AIDS awareness and treatment to the forefront. Married to Prince Charles of Wales with two sons, Diana’s life seemed great. However, on August 31, Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed, her rumored boyfriend, were killed in a crash after the car they were in slammed into a road tunnel in Paris. The driver was told to take that route to avoid paparazzi. Not only do people conspire about her death, some believing it was a plot by the M16 acting on orders from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, but others believe she isn’t dead at all. Pictures have floated around of a suspected Diana in a wheelchair who is said to be pregnant with Al-Fayed’s child. However, with over 2.5 million people viewing the funeral, most believe she is dead.

8. Jim Morrison (12/08/1943 – 07/03/1971)

Known for being the front man of The Doors, Jim Morrison definitely became a popular artist in the 1960s. After moving to Paris to an apartment, Morrison became a fan of the city and soon began to write poems. During this time Morrison changed his appearance by growing a beard and was becoming depressed. On July 3 he was found dead in a bathtub, but no autopsy was completed as there was no sign of foul play. He was buried in a sealed casket, and the death certificate stated that a heart attack killed him. However, no one knows exactly how Morrison died. His girlfriend claimed he was using cocaine and heroin and possibly had a hemorrhage, while others blame a respiratory infection. Many have claimed to have seen Morrison boarding a plane before he was reported dead, insisting that he was looking to run away.

7. D.B. Cooper (Vanished 11/24/1971)

D.B. Cooper is one that many probably don’t expect on this list, but he has an interesting story, and the conspiracies surrounding his death are just as buzzworthy. D.B. Cooper, first thought to be Dan Cooper, hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft on November 24 and demanded a random of $200,000 which he received. He then parachuted from the plane, and hasn’t been seen since. After jumping, no one has heard of, seen, or come into contact with D.B. Cooper. There is no evidence claiming that he is alive or dead, or any evidence of who the man really was. The money has yet to be recovered, but the FBI in he past years has released new evidence, but the Agency does believe he is dead. Some claim that he is still alive and is in hiding.

6. Amelia Earhart (07/24/1897 – declared dead on 01/05/1939)

Amelia Earhart stands as one of the most notable women when it comes to pioneering early aviation. Despite being a woman, Earhart earned awards for becoming the first female to fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone. In 1937, she set off to circumnavigate the globe in her airplane, but she soon disappeared when flying over the Pacific Ocean, specifically near Howland Island. Aviators believe that Earhart’s plane ran out of fuel and she pulled the crash and sink method. However, some believe she was spying on Japan in the Pacific, captured and executed when her plane crashed in Japanese territory, or that she decided to assume a new identity. Some have claimed to have seen her in Japan.

5. Adolf Hitler (04/20/1889 – 04/30/1945)

Dying due to cyanide poisoning by his own hands, Hitler declared he would not live the same fate as Benito Mussolini. After committing suicide along with his wife of one day, his body was found and buried in a secret location in Magdeburg, but was then exhumed and his ashes throw into the Elbe River. Joseph Stalin stated that Hitler may have escaped to Argentina or Spain, while others believed the Germans were trying to conceal Hitler’s escape to the underground. Despite the use of dental records to positively identify Hitler, many still believe he is alive. Some have even claimed multiple sightings of him.

4. Michael Jackson (08/29/1958 – 06/25/2009)

The most recent death on this list, Michael Jackson became known as the King of Pop and for decades provided music for his fans. Though his death is still a mystery today, it’s safe to say that he is dead. Though the exact cause of death is not yet known, many speculate that an overdose of pain or an anesthetic drug used to help him sleep is what killed Jackson. However, many at first and still believe that he isn’t dead, due to the lack of autopsy answers, and the possible fact that he may not have been buried yet. Some are skeptical and believe that his gold plated casket was empty, claiming that he is still alive and planned a publicity stunt.

3. Tupac Shakur (06/16/1971 – 09/13/1996)

Today Tupac Shakur’s death remains a mystery. He was a rapper who was killed in a drive by shooting. Because of the questions and circumstances surrounding his death, many believe he is alive. Skeptics claim that they have reason to doubt Tupac is dead because of the fact that eight of his records were released after his reported death and lyrics of his involving a man being shot but then resurrected. Magazines and popular celebrity gossip websites have claimed to have spotted and taken pictures of Tupac. The most recent is a picture of supposed Tupac drinking in Bourbon Street.

2. Grand Duchess Anastasia (07/18/1901 – 07/17/1918)

As the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, many would think Anastasia would have had a luxurious long life. However, her and her family was murdered by the Bolshevik secret police as a means to end the Romanov rule in Russia. The bodies were shot and then burned, but there was no trace of Anastasia’s DNA. Many believed she must have escaped somehow due to lack of some sort of identification of her body. Since no real proof of her death had come to light, many women have falsely identified themselves as Anastasia, the most well known being Anna Anderson. In March 2009, Dr. Michael Coble stated that DNA of all four Duchesses has been tested and found.

1. Elvis Presley (01/08/1935 – 08/16/1977)

Elvis Presley, said to be the King of Rock ‘n Roll was found dead in his own bathroom by his fiancée and his death was ruled to be due to an overdose of medication. He was buried at Graceland next to his mother. Despite being declared dead, many around the world claim that there is no way he can be dead. Some say his middle name is spelled wrong on his grave while others claim that a wax body was put inside the coffin. Some believe Elvis was in a position to fake his death, as he became in debt to someone possibly linked to the Mafia. Other people have claimed to have even seen Elvis in multiple places, the most noted being places in Tennessee.

Top 10 Most Bizarre Soups

We all love a warm bowl of soup, it is filling, nutritious and delicious. For years soups have been a simply way to make a good meal out of what you have. Sometimes what you have may be more than your traditional chicken noodle soup. With that here are the top ten most bizarre soups that span the globe.

10

Menudo

This is a personal favorite and while it is not very bizarre where I come from, some may find cow stomach soup to be a little odd. Menudo is a traditional Mexican soup that is very popular and often made for special occasions. It is also widely known as a cure all for hangovers. Menudo consists of tripe or cow stomach, onions, cilantro, oregano, chilis and hominy. It takes anywhere from seven to ten hours to make, as the meat needs to cook for an extended time to make it tender. Some people wonder howstomach lining can be delicious but when you add all of the other ingredients and let it simmer for hours what you get is an insanely good soup. The tripe is so tender it almost melts in your mouth, add some corn tortillas for dipping and you got yourself a meal. Who knew cowstomach could be so good? The origin of Menudo varies, found throughout Mexico, the soup most likely came from a need to use every part of the cow, in this case stomach lining. You can find the soup in most Mexican restaurants.

9

Kiburu Soup

Perhaps the simplest soup on the list comes to us from the Chagga tribe that lives at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. The tribe depends on agriculture for their livelihood focusing on bananas and coffee. A no frills type of life gets you a no frills soup, made of sweet bananas, beans and dirt or “earth” as they call it. Essentially the ingredients are all mixed together to formthe soup including bits of twigs that can be seen in the picture. The dirt supposedly gives the soup a saltiness and earthiness flavor.

8

Supu Soup

This soup reminds me a little of Menudo, with many parts of the animal being used to create a flavorful soup or stew. Supu simply means soup, but the breakfast version of this Tanzanian soup is the most extravagant, made from goat lungs, heart, liver, head, cow stomach, intestines and tongue. If you are lucky, you might even get a cow hoof and tail thrown in. The hooves are sometimes boiled and is called supu ya makongoro.The soup eaten for breakfast is a traditional dish in Tanzania and is also widely known to cure hangovers.

7

Chicken Testicle Soup

Very similar to our traditional chicken noodle soup except that it has chicken testicles instead of chicken meat. The soup simply made from testicles and vegetables is cooked in broth until tender. The testicles are creamy on the inside and very soft, similar to tofu but with tight skin like a sausage. Others have compared it to an under cooked egg with a custard consistency. Again, the testicles are said to have good side effects, in this case good skin for the women and stamina for the men. I have always heard that kind of stuff is good for your skin. There are black and white chicken testicles available for soups.

6

Bird Nest Soup

One of the most expensive soups on the list, Bird Nest Soup is made from the nests of Swiftlet birds. The Chinese soup is a delicacy, and sells for as much as $30 to $100 per bowl, a kilogram of the nest can cost up to $2000. Soups made from nests are almost entirely from the birds own sticky saliva. The nest dissolves and becomes gelatinous with water. The bird’s nests have been inChinese cooking for centuries usually in the soup . Swiftlet birds make their nests in caves by the male and take over 35 days to build. The cup shaped nests are interwoven strands of salivary cement. Some common health benefits that are associated withthe soup are, focus, improved asthma, libido, and the immune system.

Just paying the bills...

5

Deer Placenta Soup

In Shanghai, China, you can have Deer Placenta Soup that will help you in bed, your kidneys, skin and vitality. I am starting to see a trend here.The soup is made from mushrooms, flowers, black chicken (must be where the black testicles come from) and deer tendon in a broth. While the soup actually sounds good, the placenta is elastic making it chewy when eating it. If you do not know exactly what a placenta is, here is the definition to make it even more appetizing. The sac-shaped organ that attaches the embryo or fetus to the uterus during pregnancy in most mammals. Blood flows between mother and fetus through the placenta, supplying oxygen and nutrients to the fetus and carrying away fetal waste products. The placenta is expelled after birth.

4

Shirako Soup or Cods Sperm Soup

Known as Cods Milk Soup stateside and Shirako in Japan, the soup is essentially the sperm sac of male codfish. Shirako is served raw or in a soup. The sperm sac cooks until it melts down into chowder like broth becoming creamy, almost like custard. Shirako, appropriately means “white children” and is available in the winter. As with many animal parts in Asian cuisine that have special qualities, eating the Cod’s sperm gives you stamina in bed. There is a restaurant in New York that serves the dish as a specialty.

3

Fruit Bat Soup

This next soup would not be so bad if they would at least take the fuzzy fur off the bat. In the islands of Palau, this soup is again a delicacy in town. Although I am starting to think many of these “delicacies” came from unknowing tourists willing to try anything. The island has two types of bats, the insect eating and the large fruit bats. The latter are cooked in coconut milk, ginger, spices and boiled for several hours. At some restaurants, the customer is able to choose his or her bat before cooking it alive in boiling water. Many people who have triedthe soup stated it is delicious, although having a furry rodent like head staring at you can be unsettling.

2

Tiger Penis Soup

There are many penis soups out there but this is by far one of the most rare and expensive. Tiger Penis Soup has been around for centuries in Asian cultures, known for its almost mythical properties akin to Viagra. The dried tiger penis is soaked in water for a week and then simmered up to 24 hours with other spices and medicines, at times with tiger bone. A single bowl of soup can cost you up to $400.
Tigers are an endangered species and protected, yet many Asian markets still carry tiger parts in their shops. A recent survey of New York’s Chinatown revealed that 60% of the shops claimed to carry tiger parts. If you do decide to buy some tiger penis make sure it is legit, shady shop owners often substitute ox or deer tendons for the real thing.

1

Tiet Cahn a.k.a. Vietnamese Blood Soup

Finally, we have a soup so bizarre it can hardly be called a soup at all. It is a traditional soup in Vietnamese cuisine made from simple ingredients, raw blood (usually duck), cooked gizzards, and topped with peanuts and herbs. The soup is refrigerated so the blood coagulates and can then be eaten chilled before the blood loses its jello like consistency. Supposedly,the soup gives both the person making and eating it strength. Its popularity has declined since the bird flu spread through Asia. Although many still eat it, there is concern for the public’s health in consuming raw blood from ducks. Did I really have to tell you that though?

Turning Trash Into Power Biological Engineers Generate Natural Gas with Bacteria

A new kind of waste digester uses two different strains of bacteria in different tanks. This would normally take place in the same environment, but microbiologists have now separated it into two stages that increases natural-gas production. The technology increases efficiency and can turn three tons of food scraps into enough energy to power 25 homes for a day.

DAVIS, Calif. -- There's a new twist on the old adage, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Now that trash may be another man's power. Researchers in California are turning garbage into bio-gas that may one day provide the electricity in your home.

Trash could soon be powering your home. A new digester can transform it into energy. It uses two strains of bacteria to convert waste into bio-gas. Most digesters store both bacteria in the same tank, which makes the process unpredictable and slow. But not this digester.

"Zhang's process takes the two bacteria and separates them into two separate environments," Dave Konwinski, the director of OnSite Power Systems in Davis, Calif., tells DBIS.

This new and improved digester is the brain child of Biological Engineer Ruihong Zhang. She and her students at UC Davis first built its prototype in the lab. She's thrilled her new technology is being put to use in the real world.

"It's a new technology ... So it's like a child grow into adult," she says.

The digester will turn three tons of food scraps into energy for 25 houses a day. But it's not just for homes. The digester could be especially useful to fuel processing plants. It s scheduled to be up and running this fall. OnSite Power Systems plans to market it in several states in the next couple of years, including California, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

"We can actually scale a digester to fit their current operations, fill it right at their operations, take the waste stream into the digester, and the energy right back into the plant," Konwinski says. "It will make a substantial dent in our current energy requirement for petroleum."

It's a win-win-win situation for the environment, industry and consumers.

Scientists Reveals Secrets Of Drought Resistance

A team of biologists in California led by researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California (UC), San Diego has solved the structure of a critical molecule that helps plants survive during droughts. Understanding the inner workings of this molecule may help scientists design new ways to protect crops against prolonged dry periods, potentially improving crop yields worldwide, aiding biofuels production on marginal lands and mitigating drought's human and economic costs.

The findings were described in the journal Science Express, an advance online issue of the journal Science, on October 22, 2009.

"This molecular structure helps explain the mechanism behind drought tolerance in plants," said Elizabeth Getzoff, a Scripps Research scientist who led the team from Scripps Research, UC San Diego, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and UC Riverside. "We're very excited by the findings."

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), major droughts in the last three years alone have collectively caused more than ten billion dollars in losses to crops and other damages in the United States. The problem is particularly pronounced in western farm areas such as those in California, which is now three years into a severe drought.

The newly solved structure shows a three-dimensional representation of a critical plant hormone called abscisic acid, attached to its "target" protein called PYR1. Abscisic acid is key to many plant processes, including to survival tactics in challenging environmental conditions.

"In revealing how a plant hormone functions under stressful conditions, this work provides important clues about how hormones might regulate crucial physiological responses in humans," said Jean Chin, a program director with the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

A Mysterious Hormone

When drought-tolerant plants detect dry conditions, they synthesize abscisic acid, which causes changes from root tips to leaves and flowers. Plants under the influence of this hormone begin to conserve water. Their seeds lie dormant in the ground. Their leaves close microscopic pores to stop water loss. They slow their own growth, and they signal numerous genetic changes, reprogramming themselves to accomplish their single most pressing goal -- survival.

"Abscisic acid triggers an array of plant drought-tolerance mechanisms," said co-investigator Julian Schroeder of UC San Diego.

The hormone abscisic acid was discovered in the early 1960s, and plant biologists have known for decades that it plays this crucial role in keeping plants alive during drought. Despite this fact, says Getzoff, who is a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at Scripps Research, nobody has understood how the hormone functions.

"That has been pretty mysterious," Getzoff says, "yet solving this mystery is key to controlling drought responses to protect plants."

Earlier this year, however, the picture of how abscisic acid works became clearer when two separate groups of scientists discovered a cluster of genes associated with the hormone. Simultaneous mutations in four of these related genes led to a greatly impaired abscisic acid response and reduced drought resistance. Scientists suspected it was because the genes produced proteins that are normally targets of the hormone -- an association that the mutations disrupted. One of the groups was a team of researchers led by Sean Cutler of UC Riverside, whose initial work on the protein PYR1 led to the current study.

"This early research with Sean led to important new questions," said Schroeder, who together with Getzoff initiated the current study. "We wanted to know if abscisic acid bound specifically to the PYR1 protein as a hormone receptor or whether it acted like a glue between PYR1 and partner proteins."

Structure Revealed

Collaborating closely with Schroeder and his lab, Getzoff and her group decided to try to figure out exactly how PYR1 was involved in drought resistance by looking at PYR1 and abscisic acid molecules on the micro-and nano-scales.

"Team researchers Noriyuki Nishimura of UC San Diego, Kenichi Hitomi, Andrew Arvai, and Chiharu Hitomi of Scripps Research, and Robert Rambo of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used a multi-disciplinary attack to overcome challenges in characterizing the abscisic acid sensor and to decipher its mechanism," said Getzoff.

First, Getzoff's lab enlisted the use of a technique called x-ray crystallography. X-ray crystallography is a method that can determine three-dimensional positions for the individual atoms of a protein's structure. To make the technique work, scientists manipulate a protein or some other molecule so that a crystal forms, which is often extremely difficult. If the scientists are successful in making a crystal, it is then placed in front of a beam of x-rays, which diffract when they strike the crystal's atoms. Based on the pattern of diffraction, scientists can reconstruct the shape of the original molecule.

In this case, the team tried to make crystals of PYR1 bound to abscisic acid. They succeeded and were able to solve and analyze the structure.

In addition, Schroeder's lab studied the association of these molecules inside living plant cells. And Rambo did complementary structural studies with x-rays to look at how the binding of hormone to PYR1 caused the protein to change shape in solution.

The research showed that two copies of PYR1 fit snugly together in plant cells. There, they are targeted by abscisic acid. Each copy of the PYR1 molecule has an internal open space like the inside of a tin can, and when a hormone molecule comes along, it fits neatly into one of the two spaces. This induces part of the PYR1 protein that the team calls the "lid" to close. Further structural changes to other parts of the PYR1 molecule initiate interactions with other proteins thus triggering plant processes for resisting drought.

Tantalizing Possibilities

The structure may reveal new ways of improving drought tolerance in plants, notes Getzoff. Such improvements would be a boon for agriculture, which is the single largest use for water in most of the world, consuming up to 90 percent of available water in some of the hottest and most arid parts of the world, which are often prone to drought.

One possible way to translate this research to agricultural products, says Getzoff, would be to design chemicals to mimic the action of abscisic acid. Such chemicals would then be sprayed on crops to protect them in the face of looming drought. The hormone itself would not work for this purpose because industrial-scale production of abscisic acid would be very expensive and sunlight can convert it into an inactive form. Getzoff cautions, however, it would likely take years before such substances were ready for widespread commercial use. Schroeder adds that understanding the structure of the abscisic acid binding site could conceivably help in redesigning the receptor itself to be bound and activated by known cheap and environmentally safe chemicals. That could be a future boon to agriculture.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology.

---

Journal reference:

1. Nishimura, Hitomi, Arvai, and Rambo et al. Structural Mechanism of Abscisic Acid Binding and Signaling by Dimeric PYR1. Science, October 23, 2009

Hubble Sees Graceful Dance Of Two Interacting Galaxies

A pair of galaxies, known collectively as Arp 87, is one of hundreds of interacting and merging galaxies known in our nearby Universe. Arp 87 was originally discovered and catalogued by astronomer Halton Arp in the 1970s. Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is a compilation of astronomical photographs using the Palomar 200-inch Hale and the 48-inch Samuel Oschin telescopes.The resolution in the Hubble image shows exquisite detail and fine structure that was not observable when Arp 87 was first discovered in the 1970's.
The two main players comprising Arp 87 are NGC 3808 on the right (the larger of the two galaxies) and its companion NGC 3808A on the left. NGC 3808 is a nearly face-on spiral galaxy with a bright ring of star formation and several prominent dust arms. Stars, gas, and dust flow from NGC 3808, forming an enveloping arm around its companion. NGC 3808A is a spiral galaxy seen edge-on and is surrounded by a rotating ring that contains stars and interstellar gas clouds. The ring is situated perpendicular to the plane of the host galaxy disk and is called a "polar ring."
As seen in other mergers similar to Arp 87, the corkscrew shape of the tidal material or bridge of shared matter between the two galaxies suggests that some stars and gas drawn from the larger galaxy have been caught in the gravitational pull of the smaller one.
The shapes of both galaxies have been distorted by their gravitational interaction with one another.
Interacting galaxies often exhibit high rates of star formation. Many lines of evidence -- colours of their starlight, intensity of emission lines from interstellar gas, far-infrared output from heated interstellar dust -- support this fact. Some merging galaxies have the highest levels of star formation we can find anywhere in the nearby Universe.
A major aspect of this excess star formation could be properly revealed only when Hubble turned its imaging capabilities toward colliding galaxies. Among the observatory's first discoveries was that galaxies with very active star formation contain large numbers of super star clusters -- clusters more compact and richer in young stars than astronomers were accustomed to seeing in our galactic neighbourhood.
Arp 87 is in the constellation Leo, the Lion, approximately 300 million light-years away from Earth. These observations were taken in February 2007 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Light from isolated blue, green, red, and infrared ranges was combined to form this colour image.

Mars With Ice: Detailed Picture Of Frigid Red Planet Emerges

Mars, like Earth, is a climate-fickle water planet. The main difference, of course, is that water on the frigid Red Planet is rarely liquid, preferring to spend almost all of its time traveling the world as a gas or churning up the surface as ice. That's the global picture literally and figuratively coming into much sharper focus as various Mars-orbiting cameras send back tomes of unprecedented super high-resolution imagery of ever vaster tracts of the planet's surface.What were just a few years ago small hints about Mars' water and climate, as seen in a few "postage-stamp" high-resolution images and topography, have given way to broader theory that explains not only the features seen on the planet today, but imply a dynamic history of Martian climate change.
"When you have postage stamps, it's like studying a hair on an arm instead of the whole arm," said Mars researcher James Head III of Brown University. Head will present the latest integrated global view of Martian surface features and how they fit with Martian climate models on October 28, 2007, at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Denver.
The pictures now reveal a range of ice-made features that show a strong preference to certain latitudes, Head explains. As on Earth, latitude-dependent features can mean only one thing: latitude-dependent climate.
The signs of water ice are obvious today at Mars' poles. But as you move towards the equator, there is plenty of evidence of water ice having shaped the surface in different ways not so long ago.
Not far from either pole, for instance, widespread bumpy polygonal patterned ground suggests the contraction and expansion of icy permafrost ground — very similar to that seen in Earth's Arctic and Antarctic. Next, between 30 and 60 degrees latitude in both hemispheres, the patterned ground gives way to a pervasive pitted texture of once ice-rich dust deposits. Even closer to the equator on the flanks of Mars' equatorial volcanoes are compelling signs of large glaciers, almost exactly like those of Earth. There are also craters which seem to be filled with glacial debris and small valleys which drop precipitously into canyons — which on Earth is usually a strong indicator that a glacier once filled and widened the canyon.
As for where all the ice went, much of it was sublimed away and deposited at the poles. The ice rules the more temperate latitudes only when the tilt of Mars' spin axis is far more extreme than today — up to 45 degrees. That tilt, or obliquity, exposed the poles to a lot more sun during the course of a Martian year, according to climate models, evaporating the ice caps. That same water refroze on the surface in the then darker and colder equatorial and middle latitudes, hence all the evidence of ice and glaciers.
"It's a quest to understand the Martian water cycle," said Head describing his work.
Among the instruments used to study Mars are the Mars Global Surveyor's Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and Camera (MOC), the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Context Camera (CTX) and High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), and the Mars Express's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC).