How to apply for NASA’s next Mars habitat simulation

Looking for a change of pace from your day-to-day routine? Life on Earth feeling a bit overwhelming at the moment? How about a one-year residency alongside three strangers at a 3D-printed Mars habitat simulation? On Friday, NASA announced it is now accepting applications for the second of three missions in its ongoing Crew Health …

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Unprecedented Fire Season Has Raged Through One of Earth’s Biodiversity Hotspots

With ecosystems ranging from Andean highlands to vast plains to the Amazon rain forest, Colombia—perched at the juncture of Central and South America—is home to nearly 10 percent of the world’s biodiversity. Its iconic species include dozens in the genus Espeletia: Seussian-looking plants commonly called frailejones, or “big monks.” Their rosettes of succulent, hairy …

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Discovery Alert: Glowing Cloud Points to a Cosmic Collision

Even within our own solar system, scientists have seen evidence of giant, planetary collisions from long ago. Remaining clues like Uranus’ tilt and the existence of Earth’s moon point to times in our distant history when the planets in our stellar neighborhood slammed together, forever changing their shape and place in orbit. Scientists looking …

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Half-Life Formula: Components and Applications

In the context of radioactive decay and nuclear physics, half-life describes the time it takes for half of a quantity of a substance undergoing decay to go through transformation. In simpler terms, half-life is the duration it takes for a radioactive substance to lose half of its initial radioactivity. For example, if you start …

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A New Look At Our Linguistic Roots

Almost half of all people in the world today speak an Indo-European language, one whose origins go back thousands of years to a single mother tongue. Languages as different as English, Russian, Hindustani, Latin and Sanskrit can all be traced back to this ancestral language. Over the last couple of hundred years, linguists have …

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The trouble with stereotyping Gen Z as troubled

Recent surveys underscoring the prevalence of mental health challenges among young people leave me very concerned — not just about the findings but also about counterproductive perceptions of younger generations. A Common Sense Media poll found that 53% of the country’s 12- to 17-year-olds see mental health challenges as a major problem in their …

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