Perseverance is gathering samples for return to Earth in the 2030s, but proposed budget cuts could delay or doom that homecoming. Since its touchdown in February 2021, the car-sized, nuclear-powered robot has traveled far and wide across this otherworldly terrain, dutifully gathering samples of rock and soil. Protected in hermetically sealed metal tubes, these specimens are meant for future retrieval and delivery back to Earth, where close-up inspection in state-of-the-art labs might at last provide the first compelling evidence of life beyond Earth. This cooperative program between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) is known as Mars Sample Return (MSR) and has been generations in the making. Unless, that is, the Trump administration gets its way: on May 2 the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) dropped a budgetary bombshell, proposing to cut NASA's top-line funding by a quarter, slash the space agency's science budget by nearly half and entirely eliminate MSR. The cancellation is justified, the OMB document claims, because MSR is “grossly overbudget” and its goals of sample return will instead “be achieved by human missions to Mars.” If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. The news apparently came as a surprise to high-ranking officials. MSR “will be the first round-trip mission to another planet,” she said, “and will be the first time that we actually launch from another planet.” In her remarks, Douglas-Bradshaw did acknowledge the program's growing pains. One recent review estimated that it would cost about $11 billion and return samples to Earth in 2040—a price too high and a time frame too slow to be acceptable, Douglas-Bradshaw said. Last year, triggered by those figures, yet another review envisioned a streamlined version of MSR that could deliver samples as early as 2035 for a cost of some $8 billion. MSR's proposed cancellation would overturn decades of arduous planning and deliberate investments while also diminishing U.S. space leadership on the global stage, says MEPAG chair Victoria Hamilton, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. The project, she notes, was ranked as the highest priority of U.S. planetary science in two consecutive Decadal Surveys—authoritative communal reports that historically give Congress and federal agencies recommendations for future activities. And without MSR other nations could seize the opportunity to pull off sample-return missions of their own before the U.S. and its allies could recover. “It's crucially important that NASA maintain U.S. leadership in deep space by pursuing the ambitious goals outlined in our Decadal Surveys, lest we cede leadership to other nations, such as China.” And while it's true that crewed missions to Mars have long been NASA's polestar, endorsed by both Trump administrations as well as that of former president Joe Biden, many experts lambast the notion that U.S. astronauts could return Perseverance's samples anytime soon. My reaction to the ‘astronauts will do sample return' is: When?! “I know of no credible ‘humans to Mars' scenario that is earlier than 2039 or 2040.” Meanwhile, Hubbard says, China has announced plans for a more basic Mars sampling endeavor around 2030 that would likely entail a lander simply snatching nearby material from some easily accessible spot on the surface. None of which means that humans should be forever forbidden from Mars or that astronauts could play no role whatsoever in sample return, Dreier hastens to add. “There are a number of novel approaches for MSR that should still be considered, including a tighter coupling with future human exploration of Mars. Indeed, President Trump's nominee for running NASA, entrepreneur and two-time private space traveler Jared Isaacman, has yet to officially weigh in on this new MSR development. At his most recent Congressional appearance on April 9— before the OMB's bombshell sent shockwaves through all of U.S. space science—he offered sunny testimony about NASA's bright future. On April 30, the Senate committee that oversees NASA and other federal science agencies gave Isaacman its nod to advance to a formal confirmation vote in the full chamber. That confirmation could be days, weeks or months in the making, however—and it's uncertain whether Isaacman has sufficient political capital to oppose or even question any of the Trump administration's budget-snipping edicts. Amanda Hendrix, director and chief executive officer of the Planetary Science Institute, worries that such potential gaps in political leadership could prove ruinous well beyond the “mystifying and infuriating” possible cancellation of MSR. “These proposed cuts are so bad that we cannot wait for Congress to go through the normal appropriations process. To understand how shocking the prospect of MSR's downfall really is, consider that even some of the endeavor's historic opponents are now speaking up in its defense—albeit with caveats. Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and founder of the Mars Society, has long been a fierce critic of MSR; he has argued that NASA's Mars exploration program would be better served by a more numerous and diverse mix of small- and medium-sized missions. Even so, he can't bring himself to support the proposed cancellation. “While you can raise objections to the MSR mission, that money should be rescheduled to run a Mars exploration program with more rovers, more robotic helicopters, orbiters and life-detection experiments,” Zubrin says. As uncertainty and confusion cloud the outlook for MSR and federally funded science as a whole, longstanding international partners of the U.S. see little choice but to project an outward sense of calm. Look, for instance, to the statement issued on May 5 by ESA's director general Josef Aschbacher that carefully emphasizes the importance of U.S.-European cooperation in space activities. Via ESA, Europe's main contribution to MSR is an Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) that would snare and stow a surface-launched sample-return capsule in Mars orbit, then ferry it back toward our planet. If MSR is mothballed, ERO could become a nearly half-billion-euro boondoggle for ESA, which has an annual budget that's only a small fraction of NASA's. Aschbacher did not directly address ERO or MSR in his statement but did note that a more detailed version of the Trump administration's budget request is expected in late May or early June. “Thus it should be kept in mind that this is still very much a work in progress.” Based on the outcome of that process and other further developments, the space agency will hold meetings later this year to plot “potential actions and alternative scenarios for impacted ESA programmes and related European industry.” ESA, Aschbacher pointedly added, “has strong partnerships with space agencies from around the globe and is committed to not only being a reliable partner, but a strong and desirable partner.” Perhaps not by coincidence, two days after his statement, Aschbacher was in New Delhi, where he signed a joint statement of intent between ESA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to cooperate on future crewed missions to low-Earth orbit and to the moon. Leonard David is author of Moon Rush: The New Space Race (National Geographic, 2019) and Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet (National Geographic, 2016). He has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Lee Billings is a science journalist specializing in astronomy, physics, planetary science, and spaceflight, and is a senior editor at Scientific American. In addition to his work for Scientific American, Billings's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Wired, New Scientist, Popular Science, and many other publications.Billings joined Scientific American in 2014, and previously worked as a staff editor at SEED magazine.

India and Pakistan Remind Us We Need to Stop the Risk of Nuclear War After a terrorist attack that killed at least 26 people, mostly Indian tourists, in Kashmir in April, India blamed the attack on Pakistan, threatened to cut off that nation's water supplies and followed up in May with airstrikes. India and Pakistan each have about 170 nuclear weapons. Like it or not, humanity still has a nuclear dagger pointed at its throat. But there is another choice that starts with the U.S. If we take our land-based missiles off their hair-trigger alerts and negotiate with Russia to reduce our nuclear arsenal, we could set an example for the rest of the world. If we eventually sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the U.S. could provide an example to Iran and other nations with an interest in building their own nuclear arsenal. If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. One of us (Robock) published an article in Scientific American 15 years ago describing how a war in South Asia, like the one now possible between India and Pakistan, could produce global climate change and threaten the world's food supply, but we did not know how large that threat would be. In the years since then we have calculated, for a range of smoke amounts released from nuclear war, the specific effects on agriculture in each nation. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could kill one to two billion people through starvation in the two years after the war. The U.S. and Russia have more than 8,000 nuclear weapons. The direct impacts of blast, radiation and fire on those attacked by nuclear weapons would be horrific, as we know from what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, but 10 to 20 times more people would die from famine. Many people assume that there will never be another nuclear war, since it has now been 80 years and several generations since the last one. They also have been told that nuclear deterrence must be maintained to keep us safe. Yet threats to use nuclear weapons from Russia and North Korea, and even from the U.S. president, have worried many. President Trump just proposed a budget for the next fiscal year with a 13 percent increase for the Defense Department. Our nuclear “triad” is composed of land-based missiles, submarine missiles and nuclear bombs that could be dropped from airplanes. The theory is that we will not be attacked because we will attack an enemy if they attack us, thus deterring them. That is, that we will attack an enemy, producing so much smoke that we will be unable to grow any crops for more than five years and thus all starve to death. This is not mutual assured destruction (the so-called “MAD” theory). The upcoming Independent Study on Potential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, a report from the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine due out this summer, the first such report since 1985, will make this danger more plain. In 2017, after three international conferences on the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, including the indirect effects on food supply based on our work, the United Nations passed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which prohibits possession, manufacture, development and testing of nuclear weapons, stationing and installment of nuclear weapons or assistance in such activities, by its parties. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which led the effort to get this treaty, was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.” For deterrence to succeed, there must be no use of nuclear weapons by accident, terrorists, computer malfunctions, hackers or unstable leaders. As Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN, said in her Nobel Peace Prize Lecture on December 10, 2017, “If only a small fraction of today's nuclear weapons were used, soot and smoke from the firestorms would loft high into the atmosphere—cooling, darkening and drying the Earth's surface for more than a decade. It would obliterate food crops, putting billions at risk of starvation. Yet we continue to live in denial of this existential threat.… The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be. The only rational course of action is to cease living under the conditions where our mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away.” When Carl Sagan, a leader in early nuclear-winter research, was asked if he didn't want to keep our nuclear weapons as a deterrent, he said: “For myself, I would far rather have a world in which the climatic catastrophe cannot happen, independent of the vicissitudes of leaders, institutions, and machines. This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American. Alan Robock is a distinguished professor in the department of environmental sciences at Rutgers University. He is a co-author, with Owen Brian Toon, of the upcoming book Earth in Flames: How an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs, and How We Can Avoid a Similar Fate From Nuclear Winter. Lili Xia is an assistant research professor in the department of environmental sciences at Rutgers University. Subscribe to Scientific American to learn and share the most exciting discoveries, innovations and ideas shaping our world today.

You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar You have full access to this article via your institution. Although the study focused on a major US biomedical-science funding agency, the results might persuade governments worldwide “to implement policies that give stable funding to researchers”, says study co-author Aruhan Bai, a science-policy researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institutes of Science and Development (CASISD) in Beijing. Continuous funding, Bai says, will ultimately “encourage the real prosperity of science”. In the new study, Bai and her co-author, Baicun Li, also at CASISD, analysed the scientific output of 642 US scientists who won NIH funding between 1985 and 2021. The study focused on recipients of R01 grants — common, yet highly competitive, awards from the NIH that provide up to five years of financial support and can be renewed several times. As of last year, the success rate of winning an R01 grant was 20%, on average, and the rate for winning a renewal was about 45%. To evaluate the scientists' output after renewal decisions, the duo used public NIH-funding data, researchers' publications listed in the biomedical-literature repository PubMed and a newer database called SciSciNet2 that contains scientific publication data and links to related funding and usage information. The pair also measured the ‘switching probability' for scientists — how likely they were to hop to new research topics — and the ‘diversity', or spread, of topics they studied using a model that calculated the similarity of their publications over a set period.The results revealed that researchers who received renewals without a funding gap were less likely to switch research topics and investigate a wide array of subjects than were those in the control group, and they produced papers featuring newer or more unconventional combinations of ideas. “Innovation takes more than 10 or 20 years of continuous work,” she says. How a PhD student's lab size affects their chance of future academic success Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones Controversial geoengineering projects to test Earth-cooling tech funded by UK agency ‘Second chance': convicted US chemist Charles Lieber moves to Chinese university Major European institutes join race to save US science data How a PhD student's lab size affects their chance of future academic success An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, delivered to your inbox every weekday. Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Whether you're a feline fanatic or with the canine crowd, maybe you've noticed your cat has an eerie resemblance to a popular purebred pug on social media, or that your dog is starting to look like a lot of Instagram cats. This phenomenon isn't a trick of the imagination. Some breeds of dogs and cats really are starting to look uncannily similar, and it's all because of the human aesthetic preferences that go into breeding them. They did a double take, however, after comparing the shapes of dog and cat skulls. “I don't think anyone would have expected that.” Regardless of whether they happen to be dog or cat lovers, humans tend to prefer flat faces and huge eyes, most likely because these features closely mirror infants of our own species and trigger parental instincts. Seeing these features automatically puts many of us into nurturing mode—so much so, in fact, that caring for pets is also sometimes referred to as alloparenting (which refers to parenting anything other than direct offspring). As precocial animals, they are walking, leaping, pawing at the carpet, and knocking over houseplants just weeks after they open their eyes. Human infants don't even begin crawling until about 7 months. The merging of dog and cat features is an example of convergent evolution, which happens when unrelated organisms (which may even live far apart for each other) evolve similar characteristics because of the environmental pressures they face. This has been going on since there was life on Earth—for example, when fossils from what appeared to be a saber-tooth cat emerged in Argentina, scientists examining the bones realized that the creature was actually a monstrous marsupial that had developed fangs to tear through leftover carcasses. Divergent evolution, which results in speciation, is the opposite. Canids (dogs) and felids (cats) diverged from each other 50 million years ago. There are still those of us (including this author) who love creatures that don't even look remotely human as our own. But, in general, people tend to melt at anything that looks human-ish. Problems with this arise when an animal's health is compromised for its looks. And pugs did not evolve these characteristics on their own—they used to be almost unrecognizable by today's standards, with longer faces and legs. Your neighbor's very expensive designer dog went and had puppies with a stray of indeterminate breed? Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting. A Man Let Deadly Snakes Bite Him For Science

The military significance of the Athar region of North Sinai may have pre-dated Ptolemaic-era and Roman-era fortresses already uncovered at the Tel Abu Seifi archaeological site. We know this thanks to the discovery of what is likely a third—and older—defensive structure for Egypt's “fortress of the east.” and the other from Roman rule during 30 B.C. Sharif Fathi, minister of Tourism and Antiquities, said the fresh discovery shows the secrets of eastern military fortresses of Egypt over multiple centuries, and the importance of the location as a military and industrial center throughout time. The additional information also more fully maps the Egyptian defenses on its eastern border, said Mohamed Ismail Khaled, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, reaffirming that Sinai was once Egypt's eastern gateway and its first military stronghold. The team believes that the newly found mixture of interconnected rectangular buildings near the third fort were likely used as living quarters for soldiers and then reused over time. The road was paved with limestone tiles and covered an older path underneath it, which also included limestone, likely from the Ptolemaic era. Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. This Tooth Changes Part of Christianity's History Scientists Spotted the Milky Way on a Sarcophagus Hikers Found an Old Can Filled With Gold Coins African Rock Art Depicts Ancient Horned Reptile Scientists Found an Ancient Figurine With No Face

We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Living beings reduced only to skin and bones through consenting abstinence from food consumption. Asceticism in Christianity as practiced for centuries can comprise an array of devotional practices from fasting to meditation. Though these acts of extreme deprivation and self-harm were condemned by Church figures like Saint Barsanuphius and John the Prophet, radical acts like Simeon Stylites' 36 years atop a pillar have been immortalized in works as far ranging as a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and a 1965 film by the Mexican director Luis Bunuel. But while these pop culture depictions of “ecstatic suffering” vary in style and genre, one thing remains consistent: the practitioners depicted are always male. “Only men performed self-punishment in the Byzantine period,” a recent Haaretz article notes of the general assumption made by historians. The evidence in question was found within a Byzantine monastery near the Old City of Jerusalem, which likely existed from 350 to 650 A.D. But one had been so damaged by tree roots and other degradation that the so-called “diagnostic bones,” primarily the pelvis, were indecipherable. What was evident about it, however, was that these remains had belonged to a practitioner of a particularly extreme form of asceticism, as the bones had been wrapped in chains. But, remarkably, a different kind of analysis had previously been pioneered by Dr. Paula Kotli and their team for the purposes of studying ancient animal domestication. “In animaldom, Kotli and others developed a methodology to sex ancient remains based on a protein in dental enamel, amelogenin, which differs slightly between males and females,” Haaretz summarizes. When the tooth of this chain-bound ascetic was subjected to analysis, there was no Y-linked amelogenin present, which highly suggests the tooth's owner had been female. We say “highly suggests” because there is some wiggle room here. Since men have both the X- and Y-chromosomes, it's possible this tooth at one time had a Y-linked amelogenin, which simply didn't survive as well and wasn't discovered in the analysis. This discovery offers a new insight into ancient devotional practices, and broadens our understanding of the spectrum of early Christian worship, not just in terms of what was practiced, but who was permitted to practice it. Michale Natale is a News Editor for the Hearst Enthusiast Group. As a writer and researcher, he has produced written and audio-visual content for more than fifteen years, spanning historical periods from the dawn of early man to the Golden Age of Hollywood. Is the Key to Human Immortality This Sea Creature? Excavation Uncovers Skull Which Could Be a King Why the USS Gerald R. Ford Is Such a Badass Ship A Surprising Reason Why Your Pee May Turn Red

Mount Sinai researchers have discovered distinct roles for two dopamine receptors located on nerve cells within the portion of the brain that controls approach vs. avoidance behavior. These receptors potentially influence anxiety and mood disorders whose origins are still unclear. Their work expands the field's knowledge of dopamine signaling beyond its well-known actions in other brain regions that influence reward and motivation, and sets the stage for future research into dopamine dysregulation in a range of anxiety and depressive disorders. "Healthy and dysregulated emotional processing related to an individual's ability to resolve conflict between approach and avoidance when making decisions on a moment-by-moment basis have long implicated the hippocampus," says senior author Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD, Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience and Director of The Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Chief Scientific Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System. The hippocampus coordinates decision-making in anxiety-inducing situations, like when an individual has to choose whether to obtain food or drink under threatening situations. Researchers learned that D1 and D2 dopamine receptors expressed in different neuronal populations are called into play to help execute approach/avoidance decisions. These receptors and the cells that express them mediate opposite approach/avoidance responses, and are differentially impacted by dopamine transmission in that region of the brain. Another unexpected behavioral observation was that mice whose D2 cells were artificially activated became much less fearful. "These discoveries underscored for us that dopamine is an important component of the hippocampal circuitry and that dopamine signaling should be reconsidered in many brain regions where it was previously overlooked, especially those associated with learning, memory, and emotional behavior," notes Dr. Nestler, whose considerable research over the years has been designed to better understand the molecular mechanisms of drug addiction and depression. "Our work further implicates dopamine dysregulation in anxiety and mood disorders." The next step for Dr. Nestler and his team is to show precisely how the dopamine-hippocampus circuit that modulates approach/avoidance is dysregulated in several stress-related conditions, such as anxiety disorders and major depressive disorders (which involve increased avoidance) and in drug addiction (where individuals seek drug rewards despite harmful consequences). "By helping to delineate the neuromodulatory circuits that govern these disorders," says Dr. Nestler, "we're taking an essential step toward addressing a leading cause of disability in humans worldwide." This work was funded by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Mental Health, and Hope for Depression Research Foundation. Stay informed with ScienceDaily's free email newsletter, updated daily and weekly. Keep up to date with the latest news from ScienceDaily via social networks: Tell us what you think of ScienceDaily -- we welcome both positive and negative comments.

Professor Keehoon Kim and Ph.D. candidate Jaewon Byun from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) have developed an "Intelligent Autonomous Wiping and UV-C Disinfection Robot" capable of automating hospital disinfection processes. Moreover, individuals' compliance with manually conducted disinfection tasks tends to vary, and human performance is inconsistent. Furthermore, existing technologies, such as UV-C robots and hydrogen peroxide vapor systems, have inherent limitations in completely removing contaminants hidden in obscured or hard-to-reach areas. To address these challenges, the research team developed an autonomous robot capable of both navigating hospital environments and performing disinfection tasks. A key feature of the robot is its dual disinfection system: first, it utilizes a robotic manipulator to physically wipe surfaces and remove contaminants; second, it employs UV-C irradiation to disinfect hard-to-reach corners and narrow spaces. The robot's performance was validated through real-world testing at Pohang St. Mary's Hospital. The team conducted bacterial culture experiments to confirm the effectiveness of disinfection and carried out repeated autonomous operations to verify its long-term usability in clinical settings. Precision control algorithms minimize operational failures, while the integration of a self-sanitizing station and wireless charging system ensures sustained disinfection operations. Professor Keehoon Kim emphasized, "Although COVID-19 has transitioned into an endemic phase, it remains essential to prepare for future pandemics. We will continue advancing this disinfection robot technology beyond hospitals to public facilities, various social infrastructures, and everyday environments to further reduce infection risks." Stay informed with ScienceDaily's free email newsletter, updated daily and weekly. Keep up to date with the latest news from ScienceDaily via social networks: Tell us what you think of ScienceDaily -- we welcome both positive and negative comments.

An international study led by the Institut de Neurociències at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (INc-UAB) has shown that increasing levels of the Klotho protein in mice extends lifespan and improves both physical and cognitive health when aging. Now, in an article published in Molecular Therapy, an international research team led by Professor Miguel Chillón, ICREA researcher at the INc-UAB, has shown that increasing levels of the secreted form of the Klotho protein (s-KL) improves aging in mice. The team treated young animals with gene therapy vectors that caused their cells to secrete more s-KL. At 24 months of age, roughly equivalent to 70 years in humans, they found that the treatment had improved the animals' muscle, bone, and cognitive health. In this study, we wanted to see whether s-KL could also be beneficial for healthy aging by examining a broad range of factors," explains Miguel Chillón. Improvements in bone health were also observed, particularly in females, with greater preservation of the internal bone structure (trabeculae), suggesting a potential protective effect against osteoporosis. "We now have viral vectors that can reach the brain after being administered intravenously, which would make it easier to safely transfer this therapy to humans. Another option would be to administer the protein directly as a drug instead of using viral vectors, but we still need to find an efficient way to deliver it and ensure it reaches the target organs," explains Joan Roig-Soriano, INc-UAB researcher and first author of the article. The research group had already patented the use of Klotho to treat cognitive deficits, and following this study, three new patents were filed. These patents protect the use of Klotho for treating bone and muscle deficits, as well as for developing therapies aimed at increasing longevity. "If we can find a viable delivery method, s-KL could make a significant contribution to improving people's quality of life and helping to build the healthiest society possible," the researchers conclude. Stay informed with ScienceDaily's free email newsletter, updated daily and weekly. Or view our many newsfeeds in your RSS reader: Keep up to date with the latest news from ScienceDaily via social networks: Tell us what you think of ScienceDaily -- we welcome both positive and negative comments.