Week in Science: Mars samples to be abandoned indefinitely. Experts are furious

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May 9—This week, the National Science Foundation stopped all funding for existing and new grants. Plus, being watched can change how your brain works; and samples from Mars may get stranded up there indefinitely. All that and more below. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

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National Science Foundation Halts Funding Indefinitely National Science Foundation staff were told to freeze outgoing funding days after NSF leadership introduced a new policy that requires that grants be screened for "alignment with agency priorities" Dan Garisto, Nature magazine

How Being Watched Changes How You Think We live in an era of constant surveillance. Psychology research shows how this might change how we perceive the world—even unconsciously Simon Makin

The Pyrotechnic Chemistry of the Vatican's Pope Smoke Signals Explained Pyrotechnic chemistry drives the Vatican's recipes for the black and white smoke used to announce papal election outcomes Meghan Bartels

A custom publication sponsored by UL Research Institutes A Quest to Stop Fires Before They Turn Lethal It takes sophisticated science to prevent fires caused by lithium-ion batteries and blazes that start where wild and developed lands meet. Learn more.

NASA Spent Billions to Bring Rocks Back from Mars. Trump Wants to Leave Them There After billions of dollars in spending and decades of planning, NASA may be forced to abandon precious samples of air, rock and soil on the Martian surface. Experts are furious Leonard David, Lee Billings

Ancient Poems Reveal the History of the Endangered Yangtze Porpoise Mentions of the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise in ancient Chinese poetry have revealed missing information about the habitat of the world's only freshwater porpoise Gennaro Tomma

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This Soviet Spacecraft Will Soon Crash-Land on Earth Kosmos-482, a failed mission to Venus from the former Soviet Union that stalled in Earth orbit in the 1970s, is about to fall back to our planet. Exactly where or when it will strike, however, remains unknown Lee Billings

Solar Geoengineering Is Possible with Existing Aircraft, Study Finds Scientists previously thought that solar geoengineering—or releasing particles into the atmosphere to reflect solar rays—would require specialized high-altitude vehicles Chelsea Harvey, E&E News

Criminal AI is Here—And Anyone Can Subscribe A new AI platform called Xanthorox markets itself as a tool for cybercrime, but its real danger may lie in how easily such systems can be built—and sold—by anyone Deni Ellis Béchard

India and Pakistan Remind Us We Need to Stop the Risk of Nuclear War The U.S. needs to set an example for the rest of the world by taking our nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert and negotiating a reduction of our arsenal Alan Robock, Lili Xia

Do 'Alternative' Measles Treatments Work? As the measles outbreak in the U.S. gets bigger, HHS's secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., touts nonvaccine treatments. But they generally don't help and can carry dangers Josh Fischman

The 28 Most Populous Cities in the U.S. Are All Sinking Cities across the U.S., including inland ones such as Denver and Dallas, are settling into the earth, posing increased flooding risks and potentially damaging urban infrastructure Andrea Thompson

Could AI Really Kill Off Humans? Many people believe AI will one day cause human extinction. A little math tells us it wouldn't be that easy Michael J.D. Vermeer

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