Disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires are increasing in frequency, and many locations are experiencing repeated disasters. Each disaster can create legacy conditions that affect the outcome of the disasters that follow. New research is helping to understand and predict these important legacies.

Using some common household cleaning products lead to the formation of indoor pollutants. During realistic use, we observed for the first time that chemical vapors from certain cleaning products can rapidly change into small airborne particles harmful to the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. This has consequences for professional cleaners and people frequently exposed to cleaning products.

Imagine telling explorers of the New World that the Fountain of Youth was hidden in their cells. That's probably what Kristen C. Browder's team could say after successfully reversing the biological clock of living mice. According to their results, the secrets of rejuvenation seem to be buried in the heart of each of our cells, in other words, in our genes.

Ships expose Antarctica to many kinds of human impacts, including invasive species that cannot cross the rough seas of the Southern Ocean without help. To successfully conserve iconic Antarctic species and environments we need to know where non-native species might come from, and where to look for them in Antarctica.

The discovery of planets outside the Solar System began thirty years ago and has been on the rise since, but how much do we know about these planets? Can we find out what they are made of and if they are habitable? Can we use our limited knowledge of the Earth’s interiors to predict the habitability of these faraway planets? Some scientists used laser beams on a piece of iron and did just that.

Mars is nowadays a frozen desert devoid of liquid water, but it was not always like this: giant valleys and canyons on its surface show that at some point in the remote past, water existed on the Martian surface. Trying to understand the origin of these valleys, we found answers in an unexpected place: the plumbing system of ice sheets.