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The discovery of rare painted rock art featuring cattle in one of the driest parts of the Sahara Desert indicates that the region was once covered in grass, swamps and waterholes, making it a resource-rich home to a diverse community of animal species.

Researchers say sperm whales have a complex communication system, an example of how new technology is opening up the mysterious world of animal language.

Northwestern, Brown, Rutgers and University of Minnesota are among the handful of schools that have reached agreements with student protesters. Here's how they did it, and what could come next.

SpaceX has unveiled its extravehicular activity (EVA) suit for spacewalks. It plans to use them during its upcoming Polaris Dawn mission, where four astronauts will spend up to five days orbiting Earth in a SpaceX Dragon capsule with the goal of testing Starlink in space and conducting research to prepare for a potential base on the Moon and the human colonization of Mars. The mission will be the first commercial spacewalk as well as the first time four astronauts from one crew enter space's vacuum simultaneously.

The low-profile suits have 3D-printed helmets with polycarbonate visors. There's a copper and indium tin oxide outer coating and an anti-fog and anti-glare treatment, as well as a built-in camera and heads-up display (HUD) that will show the astronaut's suit pressure, temperature, and humidity levels while tracking the amount of time they spend in space, according to a SpaceX video.

The Earth’s magnetic field is vital for life – without it, the Sun’s radiation would sterilize the planet. But a new study suggests we wouldn’t be here at all if that magnetic field hadn’t almost completely collapsed half a billion years ago.

Taxpayer-funded special ed schools have hired relatives and struck business deals with board members. Nearly three out of every four of the private organizations had possible conflicts. State oversight of the schools’ finances is lax.

There’s still much to be learned about our prehistory. But we can’t help using it to explain the societies we have or to justify the ones we want.

CATL made headlines around the globe last August when it presented the Shenxing battery, an LFP pack capable of adding 400 kilometers (249 miles) of range in a mere 10 minutes at the charger. Not a year later, and that pack's powering actual cars. This year, the company has rolled the tech into an…

Jason Prokowiew's father was 10 in 1941, when the Nazis that invaded Belarus murdered his mother. How to get food -- and how to survive without it -- became a through line in his survival story. Now, with famine imminent in Gaza, Prokowiew is reminded that living without food is not something humans ought to know.

Not since the Vietnam War has a protest movement reached college campuses with such fury. We look at the reverberations at one school, Harvard University.

Some teachers have found a way to combat classroom burnout: stand up comedy. In Oregon, the Teacher Show features professors, preschool teachers and everyone in between joking about their day jobs.

In its third year, NPR's College Podcast challenge received more than 500 entries from all around the U.S. We've listened to them all and narrowed it down to 10 finalists.

Climate journalist Zoë Schlanger says research suggests that plants are indeed "intelligent" in complex ways that challenge our understanding of agency and consciousness. Her book is The Light Eaters.

Earth, Mars and Venus all looked pretty similar when they first formed. Today, Mars is dry, cold, and dusty; Venus has a hot, crushing atmosphere. Why did these sibling planets turn out so different?

SpaceX has shared footage of a stunning orbital sunrise captured during the deployment of another batch of Starlink satellites.

A startup says it’s made “the first-ever Bluetooth connection directly to space” by operating a pair of satellites capable of receiving the wireless signals. 

Seattle-based Hubble Network used off-the-shelf Bluetooth parts and low-Earth orbiting satellites that launched in March. "These aren’t just any satellites; they’ve successfully reached their orbits and managed to receive signals from a simple 3.5mm Bluetooth chip over an astonishing distance of 600km,” the company said in a blog post. 

TechCrunch adds that Hubble Network has patented a phase array antenna for small satellites that essentially acts as “magnifying glass” capable of picking up Bluetooth signals, which can have an effective range of up to more than 1 kilometer.     

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, farther away than the Sun, has sent data through a laser over a record-breaking distance, and done so even faster than expected. The breakthrough could help establish high-speed communications with human colonies on Mars.

According to the filed complaint, Lopez had been facing harassment and discrimination for months leading up to the incident, including being called the N-word multiple times by white students.

It is "the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with a medical plant," biologist Isabelle Laumer told NPR. She says the orangutan, called Rakus, is now thriving.

Mathematicians think abstract tools from a field called symplectic geometry might help with planning missions to far-off moons and planets.

The embattled Boeing spacecraft Starliner is scheduled to launch next week, after more than a decade of delays and development. Given the history of the craft and the company's recent scandals, it's a nail-biter – so let's recap CST-100 Starliner.

For more than 50 years, administrators, school officials, policy makers and my fellow teachers have wrung their hands about grade inflation, writes Seth Czarnecki. It’s hard to see a realistic way out, but we must.

University faculty from UCLA to Columbia have put their bodies and livelihoods on the line amid a brutal, violent response to student protests for Gaza.

This year's winning entry is an emotional account of living with schizoaffective disorder, from a student at Miami Dade College.