NASA aims to send a man and a woman to the moon by 2024. This is the goal of its Artemis program. But for Artemis to succeed, the U. S. space agency first needs to solve a big problem: the damaging threat of moon dust.

Over billions of years, celestial （天体的）bodies, such as asteroids and meteors, have slammed into the moon. These hits have crushed some lunar rocks into dust. The surfs radiation gives the dust an electric charge that makes it stick to everything. Those powdery bits are like ^u broken pieces of glass" , notes Mihaly Horanyi, a physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder. The dust is so rough, in fact, that it can damage equipment. If taken in, it might even harm an astronaut's health. Horanyi is part of a team that has now figured out how to overcome one troubling aspect of the dust: its static cling, using a low-powered electron beam （电子束）.When shined onto the dust, that beam sends the dust flying.

During the 1970s, the astronauts in NASA's Apollo missions relied on a very low-tech system to clean lunar dust off their spacesuits. They swept it away with what looked like the brushes used to paint a house. But the electrically charged nature of space dust tended to fail such hand sweepers.

The new electron-beam broom takes advantage of the dust's electrical characteristic. As the beam hits the dust, it releases electrons into the tiny spaces between particles. Some of these negatively charged electrons will be absorbed by the surrounding dust.

One problem with the electron beam, at least for now, is that it leaves up to one-fourth of the dust behind. The Boulder group aims to strengthen that cleaning power. Horanyi says the electron beam is just one of several ways future space explorers could keep surfaces clean. Others might include changes to a spacesuit's design.

Parents naturally comfort their children when they are scared, but new research shows that some reactions may actually increase their children’s feelings of anxiety. A new Arizona State University study shows that parents whose children suffer from anxiety often fall into the “protection trap” that may influence their child’s behavior. Researchers analyzed self-report questionnaires and clinical interviews that were completed by 70 children aged 6 to 16 who were being treated for anxiety at a university-based program.

The “protection trap” identified through the study involves parents who allow their kids to avoid situations that are scary or uncomfortable. Excuses may be made in order to avoid scary things or situations, which can increase anxiety. The more a child avoids a situation that may be scary, the scarier it becomes because they don’t have a chance to develop the skills or strategies to deal with the situation properly. Sometimes parents may tell the child what to do, how to behave and what to say during those situations. Or, they might do things on behalf of their child. Children don’t overcome the situation and they keep feeling anxious.

Researchers suggest parents monitor how their own reaction to their child’s anxiety affects their kids. thinking about the best way to respond and giving their children positive attention when they do something brave or face their fears in scary situations. “Even anxious children naturally face fears and situations that are frightening to them. Parents can look out for this type of bravery, no matter how small, and reward their child. Attention is often the most powerful type of reward so doing easy things like giving a high five, a smile, or a simple ‘I like how you faced your fears!’ can go a long way,” Holly, one of the researchers, said.

Researchers set out to understand more about the connection between people’s emotions and behavior at bird feeders and how that may impact conservation in a study published in People and Nature.

“We know that bird feeding is popular across the world, but not a lot is known about people who feed birds,” said lead author Ashely Dayer, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech.

In the study, Dayer and her workmates made use of Project Feeder Watch, a citizen science program from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The team sent an email to a subset of the project participants in all U.S. states and asked them questions about observations made at their feeders, how those observations made them feel and any management actions they took.

“Those who fed birds seemed to notice whether the predator(捕食者) near their feeders was a cat, which is non-native, or a hawk(鹰), which is native. They also had different emotional responses to the two. About half the people studied thought hawks were interesting. Cats, on the other hand, tended to cause anger,” said Dayer.

Researchers also determined that people changed their actions after noticing changes at their feeders. People tended to scare off cats, move their feeders or provide shelter for birds when they spotted cats around their feeders. When people saw sick birds, which caused emotions like sadness and worry, they often provided more food.

Another thing they found surprising was the factors that impact people’s decisions about how much to feed birds. “Cold weather mattered more than what’s usually predictive of human behavior—time and money,” Dayer said. Feeding birds when it was colder outside was more important to the participants, which showed their commitment to bird feeding, despite the cost of bird food.

Dayer said the next step would be looking at the impacts of feeders on birds themselves including disease risk and how feeders may influence bird behavior.

“Being able to understand how people decide what to do and what effects these actions have on birds can help answer bird conservation questions and help bird conservation organizations work with people that feed birds to ensure their activity has the most benefit,” Dayer said.