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Editorial article, editorial: advances in mars research and exploration.

• 1 School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
• 2 Institut für Kartographie, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany
• 3 CNRS, UMR 6112, Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géosciences, Nantes, France

Editorial on the Research Topic Advances in Mars research and exploration

The pursuit of finding habitable conditions or life outside our planet has always been fascinating. In terms of habitability, Mars is the most Earth-like planet within our solar system as it displays comparable physical determinants such as radius, mass, and temperature, and physicochemical markers such as available energy, substrate stability, suitable chemistry, and past liquid stability. In addition, the Martian regolith and subsurface contain water in frozen and possibly in liquid or transient liquid states; Mars has moderate surface gravity to enable future colonization; and the Martian climate, although harsh, can still theoretically support life forms analogous to terrestrial extremophiles. Thus, Mars research and exploration holds a significant place in planetary sciences, advancing our knowledge beyond the Earth.

The interest towards Mars research and exploration has gained significant momentum in the past three decades owing to the advances in computing, hardware, remote sensors, public data availability, and outreach. The next stages of this exploration demand more multidisciplinary efforts to effectively use the vast planetary data being gathered using various missions, platforms, and techniques. With this overview, our Research Topic aimed to bring together research and reviews from the Mars community covering topics on geomorphology, atmosphere, geochemistry, and future exploration. The editorial team consisted of academics from early, mid, and advanced career stages, offering valuable perspectives and feedbacks throughout the editorial process. After thorough review, all the accepted papers in the present Research Topic were novel, comprehensive, and informative with emphasis on the systematic and recent advances in our knowledge, tools, techniques, and methods for Mars research and exploration.

Within Martian geomorphology and geochemistry disciplines, two papers were accepted for publication. The first such paper by Howari et al. investigates certain aspects of recurring slope lineae (RSL), the dark albedo features which are often interpreted as possible transiently flowing water on Martian surface. Using multisensory datasets from High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), Context Camera (CTX), and Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), Howari et al. start with providing an updated global distribution map of RSL sites, and they further go on to perform a geomorphological and compositional analysis of Asimov and Hale craters, two confirmed RSL sites. Howari et al. also investigate the possibility of RSL activity due to deliquescence mediated by favourable temperature and humidity conditions, concluding that the local temperatures in Asimov Crater are high enough to allow deliquescence during the months of RSL activity with a water vapor column nearly five times higher than those measured before RSL appearance. The second paper addressing Martian geomorphology, authored by Chao and Zhibao , investigates the distribution characteristics and patterns of dune landforms. This study also took a multisensory approach, taking key inputs from CTX, Thermal Radiation Imaging System (THEMIS), HiRISE, and MOLA. The results from Chao and Zhibao indicate that the Martian dunefields are spatially distinct, scattered, and mainly concentrated in high-latitude and polar regions. Similar to their terrestrial counterparts, Martian dunes are mainly located in low-lying geomorphic units which favour sand accumulation. Based on these results, Chao and Zhibao conclude the limited sand supply as an important feature of the Martian dune development conditions, and their spatially scattered nature can provide important clues to understanding the Martian aeolian environment and evolutionary history.

The other published papers explored various aspects of the Martian electromagnetic and radiation environment. For example, Gonçalves et al. validate a model which is used to predict the radiation environment expected at different locations on the Martian orbit, atmosphere and surface, as a function of epoch, latitude and longitude. The model is called the detailed Martian Energetic Radiation Environment Model (dMEREM), developed for the European Space Agency, and it takes into account the specific atmospheric and soil composition, based on different particle propagation codes for primary Galactic Cosmic Rays or Solar Particle Events. Gonçalves et al. validate dMEREM with differential proton fluxes measured with the NASA Curiosity rover Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) at the Gale Crater, at the surface of Mars. The authors report a good agreement between the proton fluxes measured at the surface with RAD and the corresponding dMEREM predictions, thus proving the usefulness of dMEREM in the assessment of the expected ionising radiation field on the surface of Mars. The only review article in this Research Topic, authored by Mittelholz and Johnson discusses the Martian crustal magnetic field, discussing its presence, magnitude, and significance from the Martian subsurface to its upper atmosphere. Research on Mars’ crustal magnetic field can offer vital clues about the planet’s interior evolution and surface crustal modification. While available datasets have provided useful information on the acquisition and modification of magnetization in the crust, the authors highlight several research gaps regarding the nature and origin of crustal magnetization, and the past of Martian magnetism. Mittelholz and Johnson also discuss the ways in which all these research questions can be addressed through laboratory analysis, modelling and new datasets.

Finally, two of the published papers aimed at future Mars exploration. The paper by Poian et al. argues in favour of the concept of science autonomy to reduce data redundancy. As a pioneering work in this domain, the authors develop a proof-of-concept for Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) instrument onboard the planned ExoMars rover, where MOMA will be able to perform selected onboard science data analyses and then act upon those analyses through self-adjustment and tuning of instrument parameters. Poian et al. also discuss the challenges and limitations of this implementation for future missions. Another paper by Abel et al. covers all the more important topic of in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) for future Mars missions. The authors integrated climate data into a radiative transfer model to show the usefulness of photovoltaics-based power systems as an adequate and practical solution to sustain a crewed mission for an extended period and that too over a large fraction of the Martian surface. Thus, all the published studies in this Research Topic demonstrate the importance of different research and exploration activities aimed at improving our understanding of the Red Planet. Many progresses are expected in relation with the forthcoming exciting Mars missions which are supposed to target the current four goals, prioritised by the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), pertaining to Martian habitability, climate, geology, and preparation for human exploration.

Author contributions

AB and LS organised this Research Topic with valuable support from MB and AG. AB and LS initiated the first draft of the editorial with subsequent edits and inputs from MB and AG.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Keywords: Mars, geomorphology, RSL, dunes, radiation modelling, science autonomy, in-situ resource utilisation

Citation: Bhardwaj A, Sam L, Buchroithner MF and Galofre AG (2022) Editorial: Advances in Mars research and exploration. Front. Astron. Space Sci. 9:971104. doi: 10.3389/fspas.2022.971104

Received: 16 June 2022; Accepted: 07 July 2022; Published: 04 August 2022.

Edited and reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Bhardwaj, Sam, Buchroithner and Galofre. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Anshuman Bhardwaj, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

Advances in Mars Research and Exploration

NEWS | April 24, 2023

Nasa insight study provides clearest look ever at martian core.

One of InSight's Last Images : This is one of the last images ever taken by NASA’s InSight Mars lander. Captured on Dec. 11, 2022, the 1,436th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, it shows InSight’s seismometer on the Red Planet’s surface. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Download image ›

A pair of quakes in 2021 sent seismic waves deep into the Red Planet’s core, giving scientists the best data yet on its size and composition.

While NASA retired its InSight Mars lander in December, the trove of data from its seismometer will be pored over for decades to come. By looking at seismic waves the instrument detected from a pair of temblors in 2021, scientists have been able to deduce that Mars’ liquid iron core is smaller and denser than previously thought.

The findings, which mark the first direct observations ever made of another planet’s core, were detailed in a paper published April 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Occurring on Aug. 25 and Sept. 18, 2021, the two temblors were the first identified by the InSight team to have originated on the opposite side of the planet from the lander – so-called farside quakes. The distance proved crucial: The farther a quake happens from InSight, the deeper into the planet its seismic waves can travel before being detected.

“We needed both luck and skill to find, and then use, these quakes,” said lead author Jessica Irving, an Earth scientist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. “Farside quakes are intrinsically harder to detect because a great deal of energy is lost or diverted away as seismic waves travel through the planet.”

Irving noted that the two quakes occurred after the mission had been operating on the Red Planet for well over a full Martian year (about two Earth years), meaning the Marsquake Service – the scientists who initially scrutinize seismographs – had already honed their skills. It also helped that a meteoroid impact caused one of the two quakes; impacts provide a precise location and more accurate data for a seismologist to work with. (Because Mars has no tectonic plates, most marsquakes are caused by faults, or rock fractures, that form in the planet’s crust due to heat and stress.) The quakes’ size was also a factor in the detections.

“These two farside quakes were among the larger ones heard by InSight,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “If they hadn’t been so big, we couldn’t have detected them.”

One of the challenges in detecting these particular quakes was that they’re in a “shadow zone” – a part of the planet from which seismic waves tend to be refracted away from InSight, making it hard for a quake’s echo to reach the lander unless it is very large. Detecting seismic waves that cross through a shadow zone is exceptionally difficult; it’s all the more impressive that the InSight team did so using just the one seismometer they had on Mars. (In contrast, many seismometers are distributed on Earth.)

“It took a lot of seismological expertise from across the InSight team to tease the signals out from the complex seismograms recorded by the lander,” Irving said.

A previous paper that offered a first glimpse of the planet’s core relied on seismic waves that reflected off its outer boundary, providing less precise data. Detecting seismic waves that actually traveled through the core allows scientists to refine their models of what the core looks like. Based on the findings documented in the new paper, about a fifth of the core is composed of elements such as sulfur, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.

“Determining the amount of these elements in a planetary core is important for understanding the conditions in our solar system when planets were forming and how these conditions affected the planets that formed,” said one of the paper’s co-authors, Doyeon Kim of ETH Zurich.

That was always the central goal of InSight’s mission: to study the deep interior of Mars and help scientists understand how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.

More About the Mission

JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure ( SEIS ) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. The Marsquake Service is headed by ETH Zurich, with significant contributions from IPGP; the University of Bristol; Imperial College; ISAE (Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l’Espace); MPS; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package ( HP 3 ) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

News Media Contacts

Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 [email protected]

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson NASA Headquarters, Washington 301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501 [email protected] / [email protected]

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Aeronomy of Mars

• © 2023
• S. A. Haider 0

Planetary Sciences Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

• Is the first-ever one on the aeronomy of Mars and reviewing the results from all Mars missions
• Highlights various models on the aeronomy of Mars and complements them with experimental data
• Aims for students and researchers in the field of aeronomy

Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Library (ASSL, volume 469)

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Table of contents (26 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

S. A. Haider

Foundation of Ionospheric Theory

Instruments for ionospheric measurements on mars, aeronomy missions: exploration to mars atmosphere, thermal structure of mars atmosphere, magnetic field of mars, upper atmosphere of mars, atmospheric escape from mars, upper ionosphere of mars, models of the martian ionosphere, solar flux for ionospheric modeling of mars, ionization sources of upper ionosphere of mars, mars upper ionospheric disturbances, upper ionosphere of mars during low, medium and high solar activity, characteristics of martian ionopauses, aurora and airglow on mars, middle ionosphere of mars, lower atmosphere of mars, trace gases of mars atmosphere.

• Mars Upper Ionosphere
• Modeling the Martian atmosphere
• Ionospheric theory
• Radio Occultation
• Langmuir Probe
• Mars Advanced Radar
• Stratospheric Gravity waves
• Mars Global Surveyor

About this book

“Mangalyaan was launched on November 5, 2013, to Mars by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). On October 2, 2022, ISRO declared that Mangalyaan had lost communications with Earth. Mars Color Camera (MCC) on-board Mangalyaan has taken thousands pictures of Mars. A full disk of Mars image observed by Viking is shown on the cover page of this book. Mars is covered by the dust as observed by Mangalyaan (from Arya et al., 2015).  This book presents the atmospheric and ionospheric results obtained from all missions to Mars. It also covers various atmospheric and ionospheric models of Mars. Broadly speaking, the planet’s atmosphere can be divided into two regions: lower and upper. These two regions can be coupled due to the propagation of energy from the lower to the upper atmosphere. The first-ever book on the aeronomy of Mars, this work is intended to help students and researchers familiarize themselves with the field of aeronomy. In addition, it helps planetary probe designers, engineers, and other users in the scientific community, e.g., planetary geologists and geophysicists”.

Authors and Affiliations

About the author.

Prof. S.A. Haider has worked at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India, for 25 years on the modeling studies of Martian atmosphere. During this period, he has published over eighty scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, several review papers and book chapters. He has also edited a book on Modeling of Planetary Atmospheres, published by Macmillan. He is a recipient of several prestigious fellowships like the Russian Academy of Sciences Fellowship (Russia), JSPS Fellowship (Japan) and FAPESP Fellowship (Brazil). Based on his innovative work, he was elected fellow of all three academy of sciences in India and has also been elected president of planetary sciences 2012–2014 by Asia Oceania Geosciences Society.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Aeronomy of Mars

Authors : S. A. Haider

Series Title : Astrophysics and Space Science Library

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3138-5

Publisher : Springer Singapore

eBook Packages : Physics and Astronomy , Physics and Astronomy (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023

Hardcover ISBN : 978-981-99-3137-8 Published: 18 August 2023

Softcover ISBN : 978-981-99-3140-8 Due: 18 September 2023

eBook ISBN : 978-981-99-3138-5 Published: 17 August 2023

Series ISSN : 0067-0057

Series E-ISSN : 2214-7985

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXIII, 248

Number of Illustrations : 18 b/w illustrations, 76 illustrations in colour

Topics : Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics, Space Exploration and Astronautics) , Astronomy, Observations and Techniques , Atmospheric Sciences , Numerical and Computational Physics, Simulation , Planetology , Plasma Physics

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The Secret of “The Martian” Success? Scientific Peer Review

Andy Weir’s tale of a stranded astronaut got its start as a blog, complete with reader comments that helped shape the plot

Victoria Jaggard

When Matt Damon signed on to play astronaut Mark Watney in the upcoming film The Martian , he probably didn't know he would be portraying the planetary science version of Schrödinger's cat .

That fictitious feline, the poster child for quantum mechanics, was born as a thought experiment—a way for physicist Erwin Schrödinger to help people visualize the strange quantum property of superpositions. Similarly, Watney is a thought experiment dreamed up by author Andy Weir , who wanted to explore the possibilities of sending humans to a punishing planet.

"I was sitting around thinking about how to do a human mission to Mars, not for a story but just for the heck of it," says Weir. "I started thinking about how I would do it and all the things that could go wrong, and I realized it would make a great story. So I made up a protagonist and subjected him to all of it."

The novel The Martian became a New York Times bestseller, and Twentieth Century Fox quickly optioned the movie rights, pulling together a cast list that reads like a call sheet for Hollywood’s “A List”. In the run-up to the film's October 2 release, NASA has been shamelessly plugging the movie as a tie-in with its efforts to mount a real crewed Mars mission.

So how did a software engineer's thought experiment, originally posted for free online, explode into a literary and cinematic blockbuster? One possible answer may be just as geeky as the novel itself: open-access peer review.

Stranded alone on Mars with limited supplies, Watney has to "science the sh-t" out of everything around him to survive, and for many readers, the most notable thing about the plot is its attention to the technical details . The book and the movie dive deep into the minutiae of the chemical reactions that turn rocket fuel into water, the caloric value of Mars-farmed potatoes and the engineering challenges of hijacking an abandoned lander to create an interplanetary Instagram feed.

Weir spent three years crafting the tale, researching the science behind his vision and working out his own calculations and mapping. That's not so unusual for science fiction writers, many of whom are working scientists or avid enthusiasts. What sets Weir's story apart is its origin as a self-published blog.

"I had tried before to write novels and submitted them to agents, but no one was interested," Weir says. By the time he had dreamed up Watney, Weir was writing just for kicks. "If it weren't for the Internet, the story wouldn't have been possible at all, because I wouldn't have had any medium to tell stories. I wasn't even trying to break into the industry any more, I was doing it as a labor of love."

Writing The Martian as a web-based serial, Weir would post a new chapter roughly every six to eight weeks, and the developing story attracted a core of about 3,000 devoted readers. As with all things posted to the Internet, each chapter sparked a variety of comments, and some readers took to emailing Weir with their thoughts and opinions.

"Getting feedback from them motivated me to keep working on it," Weir says. "There was fan mail stuff, but also my readers are nerds just like me, because they would tell me anywhere I got the science wrong. It was like having thousands of fact-checkers, and I fixed things as they sent it in."

Fred J. Calef , a geologist and geospatial information scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had just finished his Ph.D. work on Mars impact craters when he became part of Weir's fact-checker army. He found one of Weir's earlier self-published novels via Reddit, and that led him to The Martian while it was still a web serial.

"I read the story, and it was really compelling," Calef says. "He had all these technical details, and I thought I should write to him and share." In an email exchange, he offered Weir some notes on Martian geochemistry—there is some water trapped in Mars soil, accessible if it's brought inside and baked—and on survival tactics, such as salvaging old rovers for spare parts. In his reply, Weir told Calef: "Your points are not only useful, they are precognitive."

This type of open and immediate editorial tinkering might not appeal to every author, but it helped Weir achieve exactly the effect he wanted.

"If you say a story is going to be about the details of science, then you have to get the science right," Weir says. "I really get taken out of a science fiction story when it has a blatant violation of the laws of physics. Or even worse, when the plot sets up its own physics and then isn't consistent."

Weir's preferred style of plausible, detail-driven science fiction echoes the work of one of the genre's pioneers: Jules Verne. As with Weir's Martian success, much of Verne's popularity can be attributed to his diligent research, says Rosalind Williams , the Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology at MIT.

In place of the not-yet-existent Internet, Verne read magazines and journals voraciously, attended scientific demonstrations and lectures and crowd-sourced ideas from other science enthusiasts at the social clubs of Paris.

"Verne gave his work a kind of technical realism that seems to be a big draw among certain types of readers," says Williams. "He had a good sense of his audience … I think that's why his work was so interesting. He gets the mentality, the mindset, the obsession. 

Williams notes, for instance, that Verne would seek out scientists working on early versions of submarines in the Seine so he could witness their experiments, a personal fascination that left an indelible mark on world literature: the 1870 serial-turned-novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea . Elements of Verne's descriptions of the underwater vessel Nautilus still ring true today, from its cigar shape and steel double hull to its on-board electricity. And his portrayal of the mysterious and haunted Captain Nemo adds intrigue to the innovation.

"The great invention of Jules Verne was to take the science of the day and add to it a literary plot," adds Williams. Verne plucked a piece of enticing science from the zeitgeist and pushed it to its speculative edges, crafting some of the earliest works of science fiction as we recognize it today.

Just don't tell that to Verne.

"The term 'science fiction' was … not a term he would have used or appreciated," Williams says. "He was much more likely to say he wrote geographic romance." A reluctant law student, Verne was most interested in adventure and exploration, and he got his start writing for the theater. Williams notes that reading Verne's work can feel akin to reading a movie script or a stage play.

By contrast, Weir freely admits that he didn't set out to pen a literary masterpiece with rich character development. "I don't think there's ever going to be a book club that talks about the finer nuances of Watney's personality," he quips. Still, even Weir makes some concessions to drama: At least one major plot point in The Martian hinges on a scientific impossibility.

"The big windstorm on Mars—that's just not going to happen," says Calef, referring to the initial catastrophe that prompts Watney's crew to abort the mission and leave him for dead on Mars. In real life, the red planet's atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's, so winds there can't build up enough inertia to tip over a small rover, much less a massive launch vehicle loaded with humans.

"Even hurricane-force wind on Mars is going to feel like having paper balls thrown at you," Calef says.

Weir readily acknowledges the windstorm issue: "I had an alternate beginning with an engine failure ... but in a man versus nature story, I wanted nature to get in the first shot." He notes that he also "hand waved" the rather serious issue of cosmic radiation presenting a serious health risk to Mars travelers, and he adds that NASA has evolved its portable life-support systems in plot-critical ways since publication.

That's all fodder for pedantic debates in technical circles. But in addition to its scientific street cred, Calef thinks  The Martian  attracted such a loyal following because it appeals to something basic in human nature: "He's approached it as a problem to solve and shows how he solves it. It's like a crime procedural, where the story is about how they find out a person is guilty. That's just interesting to people."

Williams also sees a draw beyond the pure scientific stakes, such as the parallel between sardonic, tenacious Watney and the protagonists in many Verne classics.

"There's a deep romance, in 19th-century sense of the word, in the lone individual confronting the forces of the cosmos," she says. "There's the taciturn, unflappable hero who has the technical skills to navigate and fix things, but circumstances land this individual in very frightening settings—an earthly desert, or the moon, or the Arctic waste.

"It's fascinating that this storyline is so persistent. It tells us something about us, not just these writers."

The film The Martian  can be seen afternoons and evenings throughout October at the Smithsonian's Airbus IMAX® theater located at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. View showtimes and purchase tickets at the  online sales venue .

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Victoria Jaggard | | READ MORE

Victoria Jaggard is the science editor for Smithsonian.com. Her writing has appeared in Chemical & Engineering News , National Geographic , New Scientist and elsewhere.

Prestigious cancer research institute has retracted 7 studies amid controversy over errors

Seven studies from researchers at the prestigious Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have been retracted over the last two months after a scientist blogger alleged that images used in them had been manipulated or duplicated.

The retractions are the latest development in a monthslong controversy around research at the Boston-based institute, which is a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. 

The issue came to light after Sholto David, a microbiologist and volunteer science sleuth based in Wales, published a scathing post on his blog in January, alleging errors and manipulations of images across dozens of papers produced primarily by Dana-Farber researchers . The institute acknowledged errors and subsequently announced that it had requested six studies to be retracted and asked for corrections in 31 more papers. Dana-Farber also said, however, that a review process for errors had been underway before David’s post. 

Now, at least one more study has been retracted than Dana-Farber initially indicated, and David said he has discovered an additional 30 studies from authors affiliated with the institute that he believes contain errors or image manipulations and therefore deserve scrutiny.

The episode has imperiled the reputation of a major cancer research institute and raised questions about one high-profile researcher there, Kenneth Anderson, who is a senior author on six of the seven retracted studies. 

Anderson is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber. He did not respond to multiple emails or voicemails requesting comment. 

The retractions and new allegations add to a larger, ongoing debate in science about how to protect scientific integrity and reduce the incentives that could lead to misconduct or unintentional mistakes in research. 

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has moved relatively swiftly to seek retractions and corrections. 

“Dana-Farber is deeply committed to a culture of accountability and integrity, and as an academic research and clinical care organization we also prioritize transparency,” Dr. Barrett Rollins, the institute’s integrity research officer, said in a statement. “However, we are bound by federal regulations that apply to all academic medical centers funded by the National Institutes of Health among other federal agencies. Therefore, we cannot share details of internal review processes and will not comment on personnel issues.”

The retracted studies were originally published in two journals: One in the Journal of Immunology and six in Cancer Research. Six of the seven focused on multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that develops in plasma cells. Retraction notices indicate that Anderson agreed to the retractions of the papers he authored.

Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and longtime image sleuth, reviewed several of the papers’ retraction statements and scientific images for NBC News and said the errors were serious. 

“The ones I’m looking at all have duplicated elements in the photos, where the photo itself has been manipulated,” she said, adding that these elements were “signs of misconduct.” 

Dr.  John Chute, who directs the division of hematology and cellular therapy at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and has contributed to studies about multiple myeloma, said the papers were produced by pioneers in the field, including Anderson. 

“These are people I admire and respect,” he said. “Those were all high-impact papers, meaning they’re highly read and highly cited. By definition, they have had a broad impact on the field.” 

Chute said he did not know the authors personally but had followed their work for a long time.

“Those investigators are some of the leading people in the field of myeloma research and they have paved the way in terms of understanding our biology of the disease,” he said. “The papers they publish lead to all kinds of additional work in that direction. People follow those leads and industry pays attention to that stuff and drug development follows.”

The retractions offer additional evidence for what some science sleuths have been saying for years: The more you look for errors or image manipulation, the more you might find, even at the top levels of science. 

Scientific images in papers are typically used to present evidence of an experiment’s results. Commonly, they show cells or mice; other types of images show key findings like western blots — a laboratory method that identifies proteins — or bands of separated DNA molecules in gels. 

Science sleuths sometimes examine these images for irregular patterns that could indicate errors, duplications or manipulations. Some artificial intelligence companies are training computers to spot these kinds of problems, as well. 

Duplicated images could be a sign of sloppy lab work or data practices. Manipulated images — in which a researcher has modified an image heavily with photo editing tools — could indicate that images have been exaggerated, enhanced or altered in an unethical way that could change how other scientists interpret a study’s findings or scientific meaning. 

Top scientists at big research institutions often run sprawling laboratories with lots of junior scientists. Critics of science research and publishing systems allege that a lack of opportunities for young scientists, limited oversight and pressure to publish splashy papers that can advance careers could incentivize misconduct. 

These critics, along with many science sleuths, allege that errors or sloppiness are too common , that research organizations and authors often ignore concerns when they’re identified, and that the path from complaint to correction is sluggish. 

“When you look at the amount of retractions and poor peer review in research today, the question is, what has happened to the quality standards we used to think existed in research?” said Nick Steneck, an emeritus professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on science integrity.

David told NBC News that he had shared some, but not all, of his concerns about additional image issues with Dana-Farber. He added that he had not identified any problems in four of the seven studies that have been retracted. 

“It’s good they’ve picked up stuff that wasn’t in the list,” he said. 

NBC News requested an updated tally of retractions and corrections, but Ellen Berlin, a spokeswoman for Dana-Farber, declined to provide a new list. She said that the numbers could shift and that the institute did not have control over the form, format or timing of corrections. 

“Any tally we give you today might be different tomorrow and will likely be different a week from now or a month from now,” Berlin said. “The point of sharing numbers with the public weeks ago was to make clear to the public that Dana-Farber had taken swift and decisive action with regard to the articles for which a Dana-Farber faculty member was primary author.” 

She added that Dana-Farber was encouraging journals to correct the scientific record as promptly as possible. 

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Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Marginal Returns to Public Universities

This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. I use administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10 percent of American public university students, to systematically identify and employ decentralized cutoffs in SAT/ACT scores that generate discontinuities in admission and enrollment. The typical marginally admitted student completes an additional year of education in the four-year sector, is 12 percentage points more likely to earn a bachelor's degree, and eventually earns 5-10 percent more than their marginally rejected but otherwise identical counterpart. Marginally admitted students pay no additional tuition costs thanks to offsetting grant aid; cost-benefit calculations show internal rates of return of 19-23 percent for the marginal students themselves, 10-12 percent for society (which must pay for the additional education), and 3-4 percent for the government budget. Finally, I develop a method to disentangle separate effects for students on the extensive margin of the four-year sector versus those who would fall back to another four-year school if rejected. Substantially larger extensive margin effects drive the results.

For helpful comments and conversations, I am grateful to Marianne Bertrand, Dan Black, Chris Campos, Raj Chetty, Jeff Denning, Michael Dinerstein, Lancelot Henry de Frahan, Michael Galperin, Luis Garicano, Owen Graham-O'Regan, Emily Leslie, Jonathan Meer, Magne Mogstad, Dick Murnane, Rich Murphy, Derek Neal, Matt Notowidigdo, Amanda Pallais, Canice Prendergast, Michael Ricks, Evan Rose, Jon Roth, Jesse Shapiro, Doug Staiger, Alex Torgovitsky, Cody Tuttle, Chris Walters, and seminar participants at the University of Maryland, University of Chicago, Texas A&M, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Toronto, and UT-Austin. I am also grateful for the expertise of the UT-Dallas Education Research Center staff, especially Holly Kosiewicz, Mark Lu, Trey Miller, and the tragically departed Rodney Andrews. The Robert H. Topel Faculty Research Fund at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business provided valuable research funding. The conclusions of this research do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official position of the Texas Education Research Center, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Texas Workforce Commission, or the State of Texas. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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• Published: 25 May 2020

The global current systems of the Martian induced magnetosphere

• Robin Ramstad   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0458-4050 1 ,
• David A. Brain 1 ,
• Yaxue Dong 1 ,
• Jared Espley 2 ,
• Jasper Halekas 3 &
• Bruce Jakosky   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0758-9976 1  

Nature Astronomy volume  4 ,  pages 979–985 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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• Magnetospheric physics

Induced magnetospheres form around conductive non-magnetized planetary objects (such as the ionospheres of Mars, Venus, Titan, Pluto and comets) in the electrodynamic interaction with a magnetized flowing plasma, such as the solar wind. The resulting induced currents couple the ionosphere and the deflected plasma, thus they provide insight into the solar wind’s role in powering the heating, escape and evolution of planetary atmospheres. In contrast to the analogous current systems in intrinsic magnetospheres, which were mapped decades ago at Earth, the current systems of induced magnetospheres are largely unexplored. Here, we use five years of magnetic field measurements from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to empirically map the current systems of the Martian induced magnetosphere. We find unexpected features, in particular: coupling of the ionosphere and the bow shock, asymmetries between the north–south electric hemispheres and a twist in the near-Mars current system. The current flow pattern in the induced magnetosphere of Mars indicates a system driven by a magnetospheric convective electric field, powered by the solar wind interaction.

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All datasets analysed in this study are publicly available through the NASA Planetary Data System ( https://pds.nasa.gov/ ). MAVEN data are hosted at the Planetary Plasma Interactions node, provided by the University of California, Los Angeles ( https://pds-ppi.igpp.ucla.edu/mission/MAVEN/ ). The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are also available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

Code related to the implementation of methods presented in this study will be provided upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This study was made possible thanks to NASA’s Mars Exploration Program through their continued support of the MAVEN mission.

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Robin Ramstad, David A. Brain, Yaxue Dong & Bruce Jakosky

Laboratory for Planetary Magnetospheres, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

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Contributions

R.R. conceptualized the study and produced the published results based on MAVEN physical data products. The production of the relevant MAVEN data products is led by J.E. and J.H. based on direct measurements acquired from the spacecraft instruments, measurements which they also plan and continuously calibrate. R.R., D.A.B., Y.D., J.E. and J.H. contributed substantially to scientific interpretation of the results and drafting of the manuscript. B.J. directs the operation of the spacecraft, acquisition of data, and related scientific investigations as principal investigator for the MAVEN mission. All authors discussed the results and conclusions of the manuscript.

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Ramstad, R., Brain, D.A., Dong, Y. et al. The global current systems of the Martian induced magnetosphere. Nat Astron 4 , 979–985 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1099-y

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Title: realm: reference resolution as language modeling.

Abstract: Reference resolution is an important problem, one that is essential to understand and successfully handle context of different kinds. This context includes both previous turns and context that pertains to non-conversational entities, such as entities on the user's screen or those running in the background. While LLMs have been shown to be extremely powerful for a variety of tasks, their use in reference resolution, particularly for non-conversational entities, remains underutilized. This paper demonstrates how LLMs can be used to create an extremely effective system to resolve references of various types, by showing how reference resolution can be converted into a language modeling problem, despite involving forms of entities like those on screen that are not traditionally conducive to being reduced to a text-only modality. We demonstrate large improvements over an existing system with similar functionality across different types of references, with our smallest model obtaining absolute gains of over 5% for on-screen references. We also benchmark against GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, with our smallest model achieving performance comparable to that of GPT-4, and our larger models substantially outperforming it.

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