rugged

How a Virus Exposed the Myth of Rugged Individualism

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For countless Americans, there was a dull but persistent pain to prepandemic life: high-priced housing, nearly inaccessible health care, underresourced schools, wage stagnation and systemic inequality. It was a familiar ache, a kind of chronic hurt that people learned to live with simply because they had no other choice. Faced with threadbare safety nets and … Read more

Rugged Mars has taken big bites out of Curiosity rover’s wheels (photos)

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has left plenty of marks on Mars over the past nine-plus years, and the Red Planet is returning the favor. The rugged landscape inside Mars’ Gale Crater has taken some substantial bites out of Curiosity’s six aluminum wheels, as CNET recently pointed out. The damage looks dramatic, but don’t panic; Curiosity should … Read more

Cheap and rugged optical fibers are revealing Earth’s hidden motions | Science

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A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 374, Issue 6573. In August, as Iceland’s long summer days began to wane, Sölvi Thrastarson made his 10th visit to a volcano so young it lacks a name. Since it began to erupt in March on a peninsula a short drive south of Reykjavík, the volcano … Read more