Extra Credit: Our pick of stories from around the web that bridge the gap between news and scholarship. ...

NASA volunteers are experimenting with long-term isolation in a dome in preparation for long space flights.

Revisiting the struggle to keep prostitution from being criminalized in 1950s Japan.

The noted archaeologist was targeted for his research and work on the ruins of Palmyra, an ancient semitic city dating back to the Neolithic age.

A look at Albert Einstein's passionate fight against racism.

When tragedies strike, it is through photographs, rather than think pieces and reportage that the reader can see the sheer scale of the problem.

Electric cars were first introduced in the late 1890s, but they didn't catch on.

So-called sustainable commercial logging is not sustainable.

Frank Herbert's novel Dune, the best selling science-fiction novel of all time, celebrates it's 50th birthday and is still read in innovative ways.

ISIS militants destroyed two of Palmyra' most important structures, the Temple of Baalshamin and the Temple of Bel, both of which had stood for 2,000 years.