Liz Groesbeck is following her one true love — the brain — to medical school. But she’s open to developing a new relationship. “I don’t have much experience with things that aren’t brains,” said Groesbeck, who graduated in May from the University of Nevada, Reno, with a master’s degree in neuroscience. “But I might fall in love with another organ system.”

New research from scientists at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) shows that the cancer risk for astronauts undertaking long-term missions to Mars or any other destination beyond Earth’s magnetic field is actually twice what we previously thought.

You might want to hold off on purchasing a ticket to Mars. The risk of developing cancer from the galactic cosmic rays on Mars is twice as high as originally estimated, according to a new study published in Scientific Reports.

With his signature on a novel Medicaid-for-all-type bill, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval could rewrite the way many of his constituents get healthcare, and establish a model that other states might eventually follow in the absence of congressional action to fix or replace Obamacare.

Practically everyone who likes space and has lots of money is trying to get to Mars in the near future. But before anyone reaches the Red Planet, there are plenty of concerns to mull over, most notably that our bodies were not built to live in a barren litter box with a thin atmosphere. But the journey to Mars is an equal concern. An unnerving new study suggests that the trip to Mars could put passengers at a higher risk to develop cancer—possibly two times greater than what experts previously thought.

Everyone is well aware that sending humans to Mars means overcoming a number of major problems, one of which is the cancer risk for the astronauts. But it seems that even NASA's best risk projections were way off the mark. The latest research suggests the cancer risk is actually double what we thought.

'Exploring Mars will require missions of 900 days or longer and includes more than one year in deep space where exposures to all energies of galactic cosmic ray heavy ions are unavoidable,' UNLV scientist Francis Cucinotta, a leading scholar on radiation and space physics, explained.

Astronauts hoping to take part in a crewed mission to Mars might want to pack some additional rad tablets! Long before NASA announced their proposal for a “Journey to Mars“, which envisions putting boots on the Red Planet by the 2030s, mission planners have been aware that one of the greatest risks for such a mission has to do with the threat posed by cosmic and solar radiation.