A high-school welding teacher in Louisiana says students need to think about more than the trade -- they need a plan for the future. Chris Henning says he asks students pointed questions while exploring the costs associated with housing, car insurance and other bills, along with average salaries they can earn in welding or another skilled trade.

Pet food ingredient prices have risen by as much as 20% since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Pet Food Institute, with shortages in edible oils and workers at food makers -- all of which has left some humans unable to find preferred foods and treats for their pets. The South Shore Pet Food Pantry near Boston has been making more frequent updates to its food wish list so donors have alternatives for sold-out products, says the animal charity's co-founder Kristen Clancy.

A Tennessee school district is moving forward with constructing an FFA Barn on a high-school campus. Ray Lecomte, the district's career and technical education coordinator, says the facility will support agriculture education and prepare students for careers in the industry.

Light has been detected from behind a black hole for the first time, bolstering Einstein's theory of general relativity, according to findings reported in Nature. Astrophysicists used telescopes to detect the light coming from the far side of I Zwicky 1, looking at the coronal flares the supermassive black hole produces and finding that some of their X-rays appear to be bouncing off the accretion disk.

The brain of a horseshoe crab that lived about 310 million years ago was preserved due to siderite, an iron carbonate mineral, which formed rapidly and preserved its soft tissues, according to findings reported in Geology. Typically, soft tissues are lost because of their quick decay, but researchers were able to learn more about the creature's central nervous system due to the preservation of the horseshoe crab specimen found at the Mazon Creek site in Illinois.

The Anschutz Foundation has awarded a $2 million grant to Colorado State University to study ways to prepare for future infectious illnesses and prevent pandemics. The interdisciplinary research will focus on monitoring and surveillance of potential threats as well as more effective ways to distribute treatments and vaccines.

Middle-school students attending Valour SkillZ Camp learned how to fix a flat bicycle tire, build and fly a drone and repair a lawnmower. Camp founder and Judson Middle School assistant principal Danny Stanley says the idea was to introduce students to area mentors while teaching them valuable life skills.

Exposure to early morning light for as little as 15 minutes appears to have made mice less depressed and that mood boost may be linked to a light-sensitive gene, according to findings reported in PLOS Genetics. Researchers exposed mice to light at various times over a 24-hour period to see if it would activate the Period 1 gene, which helps regulate circadian rhythms, and noticed behavioral changes when the exposure occurred in the 22nd hour of the light-dark cycle.

Record-setting weather events can take years to study and verify. Randall Cerveny, who leads verification efforts for the World Meteorological Organization, notes that an Aug. 6, 2020, reading from Death Valley is still under review. Manola Brunet, president of the WMO's Commission for Climatology, says that WMO committees typically have eight to 12 experts.

Undergraduate students at Georgia Highlands College in Rome, Ga., will be able to major in building information modeling and virtual design and construction beginning in the spring. The college will join Purdue University in Indiana as one of the few schools with such a program.