An Ohio school district is recruiting the first cohort of students to enroll in the Robotics Automation Engineering program. Under the program -- offered in partnership between a technical high school and a community college -- students who participate can work toward an associate degree and prepare for careers.

Researchers have 3D-printed models of the shells of ancient ammonites and nautiluses to learn more about how the marine creatures evolved, saying the ammonites' complex internal patterns, called sutures, may have helped them be more buoyant. "The 3-D printed models allow the fabrication of incredibly intricate chamber walls that have details comparable to the living animals," said David Peterman, author of a study on the process published in Scientific Reports.

Female Indian jumping ants can fight to become queen but it costs them in brain size, a study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests. Winning queens' brains shrink by as much as a quarter in size so the ants can channel all their resources into reproduction, but when their reproduction duties end, their brains return to their pre-queen sizes.

People who lived in what is now Spain and France between 14,000 and 40,000 years ago may have purposefully sought out caves with low oxygen levels so they could have a hallucinatory experience while creating cave art, according to findings reported in Time and Mind. Computer simulations suggest the depleted oxygen in caves where paintings have been discovered could have resulted in hypoxia, which can cause hallucinations.

A new area of the Milky Way bursting with huge blue stars has been detected by astrophysicists putting together a comprehensive map of the galaxy, and they describe the find in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The region was found between the Perseus constellation and the Orion Arm and researchers say the stars, which are extremely hot, are close to blowing up.

Northern paper wasps separated from group living may experience difficulty recognizing the faces of other wasps in their community, a study in Biology Letters suggests. Researchers observed the wasps after they emerged from their cocoons, isolating some and allowing others to socialize, then they examined the wasps brains, finding differences between the social wasps and the solitary ones.

Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina may be the first college in the US to take its dual-enrollment culinary program to a high-school campus, according to Gwen Gulliksen, program director for the culinary arts department. She says the high school built a kitchen for the program, and students enroll as young as 15.

The GAP Ministries Culinary Training Program in Tucson, Ariz., is a 10-week culinary training program aimed at helping people find a "fresh start" in foodservice jobs.
The program also teaches "financial education and life skills to help them be leaders," says John Hohn, executive chef and program instructor.

Southeast Technical College and Dakota Wesleyan University are partnering to make it easier for students to graduate from the college and then from the university. Under the partnership between the two South Dakota institutions, students who earn an associate of applied science degree at the college can apply 60 credit hours toward a bachelor's degree at the university.

Data available through CalEnviroScreen, California's mapping tool, can help identify areas of pollution and assist advocacy efforts. The tool could serve as a model as the Biden administration looks to update the Environmental Protection Agency's mapping tool EJScreen.