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In the United States, it is estimated that more than 5.4 million children and adolescents under age 18 provide care for adult family members who are aging or have a chronic illness, disability, or other health conditions that require assistance. However, little is known about how providing care to the family during childhood and adolescence impacts youth development. We examined whether caregiving as a youth is associated with emotional challenges, peer difficulties, course grades, and physical health risk behaviors. A large, diverse sample of middle and high school students in Florida completed the first systematic school-based survey in the U.S. to date to count caregiving youth (N = 10,880; 52% female; M[subscript age] = 14.40, 40% Latinx). Youth reported the amount of caregiving they provided to the family each week, in addition to items reflecting their emotional challenges (e.g., suicidality), peer difficulties (e.g., experiences of conflict or victimization), academic course grades, and health risk behaviors (e.g., diet, physical activity, sleep). We found that Latinx and Black youth provided higher levels of caregiving to the family compared to youth from White non-Latinx, Asian, or Other ethnicities. Caregiving was associated with more emotional challenges, more peer difficulties, and lower course grades for all groups. In addition, providing caregiving was associated with a less healthy diet among older youth and sleeping less than 8 hr per night among White non-Latinx youth. These findings highlight a need to support caregiving youth and their families via policies and institutional supports. [This paper was published in "Journal of Family Psychology."]

As an end-member of terrestrial planet formation, Mercury holds unique clues about the original distribution of elements in the earliest stages of solar system development and how planets and exoplanets form and evolve in close proximity to their host stars. This Mercury Lander mission concept enables in situ surface measurements that address several fundamental science questions raised by MESSENGER’s pioneering exploration of Mercury. Such measurements are needed to understand Mercury’s unique mineralogy and geochemistry; to characterize the proportionally massive core’s structure; to measure the planet’s active and ancient magnetic fields at the surface; to investigate the processes that alter the surface and produce the exosphere; and to provide ground truth for current and future remote datasets. NASA’s Planetary Mission Concept Studies (PMCS) program awarded this study to a multidisciplinary team led by Dr. Carolyn Ernst of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), to evaluate the feasibility of accomplishing transformative science through a New-Frontiers-class, landed mission to Mercury in the next decade. The resulting mission concept achieves one full Mercury year (~88 Earth days) of surface operations with an ambitious, high-heritage, landed science payload, corresponding well with the New Frontiers mission framework.