The space agency televised the four-hour hearing featuring an independent panel of experts who vowed to be transparent. The team includes 16 scientists and other experts selected by NASA including retired astronaut Scott Kelly, the first American to spend nearly a year in space.

“I want to emphasize this loud and proud: There is absolutely no convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life associated with” unidentified objects, NASA’s Dan Evans said after the meeting.

Still, hundreds of questions from the public that poured in ahead of time were skeptical and veered into conspiracy theories.

NASA launched the study to probe what it calls UAPs — short for unexplained anomalous phenomena — in the sky, in space or under the sea.

Optical illusions can explain some of this, said Kelly, a former Navy fighter pilot. He recalled a Tomcat flight off Virginia Beach years ago during which his radar intercept officer in the back seat was convinced they’d flown past a UFO.

“It turns out it was Bart Simpson, a balloon,” Kelly said. “And in my experience, the sensors kind of have the same issues as the people’s eyeballs.”

Evans pointed out that the livestream of the meeting led to considerable trolling. That comes on top of “online abuse” directed toward several committee members.

Harassment detracts from the scientific process and reinforces the stigma surrounding the topic, said Evans, adding that NASA security is dealing with it.

“It’s precisely this rigorous, evidence-based approach that allows one to separate the fact from fiction,” he said.

The group is looking at what unclassified information is available on the subject and how much more is needed to understand what’s going on in the sky, according to astrophysicist David Spergel, the committee’s chair who runs the Simons Foundation.

No secret military data are included, such as anything surrounding the suspected spy balloons from China spotted flying over the U.S. earlier this year.

The meeting was held at at NASA headquarters in Washington with the public taking part remotely.

A final report is expected by the end of July.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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FTC Chair Lina Khan joined top officials from U.S. civil rights and consumer protection agencies to put businesses on notice that regulators are working to track and stop illegal behavior in the use and development of biased or deceptive AI tools.

Much of the scrutiny has been on those who deploy automated tools that amplify bias into decisions about who to hire, how worker productivity is monitored or who gets access to housing and loans.

But amid a fast-moving race between tech giants such as Google and Microsoft in selling more advanced tools that generate text, images and other content resembling the work of humans, Khan also raised the possibility of the FTC wielding its antitrust authority to protect competition.

“We all know that in moments of technological disruption, established players and incumbents may be tempted to crush, absorb or otherwise unlawfully restrain new entrants in order to maintain their dominance,” Khan said at a virtual press event Tuesday. “And we already can see these risks. A handful of powerful firms today control the necessary raw materials, not only the vast stores of data, but also the cloud services and computing power that startups and other businesses rely on to develop and deploy AI products.”

Khan didn’t name any specific companies or products but expressed concern about tools that scammers could use to “manipulate and deceive people on a large scale, deploying fake or convincing content more widely and targeting specific groups with greater precision.”

She added that “if AI tools are being deployed to engage in unfair, deceptive practices or unfair methods of competition, the FTC will not hesitate to crack down on this unlawful behavior.”

Khan was joined by Charlotte Burrows, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who leads the civil rights division of the Department of Justice.

As lawmakers in the European Union negotiate passage of new AI rules, and some have called for similar laws in the U.S., the top U.S. regulators emphasized Tuesday that many of the most harmful AI products might already run afoul of existing laws protecting civil rights and preventing fraud.

”There is no AI exemption to the laws on the books,” Khan said.

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The investigation was spurred by allegations regarding fire protection concerns at the repository, which is the backbone of a multibillion-dollar effort to clean up Cold War-era waste from past nuclear research and bomb making at national laboratories and defense sites across the U.S.

Investigators noted that the issues with the fire department training program went back to at least 2016. They pointed to an undeveloped training curriculum for the technical rescue program and claims by firefighters that their training needs weren’t being met.

According to the inspector general’s report, the issues persisted because the contractor that manages the repository inadequately addressed and closed recommendations from prior internal assessments that were aimed at fixing the deficiencies. The report also blamed inadequate oversight by Energy Department officials.

“WIPP has experienced growth with the number of buildings and employees since 2006 and is anticipated to operate beyond 2050. The next management and operating contractor must be able to provide effective emergency response at WIPP to protect lives, property and the environment,” the Office of Inspector General stated.

Energy Department officials in a response to the inspector general said the agency has followed through with corrective actions and will continue to “’make progress on ensuring local fire departments and first responders have all necessary training and equipment to handle any event in relation to WIPP’s operations.”

Still, agency officials acknowledged there was more work to do.

The safety concerns come as New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and others voice opposition to expanding the types of radioactive waste that can be shipped to the repository. In a letter sent this month to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the first-term Democratic governor noted ongoing frustration regarding the lack of meaningful public engagement from federal officials on waste cleanup, shipments and long-term plans for the repository.

Just this month, the work of processing incoming waste shipments was temporarily halted after workers discovered radioactive liquid in a container sent from the Idaho National Laboratory.

The latest report from a federal oversight board also cited three recent incidents, including one in which a container from Los Alamos National Laboratory was placed underground without adequate analysis for its flammability. The container ended up posing no risk.

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that manages the repository, expanded its fire brigade to a department with full-time emergency responders following two emergencies in 2014. One was a fire involving a salt-hauling truck that was followed days later by a radiation release from a drum that had been inappropriately packed at Los Alamos.

The incidents prompted major policy and procedure overhauls related to the national cleanup program.

According to the inspector general, a 2019 review found that nearly half of the repository’s firefighters had not participated in required live training for at least one year and that some had not participated in over two years. Another review in April 2021 found that not all firefighter training records were maintained in accordance with the hazardous waste permit issued by the state Environment Department.

In interviews, several firefighters told investigators that the majority of training was web-based as opposed to hands-on fire drills, vehicle extrications or rope training. The firefighters expressed concern that without adequate training, they would lose their skills.

As for the fire department’s fleet, federal officials said they were in the process of revising maintenance procedures and that about $1.2 million was spent to purchase two new fire trucks in 2021.

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Mark Vande Hei landed in a Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan alongside the Russian Space Agency’s Pyotr Dubrov, who also spent the past year in space, and Anton Shkaplerov. Wind blew the capsule onto its side following touchdown, and the trio emerged into the late afternoon sun one by one.

Vande Hei, the last one out, grinned and waved as he was carried to a reclining chair out in the open Kazakh steppes.

“Beautiful out here,” said Vande Hei, putting on a face mask and ballcap.

Despite escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine, Vande Hei’s return followed customary procedures. A small NASA team of doctors and other staff was on hand for the touchdown and planned to return immediately to Houston with the 55-year-old astronaut.

Even before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Vande Hei said he was avoiding the subject with his two Russian crewmates. Despite getting along “fantastically … I’m not sure we really want to go there,” he said.

It was the first taste of gravity for Vande Hei and Dubrov since their Soyuz launch on April 9 last year. Shkaplerov joined them at the orbiting lab in October, escorting a Russian film crew up for a brief stay. To accommodate that visit, Vande Hei and Dubrov doubled the length of their stay.

Before departing the space station, Shkaplerov embraced his fellow astronauts as “my space brothers and space sister.”

“People have problem on Earth. On orbit … we are one crew,” Shkaplerov said in a live NASA TV broadcast Tuesday. The space station is a symbol of “friendship and cooperation and … future of exploration of space.”

The war tensions bubbled over in other areas of space with the suspension of European satellite launches on Russian rockets and the Europe-Russia Mars rover stuck on Earth for another two years.

Vande Hei surpassed NASA’s previous record for the longest single spaceflight by 15 days. Dubrov moved into Russia’s top five, well short of the 437-day, 17-hour marathon by a cosmonaut-physician aboard the 1990s Mir space station that remains the world record.

“Broken records mean we’re making progress,” said NASA’s previous space endurance champ, retired astronaut Scott Kelly, whose 340-day mission ended in 2016.

Like Kelly, Vande Hei underwent medical testing during his long stay to further NASA’s quest to get astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars. He said daily meditation helped him cope during the mission, twice as long as his first station stint four years earlier.

“I’ve had an indoor job 24-7 for almost a year so I am looking forward to being outside no matter what kind of weather,” Vande Hei said in a recent series of NASA videos. As for food, he’s looking forward to making a cup of coffee for himself and wife Julie, and digging into guacamole and chips.

Remaining on board: Three Russians who arrived two weeks ago and three Americans and one German, who have been aboard since November. Their replacements are due in three weeks via SpaceX. Next week, SpaceX will fly three rich businessmen and their ex-astronaut escort to the station for a weeklong visit arranged by the private Axiom Space.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX began transporting NASA astronauts to the station in 2020, nine years after the shuttle program ended. During that gap, Russia offered the lone taxi service, with NASA shelling out tens of millions of dollars per Soyuz seat. Vande Hei’s ride was part of a barter exchange with Houston-based Axiom.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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On his current mission, Stockwell helps students with assignments as a substitute science teacher at Alamogordo High School.

“You can’t act Army with these kids. You can’t speak the same way you would with another soldier with these kids. You can’t treat them the same way. You have to be careful with corrective actions,” he said with a laugh.

Dozens of National Guard Army and Air Force troops in New Mexico have been stepping in for an emergency unlike others they have responded to before: the shortage of teachers and school staff members that has tested the ability of schools nationwide to continue operating during the coronavirus pandemic.

While many other states and school districts issued pleas for substitute teachers amid omicron-driven surges in infections, New Mexico has been alone in calling out its National Guard members. In 36 of the state’s 89 school districts, guard members have traded in mission briefs for lesson plans to work for school systems.

When Stockwell first walked into the freshman science class, wearing camouflage fatigues and combat boots, some students thought he was just visiting, like a recruiter. Then he took a seat in the teacher’s chair.

“When he started taking attendance, I was like, ‘whoa,’” said Lilli Terrazas, 15, of Alamogordo. “I was kind of nervous because, like, you know — a man in a uniform. But it was cool. He helped me.”

Roughly 80 service members have volunteered to work in schools. The troops have gone through background checks and taken brief courses required for substitute teachers. As substitutes, they don’t have to learn much about curriculum, but they need to be attentive to students.

Stockwell has been filling in since late January when his students’ teacher moved to an administrative role in another school. One recent day, he shuffled through the rows of school desks, kneeling to meet students eye-to-eye as he helped them with assignments calculating the depth of the earth’s crust, and other layers of the planet.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called out the guard to help with the acute shortages in a state that like several others has struggled to find enough educators. At least 100 schools had reported closing down for at least one day this school year.

New Mexico saw a surge of teacher retirements last fall, and there are currently around 1,000 open teaching positions in a state with about 20,000 teachers. Grisham stressed the guard deployment is a temporary measure and state officials are working to bolster the teaching force and school staff through increased pay and other strategies.

At Alamogordo High School, the teacher shortage peaked on Jan. 13, when 30 teachers, about a third of the teaching staff, were out due to illness, professional training, or family emergencies.

“Everybody was enjoying their holiday and things like that, and then they came back and were sick,” said Raeh Burns, one of two Alamogordo High School secretaries tasked with filling teaching slots each morning. “I know I’m going to have Mr. Stockwell every morning and that he’s OK to go where I need him to go.”

In some communities, there have been concerns raised about soldiers going in classrooms. In Santa Fe, the school district was asked if soldiers would wear uniforms and carry guns, school district spokesperson Cody Dynarski said. Guns were always out of the question. The district decided that soldiers would wear civilian clothing.

Ultimately, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, two of the largest urban school districts, did not receive any soldiers despite their requests as the deployments have prioritized smaller and more rural school districts.

Elsewhere, when given the choice, some soldiers have opted for military fatigues over civilian clothes to command respect in the classroom, particularly if they’re not much older than their students.

“I think I look like an 18-year-old out of uniform,” said Cassandra Sierra, 22, of Roswell, N.M., who has served as a substitute teacher in a high school in Hobbs.

Sierra already works with kids in her day job as a student coordinator at a military boarding school in Roswell, which has given her an edge as a substitute.

“Kids just need patience,” she said. “I think I just have a lot of patience.”

At a middle school on Alamogordo’s Holloman Air Force Base, students are used to seeing people in uniform, but not in classrooms.

“I was like, ‘Oh, we have somebody in the uniform that’s going to teach us. That’s kinda awkward.’ It was weird,” said Andrew George, 12, of his computer classes led by a woman trained in combat and with experience leading a platoon overseas. “Once she introduced herself I was like ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be fun.’”

The substitute, Lt. Amanda Zollo, works in the 911 dispatch center in Albuquerque when she’s not training or serving with the guard. She kept students on task during a lesson about cybersecurity, as they created and then attempted to break each other’s passwords.

She was subbing for a teacher who was having trouble finding childcare. The principal, Whitney Anderson, said that having Zollo’s services meant that for the first time that week she didn’t have to take over a classroom herself.

Zollo doesn’t talk about her work as an infantry officer with her students, which, after a nervous laugh, she describes as “engaging with and destroying the enemies of the U.S. in close-quarter combat.”

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This story has been corrected to reflect that it was the high school missing a third of teachers, not the entire district.

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Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.

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Biden announced Wednesday that Alondra Nelson, currently deputy director for science and society in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will become the temporary director of the office.

Biden also announced that he has lured Dr. Francis Collins out of retirement to serve temporarily as the president’s chief science adviser. Collins had retired in December after serving 12 years as director of the National Institutes of Health.

Both Nelson and Collins will serve until Biden names permanent replacements. The Senate must vote to confirm any nominee to lead the science and technology policy office.

Eric Lander, who had served in the dual roles of Biden’s chief science adviser and head of the science and technology office, resigned last week after the White House confirmed that an internal investigation had found credible evidence that he had mistreated staff.

The internal review last year, prompted by a workplace complaint, found evidence that Lander had bullied staffers and treated them disrespectfully. The White House rebuked Lander and initially signaled that he would be allowed to keep his job, but he later resigned.

Lander was the first Cabinet-level departure of the Biden administration.

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An internal review last year, prompted by a workplace complaint, found evidence that Lander, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to Biden, bullied staffers and treated them disrespectfully. The White House rebuked Lander over his interactions with his staff, but initially signaled Monday that he would be allowed to remain on the job, despite Biden’s Inauguration Day assertion that he expected “honesty and decency” from all who worked for his administration and would fire anyone who shows disrespect to others “on the spot.”

But later Monday evening, press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden had accepted Lander’s resignation with “gratitude for his work at OTSP on the pandemic, the Cancer Moonshot, climate change, and other key priorities.”

Lander, in his resignation letter, said, “I am devastated that I caused hurt to past and present colleagues by the way in which I have spoken to them.”

“I believe it is not possible to continue effectively in my role, and the work of this office is far too important to be hindered,” he added.

The White House said Biden did not request Lander’s resignation.

Earlier Monday, Psaki said senior administration officials had met with Lander about his actions and management of the office, but indicated he would be allowed to stay in the job, saying the administration was following a “process” to handle workplace complaints.

“Following the conclusion of the thorough investigation into these actions, senior White House officials conveyed directly to Dr. Lander that his behavior was inappropriate, and the corrective actions that were needed, which the White House will monitor for compliance moving forward,” she said.

Psaki added, “The president has been crystal clear with all of us about his high expectations of how he and his staff should be creating a respectful work environment.”

The White House said Lander and OSTP would be required to take certain corrective actions as part of the review. It also said the review did not find “credible evidence” of gender-based discrimination and the reassignment of the staffer who filed the original complaint was “deemed appropriate.”

Lander on Friday issued an apology to staffers in his office, acknowledging “I have spoken to colleagues within OSTP in a disrespectful or demeaning way.”

“I am deeply sorry for my conduct,” he added. “I especially want to apologize to those of you who I treated poorly, or were present at the time.”

The White House review was completed weeks ago, but it was confirmed — and Lander apologized — only after reporting by Politico.

Biden’s “Safe and Respectful Workplace Policy” was instituted when he took office and was meant to serve as a contrast from the often-demeaning way former President Donald Trump and his aides treated one another and political foes.

Lander’s conduct and the White House’s initial decision to stand by him sparked some consternation inside the White House and among Biden allies and created an unnecessary distraction from Biden’s agenda.

By late Monday, Lander came to believe he was in an untenable position and resigned effective no later than Feb. 18, “in order to permit an orderly transfer.”

There are five deputy directors — four women and one man — at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Kei Koizumi is the deputy director for policy. Former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco is the deputy for climate science. Sally Benson is the deputy for energy. Carrie Wolinetz is the deputy director for health and life science. Alondra Nelson is the deputy director for science and society.

The world’s largest general science society disinvited Lander from speaking at their annual meeting shortly before his resignation was announced. American Association for the Advancement of Science Chief Executive Officer Sudip Parikh said he didn’t know if that had anything to do with the resignation.

“I hope that we sent the right message about what’s important,” Parikh told The Associated Press Monday night. “The time of letting these things go is over. Not just in sciences, but in workplaces all across America.”

“This is an administration that has put a lot of their political capital into science and technology,” Parikh added. “It’s a tough role to fill. It’s very possible and very likely that that person could be a woman.”

Lander, whose position was elevated to Cabinet-rank by Biden, appeared prominently with the president last week when he relaunched his “Cancer Moonshot” program to marshal federal resources behind research and treatment for cancer diseases.

The founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Lander is a mathematician and molecular biologist. He was lead author of the first paper announcing the details of the human genome, the so-called “book of life.”

His confirmation to his role in the Biden administration was delayed for months as senators sought more information about meetings he had with the late Jeffrey Epstein, a disgraced financier who was charged with sex trafficking before his suicide. Lander also was criticized for downplaying the contributions of two Nobel Prize-winning female scientists.

At his confirmation hearing last year, Lander apologized for a 2016 article he wrote that downplayed the work of the female scientists. At the hearing, he also called Epstein “an abhorrent individual.″

Lander said he “understated the importance of those key advances” by biochemists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. The two were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Lander’s departure on the grounds of Biden’s respectful workplace policy echoed the February 2021 resignation of a White House deputy press secretary, TJ Ducklo, who was suspended and then resigned over threatening conversations with a reporter.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.

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The Energy Department announcement last week means some radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production stored in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina could be reclassified and moved for permanent storage elsewhere.

“After extensive policy and legal assessment, DOE affirmed that the interpretation is consistent with the law, guided by the best available science and data, and that the views of members of the public and the scientific community were considered in its adoption,” the agency said in a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The Biden administration’s affirmation of the new interpretation came after various groups offered letters of support and opposition to the agency after Biden became president, leading to the notice in the Federal Register making clear where the administration stood. Biden has reversed Trump policy in other areas.

The policy has to do with nuclear waste generated from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to build nuclear bombs. Such waste previously has been characterized as high level. The new interpretation applies to waste that includes such things as sludge, slurry, liquid, debris and contaminated equipment.

The agency said making disposal decisions based on radioactivity characteristics rather than how it became radioactive could allow the Energy Department to focus on other high-priority cleanup projects, reduce how long radioactive waste is stored at Energy Department facilities, and increase safety for workers, communities and the environment.

The department noted that the approach is supported by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, formed during the Obama administration.

The department identified three sites where waste is being stored that will be affected by the new interpretation.

In Idaho, it’s stored at an 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) Energy Department site in the southeastern part of the state that includes the Idaho National Laboratory. In Washington, the waste is stored at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a decommissioned nuclear site in the south-central part of the state that produced plutonium for nuclear bombs. In South Carolina, it’s stored at the 310-square-mile (800-square-kilometer) Savannah River Site, home of the Savannah River National Laboratory.

The department, in the statement to the AP, said it “is committed to utilizing science-driven solutions to continue to achieve success in tackling the environmental legacy of decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.”

The agency also last week made public a draft environmental assessment based on the new interpretation to move some contaminated equipment from the Savannah River Site to a commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal facility located outside South Carolina. Potential storage sites are located in Andrews County, Texas, and in Clive, Utah.

Previously, the agency through a public process and using the new interpretation, approved moving up to 10000 gallons (37,854 liters) of wastewater from the Savannah River Site, with some going to Texas.

A similar public process would be used concerning additional waste at the Savannah River Site or in the other two states.

The nation has no permanent storage for high-level radioactive waste. Reclassifying some of the high-level waste under the new interpretation means it can legally be sent to commercial facilities for storing waste deemed less radioactive.

Edwin Lyman, director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit, said his group agreed that radioactive waste should be classified using technical analysis rather than a legal definition.

But he also said “any decision made under this new interpretation has to be backed up by solid analysis and a strong commitment to public health and safety and environmental protection.”

He also said he was concerned that the new interpretation could hinder development of permanent storage for high-level radioactive waste, which mostly sits above ground at sites where it was produced.

“It shouldn’t be used as an excuse not to move forward with a repository,” Lyman said. “That’s the danger.”

The Energy Department was shipping high-level waste to Idaho until a series of lawsuits between the state and the federal government in the 1990s led to a settlement agreement. The agreement is seen as preventing the state from becoming a high-level nuclear waste repository.

The Idaho site sits above a giant aquifer that supplies water to cities and farms in the region.

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When 653 midshipmen took the final exam for General Physics I through a website in December, written and verbal instructions prohibited using outside sources, including other websites, officials said. But after learning that outside sources may have been used, the superintendent launched an investigation, officials said. The violations were uncovered through various sources, including midshipmen’s discussions on an anonymous chat platform, officials said.

Officials identified 105 midshipmen who likely accessed unauthorized resources and announced Friday that 18 of those midshipmen have been separated from the Naval Academy. Another 82 who were found to have violated the honor concept were sanctioned and entered into a 5-month honor remediation program, officials said. Four midshipmen were found to be not in violation and one is awaiting adjudication.

“Character development is an ongoing process and midshipmen must make the choice to live honorably each day and earn the trust that comes with a commission in the Navy or Marine Corps. This incident demonstrates that we must place an increased focus on character and integrity within the entire brigade,” Superintendent Vice Adm. Sean Buck said in a statement.

The pandemic required flexibility in exam administration and investigators found that the physics department used safeguards to prevent cheating and instructions explicitly stated that outside resources were prohibited, officials said. The biggest vulnerability investigators identified was inadequate proctoring.

The school now “strongly advises” instructors to use paper-based, in-person exams and if an electronic device is required, a proctor must be able to view each midshipman’s screen or a browser security program must be activated. The academy will block websites when there’s faculty consensus that potential misuse outweighs educational value, officials said. Midshipmen will also write out and sign an honor pledge at the beginning of each examination.

There was a day-long “honor conference” in April with intensive training and discussions on honor and officials said there will be a renewed focus on character and professional development throughout this academic year.

Maryland Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the academy’s Board of Visitors’ chairman, said in a statement that he supports the findings of the investigation, which appears to be “thorough and fair.”

“The Academy’s Honor Concept is clear and anyone who violates it must be held accountable,” Ruppersberger said. “Midshipmen must earn the privilege to study at one of our nation’s most prestigious institutions and their character and conduct must be worthy at all times.”

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The new seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee features four scientists who have served on the panel previously — including two who were on the board when it was dismantled in March. The five women and two men on the panel include three people of color, making it the most diverse panel since the committee was established more than 40 years ago.

“From the very beginning of my tenure, I have committed to ensuring that science is restored as the backbone of everything EPA does to protect people and the environment from pollution,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. The new advisory panel will provide “credible, independent expertise to EPA’s reviews of air quality standards that is grounded in scientific evidence,” he said.

Regan has said that advisers appointed under the Trump administration were overly friendly to business, adding that his March 31 “reset” of the clean-air panel and the Science Advisory Board would return EPA to its practice of relying on advice from a balanced group of experts.

Regan’s overhaul removed more than 45 members of the two advisory boards, including some whose terms do not expire this year. The panels provide scientific expertise and recommendations for air quality standards and other policies intended to protect public health and the environment.

The new chair of the clean-air committee is Lianne Sheppard, a professor in environmental and occupational health sciences and biostatistics at the University of Washington. Sheppard, who has expertise in epidemiology, biostatistics and exposure assessment, served on the committee from 2015 to 2018.

Other members include James Boylan, an air protection official with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Boylan served on the panel under President Donald Trump and was on the committee when it was dismantled, along with Dr. Mark Frampton, a physician and professor emeritus in medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Judith Chow, a professor in atmospheric sciences at the Nevada=based Desert Research Institute, served on the panel from 2015 to 2018.

Also serving on the committee are Michelle Bell, environmental health professor at Yale University; Christina Fuller, associate professor of environmental health at Georgia State University; and Alexandra Ponette-González, associate professor of geography and the environment at the University of North Texas.

Members of the much larger Science Advisory Board have not been selected. Both panels pay stipends to members for their service.

Republican Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Ralph Norman of South Carolina have criticized Regan for what they say was an unwarranted “purge” based more on politics than science. Comer is the senior Republican on the House Oversight Committee, while Norman is the top Republican on the panel’s environment subcommittee.

Democrats have said a 2017 decision by Trump’s first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, to remove many academic scientists from the advisory panels tilted them in favor of the chemical and fossil fuel industries. Pruitt barred scientists from serving on the advisory boards if they had received EPA research grants. Pruitt later resigned amid ethics scandals but his policies were largely continued under his successor and former deputy, Andrew Wheeler.

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This story has been updated to correct the name of board member Christina Fuller.

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The name was changed to Vandenberg Space Force Base during an afternoon ceremony on the parade field at the sprawling base on the state’s Central Coast, which tests ballistic missiles and conducts orbital launches for defense, science and commercial purposes.

The Space Force was created as the sixth uniformed military branch in 2019 during the administration of former President Donald Trump. Personnel assigned to the Air Force Space Command were reassigned to the Space Force, ending its Air Force lineage.

“Redesignating Air Force installations as Space Force installations is critical to establishing a distinct culture and identity for the Space Force,” a base statement said.

Vandenberg’s host unit, the 30th Space Wing, is being renamed Space Launch Delta 30, under Space Operations Command.

Vandenberg was originally established in 1941 as Camp Cooke, an Army garrison for tank, infantry and artillery training.

Its geographical location made it ideal for missile tests and launches into polar orbit. During the Cold War, it was relabeled Cooke Air Force Base and then Vandenberg in honor of Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the second chief of staff of the Air Force.

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The latest moves are aimed at taking the pressure off local hospitals so that they can free up rooms and staff to deal with virus patients. Military hospital ships and field units are geared toward treating trauma cases.

The military moves, however, face limits. It will take as long as two weeks for the USS Comfort hospital ship to get to New York City, where the governor has been pressing for medical help.

And there are logistical and legal concerns about expanding the military’s role in civilian affairs, such as tasking it with enforcing quarantines. Defense officials also want to be careful not to do anything to weaken its ability to defend the nation.

A look at the military’s role in the crisis:

WHAT THE MILITARY IS DOING

The hospital ships are not on their way but are gathering staff and preparing to go.

The USS Mercy hospital ship, which is based on the West Coast, will be ready to move out “in days,” according to officials, and the USS Comfort is undergoing maintenance in Norfolk, Virginia, and will head to New York City within two weeks.

Navy officials are trying to expedite the Comfort’s departure. It was not yet clear where the Mercy will go, but it will be somewhere on the West Coast.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Friedrichs, the surgeon for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the plan is to staff the ships with the typical mix of medical expertise, which primarily involves trauma treatment. The ships will take non-COVID-19 patients, easing the trauma treatment load on civilian hospitals.

He said staffing decisions will be based on what local leaders need and will mainly involve active-duty military personnel.

The Army, meanwhile, is preparing to deploy two field hospitals, according to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. One defense official said the two field hospitals will go to New York City and Seattle, two cities with the greatest need.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public.

Friedrichs said Army field hospitals will be able to provide about 1,000 beds. He said they have not put reserve medical units on alert because of concerns about taking those people out of the civilian jobs in the health care industry.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Wednesday that 1 million respiratory masks were immediately made available to the Department of Health and Human Services, and 4 million more will follow. The Pentagon also will provide to civilian agencies as many as 2,000 special-purpose military ventilators, he said.

Also, Army scientists are researching and testing vaccines for the coronavirus, in coordination with civilian agencies. On Tuesday, Esper visited Fort Detrick in Maryland, where the research is underway.

In addition, the Pentagon continues to provide housing at four military bases for some passengers taken from the Grand Princess cruise ship, which was hit with a cluster of coronavirus cases. It also has made available housing at other bases for people entering the U.S. at certain civilian airports and needing monitoring.

The most extensive role for the military so far is for the National Guard, which is being called up by governors to provide a range of support. At least 2,000 National Guard members in 23 states are working on virus support and response. Some are helping at state emergency operations centers; others are providing transportation for civilian health care providers; and some are collecting and delivering test samples.

What the military is considering

There are many more ways the military could assist in the COVID-19 crisis, and Pentagon leaders said those discussions are going on continually with federal and state officials.

Friedrichs told reporters Monday that defense officials are trying to identify “what’s within the realm of the possible,” while also spelling out what the trade-offs for that would be.

For example, Friedrichs said, officials are wary to mobilize large numbers of National Guard members because it would take them away from their civilian jobs, which in some cases are in health services already engaged in fighting COVID-19.

Esper has said he is considering activating National Guard and Reserve units for federal duty to help states with planning, logistics and medical support “as needed.” Such a move would need approval by President Donald Trump.

What the military could do in an extreme emergency

The Defense Department has a detailed pandemic response plan that lays out the myriad things the military can do if requested, including a last-resort role in helping to impose quarantines and border restrictions.

The military could be called on to help establish “mass casualty” treatment sites, provide shelter for displaced persons and help provide postal, power, water and sewer services, food deliveries and mortuary tasks. Troops also could provide logistics, communications and other support for law enforcement and the National Guard. Drafted and overhauled several times in recent years, the military’s plan is closely guarded and officials decline to discuss details publicly.

Officials, however, say that there is a broad assumption that local law enforcement, border control officers and the National Guard under the governors’ command would be the first line of defense to stem the spread of any virus through travel restrictions at the borders and along state lines or outbreak areas.

Positive cases of coronavirus in the military

So far, 49 members of the military have tested positive for the virus, along with 14 Defense Department civilians, 19 military dependents and seven contractors.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. Worldwide, more than 200,000 cases have been confirmed, while more than 8,500 people have died.

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The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Before signing a document instructing the defense secretary to draft proposed legislation, Trump said space is the “future” and the “next step.”

“We have to be prepared,” he said in the Oval Office, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and other top officials.

Trump initially said he wanted a Space Force that was “separate but equal” to the other military services. The current proposal falls short of that goal and faces some skepticism among lawmakers.

If approved by Congress, the Space Force would be part of the Air Force, just as the Marine Corps is part of the Navy. It would not have its own full-blown bureaucracy, including a civilian secretary. It would instead have a Senate-confirmed undersecretary for space within the Air Force.

It would be the first new uniformed military service since 1947, when the Air Force was created after World War II.

The president’s lofty vision for a Space Force became a hit at his campaign rallies last year, with supporters cheering and applauding the mere mention of a military force devoted to policing outer space. But the idea encountered resistance both inside and outside the administration among those who questioned the need and the potential costs.

Before Trump ordered the Pentagon in June 2018 to begin laying the groundwork for a Space Force, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had publicly questioned the wisdom of adding a separate service for space. Mattis agreed, however, that the Pentagon needed a more effective way of defending its interests in outer space.

Mattis’ lack of enthusiasm for creating a sixth military service — after the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Coast Guard — was among his many differences with Trump. He has since resigned.

The House has been supportive of creating a Space Force within the Air Force, along the lines of what Trump proposed on Tuesday. Senate support is less clear but seems likely to swing in Trump’s favor. Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that Trump’s approach is “an important step toward real reform of national security space.”

Shanahan, a former longtime Boeing Co. executive who took over as acting defense secretary on Jan. 1, had spearheaded Pentagon planning for a Space Force in his previous role as deputy defense secretary. Shanahan has not shifted from the path that was set before Mattis resigned, and has stressed his interest in keeping the Space Force as economical as possible.

“It’s going to be small, as small as possible,” Shanahan said last month, explaining his recommendation to Trump that a Space Force be part of the Air Force.

Some questioned whether having a Space Force would increase the odds of armed conflict in space.

“There are much better ways to protect satellites,” said Laura Grego, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Space security cannot be achieved unilaterally or solely through military means. It will require coordination and cooperation with other spacefaring nations. That means diplomacy.”

Under a legislative proposal being reviewed by the White House, the Space Force chief of staff would work within the Air Force and also be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the group of top uniformed military leaders who advise the president and defense secretary. A civilian undersecretary of the Air Force for space would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Cost estimates were not provided Tuesday. They are to be included in the 2020 budget proposal Trump is expected to send to Congress next month.

White House officials said seeing the Space Force become a separate military department remained a goal. But they said that, after hearing concerns from Congress, a decision was made to avoid going that route at the outset since it would have meant spending a lot of time building a bureaucracy and not focusing on the mission.

The directive requires the defense secretary to conduct periodic reviews to determine when it would make the most sense to propose a stand-alone Space Force department.

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AP National Security Writer Robert Burns and Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

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The age, gender, location, race and ethnicity for 138 million people were potentially vulnerable. So far, however, only internal hacking teams have discovered such details at possible risk, and no outside groups are known to have grabbed data intended to remain private for 72 years, chief scientist John Abowd told a scientific conference.

The Census Bureau is now scrapping its old data shielding technique for a state-of-the-art method that Abowd claimed is far better than Google’s or Apple’s.

Some former agency chiefs fear the potential privacy problem will add to the worries that people will avoid answering or lie on the once-every-10-year survey because of the Trump administration’s attempt to add a much-debated citizenship question.

The Supreme Court on Friday announced that it would rule on that proposed question, which has been criticized for being political and not properly tested in the field. The census count is hugely important, helping with the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives and distribution of billions of dollars in federal money.

The 8 billion pieces of statistics in census data are supposed to jumbled in a way so what is released publicly for research cannot identify individuals for more than seven decades. In 2010, the Census Bureau did this by swapping similar household information from one city to another, according to Duke University statistics professor Jerome Reiter.

In the internal tests, Abowd said, officials were able to match of 45 percent of the people who answered the 2010 census with information from public and commercial data sets such as Facebook. But errors in this technique meant that only data for 52 million people would be completely correct — little more than 1-in-6 of the U.S. population.

He said the 2010 census used the best possible privacy protection available, but hackers since then have become more skilled in reconstructing data. To counter their growing abilities, the agency has completely changed the system for 2020 and will offer the “gold standard” of privacy regardless of the fate of the citizenship question, Abowd said.

People “want to know that statistical tables aren’t going to come back and haunt them,” Abowd said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting. “I promise the American people they will have the privacy that they deserve.”

Georgetown University provost Robert Groves, who headed the 2010 census, said the count had the proper privacy and that every census improves. He lauded the new steps.

Former agency chief Kenneth Prewitt, a professor of policy at Columbia University, said the basic information such as age and ethnicity, even if publicly revealed, isn’t as big a deal as other data breaches.

“There is a widespread privacy anxiety out there that is very much related to Facebook and Google and so forth,” Prewitt said. “I’m much more worried about the fact that my iPhone follows me around every day.”

In a statement, Apple’s Fred Sainz took issue with such privacy concerns: “The iPhone doesn’t follow you around all day long — Apple has no idea where you are nor do we care. And Apple does not sell information to companies.” He noted, however, that consumers can choose apps that know their location.

Abowd said “the 2020 census will be the safest and best protected ever. And this is not as easy as it sounds.”

The new system involves complex mathematical algorithms that inject “noise” into the data, making it harder to get accurate information and providing “a very strong guarantee” of privacy, said Duke University computer sciences professor Ashwin Machanavajjhala.

This increases privacy while lowering the accuracy for researchers who use the statistics. Think of it as one set of knobs being dialed up while a second is dialed down at the same time.

The decision on the official privacy/accuracy setting for 2020 hasn’t been set. Abowd said policy officials, not engineers or scientists, will make that call.

The Census Bureau tried this system in a 2018 survey using an ultra-strict privacy setting that, while not directly comparable to Google or Apple, is hundreds if not thousands of times more secure for privacy than what’s now being used on data from searches using Google Chrome or Apple’s iPhone, Duke’s Reiter said.

Prewitt suggested the public might not understand the extra efforts underway for the 2020 count but would be spooked by the disclosure about the privacy vulnerability, making people more reluctant to comply with the next census.

If the administration succeeds in adding the citizenship question, “there will be a huge evasion of it (the census) and some selective misuse of it,” Prewitt said.

Whether some avoid the survey because of it or lie, neither is a good outcome, making the data less usable, Prewitt said.

Groves said technical experts have serious problems with the citizenship question because it hasn’t been tested in the field, as all census questions usually are. He compared it to putting a new drug on the market before the necessary testing.

“Very subtle wording and positional changes in a thing like the Census can have enormous impact way beyond what we as humans can predict,” Groves said

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @borenbears

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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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But conference-goers will not be able to see NASA’s space-exploring plane. Its visit to the 233rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society was canceled, one of a growing list of scientific casualties of the partial government shutdown now stretching into its third week.

Along with the plane, hundreds of government scientists are also no longer allowed to attend the conference or two other major scientific gatherings scheduled to begin this week. Those meetings will address pressing issues in the fields of technology, space exploration, extreme weather and climate change.

But the shutdown’s impact on science stretches well beyond the empty chairs at this week’s conferences, said Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society. It means some of the nation’s smartest scientific minds are sitting at home, not doing science, for weeks, with no clear end in sight.

“That’s difficult to recover from,” said Seitter. “We’ll be seeing ripple effects from this for a long time.”

Attendees of the events describe them as crucial opportunities for scientists from the government, the private sector and academia to exchange research and ideas. The gatherings are like three-legged stools, said Kevin Petty, the chief science officer for the private climate company, Vaisala. And this week one of the legs is missing.

“That’s the value of these conferences, it’s the people I run into in the hallway or the coffee line, start up a conversation and realize there’s a connection between what they’re doing and what I’m doing,” said Amanda O’Connor, a satellite imaging expert who is attending a weather conference. “It’s those serendipitous encounters that are lost and really important.”

Some 700 federal employees who planned to attend the American Meteorological Society conference in Phoenix are staying home. Another 500 will miss the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ SciTech Forum and Exposition in San Diego. The American Astronomical Society estimates that between 300 and 450 scientists will be absent this week from the world’s largest annual astronomical meeting, where the NASA plane was supposed to be. But it’s hard to get a firm count, said Rick Fienberg, the organization’s press officer: Organizers emailed a survey, but furloughed government employees aren’t even allowed to check their email.

Even Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s new administrator, and the leaders of the National Weather Service are no longer able to attend the weather conference, and the organizers scrambled to replace their presentations.

Until late last week, Fienberg said the astronomical organization had hoped the politicians in Washington could work out a deal to resolve the impasse over President Donald Trump’s demands for $5.6 billion to build a wall on the southern border.

But on Thursday, employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, were told to cancel their conference plans. Scientists and engineers from NASA and the Smithsonian were also told they couldn’t attend.

Conference organizers have scrambled to shift speakers, relax the rules to allow non-governmental employees to present the work of their federal colleagues and negotiate with hotels to allow government employee to cancel reservations made long ago.

“In the same week that the Chinese government lands a rover (on the far side of the moon) and the U.S. sends a probe to the furthest object ever visited by humanity,” said Kevin Marvel, the astronomy organization’s executive officer, “scores of scientists at all career levels are being prevented from attending our meeting.”

One concrete casualty could be the government’s ability to recruit and retain the next generation of scientists, said Seitter, with the American Meteorological Society. Take E.L. Meszaros, a doctoral student at Brown University, who had been scheduled to present her research on human-drone communication techniques at the San Diego technology conference.

But her work was funded by NASA, as was her trip to the conference. So she’s stuck at home in Rhode Island. She always imagined she’d work as a public servant. But now she has scientist friends who work for the government who haven’t been paid in weeks and are interviewing at other places.

“If you can’t guarantee that you’re going to be able to pay your employees,” she said, “then it does make you second guess whether that’s where you want to work.”

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Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed.

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The story has been updated to correct that China landed a rover on the far side of the moon and to correct the description of a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

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