NAU News — With prestigious NSF fellowship, NAU grad student tackling the question of life on Mars by way of Antarctica

	With prestigious NSF fellowship, NAU grad student tackling the question of life on Mars by way of Antarctica Doctoral student Schuyler Borges is leading a project studying hot springs structures in Antarctica, comparable to features on Mars, that may be evidence for life on the Red Planet since microorganisms facilitate the production of similar hot spring structures on Earth.
	Latest results from NAU-led economic survey show business in northern Arizona is picking up, but slowly The Economic Sentiment Survey is a joint effort between NAU’s Alliance Bank Economic Policy Institute and Coconino County. A third round of results show most Flagstaff and Sedona businesses are open, but not operating at close to full capacity.
	Forests can be risky climate investments to offset greenhouse gas emissions, say NAU scientists Scott Goetz and Deborah Huntzinger co-authored a paper showing that forests can be deployed in the fight against climate change with a proper understanding of the risks that climate change itself imposes to forests.
	NAU researchers part of team that found stocks of vulnerable carbon twice as high where permafrost subsidence is a factor Ecoss researchers Elaine Pegoraro, Christina Schädel, Emily Romano, Meghan Taylor and Ted Schuur collaborated on the study, which suggests that traditional methods of measurement underestimate the amount of previously-frozen carbon unlocked from warming permafrost by more than 100 percent.
	EPIC move: To help solve the world’s problems, NAU’s newest college creates program to increase diversity, inclusion in STEM Equal Partners in Inclusive Community (EPIC) was created to make CEIAS a welcoming place where students from underrepresented groups can thrive and ensure that all students become accustomed to working with people of different genders, ethnicities and backgrounds.