Links

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/27/642227109/hawaii-takes-a-new-spot-in-u-s-rainfall-records-after-hurricane-lane-drenches-st
Aug. 27, 2018
Hurricane Lane drenched parts of Hawaii with 3-4 feet of rainfall, with one weather station tallying the third-highest "total rainfall from a tropical cyclone in the United States since 1950," the National Weather Service says. The slow-moving storm caused floods and landslides as it moved west of the islands, back out over the Pacific Ocean.
On the Big Island, the town of Mountain View recorded 51.53 inches of rain from Wednesday to Sunday. That's the third-highest total ever measured from a U.S. storm, with the highest total being the 60.58 inches that fell on Nederland, Texas, over several days during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The weather service says the second-highest total is the 52 inches recorded during Hurricane Hiki's hit on Hawaii in 1950.
Hilo International Airport got 36.76 inches of rain, making it "the wettest four-day period ever observed at Hilo, with records dating back to 1949," the NWS says.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/science/cave-bears-dna-extinction.html
Aug. 27, 2018
About 25,000 years ago in Western Europe, the last cave bear drew its final breath and the species went extinct.
But a study published on Monday in Nature Ecology & Evolution finds that some cave bear DNA lives on in modern brown bears, much like humans carry around a bit of Neanderthal.
It’s not clear why cave bears went extinct, Dr. Barlow said, although the timing roughly followed the migration pattern of anatomically modern humans from Africa into Europe. The last cave bears lived in western Europe, and at least one skeleton has been found with fragments of a human-made spear embedded in its vertebrae.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/major-veterans-group-slams-trump-174756108.html
Aug. 27, 2018
AMVETS, one of the country’s largest veterans organizations, blasted President Donald Trump on Monday over his lackluster response to the recent death of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The organization, also known as American Veterans, tweeted that it was “deeply disappointed in the lack of traditional and appropriate respect in the White House’s reaction” to the decorated Vietnam veteran’s death.
“AMVETS is calling on the White House to show appropriate respect for the passing of Sen. McCain,” AMVETS tweeted. “He was a war hero, twice a presidential contender, and a national treasure who devoted his entire adult life to protecting and improving the American way of life.”


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/john-mccain-wanted-this-statement-read-after-his-death
Aug. 27, 2018
One of Sen. John McCain’s final wishes was to tell the country not to “despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.”
John McCain wanted this statement read after his death


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/us/politics/bruce-ohr-trump-justice-department.html
Aug. 27, 2018
In nearly three decades at the Justice Department, Mr. Ohr has made a career of supporting and facilitating important cases that targeted Russian organized crime. Now he is a target of President Trump, who has put his security clearance under review and attacked him publicly, and allies. They have cast Mr. Ohr and his wife — who worked as a contractor at the same research firm that produced a damaging dossier of information about Mr. Trump — as villains, part of a pro-Clinton cabal out to destroy the president.
But Mr. Ohr, 56, is far from corrupt, friends and former colleagues said. An experienced law enforcement official, he has a deep understanding of the underworld of Russian organized crime, they said, including raising concerns about at least one oligarch whose name has resurfaced amid the scrutiny of contacts between Trump associates and Russia.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-court-says-north-carolina-gerrymander-illegal-seeks-005935273.html
Aug. 27, 2018
A federal court ruled on Monday that North Carolina Republicans illegally drew up U.S. congressional districts in the state to benefit their party, suggesting that new lines be crafted before November's election.
The three-judge panel for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina said in a 321-page opinion that Republican legislators responsible for the map conducted unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering to dilute the impact of Democratic votes.
“That is precisely what the Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly sought to do here," the opinion said.
The panel gave parties until Thursday to file their recommendations to fix the problem.
The Republican lawmaker in charge of the plan said it was crafted to maintain Republican dominance because "electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats."
Republicans in 2016 won 10 of the 13 House districts - 77 percent of them - despite getting just 53 percent of the statewide vote, nearly the same result as in 2014.
"If this opinion stands ... the court may well order new districts be drawn in time for the 2018 elections," Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, wrote on his election law blog.
"North Carolina’s gerrymandering was one of the most brazen in the nation, where state legislative leaders proudly pronounced it a partisan gerrymander," he wrote.


https://hbr.org/2018/09/curiosity
Harvard Business Review
September–October 2018 Issue
The Business Case for Curiosity
Most of the breakthrough discoveries and remarkable inventions throughout history, from flints for starting a fire to self-driving cars, have something in common: They are the result of curiosity. The impulse to seek new information and experiences and explore novel possibilities is a basic human attribute. New research points to three important insights about curiosity as it relates to business. First, curiosity is much more important to an enterprise’s performance than was previously thought. That’s because cultivating it at all levels helps leaders and their employees adapt to uncertain market conditions and external pressures:
although leaders might say they treasure inquisitive minds, in fact most stifle curiosity, fearing it will increase risk and inefficiency. In a survey I conducted of more than 3,000 employees from a wide range of firms and industries, only about 24% reported feeling curious in their jobs on a regular basis, and about 70% said they face barriers to asking more questions at work.


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/27/air-pollution-causes-huge-reduction-in-intelligence-study-reveals
Aug. 27, 2018
Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health.
The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person’s education.
“Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year, which is huge,” said Xi Chen at Yale School of Public Health in the US, a member of the research team. “But we know the effect is worse for the elderly, especially those over 64, and for men, and for those with low education. If we calculate [the loss] for those, it may be a few years of education.”
The damage in intelligence was worst for those over 64 years old, with serious consequences, said Chen: “We usually make the most critical financial decisions in old age.” Rebecca Daniels, from the UK public health charity Medact, said: “This report’s findings are extremely worrying.”
Air pollution causes seven million premature deaths a year but the harm to people’s mental abilities is less well known. A recent study found toxic air was linked to “extremely high mortality” in people with mental disorders and earlier work linked it to increased mental illness in children, while another analysis found those living near busy roads had an increased risk of dementia.
Air pollution was seen to have a short-term impact on intelligence as well and Chen said this could have important consequences, for example for students who have to take crucial entrance exams on polluted days.


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/27/extreme-weather-could-force-food-prices-up-5-in-uk-report-says
Aug. 27, 2018
British consumers are facing a hike in food prices of at least 5% as a result of extreme weather this year, economists warn.
Extended spells of frigid and baking weather seen during the winter and summer will likely increase household food bills by an estimated £7.15 a month, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) says.
The cold snap brought on by the Beast from the East has already been blamed for a slump in the economy at the start of the year, while some industries were adversely affected by heatwave conditions over the summer.
The Cebr said domestic food production has been hit by weather extremes that have put “particular stress on farming costs and yields”.
Between March and July, the wholesale “farm gate” prices of some staples rocketed by up to 80%.
The price of wheat for bread rose by a fifth, strawberries by 28%, carrots by 41% and lettuce by 61%.
The farm gate price of carrots rose by 80%, according to European Commission figures used by the economists.
The Cebr said: “Summer 2018 has been one of the warmest in living memory, with above average temperatures recorded since April and dry spells lasting more than 50 days in parts of the country.


https://www.sciencealert.com/meta-analysis-finds-majority-of-human-pregnancies-end-in-miscarriage-biorxiv
Aug. 1, 2018
New Research Shows Most Human Pregnancies End in Miscarriage
Previous research has found that somewhere between 10 and 20 percent, or as many as 1 in 4 known pregnancies end in miscarriage, also known medically as spontaneous abortion.
Many women don't even know they're pregnant initially; and, since most miscarriages happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, many miscarry without even knowing it's happening.
It's these unknown miscarriages that make up the majority, according to Rice. In fact, he found that a woman in her 20s is just as likely to miscarry as carry the foetus to term.
And, because the miscarriage rate only rises with age, the number of miscarriages far outnumber live births, his analysis asserts.