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“The country watched in horror as torrential rain drenched Texas earlier this month, sweeping at least 135 people to their death. Kerr County alone lost 107, including more than two dozen children at Camp Mystic. From afar, it would be easy, even tempting, to think that floods like these could never happen to you. That the disaster is remote. It’s not. As details of the tragedy have come into focus, the list of contributing factors has grown. Sudden downpours, driven by climate change. The lack of a comprehensive warning system to notify people that the Guadalupe River was rising rapidly. Rampant building in areas known to flood, coupled with incomplete information about what places might be at risk. These are the same elements that could trigger a Kerr County type of catastrophe in every state in the country.”

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“Whether it’s an exam, flight, or health check, some people take a sunny view of the future while others plan for catastrophes. Now researchers have found that people with an upbeat outlook show similar patterns of brain activity when they mull over future scenarios. ‘Optimists seem to use a shared neural framework for organizing thoughts about the future, which likely reflects a similar style of mental processing rather than identical ideas,’ said Kuniaki Yanagisawa, first author of the research from Kobe University in Japan. He said the results could shed light on previous findings that showed optimists tended to be more socially successful.”

“A meteorite impact thousands of years ago may have triggered a landslide in the Grand Canyon and reshaped the Colorado River that runs through the national park. Geologists studying driftwood and lake sediments found in Stanton's Cave — in Marble Canyon, which lies in the eastern part of the Grand Canyon — revealed a possible connection between the area and the famous impact site known as Meteor Crater (also called Barringer Crater) in northern Arizona. Through excavation and multiple rounds of radiocarbon dating, researchers determined the driftwood is about 56,000 years old. Yet today, the mouth of Stanton's Cave sits 150 feet above the Colorado River.”

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“At a typical beach, you might spend some time shooing seagulls away from your bag of potato chips. But Boulders Beach near Cape Town, South Africa, is not a typical beach. Because there, it is a different kind of bird that will pay your beach towel a visit. Birds that can’t fly, sound like donkeys, and look like they’re wearing teeny little tuxedos. These beach birds are penguins.”