In the news today: Climate change is making hurricanes deadlier; how America's unique voting system undermines popular will; and Alaska’s Fat Bear Contest has a winner. Also, how rare rains left lakes gushing in the Sahara Desert. |
A car sits half-buried in sand in Bradenton Beach, Fla., Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) |
Just like Hurricane Helene, climate change could boost rain and wind from Milton, scientists say |
Human-caused climate change boosted Hurricane Helene‘s rainfall by about 10% and intensified its winds by about 11%, scientists said in a new study released just as a strengthening Hurricane Milton threatens Florida. Read more. |
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Hurricanes as intense as Helene were once expected every 130 years on average, but today are about 2.5 times more likely in the region, scientists at World Weather Attribution, an international collaborative that runs rapid climate attribution studies, calculated. The warming climate boosted Helene’s wind speeds by about 13 miles per hour and made the high sea temperatures that fueled the storm 200 to 500 times more likely, they said.
Helene dumped more than 40 trillion gallons of rain — an unprecedented amount of water — onto the region, meteorologists estimated. That rainfall would have been much less intense if humans hadn’t warmed the climate, according to WWA. The organization launched in 2015 to assess the extent to which extreme weather events could be attributed to climate change.
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The scientists warned that continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to more hurricanes like Helene, with “unimaginable” floods well inland, not just on coasts. Many of those who died in Helene fell victim to massive inland flooding, rather than high winds.
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American voters don’t directly elect the president. Sometimes that can undermine the popular will |
The U.S. has a unique system for electing a president, the Electoral College. When voters cast their ballot, they are technically voting for a slate of electors who will then vote for president and vice president. In modern times, this system has put disproportionate voting power in the hands of a few states that are fairly evenly divided politically. The lack of attention to other states leaves voters in much of the country feeling as if they are being overlooked. In two of the last six elections, candidates have lost the nationwide popular vote but won the presidency. Read more.
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Each state’s presidential electors are equal to the number of its representatives in the U.S. House and Senate. This benefits smaller states and incentivizes presidential campaigns to focus visits and dedicate most of their money on swing states, or so-called battleground states. There are seven of them this year — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The seven states represent 18% of the U.S. population but have dominated the attention of the Democratic and Republican tickets. Through Tuesday, both tickets have had just over 200 total campaign stops — three-quarters of which have been to these states, according to a database of campaign events based on AP reporting. Pennsylvania alone has been visited 41 times.
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A peek inside the human brain shows a way it cleans out the kind of waste that leads to Alzheimer’s |
Brain cells use a lot of nutrients which means they make a lot of waste. Scientists have long thought the brain has special plumbing to flush out cellular trash, especially during sleep – they could see it happening in mice. Now, researchers have finally spotted that network of tiny waste-clearing channels in the brains of living people, thanks to a special kind of imaging. Read more.
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The brain is remarkably active during sleep. One reason seems to be that it's the time it does a deep clean. And that’s gotten attention because while losing a good night’s sleep muddles people’s thinking, chronic sleep deprivation also is considered a risk factor for dementia.
The study by Dr. Juan Piantino of Oregon Health & Science University and his team is a small but potentially important one that Rochester’s Dr. Maiken Nedergaard predicted will increase interest in how brain waste clearance connects to people’s health.
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A view of lakes caused by heavy rainfall between sand dunes in Merzouga, Morocco, Oct. 2, 2024 (AP Photo) |
Water gushes through palm trees and sand dunes after rare rain in the Sahara Desert
The rare deluge of rainfall left blue lagoons of water amid the palm trees and sand dunes, nourishing some of its most drought-stricken regions with more water than many had seen in decades. |
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Please let us know what you think of this newsletter. You can sign up for more and invite a friend here. For news in real time visit APNews.com. - Siddharth
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