Category: Science

More on the human brain

One that I can republish and another that I can refer to.

First, the article presented in The Conversation that I can republish.

ooOOoo

Using light to control brain cells – neuroscientist Karl Deisseroth explains how he made his Nobel‑winning discovery

Illustration of brain scan with red threads reaching from the side towards it
Optogenetics involves the use of light to alter the activity of neurons. Westend61/Getty Images

Karl Deisseroth, Stanford University

The 2026 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine honored Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their work developing optogenetics – a technique that allows researchers to control the activity of neurons with light.

The Conversation Weekly podcast talked to Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, about his journey developing optogenetics and its potential to treat a wide range of neuropsychiatric conditions. What follows is an edited transcript of the podcast.

Take us back to the early 1990s. You’re training to be a doctor and you start a rotation working with psychiatric patients. What questions about the brain did that raise for you?

Both basic neuroscience (people asking how the brain works) and clinical neuroscience (doctors trying to help people with brain disorders) have faced a very similar problem, which is the brain is quite mysterious and quite hard to study.

It’s billions of fragile, transparent, very fast-acting cells, buried within the skull and doing very complex things. We don’t have a good model for how the brain works, unlike the heart, which is very obviously a pump. We don’t actually know what the brain’s trying to do.

A lot of neuropsychiatric treatments are not as effective as they could be, and developing new ideas has been hard. The treatments we had were not grounded in a solid understanding of the cells involved. What are the cells actually doing? What are they trying to do? This was a problem that held back treatment.

When I was in psychiatry training in the early 2000s, and also as a medical student in the late 1990s, I was very much impressed with the magnitude of the challenge.

You went on to get a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and then you set up a lab at Stanford trying to understand how to control particular cells in the brain. What were the first experiments you did?

I have a background in molecular biology, and I knew how to work with genes. So I was motivated to see if we could use genetics to make a treatment or an intervention that targets one kind of cell.

Every cell has genes that tell it what to do. Different cells in the brain, just as other parts of the body, can be genetically targeted because different cells have different jobs. A cell that is a dopamine neuron has all the machinery needed to make the hormone dopamine. It uses different genes than a cell that makes the hormone serotonin, so they can be distinguished from each other.

And so the thought was maybe I could have a way of controlling just the dopamine cells or just the serotonin cells by inserting a specific gene into them. But I didn’t know what would work well, so I tried inserting different types of genes into neurons.

Close-up of hand holding an Erlenmeyer flask containing a sample of neon green liquid
Inside this flask is the unicellular algae that played a critical role in the development of optogenetics. Tobias SchwarzSCHWARZ/AFP via Getty Images

Some of the genes I tried were quite conventional; they were genes from mammals that I thought might affect the activity of neurons. But one was a gene from a single-celled algae – a microbe that converts light to energy. This gene coded for a light-activated protein called channelrhodopsin-2 that Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel identified a few years earlier.

And I thought it was worth a try. It was the least likely to work, but why not try it?

And amazingly, that was the one that worked. The genes that were lower risk didn’t work, and this gene from a single-cell microbe actually did.

Walk us through what you did. You inserted the gene into rat cells, right?

I had a preparation of cultured rodent neurons in a dish – basically a 24-well plate that let me look at many different conditions at the same time in different wells of this plate. This let me test side by side the conventional mammalian genes and this gene from the algae.

So the first step was to get the genes into the cells. Then I exposed some plates of cells to light, while others I did not. I used a test to see which cells had activated.

When I looked across the cells in the screen, I found that the ones that had the algae gene and had gotten light were showing this marker of activation, whereas the others had a much lower signal. That was a really thrilling moment because it showed that this gene from a photosynthetic single-celled organism – almost as far as you can possibly be from mammals evolutionarily – was working beautifully in fragile mammalian neurons.

It was a moment of a lot of pressure and complexity, but also delight.

You went on to name your method optogenetics – the ability to control specific nerves using light in the brain – and you soon went on to using it to control living mice in various ways. What was it like in those first few years of working with live animals?

The first experiment was in 2004, but we didn’t show that it could control the behavior of freely moving mammals until 2007. So it took almost three years. But that first moment in 2007 was quite uplifting because that showed we had gone a big, big chunk of the way toward making it work.

This was an experiment that was very visible and easy to understand. The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and attention to the left side of the world. We put in a fiber optic into the right part of a mouse motor cortex – the part that controls movement – and when we flipped the switch, the mouse immediately began going left in circles.

And then as soon as we turned off the laser light, it stopped and just looked up at us, as if nothing had happened.

That, coupled with the first experiment – those were transcendent moments.

What changed in your understanding of the brain in the moment you were able to switch particular neurons on and off?

We understood that the technique would probably work to help us understand the brain better at that moment. And then we immediately started applying it to all sorts of different cells where things were mysterious – where nobody knew or couldn’t prove exactly what one cell type or another was doing in perception and cognition and action.

We were able to find cells that were involved in hunger and thirst – basic survival drives. We were able to identify cells and pathways controlling aggression and defensiveness, parenting, how all the different parts of anxiety come on together and go away together, memory, motivation.

The general applicability became clear over the subsequent years.

Researchers are now using optogenetics in attempts to restore sight in people with visual impairment. How does that work?

In 2010, two of my colleagues in Europe were interested in delivering one of these light-activated proteins to human eye samples – specifically the retina of the eye – which worked very well.

So they did careful studies in monkeys and in people. And in 2021, just five years ago, they published a paper showing they could confer light sensitivity back to the retinas of a person who was completely blind from a neurodegenerative disease called retinitis pigmentosa.

That’s what we call direct optogenetics. It’s somewhat complicated because you have to deliver the gene and light to the person.

Karl Deisseroth sitting and smiling in a chair with laptop in his lap, Michelle Monje-Deisseroth sitting adjacent to him reaching a hand out to hold his shoulder
Karl Deisseroth, left, and his wife, Michelle Monje-Deisseroth, were at home when they were notified of his Nobel win. AP Photo/Noah Berger

And going back to your psychiatric patients, who you still see in the clinic today, how do you hope optogenetics will be able to help them?

There’s a much easier and more broadly impactful avenue that we call indirect optogenetics, which uses the knowledge that comes from studying which cells matter in a symptom and then designing medications that target those cells. This is something we’ve really lacked in neuropsychiatry for a long time.

Indirect optogenetics is making strong headway for autism and schizophrenia. There are trials that are moving to their final stages for those disorders.

My particular clinical specialty is autism, and I see the difficulties that come with irritability and anxiety in these patients. And I can see optogenetics leading to new medications that will help.

Karl Deisseroth, D. H. Chen Professor, Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ooOOoo

Next, the article in Nature what has the title: Memory stays strong in old age when this brain enzyme is active

An enzyme found in the brain could help to preserve cognitive resilience with advancing age, according to research in mice, humans and cells1.

Researchers found that high levels of the enzyme are linked to low levels of inflammation in the brains of aged mice. They also showed that the enzyme boosts the growth of neurons in ageing brains. The findings were reported on 15 October in Nature Neuroscience.

The enzyme seems to act “as a compensatory cognitive-resilience mechanism”, says study co-author Amar Sahay, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“This is a fantastic, very thoughtful approach to get at what could be protecting neurons,” says Timothy Hohman, a neuroscientist and geneticist at the Vanderbilt Memory & Alzheimer’s Center in Nashville, Tennessee, who was not involved in the study. “This is a great example of how you can use a model system to get at some of these resilience mechanisms that are super challenging to study in humans.”

ooOOoo

Maybe, just maybe, the workings of the human brain is not such a mystery as it used to be.

For the birds!

Exploring bird migration.

Here in Southern Oregon I look up at the birds in the sky, some flying solo, or with a few companions, some flying in larger groups. But I never reflect on birds that migrate.

Thus this article from The Conversation was of great interest.

ooOOoo

For centuries, bird migration was a mystery – a tech revolution is changing that, and could help save these amazing creatures

An illustration shows five birds with red and white winds on stalks in a field.
Noisy tricolored blackbirds can be found in fields and wetlands in the Pacific coast states, but they are losing habitat. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

Peter P. Marra, Georgetown University and Amy L. Scarpignato, Georgetown University

For more than 2,000 years, scientists have scratched their heads over one of the most basic mysteries of the natural world: Where do birds go?

Billions of birds appear and disappear with the seasons every year. Early naturalists offered explanations for the disappearances that today seem fantastical: Birds transformed into other species, one theory went. Others suggested they hibernated underwater or even migrated to the moon.

The truth, that these small animals were traveling thousands of miles across the planet, must once have seemed just as improbable.

Then, in the early 1800s, dramatic evidence emerged supporting the theory of migration. White storks began appearing in Germany with African arrows embedded in their bodies. These birds became known as pfeilstörche, or “arrow storks.” They provided compelling evidence that birds disappearing from Europe were traveling all the way to Africa and back.

An illustration shows two birds a building with a European walled city behind. One has an arrow through its chest.
When storks began showing up with African arrows in their backs, early ornithologists made an important discovery: Birds migrate. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

Almost two centuries later, scientists are still asking the same question, but our ability to answer it has been transformed.

For most of ornithological history, scientists understood migration through brief glimpses of a bird, a specimen collected somewhere else, or the rare instance of a banded bird recovered hundreds or thousands of miles from where it had been marked. From these fragments of intelligence, scientists reconstructed journeys that took place largely beyond their view.

Today, it’s possible to see the journeys themselves, almost in real time.

A century of following birds

Bird banding was the first tool used to attempt a systematic approach to connect these fragments of information. Since the early 1900s, researchers have placed uniquely numbered metal bands on birds and hoped someone, somewhere, would encounter them again.

Of more than 79 million birds banded, only about 6.5 million have been recovered. That generally told scientists just two things: where a bird was banded and where it was encountered again. Everything between them remained invisible.

A person holds a bird and wire snips to add a band to the bird's leg.
Carefully attaching a band to a bird’s leg allowed scientists to see where that bird ended up, but it couldn’t show its entire journey. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

Over the past quarter-century or so, the tools used to determine where birds go have changed dramatically.

Tracking devices can now be carried by increasingly smaller birds, recording their movements and communicating with land-based receivers or satellites orbiting the earth. Testing stable isotopes in feathers and other tissues can reveal where a bird originated. Genetic testing can distinguish populations.

At the same time, the extraordinary growth of bird-watching and citizen science has created another revolution.

Millions of observations by bird-watchers submitted to eBird, an online database to record the birds they see, show the distribution and abundance of birds across a continent throughout the year in ways early ornithologists could scarcely have imagined.

Collectively, these methods open an extraordinary new window into migratory birds and one of nature’s most remarkable behaviors: migration.

An owl with arresting eyes and two small owls in a burrow.
Burrowing owls breed in the Western U.S., raising their young in burrows often taken over from ground squirrels or prairie dogs. In winter, they migrate to Southwestern states, Mexico or Central America. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

Discovering unknown migrations

More than 70% of North American bird species are migratory. Yet scientists have known surprisingly little about where specific populations go.

A species like the American robin may breed across thousands of miles of North America, with different breeding populations migrating to entirely different places for the winter. Birds breeding in one part of the continent may travel one route and encounter one set of environmental conditions, while members of the same species experience a completely different set of conditions along another route.

An illustration of a brown bird with an elaborate tail on a branch, and the map behind it.
The yellow-billed cuckoo has three main flyways but many other routes between the U.S. and South America. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

These connections between where a bird breeds and where it spends the winter is called migratory connectivity. They are critical for understanding everything from the consequences of climate change on birds to how avian pathogens and diseases spread, to a species’ basic ecology.

We are ornithologists and conservation scientists who have spent almost 15 years along with a team of contributors compiling this rapidly expanding knowledge on bird movement into The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds. The atlas, being published on Nov. 3, 2026, by Princeton University Press, covers the latest information on seasonal movements for nearly 600 species and combines a century of bird-banding data with eBird observations, tracking studies, stable isotope testing, genetics and other sources of information.

What emerges is a picture of migratory birds that is both more complicated and more remarkable than the simple arrows pointing between breeding and wintering ranges on a map.

Consider the yellow-billed cuckoo. These birds breed over a wide range of the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. but migrate to a relatively small wintering area in the Gran Chaco region of northern Argentina, Paraguay and southern Bolivia.

A majestic raptor on a branch with a broad tundra behind it.
The peregrine falcon travels as far north as Alaska in summer, then some individuals return as far south as South America. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

In contrast, peregrine falcons that breed in Alaska migrate almost directly south, dispersing across the Americas to wintering grounds that extend as far as southern South America.

Discoveries like these are accumulating rapidly. Collectively, they amount to a renaissance in our understanding of animal movement never before imagined.

Living masterpieces

The more clearly scientists can follow individual birds and populations across the planet, the more extraordinary these species can seem.

Migratory birds such as the arctic tern and northern wheatear cross oceans, deserts and mountain ranges. Some, like the bar-tailed godwits, fly thousands of miles without stopping. Others, like the American redstart, return year after year to remarkably precise breeding and wintering locations.

An illustration of a sand hill crane on a prairie.
In winter, large flocks of sandhill cranes can be found in places like Bosque del Apache, N.M., and Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Texas. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

They navigate landscapes and respond to winds, weather, food and environmental conditions across enormous geographic scales.

The cover of the atlas shows several types of birds.
The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds’ combines illustrations and maps to show where bird populations go when they migrate. Princeton University Press

We see these species and their migrations as among evolution’s great living masterpieces. That’s why we combined science with natural history and artist John Anderton’s extraordinary illustrations of the birds themselves. The maps allow us to see where birds travel, and the art brings the species to life.

Together, they make visible something that humans could only imagine for most of our history.

A map for conservation

North America has lost about 3 billion birds during the past half-century, and many migratory species continue to decline.

To understand why a population is declining and help save it, researchers need to understand the species’ entire annual cycle: its critical stopover habitats, wintering grounds and threats along its migration routes.

For much of the history of ornithology, scientists studied birds primarily during their breeding season. That made practical sense. Birds are conspicuous then – singing, defending territories, building nests and raising young.

An illustration of a yellow bird with white black-tipped wings dancing.
Male buff-breasted sandpipers perform a courtship dance on the Arctic tundra to attract their mates. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

But a migratory bird may spend only a few months of its life in its breeding grounds. Conditions such as weather, food availability and habitat quality encountered during migration can determine whether an individual survives to breed again.

Drought thousands of miles away can affect a bird’s condition months later. American redstarts depart later after dry winters and produce fewer young. Declining horseshoe crab populations in Delaware Bay have reduced food availability for migrating red knots, contributing to lower survival.

Rust-colored birds hanging out in a wetland area.
Rusty blackbirds favor wetlands. The males have feathers with rusty edges in winter, but they turn glossy black during breeding season. John Anderton/The Atlas of North America’s Migratory Birds

The power of people

All of this knowledge has accumulated because people value birds and have devoted enormous time and effort to understanding them.

For more than a century, thousands of bird-banders have woken up before the crack of dawn to set traps, carefully place bands on birds’ legs and release them, often knowing the chances of ever learning what happened to those individuals were exceedingly small.

More recently, tracking technology has allowed researchers to follow individual birds across continents and oceans. Those tracks exist because scientists, students, technicians and others have spent countless hours attaching and recovering tags, and contributing and sharing their data. https://www.youtube.com/embed/xfiY0tTjKxA?wmode=transparent&start=0 In this animation, Cornell’s Bird Lab traced the routes of 15 species using tracking signals. From tiny sensors to networks of humans with binoculars, efforts to understand migrations are helping to show where cruicial habitat can be preserved.

Today, millions of bird-watchers contribute observations that, thanks to advances in data science, allow us to watch migration unfold across an entire continent.

We have spent much of our careers documenting the decline of birds, and we know the challenges facing migratory species are formidable. But we also have hope for these creatures’ survival. https://www.youtube.com/embed/-nMHxxbvAfg?wmode=transparent&start=0 Bird migrations face threats, including from habitat loss and climate change.

Scientists today know more about where migratory birds go, how populations are connected and what they encounter along the way than at any previous point in history. That knowledge is helping to identify where conservation efforts can make a difference for the future.

Peter P. Marra, Dean of The Earth Commons, Professor of Biology and the Environment, Georgetown University and Amy L. Scarpignato, Senior Species Recovery Specialist, Road to Recovery, The Earth Commons, Georgetown University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ooOOoo

Once again, the development of suitable technologies has produced answers that reveal the science.

Here is the portal for eBird Oregon.

I had no idea it was such a large organisation.

The facts behind hurricanes

Being from London originally, I grew up not being aware of hurricanes.

Now that we are living in Oregon, hurricanes are closer, both literally and figuratively.

This article was posted for the youngsters but I’m using it as my post because of its general interest.

ooOOoo

How much rain can a hurricane make, and does the storm size matter?

Two men stand in thigh-deep water in the rain next to a truck, one is holding a dog under his rain jacket.
Hurricane Harvey dropped several feet of rain on Texas, stranding trucks, people and their pets. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Zachary Handlos, Georgia Institute of Technology

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

How much rain can a hurricane make, and how much do big versus small hurricanes make? – Naarah, age 8, Pittsburgh

Hurricanes can produce enormous amounts of rain, adding up to trillions of gallons of water. But the big risk isn’t their total amount – it’s how much rain falls on each location.

One town in Texas got over 60 inches (152 centimeters) of rain from Hurricane Harvey over five days in 2017. That means empty swimming pools there would have filled with rainwater 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep. Hurricane Lane dumped 58 inches (147 centimeters) of rain on Kahuna Falls, Hawaii, the following year.

So, what causes that much rain, and does the size of the storm matter?

I’m an atmospheric scientist who teaches college students about weather at Georgia Tech. Let’s take a look at where a hurricane’s rainfall comes from and some of the questions about hurricanes and their rainfall that scientists are still trying to answer.

First, what goes into creating a hurricane?

A few ingredients are needed for a hurricane to form: A tropical thunderstorm complex, lots of moisture in the air, winds that don’t change speed much with height, and warm sea surface waters below.

The water temperature is very important.

A map shows water temperatures very warm in the Gulf.
Sea surface temperatures on Oct. 6, 2026, show the very warm water in the western Gulf of Mexico, where a tropical storm grew into Hurricane Isaias the following day. Water that is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.5 degrees Celsius) can fuel hurricanes. NOAA

The magic number for surface water temperature to be able to fuel a hurricane is at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.5 degrees Celsius). At that temperature and above, the warm ocean water evaporates into the air, changing from liquid to vapor. As it makes that change, it provides energy to fuel the storm and also adds moisture to the atmosphere that eventually falls as rain.

Another very interesting post from The Conversation

When a hurricane moves over warm water, especially when the warm water extends many feet below the surface, the storm pulls in even more energy and moisture.

What affects hurricane size and rainfall?

This is one of the many questions about hurricanes that atmospheric scientists are working on.

The average hurricane is about 300 miles (482 kilometers) wide, but hurricanes – or typhoons, as they’re called in the western Pacific of the Northern Hemisphere – can be much bigger or smaller.

Super Typhoon Tip in 1979 grew to half the size of the lower 48 U.S. states. It had a radius of about 690 miles (1,110 kilometers), measured from the center of the storm to its outer edges, meaning it was 1,380 miles (2,222 kilometers) wide. Tropical Storm Marco’s gale-force winds in 2008, in comparison, had a radius of 11.5 miles (18.5 kilometers), meaning it was about 23 miles (37 kilometers) across – not much larger than New York City.

A map shows the difference in size between the largest tropical storm, Tip, which took up half the Lower 48 states, and Marcos, which was about the size of New York City.
How the largest tropical cyclone in recorded history and the smallest compare. It’s quite a difference! NOAA

In 2025, scientists published a study showing that hurricane size appears to be influenced by how warm the ocean water is compared to its usual temperature that time of year. So, if a hurricane moves over water that is much warmer than normal, it tends to grow in size rapidly as well as growing in strength.

A recent hurricane that was very large in size was the extremely destructive Hurricane Helene in 2024. As Helene moved over water near Florida that was much warmer than normal for late September, it picked up lots of moisture that it carried all the way to the mountains of North Carolina. Several days of rain from the storm caused catastrophic flooding there.

A satellite image of a very large Hurricane Helene hitting the Florida Gulf coast.
A satellite image shows Hurricane Helene making landfall on Sept. 26, 2024, near Perry, Fla. The storm carried a lot of water far inland, causing flooding in the North Carolina mountains. NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service

But don’t count the small hurricanes out.

Just because a hurricane is small, that does not mean that it won’t have a big impact.

Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was destructive yet small. Its strongest winds extended only about 90 miles (150 km) from its center when it reached Miami and the Everglades. But that Category 5 hurricane is still known as one of the strongest hurricanes to hit the United States. It destroyed more than 25,000 homes.

A radar image showing the reach of Andrew's rain bands indicates a small storm.
Hurricane Andrew wasn’t very big when it made landfall on Elliott Key, Fla., near Miami, on Aug. 24, 1992, but it was powerful and extremely destructive. National Hurricane Center

A strong storm isn’t necessary for a lot of rain to fall. Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 is still one of the wettest tropical weather events in U.S. history. It caused over US$4 billion in damage in Texas alone, and it didn’t even develop into a hurricane!

So, what really leads to the highest rainfall totals?

Hurricanes that move slowly or nearly stop along their path usually cause the biggest rainfall problems because their rain keeps falling over the same location. The rain may be just as intense in a fast-moving hurricane, but it doesn’t stick around as long.

An example is Hurricane Harvey, which hit southeastern Texas in late August 2017. The storm dropped an estimated 27 trillion gallons of water over the state – that’s enough to fill about 40 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

When Harvey stalled over the Houston area, the storm kept drawing moisture from the warm waters of the Gulf. Over four days, it brought precipitation that totals as high as 60.58 inches (1.54 meters) of rain over Nederland, Texas. The extreme rainfall overran the town’s drainage and transformed Nederland into an island.

A map of rainfall totals over several days shows areas around Houston receiving extremely high amounts of rain.
The Houston area received extraordinarily high precipitation totals from Aug. 25 through Sept. 1, 2017, associated with Hurricane Harvey. National Weather Service, Lake Charles, La., office

If a storm moves fast, like Hurricane Michael did in 2018 when it hit the Florida Panhandle, its winds and storm surge can make a big mess, but its rainfall totals will be lower.

Michael was a Category 5 hurricane – more powerful than Harvey and Helene – but its rainfall totals for locations along its path ranged from 6 to 10 inches (15 to 25 centimeters) because it was moving so fast. That’s still a lot of rain, but not compared to Harvey or to Helene, which dumped 30 inches (76 centimeters) of rain on Busick, N.C., over a few days.

A satellite image showing the eye of the hurricane on the Florida coast.
Hurricane Michael passes over Mexico Beach, Fla., on Oct. 10, 2018. The storm moved quickly, so it brought less rainfall to each location compared to slow-moving Hurricane Harvey in Texas the previous year, but its wind and storm surge caused catastrophic damage. NOAA NESDIS

So, a hurricane can be large or small in size and still have a big impact, depending on how slowly it’s moving.

There is still a lot to learn about hurricanes. Some big questions involve what’s known as rapid intensification. That occurs when a tropical storm’s maximum wind speed increases quickly, by 30 knots (about 34.5 miles per hour or 55 kilometers per hour) or more within 24 hours.

When rapid intensification occurs, as happened with hurricanes Harvey, Michael and Helene before they hit land, the storm can surprise coastal residents and become catastrophic.

Hurricanes of all sizes can be dangerous, so accurate forecasting well before they reach land is crucial to help people prepare for their impacts. One very important area of research that today’s scientists – and future scientists – can work on is improving forecasting so coastal residents know what’s coming and have time to prepare.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Zachary Handlos, Atmospheric Science Educator, Georgia Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ooOOoo

The changing weather is a frequent topic on all communication channels.

Here in Merlin, Southern Oregon, we have had weeks of drought, and what had been forecasted for early next week as rain showers has now been changed to cloudy conditions.

Workout information

This is an interesting report.

Exercise is good. From the following article we read that exercise is much more than an event. Read on to see where I am coming from.

ooOOoo

Your cells keep a record of every workout you’ve ever done – and those gains persist even after a break from exercise

Person lying half on a treadmill, half on the ground
Your body retains the benefits of exercise even when you need to hit pause. Williams+Hirakawa/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Diego Hernandez-Saavedra, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Yi-Heng (Hank) Huang, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Have you ever taken months off training – maybe due to an injury, a new baby or crushing work deadlines – and come back convinced you were starting from zero?

Research from our team has some good news: At the cellular level, you probably weren’t.

We found that muscle and liver cells store memories from every training session in ways that may help improve endurance, control blood sugar levels and even slow weight regain after inactivity.

Use it or lose it? Maybe not

For most of the past century, long before fad diets and fancy workout trends took off, exercise was considered one of the most effective lifestyle changes to lower the risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, several cancers and early death for people of all ages. But people typically understood exercise as something whose beneficial effects fade away over time: You use it or lose it.

When you stop training, your maximum oxygen uptake, muscle gains and insulin sensitivity drift back to where they started, often within weeks. Physical activity guidelines are built on this fact, which is why they emphasize consistency above all else.

Consistency, however, is a luxury that roughly 3 in 4 American adults aren’t able to enjoy. People can experience injuries, illness, pregnancy or jobs that limit their time for or ability to exercise. If adaptation really resets, every time you step into the gym would be as if you’ve never been there before. But that scenario doesn’t match what coaches and returning athletes typically describe: In practice, people who have trained before can get fit again faster than those who haven’t undergone similar training.

In recent years, however, scientists have started challenging the concept of “use it or lose it.” New research hints that your cells might keep a record of your training history so all of your gains are not completely lost.

More than muscle

We are exercise physiologists who study how cells remember exercise. Our lab and others have shown that the body is able to store a form of exercise memory across different organs.

To study how this exercise memory works, our team of researchers use an ON-OFF-ON exercise training protocol in mice, which involves an initial four- to eight-week training period, followed by detraining – a period of no exercise – and a second training bout. This method allows us to examine how cells form a memory of exercise, maintain a record of exercise through detraining, and recall memories of prior training when exposed again to exercise.

Using this strategy, our team found that skeletal muscle memory accelerates muscle growth. Compared to mice with no training history, mice who retrained grew bigger muscles, and the individual muscle fibers inside those muscles grew too. Larger muscle fibers meant that the working cells were themselves getting bigger, rather than the surrounding tissue.

Microscopy image of small pink dots enclosed within several circular membranes
Individual muscle fibers (the pink dots) grow larger with exercise. Ed Reschke/Stone via Getty Images

Looking more closely at these muscle cells, we found that retrained muscle is better at matching energy production to demand – meaning, the muscles were better at drawing from energy stores when it’s needed most – and this ability persists without further exercise. This memory held even when the mice ate a high-fat diet, suggesting that prior training can still offer benefits even when diet is working against those gains.

Muscle isn’t the only body part that learns from exercise. Working muscle needs fuel, and the liver supplies it during and after training sessions.

My colleagues and I found that liver cells also store exercise memory and uses it to feed muscle more efficiently. In both mice and people who trained, stopped, then trained again, their livers released higher levels of a family of enzymes called carboxylesterases. These enzymes chop up lipids circulating in the blood, delivering fat in a form that muscle can take up and burn as it grows.

A record that outlives you

Recorded cellular memories of exercise may even be passed down to future generations.

In mice, we found that three to four weeks of maternal and paternal endurance exercise can have a lasting effect on their offspring. Compared to offspring born to sedentary parents, parental exercise granted protection against poor blood sugar levels and excess weight gain for an entire year after birth.

Researchers have hypothesized numerous ways that prenatal exercise may affect offspring. For example, maternal exercise might allow offspring to spend more time developing in the womb or lead parents to producer higher quality milk.

But there remains much to be discovered on how parents influence the health of their children and whether their lifestyle could provide a fitness advantage across generations.

Every cell remembers

Biology has traditionally granted memory to a short list of cells. Neurons store memory in the connections between them. Immune cells store memory so they can recognize pathogens faster and more strongly the next time they encounter them.

Researchers previously considered all other cells to be memoryless; a cell responds to a signal, then returns to baseline without keeping a record of that interaction. But that assumption is now coming apart.

Skin stem cells can keep a record of inflammation, allowing them to heal a new wound faster months later. Human fat cells keep a record of obesity that persists even after substantial weight loss, which may account for why you gain weight faster when switching back to a high-calorie diet – the so-called yo-yo effect.

Two people sitting inside a gym, fit bumping
While consistent exercise is still key to health, don’t stress if you need to take a break. The Good Brigade/DigitalVision via Getty Images

We propose that every cell in the body remembers exercise, regardless of how little or how much someone trains. The question is how long these records are stored and whether researchers could prolong or expand each cell’s storage capacity. Better understanding of how cells learn and remember exercise, where they store memories and how those memories are preserved could help improve exercise guidelines for those who cannot exercise for prolonged or consistent periods of time.

To be clear, none of these findings are evidence for skipping the gym; nothing in our data suggests the effects of past training can substitute for present training. But there is hope that the work you put into getting in shape isn’t completely lost over time.

Somewhere, deep in your cells, there is a record waiting to be replayed the next time you lace up your running shoes, pick up a pair of dumbbells or want to fulfill a New Year’s resolution.

Diego Hernandez-Saavedra, Assistant Professor of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Yi-Heng (Hank) Huang, Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ooOOoo

There were many aspects of this applied health science that surprised me, and I suspect will surprise others. It is another supporting reason why I go cycling three or four times a week.

A review of a danger.

George Monbiot spells out a motoring hazard.

I do not drive. I haven’t driven for quite a few years. I had a biking accident that caused the DVLC to recall my license. (I had two sub-dural bleedings that required urgent surgery)

Ouch!

Thus, ironically, I am removed from having car-driving accidents.

That leads me on to republish a recent George Monbiot article.

ooOOoo

Driven to the Brink

Posted on 23rd September 2026

Petromasculinity not only kills people on the road. It spills into our politics, fuelling far-right individualism.  

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 17th September 2026

Where is lawbreaking not just visible, but designed to be seen? Where is antisocial behaviour worn as a badge of honour? Where is pleasure gained directly from causing distress? And where is reckless endangerment often ignored by the police or treated with the mildest of punishments? The answer is on the roads.

Last month, three men in the West Midlands were convicted of street racing. Two were driving at over 80mph in a 40mph zone. The third clocked over 90mph in a 30mph zone. The West Midlands has long been blighted by organised racing, sometimes involving 200 cars or more and hundreds of spectators. The result is a long catalogue of deaths and life-changing injuries, including some caused when racers have left the road and ploughed into onlookers or pedestrians. And there are plenty more accidents where the police have little idea whether racing is to blame, for as soon as they happen, the drivers disperse.

The West Midlands is one of the few places in the UK where the police are actively trying to stop antisocial driving. An injunction bans street racing and dangerous tricks such as “drifting” (long sideways skids) and “doughnutting” (making the car spin on the spot). The local police commissioner has warned that reckless drivers “will face the full force of the law … including seizure of your vehicle and imprisonment”. But are the courts listening?

Of the three men convicted at Birmingham magistrates court, one received a suspended sentence, a £272 fine, 150 hours of community work and a two-year driving ban. Another was handed a £1,275 fine and seven penalty points: in other words, he could step out of the court and back into his car. The man who did over 90mph in a 30mph zone got a £253 fine and a 56-day driving ban. He’ll be back on the roads in November. All appear to have kept their cars.

If these men had caused the same level of endangerment by any other means, it’s hard to believe they would have got off so lightly. But in dozens of ways, driving gets special treatment.

There’s a similar racing culture in mid-Wales, where I lived until 2012. Night after night, a convoy of cars with exhausts modified to be as loud as possible would race past, at 50mph or more in a 30mph zone. They would start at around 10pm and continue some nights until 2am, going round the nearby roads in a loop. As soon as I’d got my infant daughter to sleep, they’d roar past and wake her up again.

Calls to the police were useless: they told me to take down the number plates and “report the incident”. When I did so, they explained, in effect, that I was wasting my time, as I couldn’t prove the drivers were breaking the speed limit. In fact, their advice was counterproductive: when I went outside to take the plates, the young men jeered, gave me the finger and accelerated. It seemed that shock and disgust was what they craved. And this was before TikTok, where drivers can achieve much wider notoriety.

The first young man to “do a ton” (100mph) down my high street in Wales on his motorbike became a local hero. Soon afterwards, he rode into a wall and died. Other drivers killed their passengers, hit pedestrians or forced other cars off the road. When people were killed or injured, the drivers were prosecuted and lightly punished, but there was little effort to address the underlying culture. Some men went straight back into the convoys when they regained their licences. I’m told that nothing has changed, despite the default 20mph speed limit now applied to residential areas across Wales. Every year a new cohort of young men joins the local urban racetrack.

Now I live in Devon, where there’s a different culture of antisocial driving. Here it’s mostly middle-aged men in “lifted” pickup trucks, which have been modified to be as loud and smoky as possible. Two local SUVs have been refitted to “roll coal” from twin exhaust towers mounted behind the cab, releasing a dense black cloud of soot when the driver hits the “smoke switch”. Adapting your truck for this purpose means buying a “delete kit” to bypass the vehicle’s emissions control system, retuning the engine and fitting bigger injectors. The practice emerged in the US, both as an anti-environmental protest and as a form of amusement. It is largely deployed against cyclists, pedestrians and electric vehicles. I’ve seen these two trucks doing it, blinding the drivers behind and choking everyone around. Of course it’s illegal. But it doesn’t seem to be a priority for the police in my area.

What we see here are manifestations of petro-masculinity: a violent, misogynistic, climate-denying version of manhood, expressed through an antisocial driving culture. Some of the modified trucks have decals saying “Stop the Boats” or “Save Our Children” (who are apparently being brainwashed by LGBTQ+ cultural Marxists). This is the Magafication of transport – a vehicle that carries some of the worst aspects of US culture and politics into the UK.

It’s the extreme end of a much wider trend. In the UK last year, 52% of the new cars on sale were SUVs. Not only do the ever-rising bonnets of these trucks make it harder for drivers to see pedestrians and cyclists, especially children, but higher and heavier cars are also more likely to cause deaths or serious injuries when they hit people: children under nine are three times more likely to be killed if they’re hit by an SUV than by a regular car.

And what are they for? On narrow country lanes round here, tourists in these “off-road” vehicles won’t back up if it means touching a hedge, in case the high-gloss finish on their Wankpanzer Childkiller gets scratched. In one of the poshest parts of London, the Chelsea Truck Company advertises “iconic urban 4x4s”. “Iconic” appears to mean huge. But what the hell is an “urban 4×4”? And why is it legal?

Isn’t it obvious that selfishness on the road changes us as a society? The belief that drivers should be allowed to do whatever they please, regardless of the impact on others, mounts the pavement and travels deep into our lives. If this is to be a decent, inclusive country that values human life, then the law and its enforcement should match that aspiration. But when the roads are used to amplify and celebrate a dangerous, antisocial culture, we are driven towards a very dark place.

http://www.monbiot.com

ooOOoo

Now this is in England but I have very little doubt that it occurs here in America. Especially since a far greater proportion of vehicles are SUV’s. Well that’s the case here in Oregon.

Back in business

And I want to republish this article.

I am slowly getting to know my new Mac, and there are many features that make it an improvement over my old Mac.

So to today’s post. It is an article published by The Conversation about the cosmos.

ooOOoo

An overlooked era of cosmology is stealing the show in the quest to understand the cosmos

A telescope on a mountaintop set in a box with two antenna disks
The Large Binocular Telescope was used to take the new measurement of primordial helium-4. NASA

Cara Giovanetti, University of California, Berkeley

Could you imagine if pagers made a comeback? Sure, your smartphone would still be your notepad-flashlight-camera-personal assistant-MP3 player-wallet-social media browser. But imagine if pagers made it so easy to do that one important thing – pinging your friends and associates – that we all brought them back into our lives, or adopted them for the first time.

A redemption arc like this is happening in cosmology, the study of the history of our universe. The hero – rather than old technology – is an epoch of cosmological history called Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, or BBN.

Some cosmologists have thought that BBN is too old-school to be as good a tool for cosmology as other probes of the early universe. But BBN is the darling of my research program, where I use cosmology to learn more about particle physics. I have seen firsthand how recent results from this old cosmological epoch can guide new research about our universe.

The smartphone of cosmology

Cosmology’s superstar is the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, which formed some 400,000 years after the Big Bang. It’s an all-sky mosaic of hot and cold patches of light, which appeared while electrons and nuclei combined into the first neutral atoms. Viewed from Earth, each hot or cold patch is small enough for the Moon to block out.

The CMB’s intricate patterning has been the subject of several intense observational campaigns, and for good reason. The key scientific model in cosmology has six major unknown quantities that researchers must measure to understand the universe. All of these quantities can be inferred with good measurements of the CMB.

But the CMB’s much older, less famous cousin is starting to steal some of its limelight.

A game of musical chairs

The universe started with a bang – the Big Bang – and about 10 minutes later, the largest game of musical chairs in history began. By that time, the universe was still dense, and hotter than the Sun. But it had cooled just enough for formerly freewheeling protons and neutrons to fuse into nuclei, which make up the centers of atoms.

The game started, and every proton searched for neutrons to fuse with. A proton lucky enough to find a neutron partner formed deuterium. That couple could snatch either another neutron to make tritium, or another proton to make helium-3. One more proton or neutron each finally made helium-4, which has a remarkably stable nucleus with two protons and two neutrons.

A diagram showing a proton and neutron fusing into deuterium, two deuteriums fusing into helium-3 or tritium, and those fusing into helium-4
Particles fused together in the first few minutes of the universe to create larger and more complicated particles. Cara Giovanetti, CC-BY-SA

The catch is that the number of neutrons in the universe plummeted during the game, like chairs being yanked out of line. Neutrons are unstable when they’re not bound in nuclei, spontaneously spitting out lighter particles in about 15 minutes to become the slightly lighter proton.

The music stopped for good when the universe became too cold for these particles to continue fusing. By that time – just 20 minutes after the game started – nearly all neutrons had either turned into protons or ended up in helium-4. Any proton that wasn’t lucky enough to partner up probably remained single for millennia, and might even be wandering the universe alone today.

This process is called Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. Astrophysicists can actually measure the quantities of helium-4 and deuterium that formed by the time it ended, referred to as primordial abundances.

But a new measurement of the primordial helium-4 abundance, published in September 2026, has reached stunning precision, providing information about the universe during BBN at a level of detail never before known.

A window to the early universe

Just a few seconds after the Big Bang, neutrons could absorb lighter particles and become protons, setting the stage for Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in processes distinct from the decays that happened toward the end of BBN 15 minutes later. This conversion could occur as long as the universe was very dense and hot. The longer that condition was satisfied, the more neutrons could turn into protons before BBN began.

But the universe expanded quickly after the Big Bang. The stretching of the fabric of the universe was propelled by radiation, where “radiation” refers to hot particles with tiny masses. The rate of expansion – and, by proxy, the amount of radiation – determined how quickly the universe became less dense.

It’s harder for neutrons to absorb particles and convert into protons in a diluted universe, because everybody’s so far away. The quicker the universe expanded, the less time there was to turn neutrons into protons, and so the more neutrons there would be the start of BBN. More neutrons at the beginning of musical chairs means more helium-4 by the end of it.

A diagram showing two images. The left, labeled 'dense,' shows a universe full of particles, while the right, labeled 'diluted,' shows a universe with particles scattered thinly.
In a dense universe, particles interact easily, and neutrons (blue) turn into protons (red). If the universe is not very dense, interaction becomes much harder, and more neutrons stick around. Cara Giovanetti, CC-BY-SA

The amount of radiation therefore determines the final helium-4 abundance. By measuring that abundance, my colleagues and I work backward to find the precise amount of radiation in the early universe.

That’s an important quantity to measure. Among other reasons, particle physicists can use it to learn more about dark matter, a largely invisible substance that constitutes 80% of the matter in the universe.

Many models of dark matter, or other hypothetical physics, call for slightly more or slightly less radiation than what’s expected in standard cosmology. Measuring this quantity precisely helps particle physicists differentiate these predictions from the truth.

Looking ahead

BBN now determines the amount of radiation in the early universe better than the CMB. And its newfound prowess doesn’t stop at helium-4. Measurements of primordial deuterium, taken throughout the 21st century, tell cosmologists the density of particles like protons and neutrons with extreme precision. The precision with which BBN determines this quantity rivals, though does not yet exceed, that of the CMB.

The CMB isn’t quite ready to give up its spotlight. Even more precise measurements of all of the major unknowns in cosmology are already underway, as the Simons Observatory – a new high precision CMB telescope – makes its first observations. But there’s no clear path to improved measurements after the Simons Observatory finishes taking data, since the next-generation experiment CMB-S4 was suspended indefinitely last year.

Maybe it’s good timing, then, for BBN to be making its comeback. Getting even better BBN data doesn’t require dedicated observatories. Instead, observers only need more time on existing or planned telescopes. With near-term improvements to astronomical observations, physicists may get closer than ever to understanding the makeup – and therefore history and future – of our universe.

Cara Giovanetti, Postdoctoral Researcher in Physics, University of California, Berkeley

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ooOOoo

Now there’s another thing I have just learnt (on the 26th). That is to copy and paste I now have to use the Command key plus the appropriate letter key.

A possible weather crisis

The latest report on this year’s super El Niño.

We love living in Southern Oregon. This rural part of the countryside is a delight, and feeding the wild deer is a bonus.

However, we also have to take note of the changing climate and the potential risks that extremes of weather can bring.

ooOOoo

As cities prepare for 2026’s super El Niño, some crucial blind spots can’t be ignored

A man carrying several items walks through cement passage with water in it under a bridge
An affordable-housing crisis and a growing homeless population led Los Angeles to declared a shelter crisis during the 2015-16 El Niño. David McNew/Getty Images

Bethany Tietjen, Tufts University

This year’s El Niño has the potential to be one of the strongest in living memory, and the evidence is showing up around the world.

The U.S. just saw its hottest summer on record in the Lower 48 states. Drought is slowing shipping in the Panama Canal. The Pacific is experiencing an exceptionally busy hurricane season, while the Atlantic is unusually quiet. Those are just a few early signs. Forecasters warn that this El Niño could bring extreme heat, destructive storms and flooding to many parts of the planet through early 2027.

Huge waves crash up against a coastline. Their spray goes as high as the homes that are right next to the water.
Storm waves crash onto seaside houses at Mondos Beach, Calif., on Jan. 12, 2016, during a strong El Niño. Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images

I am a researcher who works on climate and disaster resilience, and I study how governments prepare for climate disasters and help to identify what they are missing.

Community planning for El Niño often starts by identifying infrastructure that’s vulnerable to extreme weather. What can be harder to address are the needs of the populations most at risk, including low-income communities and older adults who may need help preparing their homes and themselves for extreme conditions.

As communities prepare for the rising risk of extreme weather, they need to be aware of the blind spots.

What is El Niño and what’s at risk?

El Niño is part of a natural climate pattern that appears every few years when temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean rise.

Its effects can shift weather patterns away from what is considered normal. Typically wet regions can get unusually dry, while dry areas can experience extreme rainfall that causes flooding. Global average temperatures also tend to rise during El Niño conditions, leaving people facing dangerous heat, both indoors and outdoors.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/WPA-KpldDVc?wmode=transparent&start=0 What is El Niño?

On the U.S. West Coast, for example, the combination of El Niño conditions with king tides and rising sea levels could lead to more coastal flooding, erosion and damage to homes and infrastructure. In the past, flood damage and landslides from heavy rain during El Niño have shut down highways and affected public services long after a storm has passed.

A map of the US shows rainier conditions in the South, warmth in Canada and the northern U.S., and dryness in the Midwest.
In winter, El Niño typically shifts weather patterns across the U.S. However, every El Nino is different – conditions during one El Niño may be very different from the next. NOAA

Preparing for the strong El Niño expected in late 2026 and early 2027 means ensuring that critical infrastructure is able to withstand flooding, temperature extremes and other severe weather conditions.

That means inspecting flood control and drainage systems, trimming trees that could knock down power lines during high winds, and reinforcing or maintaining infrastructure such as dams, stormwater channels, roads and bridges.

Aging infrastructure, in particular, can be a problem.

Old levees and dams, for example, can leave a community vulnerable to catastrophic flooding, as the Seattle area saw in December 2025 when flooding from heavy rainfall broke levees in multiple communities. Repairing and replacing large-scale infrastructure like this is expensive and time-consuming. Too often, by the time it fails, repairs had been discussed for years but not completed.

Where we’re finding gaps in disaster planning

Infrastructure is only part of the challenge. Preparing a community for El Niño also means preparing people for what could be unprecedented conditions.

A study I worked on with researchers at Tufts University reviewed climate adaptation and disaster preparedness in several high-risk communities in the United States. We identified gaps in the policies, resources and institutional capacity available to help communities adapt to rising risks.

A paved bicycling path atop a levee is broken and slabs of asphalt pavement are tilted into a breach where water poured through.
Crews inspect damage to a Green River levee in the Seattle suburbs on Dec. 15, 2025. Thousands of people were urged to evacuate during a series of atmospheric river storms, and the National Guard was sent to monitor and reinforce several levees considered at risk. AP Photo/Manuel Valdes

In particular, we found that governments often focus heavily on physical risks while giving too little attention to social vulnerability.

Vulnerable populations, including people experiencing homelessness, older adults and people with disabilities, often face higher risks and greater challenges in preparing for disasters.

People with limited mobility, for example, may have difficulty evacuating quickly or getting into shelters. Individuals with limited financial resources might have fewer options for relocating or for making home improvements in preparation for extreme weather. Someone experiencing homelessness may not have safe shelter.

A man walks carefully through water as two mattress float away in a rush of water under a bridge.
In the Los Angeles area, homeless people often set up camp in normally dry riverbeds. But those areas are at high risk of flooding during El Niño. Heavy rains during the 2015-16 El Niño swept away this camp’s mattresses. Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

It is often easier for governments to identify and invest in physical infrastructure than to invest in policies that address complex social vulnerabilities like these. For example, building a seawall can be tied to a specific project or funding stream. Reducing social vulnerability, on the other hand, may require coordination across housing, healthcare, emergency management and social services. And it typically requires sustained investments over time.

Yet, preparing successfully for extreme weather often requires considering housing and shelter needs, healthcare access and support services.

After a wildfire or major flooding, people may need temporary rental assistance or affordable housing to avoid displacement. Older adults or people with disabilities may need transportation to shelters or assistance getting medications and healthcare.

Many of these needs can be difficult to address because the underlying vulnerabilities are deeply entrenched. Issues such as affordable housing shortages, poverty or difficulty accessing healthcare cannot be solved by a single disaster-preparedness policy. But they do shape how communities are able to recover from extreme weather.

Identifying gaps before extreme weather strikes

A community’s preparedness often improves after an event, when the gaps become obvious. The challenge is identifying those gaps before a disaster occurs.

In Los Angeles, emergency managers are using a good method to meet that challenge in 2026: They are carrying out scenario exercises that bring together county departments and community disaster management coordinators to practice how they would respond to an El-Niño-driven extreme weather event.

These exercises are designed to identify gaps in existing plans and figure out what might be needed if severe storms, flooding or mudslides occur. Scenario exercises allow people involved in disaster response to work through a hypothetical event before it happens.

Several vehicles are tipped and trapped in mud up their windows along a highway.
Heavy downpours in October 2015 caused mudslides that trapped vehicles on Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles. The storm was early in the season for El Niño damage and served as a warning of the risks to come. Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images

In both the San Francisco Bay Area and in Durham County, North Carolina, officials are talking publicly about the risks to encourage residents to prepare. Bay Area officials are stressing the importance of following emergency management notifications and weather forecasts, particularly for individuals living close to the water or on hillsides that could face flash flooding and landslides.

In Oceanside, California, city officials convened an El Niño working group that included representatives from their public works, engineering, fire and police departments to coordinate planning, communications strategies and the monitoring of the San Luis Rey River.

Broader lessons

The challenge of preparing for El Niño in the face of uncertainty reflects some of the broader issues humanity faces when preparing for future climate changes.

Keeping up with infrastructure maintenance, scenario planning ahead of heat or storm seasons, understanding the needs of vulnerable populations and having plans in place to meet them can help prevent a severe storm from becoming a major disaster for the community.

Bethany Tietjen, Research Fellow in Climate Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ooOOoo

Some of the trees that we have are, potentially, too close to the house. I hate cutting down trees but then even worse than that would be that the house is badly damaged and we have to move out.

It is nicely summarised in that last chapter of the article, and I quote: “The challenge of preparing for El Niño in the face of uncertainty reflects some of the broader issues humanity faces when preparing for future climate changes.”

The face of uncertainty!

A sudden rainstorm, here at home

The power of water.

Last Saturday evening, the 5th September, 2026, we had a violent and sudden rainstorm. In twenty-four minutes 0.85” of rain fell. Luckily there was no damage.

On Thursday, The Conversation published a post about the potential dangers of hiking in canyons when storms hit,

ooOOoo

Hiking canyons can quickly turn deadly when storms hit – what you should know before going in

Mangled construction equipment is partially buried in boulders on the canyon floor.
Mud and debris, including a mangled piece of construction equipment, remain after a flash flood in Grand Canyon National Park on Aug. 31, 2026. Katherine Hensel/National Park Service via AP

Anner Paldor, University of Tennessee

Hiking a picturesque valley or climbing a craggy gorge are some of the most exhilarating experiences in nature. As a geologist, I have hiked and climbed some of the most intense terrains in the world, including in the Andes, Middle Eastern deserts, the Balkans and the Appalachians.

I am particularly drawn to canyons that provide beautiful windows into the rock record and the geologic history of a place. However, these narrow valleys can quickly become extremely dangerous when water pours in.

At Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, at least two hikers died and a third was missing after powerful monsoon storms sent a deluge into one of the narrowest parts of the canyon on Aug. 29, 2026. Two of the survivors who were rescued described seeing the water quickly rise over the trail as they clung to a ledge, fearing they might never see their families again.

People stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon as a storm moves through.
A storm moves into the Grand Canyon. AP Photo/John Locher

So, how do you balance a love for outdoor activity with managing this risk and hike canyons safely?

Why canyons are prone to flash floods

To understand the dynamics of a flash flood, it helps to start with the geomorphologic aspect – understanding the landforms and how they change over time.

In canyons and arroyos – steep gullies common to the Southwest – flash flooding can occur even when the heavy rainfall happens great distances away. A person can be hiking under clear skies in the canyon and not be aware that heavy rain falling upstream or even outside of the canyon means a disaster is unfolding.

The steep gradients and narrow passageways that define these landscapes channel the water, sending vast amounts of it rushing downstream. Under these conditions, water can rise quickly in the narrow space of a canyon.

Timelapse images of the radar shows strong storms upstream and over Bright Angel Canyon ahead of the flood.
Time-lapse radar shows the storms moving over the regions of the Grand Canyon where the flood hit, near Phantom Ranch. Anner Paldor; Iowa Environmental Mesonet

The Grand Canyon flood involved heavy downpours in the heart of monsoon season. The intensity of the rainfall matters in a canyon. Even in arid regions, which generally get low amounts of rain annually, heavy rainfall within a short period of time can create devastating floods.

In 2018, a flash flood in Israel’s Tzafit Canyon – an environment similar to the part of the Grand Canyon where the 2026 flood occurred – claimed the lives of 10 recent high school graduates who were hiking in the canyon.

I grew up in that region and had hiked there many times, and I remember thinking about the incomprehensible suddenness: One moment you are appreciating the breathtaking views of the desert, and within minutes you are fighting a torrent of water you never imagined in such an arid place. A year’s worth of rain fell near the canyon that day.

The hydrogeologic aspect

How well the ground absorbs water also affects flood dynamics. Soils that are highly porous and permeable can transmit water easily vertically into the ground.

However, in arid regions such as Arizona and the Negev Desert, where Tzafit Canyon lies, the dry ground tends to form hardened crusts that make it harder for the water to sink in. That exacerbates surface flooding.

Two people wait on a rocky canyon floor for a helicopter in the distance.
Dozens of people were evacuated by helicopter from the canyon after the flood. Katherine Hensel/National Park Service via AP

What’s more, the lack of vegetation in dry and rocky environments means that water can flow more rapidly down slopes.

What should hikers do to stay safe?

As an avid hiker, I value the beauty of nature and geology that canyons offer, and I believe in enjoying them. However, it is important to understand the risks and to prepare before hiking, climbing or backpacking in these areas.

Carefully study your environment before going in, so you know the risks and the escape routes that will let you get to safety in the event of a flash flood.

An elevation map of the area where the flood happened shows the steepness
An elevation map of the Grand Canyon shows how narrow and steep it is, with 1,500-meter drop over an area less than 5 miles. The white dot shows the location where people were rescued from the flood on Aug. 29, 2026. Anner Paldor; Data Basin, using ESRI, Census Bureau, NOAA, National Ocean Service, National Geodetic Survey, USGS, TomTom, CC BY

Gear up properly. Prepare for your trip so you have the equipment you need. Make sure you have a flashlight with extra batteries, a whistle to signal first responders, and extra clothes in case you get wet. If you know you will be hiking in high-risk water zones, you may consider an inflatable personal flotation device.

Talk to park rangers before going in so you know the current conditions and so someone knows where you’re going.

Always be aware of the weather – not just above you but upstream. Clear skies can be deceptive. An added challenge is that cellular service is often shaky in deep canyons and remote areas. Check the weather forecast before you go down a canyon, not just for the specific location, but also for the surrounding area. The National Weather Service provides warnings of flash floods and other extreme weather events.

When you are in a canyon, a good general guideline is to try to stay as high as possible and to be alert to the sound of an incoming flood. One person described the rush of water in the Grand Canyon sounding like a freight train.

If heavy rain starts, use extra caution and seek higher ground. Be aware that the timing of floods can vary widely – scientists analyzed 74,814 flash flood events in the U.S. and found the average duration was around 3½ hours, but some persisted for more than 48 hours. A flood can start quickly and strand people for long periods of time. Muddy water or debris in a normally clear stream are two signs of flooding developing. Rising water or the distant sound of rushing water is another clear warning to get to safety fast.

There are always risks in nature, but that does not mean you should avoid being out in nature. Planning ahead and hiking with caution and awareness can help you enjoy the beautiful outdoors and come back home safely.

Anner Paldor, Professor of Hydrogeology, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ooOOoo

There are a number of excellent tips in this article. The one that stood out for me was making sure that the park rangers know where you are going.