Play is crucial for the social, physical, and cognitive development of many species, and even though cats are largely solitary creatures, they still need plenty of it. But people who are new to felines might not know what playtime actually looks like for these furry fellows.

Learning how to keep your cat properly stimulated is an essential part of sharing your home with them, and science can provide a couple of clues on where to start. Everyone in your household will benefit from it.

Use toys like a string wand with a fake mouse three to four times a day in brief intervals, Siracusa says, and make sure to end every play session by letting your cat put something in their mouth. It will be a satisfying outcome for all their efforts. 

You can achieve a similar puzzle-solving effect by cutting out holes in an old plastic container, or a shoe or cardboard box, and filling it with toys. Cats can then reach in and figure out how to get their treats out through the openings. 

If you have a tablet, there are apps specially designed for cats that you can download in lieu of a physical toy. For example, Cat Fishing 2 (available for Android and iOS) will turn the screen on your device into a pond with one, two or three fish that will disappear as your cat taps them with their paws. There are many apps out there that do the same with mice and birds if the fish aren’t alluring enough.

Trying and failing to catch intangible prey, like fish in a digital pond or a bright red dot on the wall, can be furr-straiting for your kitten, so be sure to reward them with a few treats or some wet food on a spoon.

“Cats tend to go high because they are prey, and observing the world from a vantage point makes them feel safer,” Siracusa explains. The floor of a busy household also brings with it the possibility of being stepped on, so allowing cats some height can be comforting. A cat tree, a cheap bookshelf, or a similarly safe place to perch will do the job. 

And if even after getting them their own observation deck your chronic climber keeps breaking your expensive porcelain collectibles, don’t punish them. It sure must be annoying to say goodbye to every fragile belonging you own, but Siracusa warns against disciplining your cat for something that’s natural to them—it can lead to aggressive behavior toward you.

For a cat, an ideal environment is one where there’s always the option to engage socially and playfully, but where they can also abstain if they want to. Attempting to force a cat to play or preventing this type of activity when needed, may lead to adverse behavior, such as seclusion and aggression.

Contrary to popular belief, loose strings and yarn can also be dangerous to cats, especially kittens: they can get caught in it or potentially ingest it and asphyxiate. Keep yarn wrapped up tightly when using it as a cat toy, and if your furry buddy is on the younger side, always keep an eye on them during playtime.

But your cat is not the only one you should be careful with. Don’t use your body as a toy when playing with cats. It goes without saying that their sharp claws and teeth can scratch your skin, and those cuts mixed with cat saliva can lead to infection. 

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TO MAINTAIN a healthy level of physical fitness, everyone should commit to at least 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise or strength training a day. That’s easier said than done. With running errands, working a desk job, and fulfilling family obligations, the modern lifestyle does not leave much time for regular exercise. If you do prioritize working out, you might still be neglecting key muscle groups that support posture, movement, and overall health. Keep reading for a list of the most ignored ones, exercises to strengthen them, and the reasons you might need more variety in your routine. 

Healthy fitness goals

Before you start switching up your workouts, Christopher Geiser, an exercise science professor, physical therapist, and trainer at Marquette University, has a few important reminders.

First, “If you’re having trouble, don’t wait too long to get help,” he warns. Physical therapists and trainers can design a regimen specific to your needs. Everybody’s built a little differently, and unique personal histories make it difficult to give general advice. Working out various areas of the body with different types of activities is a surefire way to improve health. Remember to start off slow and careful if you haven’t exercised in a while—too much too soon might backfire on your muscles. 

Second, it’s important to know the difference between exercising for overall health and exercising for performance. “If you wanna be healthy, then you’re trying to get as variable activity with a nice even distribution of the loading across different areas as you can,” Geiser says. 

In contrast, “If you’re trying to run the Boston Marathon, you’ve got a really specific something that you’re working on and [your exercise regimen] is going to focus on that,” he explains. “And it isn’t always the most healthy for you.”

In other words, don’t sacrifice your wellbeing for better performance. “You want a balance across all of the conditioning exercises that you’re doing,” Geiser says. “And that variability across your system is probably what’s gonna give you the most bang for your buck healthwise.”

Target muscle area no. 1: Rotator cuffs

The rotator cuff is a group of four muscles and their connected tendons that attach the shoulder blade to the upper arm, stabilizing the shoulder and allowing 360-degree movement. Strengthening the area can prevent shoulder injuries, some of which can lead to permanent loss of function. 

If you already have shoulder pain or a rotator cuff injury, however, you could exacerbate it by exercising those muscles. See a medical professional for treatment instead.

Recommended exercises:

• Doorway stretches
• Reverse flies with dumbbells
• Wall angels 

Target muscle area no. 2: Abdominal core and back

In addition to helping you avoid accidents from, say, moving furniture, having a strong core boosts posture, balance, and movement. Each abdominal muscle has to work in harmony to control your back and pelvis, although “you don’t necessarily need them to do a lot of your everyday activities,” Geiser says. “But when you do need them, they’re not always in shape and ready to go.” 

Recommended exercises:

• Planks
• Bridges
• Deadlifts

Target muscle area no. 3: Neck flexors

These deep muscle groups rest in the front of the neck and are responsible for holding its position, contributing to posture. “We abuse the flexors when we stare at computer screens with our head forward all the time,” Geiser says. “They are notoriously weak because we haven’t built them up.” 

If you’re experiencing neck pain after staring down at a phone or laptop for a long period, it might be worth it to train these muscles. And at the same time, remind yourself to straighten out your posture while doom-scrolling on the couch or working at a desk.

Recommended exercises:

• Supine neck retractions
• Active assisted neck flexions
• Supine cervical flexions

Target muscle area no. 4: Glutes

Though they get a lot of attention, the muscles underlying your butt are often improperly exercised. Strengthening your glutes helps with proper body alignment, movement, and athletic edge. Weak glutes can cause other areas of the body, such as the lower back or knees, to overcompensate when you’re walking, running, or climbing stairs. A stronger set also corrects posture and spinal alignment, reducing the risk of back pain and injuries.  

Recommended exercises:

• Squats
• Lunges
• Bridges

Target muscle area no. 5: Tendons

Most casual gymgoers don’t think of flexing these parts. Tendons aren’t muscles: They’re connective tissue that attaches muscles to bones, controlling movement of the skeleton. While they’re strong and flexible, injuries can occur from overuse, repetitive strain, or aging. Tendon-specific training can improve joint health, reduce pain and stiffness, and promote speed and agility. Use two different types of exercises to strengthen them—prolonged weight holds and quick, fast contractions—but not in the same workout. Vary your routine daily to keep from overloading these crucial parts, and be sure to take at least one day off from working out each week.

Recommended exercises:

• Eccentric movements
• Isometric movements
• Plyometric movements

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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You’ve been developing your Minecraft world for a while. You have a full set of diamond armor, a field rife with pumpkins and melons next to your lakefront mansion, and you just defeated the Ender dragon. But reaching the End doesn’t need to be the end. If you want to spice up your crafting and maximize your gameplay experience, you can easily add a few, or a few dozen, modifications.

Veterans of the game might recall how hard it was to add mods to Minecraft in the early days. The process was manual and time-consuming. I, for one, lost days, if not weeks, of my teen years seeking out the latest versions of obscure mods online, waiting for downloads, and rooting around in config folders. Today, thanks to modern modding platforms, everything is automated.

Whether you’re trying to figure out how to install Minecraft mods for the first time or just need a refresher, this guide will help you snag the best user-created additions or alterations for this beloved sandbox game. If you encounter a warden in the deep dark, though, you’re on your own.

Install CurseForge

There are many modding platforms out there, such as Technic Launcher and Feed The Beast, but I prefer CurseForge. It’s one of the easiest to use, and features a diverse array of mods and modpacks suited to your wildest gameplay dreams. CurseForge is free for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and you can install it directly from your browser.

Once installed, CurseForge will prompt you to choose a game for modding and add-ons. Right now you want Minecraft, but the platform includes modding options for other popular games such as The Sims 4, World of Warcraft, and Elder Scrolls. 

To make your own modpack with a unique combination of mods, hit Create Custom Profile in the top right of the CurseForge window. The Profile Name is the name of your modpack. Once you set that, you will need to select the game version. Keep in mind that user-developed mods take a while to catch up with the latest Minecraft version. As of writing, most mods are updated to at least version 1.12.2. If you have a specific mod or mods in mind, you can look up its latest version online or in the CurseForge desktop app and choose the Minecraft version that suits your needs.

After you’ve created your modpack, it’s time to add some mods. Click the three vertical dots next to the orange Play button and select the puzzle piece labeled Add More Content in the dropdown menu. The puzzle piece icon to the right will take you to the same page. Here, you’ll be able to search for mods by name, and sort by update version and category. When you find one you want to add, click the Install button. Keep installing mods until you’re happy with the lineup.

Be careful not to add more than your computer can handle. A computer designed for gaming might be able to handle hundreds, but an older or lighter laptop might only be able to run 15 to 20 at a time without crashing. 

You can also add resource and texture packs in the Add More Content panel under Resource Packs. These alter the game’s graphics, including lighting and the appearance of blocks, items, and mobs. This is where you’ll find color-blind-friendly resource packs, and ones that make the game more realistic with alterations such as rounded logs, shadows, and clear windows.

When you’re finished adding mods and are ready to play, exit the Add More Content window and hit the orange Play button. This should open the Minecraft launcher. Make sure you’re on Java Edition. In the lower left corner where the Minecraft version is, you should see your modpack name. Hit the green Play button like usual. You should get a warning message saying that the mods may not support the latest safety features (such as parental controls, community guidelines, and chat moderation). If this isn’t a concern, go ahead and click Play. 

That’s it—you just made and launched your first modpack. Enjoy your game! If you want to play with friends, keep reading. 

To export your modpack, click the three vertical dots next to the orange Play button in CurseForge, then select Export Profile.

You’ll end up in an export window where you can change the name of the file, name the version (optional) and select which files to include (the preset should work fine). Then, click the orange Export button and it will save to whichever file location you choose.

Your modpack will save as a ZIP file, which you can send to friends over email, as a link to a cloud drive, in an iMessage if you both have macOS, or via any other file-sharing method.  

If your modpack.zip is an exceptionally large file, or if you have a slow internet connection, it might be most efficient to stash it, old-school, on a USB stick, or recreate it on your friend’s CurseForge account by repeating the steps in the previous section.

Just know that if you’re playing multiplayer, all players must have the same mods running. If one player adds or removes mods from their pack, the game will prevent players from joining the server due to incompatibility. You don’t want to miss out on traversing new dimensions with your friends because one of you is missing a mod.

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The word “bomb” is not usually associated with positive things. Except in this case, where making seed bombs could help the ecological restoration of your neighborhood. 

Instructions

1. Mix the clay and potting mix. In the bowl, pour the clay and potting mix in a 2:1 ratio. 

The powdered clay acts as a binder and protects the seeds from direct sunlight, insects, and birds. We used green calcium bentonite clay (which doubles as a face mask), but you can use any kind you find at your local store or have at home. If you want seed bombs that look more natural and blend into the soil, you can use red clay powder.

3. Add the seeds. Pour in your seeds in a ratio of 3:1 in relation to the clay mix and combine with your hands or a mixing spoon. You may change this proportion depending on how dense you want plants to grow, but 3:1 is ideal to work in enough seeds.

• Pro tip: You can put multiple types of seeds into your bombs, but be careful how you mix and match: sun-loving plants will thrive in a spot where a shade-loving one will die, while fast-growing greenery might out-perform and suffocate another. Only combine seeds with similar qualities or habitat preferences, or plants that are known to grow well together.

4. Knead and roll the mix into small balls. Use the palms of your hands to shape your bombs. Keep them around half an inch (approximately one centimeter) in diameter. As you finish each one, place them on a tray with enough room between them so they’re not touching—once they dry, it’ll be difficult to break them apart. 

• Pro tip: As you shape your bombs, your clay mix might start drying, making it hard to work with. Keep a bowl of water at hand and add it to the mix in small amounts to bring the desired texture back.

5. Let the seed bombs dry and harden. Leave your tray of seed bombs to rest for a couple of days until they’re fully dry and hard. If you want to speed up the process, place them in direct sunlight, and if you’re leaving them outside, make sure they’re covered in case it rains.

6. Start bombing. Once all of your seed bombs are dry, you can plant them in indoor or outdoor pots, your yard, or in neglected patches of soil you’re allowed to access. You can push them slightly into the soil, leaving the tops uncovered in a sunny spot, but if you prefer to toss them like true bombs, soak them in water for 5 to 10 minutes before bombardment. 

Finding seeds native to your area is easy. You can follow our guide and collect seeds from the plants around you, or you can get them at your local hardware store or nursery. To know what to get, check out the National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder, which will show you a list of plants and shrubs local to your specific zip code.  

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has recently announced the completion of its ‘A-Lab,’ where the ‘A’ stands for artificial intelligence, automated, and accelerated. The $2 million lab is complete with three robotic arms, eight furnaces, and lab equipment all controlled by AI software, and it works around the clock. 

If it seems like a real-life replica of Marvel character Tony Stark’s lab, well, it’s not far off. It’s an entirely autonomous lab that can create and test up to 200 samples of new materials a day, accelerating materials science discoveries at an unprecedented rate and easing the workload off researchers.

Researchers at the A-lab are currently working on materials for improved batteries and energy storage devices, hoping to meet urgent needs for sustainable energy use. The lab could spur innovation in many other industries as well.

“Materials development, which is so important for society, is just too slow,”  says Gerd Ceder, the principal investigator for A-Lab. 

Materials science is a field that identifies, develops, and tests materials and their application for everything from aerospace to clean energy to medicine.

Materials scientists typically use computers to predict novel, not-seen-in-nature, materials that are stable enough to be used. Though a computer can generate theoretical inorganic compounds, identifying which novel compounds to make, figuring out how to synthesize them, and then evaluating their performance is a time-consuming process to do manually. 

[Related: This tiny AI-powered robot is learning to explore the ocean on its own]

Additionally, computational tools have made designing materials virtually so much easier, which means that there is a surplus of novel materials that still need to be tested, creating a bottleneck effect.

“Sometimes you’re lucky and in two weeks of trying, you’ve made it and sometimes six months in the lab and you’re nowhere.” Ceder says. “So developing chemical synthesis routes to actually make that compound that you would like to get so much can be extremely time consuming.”

A-Lab works with The Materials Project, a database of hundreds of thousands predicted materials, run by founding director Kristin Persson. They provide free access to thousands of computationally predicted novel materials, together with information on the compounds’ structures and some of their chemical properties, that researchers can use.

“In order to actually design new materials, we can’t just predict them in the computer,” Persson says. “We have to show that this is real.”

Experienced researchers can only vet a handful of samples in a working day. A-Lab would in theory be able to produce hundreds of samples quickly, more accurately. With the help of A-Lab, researchers can allocate more of their time to big-picture projects instead of doing grunt work. 

Yan Zeng, a staff scientist leading the A-lab, compares the lab’s process to cooking a new dish, where the lab is given a new dish, which in this case is the target compound, to find a recipe for. Once researchers identify a novel compound with the required qualities, they send it to the lab. The AI system creates new recipes with various combinations of over 200 ingredients, or precursor powders like metal oxides containing iron, copper, manganese, and nickel. 

The robot arms mix the slurry of powders together with a solvent, and then bake the new sample in furnaces to stimulate a chemical reaction that may or may not yield the intended compound. Following trial and error, the AI system can then learn and tweak the recipe until it creates a successful compound. 

[Related: A simple guide to the expansive world of artificial intelligence]

AI software controls the movement of three robotic arms that work with lab equipment, and weigh and mix different combinations of starting ingredients. And the lab itself is also autonomous. That means it can make new decisions about what to do following failures, independently working through new synthesis recipes faster than a human can.

“I had not expected that it would do so well on the synthesis of novel compounds,” Ceder says. “And that was kind of the maiden voyage.” 

The speed bump from human scientists is not only due to the AI-controlled robots, but because the software can draw knowledge from  around 100,000 synthesis recipes across five million research papers. 

Like a human scientist, A-lab also records details from every experiment, even documenting the failures. 

Researchers do not publish data from failed experiments for many reasons, including limited time and funding, lack of public interest, and the perception that failure is less informative than success. However, failed experiments do have a valuable place in research. They rule out false hypotheses and unsuccessful approaches. With easy access to data from hundreds of failed samples created each day, they can better understand what works, and what does not.

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To mitigate the death and disaster brought by tsunamis, people on the coasts need the most time possible to evacuate. Hundred-foot waves traveling as fast as a car are forces of nature that cannot be stopped—the only approach is to get out of the way. To tackle this problem, researchers at Cardiff University in Wales have developed new software that can analyze real-time data from hydrophones, ocean buoys, and seismographs in seconds. The researchers hope that their system can be integrated into existing technology, saying that with it, monitoring centers could issue warnings faster and with more accuracy. 

Their research was published in Physics of Fluids on April 25. 

“Tsunamis can be highly destructive events causing huge loss of life and devastating coastal areas, resulting in significant social and economic impacts as whole infrastructures are wiped out,” said co-author Usama Kadri, a researcher and lecturer at Cardiff University, in a statement.

Tsunamis are a rare but constant threat, highlighting the need for a reliable warning system. The most infamous tsunami occurred on December 26, 2004, after a 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia. The tsunami inundated the coasts of more than a dozen countries over the seven hours it lasted, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Thailand and Somalia. This was the deadliest and most devastating tsunami in recorded history, killing at least 225,000 people across the countries in its wake. 

Current warning systems utilize seismic waves generated by undersea earthquakes. Data from seismographs and buoys are then transmitted to control centers that can issue a tsunami warning, setting off sirens and other local warnings. Earthquakes of 7.5 magnitude or above can generate a tsunami, though not all undersea earthquakes do, causing an occasional false alarm. 

[Related: Tonga’s historic volcanic eruption could help predict when tsunamis strike land]

These existing tsunami monitors also verify an oncoming wave with ocean buoys that outline the coasts of continents. Tsunamis travel at an average speed of 500 miles per hour, the speed of a jet plane, in the open ocean. When approaching a coastline, they slow down to the speed of a car, from 30 to 50 miles per hour. After the buoys are triggered, they issue tsunami warnings, leaving little time for evacuation. By the time waves reach buoys, people have a few hours, at the most, to evacuate.

The new system uses two algorithms in tandem to assess tsunamis. An AI model assesses the earthquake’s magnitude and type, while an analytical model assesses the resulting tsunami’s size and direction.

Once Kadri and his colleagues’ software receives the necessary data, it can predict the tsunami’s source, size, and coasts of impact in about 17 seconds. 

The AI software can also differentiate between types of earthquakes and their likelihood of causing tsunamis, a common problem faced by current systems. Vertical earthquakes that raise or lower the ocean floor are much more likely to cause tsunamis, whereas those with a horizontal tectonic slip do not—though they can produce similar seismic activity, leading to false alarms. 

“So, knowing the slip type at the early stages of the assessment can reduce false alarms and complement and enhance the reliability of the warning systems through independent cross-validation,” said co-author Bernabe Gomez Perez, a researcher who currently works at the University of California, Los Angeles in a press release.

Over 80 percent of tsunamis are caused by earthquakes, but they can also be caused by landslides (often from earthquakes), volcanic eruptions, extreme weather, and much more rarely, meteorite impacts.

This new system can also predict tsunamis not generated by earthquakes by monitoring vertical motion of the water.

The researchers behind this work trained the program with historical data from over 200 earthquakes, using seismic waves to assess the quake’s epicenter and acoustic-gravity waves to determine the size and scale of tsunamis. Acoustic-gravity waves are sound waves that move through the ocean at much faster speeds than the ocean waves themselves, offering a faster method of prediction. 

Kadri says that the software is also user-friendly. Accessibility is a priority for Kadri and his colleague, Ali Abdolali at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as they continue to develop their software, which they have been jointly working on for the past decade.

By combining predictive software with current monitoring systems, the hope is that agencies could issue reliable alerts faster than ever before.

Kadri says that the system is far from perfect, but it is ready for integration and real-world testing. One warning center in Europe has already agreed to host the software in a trial period, and researchers are in communication with UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

“We want to integrate all the efforts together for something which can allow global protection,” he says. 

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SpaceX’s mega-rocket Starship exploded earlier today. Using a Super Heavy booster for the first time below Starship itself, the entire vehicle assembly failed minutes after rising from the launch pad in southern Texas. 

A radiating light and brown smoke at the base of the rocket, followed by cheers, marked the beginning of the launch. All appeared to go according to plan as fiery exhaust propelled the double-deck rocket assembly higher into the atmosphere. Crowds and commenters waited to see the silvery rocket and white booster separate as planned—and then kept waiting as the rocket eventually started flipping and spinning. Then, the rocket, which was uncrewed, exploded. 

SpaceX was aiming to send the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built on a trip around the world. If all had gone according to plan, the Starship upper stage would have terminated its flight in the water near Hawaii. That didn’t happen.

This launch was originally scheduled for Monday, but a stuck booster valve delayed the project.

[Related: SpaceX Starships keep exploding, but it’s all part of Elon Musk’s plan]

The launch included two stages: one using the Starship rocket, which has blasted off before. Starship finally landed in 2021 without blowing up after multiple failures and explosions. And the second, a Super Heavy booster, is a new addition designed to propel the rocket farther. This was the first launch with those two sections together.

The plan was to launch from the southern tip of Texas, drop the booster in the Gulf of Mexico, and have Starship cross over the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans before going for a swim into the Pacific near Hawaii. 

Crowds had gathered a few miles away from SpaceX’s launch site, Boca Chica Beach in Texas, to watch the launch. The ultimate goal of the rocket is to shuttle humans and cargo to the Moon and eventually Mars, but that goal might be farther away than the places it hopes to reach. 

“I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement. It won’t be boring,” Musk said at a Morgan Stanley conference last month. He estimated it might have a 50 percent chance of reaching orbit.

Though Starship and it’s booster failed to separate, SpaceX still sees this as a success. “It does appear to be spinning, but I do want to remind everyone that everything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake,” one SpaceX announcer said during the event; the vehicle exploded while she made the comment, leading to cheers. She added that it was “an exciting end to the Starship inaugural integrated test flight.” 

The Starship’s Super Heavy booster has 33 methane-fueled engines, and the ship itself could theoretically accommodate 250 tons and 100 people. Before sending any passengers to new destinations, Musk wants to use the unmanned rocket to launch satellites, such as his own Starlinks, into Earth’s orbit. 

Watch all the fiery drama, below:

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A worm’s brain may be teeny tiny, but that small organ has inspired researchers to design better software for drones. Using liquid neural networks, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have trained a drone to identify and navigate toward objects in varying environments. 

Liquid neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence tool, are unique. They can extrapolate and apply previous data to new environments. In other words, “they can generalize to situations that they have never seen,” Ramin Hasani, a research affiliate at MIT and one of the co-authors on a new study on the topic, says. The study was published in the journal Science Robotics on April 19. 

Neural networks are software inspired by how neurons interact in the brain. The type of neural network examined in this study, liquid neural networks, can adapt flexibly in real-time when given new information—hence the name “liquid.” 

[Related: This tiny AI-powered robot is learning to explore the ocean on its own]

The researchers’ network was modeled after a 2-millimeter-long worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. Naturally, it has a small brain: 302 neurons and 8,000 synaptic connections, allowing researchers to understand the intricacies of neural connections. A human brain, by contrast, has an estimated 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. 

“We wanted to model the dynamics of neurons, how they perform, how they release information, one neuron to another,” Hasani says.

These robust networks enable the drone to adapt in real-time, even after initial training, allowing it to identify a target object despite changes in their environment. The liquid neural networks yielded a success rate of over 90 percent in reaching their target in varying environments and demonstrated flexible decision-making.

Using this technology, people might be able to accomplish tasks such as automating wildlife monitoring and search and rescue missions, according to the researchers. 

Researchers first taught the software to identify and fly towards a red chair. After the drone—a DJI quadcopter—proved this ability from 10 meters (about 33 feet) away, researchers incrementally increased the start distance. To their surprise, the drone slowly approached the target chair from distances as far as 45 meters (about 145 feet).

“I think that was the first time I thought, ‘this actually might be pretty powerful stuff’ because I’d never seen [the network piloting the drone] from this distance, and it did it consistently,” Makram Chahine, co-author and graduate researcher at MIT, says, “So that was pretty impressive to me.”

After the drone successfully flew toward objects at various distances, they tested its ability to identify the red chair from other chairs in an urban patio. Being able to correctly distinguish the chair from similar stimuli proved that the system could understand the actual task, rather than solely navigating towards an image of red pixels against a background.

For example, instead of a red chair, drones could be trained to identify whales against the image of an ocean, or humans left behind following a natural disaster. 

“Once we verified that the liquid networks were capable of at least replicating the task behavior, we then tried to look at their out-of-domain performance,” Patrick Kao, co-author and undergraduate researcher at MIT, says. They tested the drone’s ability to identify a red chair in both urban and wooded environments, in different seasons and lighting conditions. The network still proved successful, displaying versatile use in diverse surroundings.

[Related: Birders behold: Cornell’s Merlin app is now a one-stop shop for bird identification]

They tested two liquid neural networks against four non-liquid neural networks, and found that the liquid networks outperformed others in every area. It’s too early to declare exactly what allows liquid neural networks to be so successful. Researchers say one hypothesis might have something to do with the ability to understand causality, or cause-and-effect relationships, allowing the liquid network to focus on the target chair and navigate toward it regardless of the surrounding environment. 

The system is complex enough to complete tasks such as identifying an object and then moving itself towards it, but not too complex to prevent researchers from understanding its underlying processes. “We want to create something that is understandable, controllable, and [artificial general intelligence], that’s the future thing that we want to achieve,” Hasani says. “But right now we are far away from that.”

AI systems have been the subject of recent controversy, with concerns about safety and over-automation, but completely understanding the capabilities of their technology isn’t just a priority, it’s a purpose, researchers say.

“Everything that we do as a robotics and machine learning lab is [for] all-around safety and deployment of AI in a safe and ethical way in our society, and we really want to stick to this mission and vision that we have,” Hasani says.

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Since its discovery nearly 70 years ago, paleontologists have debated the lineage of the mysterious “Tully monster.” The six-inch-long, stalk-eyed creature lived over 300 million years ago in the seas of modern-day Illinois. Its unique anatomy has long challenged researchers, making it difficult to identify as either a vertebrate or invertebrate–one of the first steps of classification. 

Vertebrates are animals with spines, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Invertebrates are animals without spines, including insects, arachnids, crustaceans, mollusks, annelids, and more. The Tully monster, or Tullimonstrum gregarium, was a soft-bodied marine animal, so its fossilized remains do not show clear evidence of a backbone. In 2016, researchers claimed to have identified a pale gut-like structure as a notochord, a primitive spine, signaling a vertebrate affinity. 

Now, researchers at the University of Tokyo believe they have solved the mystery of Tullimonstrum gregarium’s lineage, finding characteristics that point to an invertebrate identity. Their findings were published in the journal Palaeontology on April 17, 2023.

Amateur collector Francis Tully found the first fossils in Illinois’ Mazon Creek formation in 1955, a fossil bed known for its treasure trove from the Carboniferous period. He then took his unidentified ‘monster’ to the Field Museum of Natural History, where it confounded paleontologists and opened up a debate that would last decades. It was first described in a paper in 1966 and became the Illinois state fossil in 1989.

[Related: A gator-faced fish shaped like a torpedo stalked rivers 360 million years ago]

So far, researchers have been unable to determine whether the fossil was a vertebrate or invertebrate, one of the first bases of taxonomic identification. Invertebrates emerged first in the form of soft-bodied organisms, such as sponges, jellyfish, and worms over 600 million years ago. Vertebrates evolved after, during the Cambrian explosion about 540 million years ago. Both sides of the debate have evidence to support them, and it is still an open discussion. If found to be a vertebrate, the Tully monster would fill a gap in evolutionary history, connecting jawless fish (such as lampreys and hagfish) to jawed fish. 

Recent findings suggest the opposite. Researchers at the University of Tokyo analyzed 3D imaging of 153 Tully monster fossils from Mazon Creek. They found structures that point to it being an invertebrate chordate, like a lancelet, a small eel-like marine invertebrate which evolved 500 million years ago. The Tully monster could also potentially be a radically modified protostome, a clade of animals encompassing insects and crustaceans, which first evolved around 540 million years ago along with vertebrates during the Cambrian explosion. 

“The most important point is that the Tully monster had segmentation in its head region that extended from its body. This characteristic is not known in any vertebrate lineage, suggesting a nonvertebrate affinity,” Tomoyuki Mikami, a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Science at the University of Tokyo at the time of the study and currently a researcher at the National Museum of Nature and Science, said in a press release. 

The researchers found structures consistent with those of invertebrates, such as body segmentation, vertical tail fins and head shape. They also analyzed body parts thought to prove similar to those of vertebrates, such as a tri-lobed brain, tectal cartilage (supporting the eyes and optic nerves) and fin rays. They found that these structures, though similar, are not comparable to those of vertebrates.

[Related: One wormy Triassic fossil could fill a hole in the evolutionary story of amphibians]

Using three-dimensional imaging techniques, the authors described the morphology of the Tully monster’s proboscis and its stylets—thin, needle-like structures with a similar function as teeth, in depth. According to the research, these structures are inconsistent with the keratinous teeth found in lampreys and hagfish, two vertebrates thought to be distant relatives.

In one of the earliest studies on the unique animal published in 1969, researchers stated that “our conception of the diversity of the organic world is based upon a small sample consisting almost entirely of animals with preservable hard parts.” The Tully monster, however, has few of such parts—not unlike jellyfish and worms, which lack hard skeletal structures and leave only impressions in sediment as they are fossilized. Studying what little evidence we have of ancient soft creatures is crucial for reconstructing the history of life, as a significant number of Earth’s creatures became extinct without leaving any fossils behind.

“More and more research is needed to extract important clues from Mazon Creek fossils to understand the evolutionary history of life,” Mikami said.

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Ghana is the first country to approve a malaria vaccine for young children, who have the highest risk of death from the disease. Some scientists have called the new vaccine a potential “game-changer” in the fight against the disease that is the leading cause of child death in Africa.

This new vaccine, called R21, has an efficacy rate of 77 percent, according to a September review in the journal The Lancet. One approved Malaria vaccine already exists, called Mosquirix, which has a 30 to 60 percent efficacy rate. 

Late stage testing is still underway in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania. It’s unusual for a country to approve a vaccine before clinical trials are completed, according to WHO guidelines, and the World Health Organization has yet to approve it. 

Oxford researchers shared the mid-stage data with regulatory authorities in Ghana over the past six months and their new data suggests similar performance as in earlier trials, according to Oxford Professor and Chief investigator of the R21/Matrix-M programme, Adrian Hill. The results of R21’s final trials are expected to be published in the coming months. 

[Related: New four-dose malaria vaccine is up to 80 percent effective]

Oxford researchers shared the mid-stage data with regulatory authorities in Ghana over the past six months and their new data suggests similar performance as in earlier trials, according to Oxford Professor and Chief investigator of the R21/Matrix-M programme, Adrian Hill. The results of R21’s final trials are expected to be published in the coming months.

The R21 vaccine is designed to stop disease and death, not prevent transmission, although vaccines that prevent transmission between people are currently in the works at Oxford, Hill said in a press interview.

“The main idea now is to get R21 out there as soon as possible, and then add a transmission blocking vaccine,” Hill said. “That will allow us to use vaccination, not just for disease control, but for initial disease elimination, and then eventually global eradication.”

Ghana’s Food and Drug authority approved its use for children aged five months to three years, but rollout will be delayed until the WHO approves it. Once it is approved, Ghana’s drug regulator has a deal with the Serum Institute of India to produce up to 200 million doses of R21 a year. Each dose is expected to cost a couple dollars, per the BBC.

The mosquito-borne disease kills about 620,000 people globally each year, and 77 percent of those deaths are children. That translates to a death toll of over one thousand children each day, nearly one child lost per minute, according to UNICEF.

Malaria is a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes, most often seen in tropical and subtropical climates. It is preventable and curable. Symptoms range from mild to life-threatening, including tissue inflammation in the brain, kidneys, and lungs. In extreme cases, leading to cerebral malaria, kidney failure, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Children, pregnant women, and immunocompromised individuals are most at risk.

The parasite responsible for Malaria is the unicellular plasmodium. There are multiple plasmodium species known to cause the disease, each with its own unique characteristics. Unfortunately, the most common species in sub-saharan Africa, Plasmodium falciparum, is also the most deadly. 

Vaccinations are a relatively recent method of treatment for malaria. Since Mosquirix was introduced in 2019, 1.4 million children across Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi were vaccinated, resulting in a 10 percent drop in child mortality. A lack of funding and commercial potential has prevented drugmakers from producing adequate amounts of Mosquirix.

The release of the R21 vaccine “marks a culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford with the design and provision of a high efficacy vaccine that can be supplied at adequate scale to the countries who need it most,” Hill said in a statement.

There are multiple reasons why a Malaria vaccine is hard to develop—including the complex life cycles of the parasite and its ability to evade immune responses. 

However, the biggest barrier is not biological, it’s financial. Malaria is most prevalent in sub-saharan Africa, making up 95 percent of all malaria cases and 96 percent of malaria deaths. This region is also home to low-income countries, which have limited resources for research funding and vaccine development. 

[Related: White House invests $5 billion in new COVID vaccines and treatments as national emergency ends]

“Malaria is a life-threatening disease that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable populations in our society and remains a leading cause of death in childhood,” Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, said in a press release statement. 

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to scaling up production of the vaccine to meet the needs of countries with high malaria burden and to support global efforts towards saving lives,” he said.

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It’s hard to identify individual members of another species, unless they have sufficient visual distinctions. Every squirrel looks more or less the same, herd animals seem like a hoard of clones, and you may have once mistaken a lookalike stray for your pet. But when you look closely, small details characterize an individual from the rest of their species. Researchers at the University of California Berkeley proved the same applies for a rare species of octopus. 

The team discovered that the Pygmy zebra octopus has stripe patterns as unique as human fingerprints, allowing even humans to tell them apart. They also found that after about two weeks of age, their stripe patterns become permanent and distinctive. They published their recent findings in PLOS One.

[Related: What human and octopus brains have in common]

Octopuses’ intelligence, complex behavior, and color-changing abilities have led the animal into the limelight, both inside academia and out. There are over 300 species that live off the coasts of every continent. One is the Pygmy zebra octopus (Octopus chierchiae), also known as the lesser pacific striped octopus, coming in at about the size of a grape when fully grown. It has brown and tan stripes, fitting its name, and is native to the Pacific coast of Central America. 

Researchers confirmed that each individual has a stripe pattern unique to them by photographing 25 Pygmy zebra octopuses in a lab for nearly two years. They took photos of the specimens every week, from hatching to adulthood. Then, they gathered 38 untrained volunteers to participate in a survey to see whether or not they could identify individual octopuses based on their stripes. The survey consisted of 20 photo comparisons, each taken no more than 25 weeks apart.

The volunteers’ average accuracy was 84.2 percent, and about half of all participants scored at least 90 percent. Additionally, no individual question was answered incorrectly by a majority of participants. By analyzing stripe patterns, the volunteers’ accuracy shows that a majority of people can discern one individual from another. Given the time difference between photos, the results also indicate that people can identify an individual after several months have passed, even between juvenile to adult life cycle stages. 

[Related: Female octopuses will chuck seashells at males who irk them]

Tracking wild animals is a challenge for many researchers, but octopuses are especially challenging to monitor. Their reclusive and mysterious behavior make them hard specimens to track. And without some sort of tag or marker, researchers struggle to identify individuals if seen again. Cephalopod researchers employ various, sometimes invasive identification techniques, including tagging, tattooing, and branding. All these practices at the very least risk harming octopuses’ soft, delicate tissues and causing unnecessary pain. Tagging, one of the least harmful options, is also imperfect. Octopuses can easily slip out of tags without bones, and if it’s attached to their flesh, they can even rip them off.

If researchers could track octopuses by photography alone, it could be a game changer for the field. In the study, the researchers highlight photography as a “a largely inexpensive, non-invasive, non-extractive, and widely accessible technique to produce high-quality data” and recommend it as an identification and tracking method for future research. 

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Plenty of species have traits evolved for more than one purpose. Deer antlers are built-in weapons as well as seductive doe-magnets. Octopus suckers can trap prey in their suction but also taste and smell. Bright colors in frogs signal danger to predators while flaunting reproductive viability to potential mates. The Luna moth has uniquely shaped wings that thwart predation from bats, but what else might they be good for? How does one determine the evolutionary role of a trait? 

In two recent complementary studies published in Behavioral Ecology and Biology Letters earlier this year, researchers expanded our understanding of the adaptation by testing the role of wing tails against sexual selection and bird predation.

Luna moths are native to the Eastern half of North America. Like all silk moths, they have distinctive long, trailing tails on their hindwings, or “twisted, cupped paddles” as lead author of both studies and doctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural history Juliette Rubin said in a statement. Bats use echolocation to detect the position of objects with reflected sound, but the moth’s wing shape reflects sound waves in a way that makes the flying mammals aim for the ends of their wings. In a flap of a wing, the moth just barely dodges their predators. 

[Related: What bats and metal vocalists have in common]

First, the researchers wanted to see if the wing tails also played a role in sexual selection. When female Luna moths are ready to mate, they perch in one spot and release pheromones. Males, with extremely sensitive antennae, can detect and follow a pheromone trail, according to the University of Florida’s entomology department. Then, the female has her pick of suitors. 

In the first experiment, researchers placed a female moth in a flight box with two males: one with intact wings and one with the wing tails removed. Initial data suggested that females preferred tails over no-tails, but further trials demonstrated otherwise. When researchers removed tails by clipping them, the resulting damage may have hindered these males’ performance in the first trial, allowing the intact males to mate successfully.

They recreated the tail/no-tail experiment by removing tails from both males, and re-gluing them to one male, while placing glue only on the hindwings of the other. Researchers found no significant difference in mating success between them. 

To ensure the glue did not confound the results, researchers conducted an additional experiment with two intact males, one with glue on the hindwings. Similarly, they had equal mating success.

Though their elegance is attractive to us humans, the experiment revealed that Luna moth wing tails aren’t the result of sexual selection. 

Then, researchers wanted to see if the moths’ tails had any obvious drawbacks. They help moths to survive bats, a species that relies on echolocation, but what about visually-oriented predators? 

Luna moths sit still during the day, since flying in broad daylight with their large bright green wings would make them easy targets. To test whether or not their tails would have any impact on daytime predation, researchers wrapped pastry dough around mealworms and molded them to the size and shape of real Luna moths. They attached full wings and wings without tails to each half. They placed the replicas around branches and leaves in an aviary, and introduced Carolina wrens. 

The wrens ate the fake moths at the same rate regardless of wing type, indicating that the tails had no effect on whether or not birds could locate them. Some research suggests that birds rely on search images, mental representations of objects, when they are searching for prey. They use visual cues, such as the shape of moth wings, to distinguish between the prey from patterns in the background. So, the wrens may ignore the hindwing tails, using the overall shape of Luna moths to identify food, according to the press release.

[Related: A new technique reveals how butterfly wings grow into shimmery wonders.]

These experiments show that despite being a noteworthy feature to humans, the Luna moths’ tails do not play a role in attracting a mate, nor do they affect predation by birds.

“When we see these really obvious physical features in animals, we’re often drawn into stories we’ve heard about them,” Rubin said in the statement. “A trait that’s obvious to us, as visual creatures, might not stand out to the predators that hunt them, and the traits that we think are dynamic and alluring might not seem that way to a potential mate.”

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Bilingualism is an advantageous ability in ways that go beyond simply being able to communicate with others. It literally changes the brain, inducing heightened neuroplasticity and protecting against cognitive decline. New research also suggests a little-understood brain region uniquely adapts to different written languages—a finding that sheds light on the mysteries of language recognition.

In a study published on April 5 in the journal Science Advances, researchers examined how bilinguals process their respective languages in written form. They discovered that a part of the brain called the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) activates differently for English-Chinese speakers compared to English-French speakers. 

While most research on bilingualism compares people who speak two languages to those who just speak one, this study compares bilinguals of different languages and writing systems. Scientists analyzed the brains of people who speak English and Chinese, along with the brains of people who speak English and French. While an fMRI machine measured their brain activity, participants viewed visual stimuli like letters, faces, and houses.

In both groups, the VWFA reacted likewise when shown English or French. But when English-Chinese participants read Chinese characters, distinct areas lit up in response. 

[Related: Learning a second language early may have ripple effects throughout your life]

The study team, in turn, discovered clusters of neurons specific to the Chinese language in English-Chinese bilinguals. In English-French bilinguals, their brain activity was the same regardless of language stimuli. Their research further demonstrates that the brain develops in response to an individual’s unique experiences. 

“My initial impression of [the study] is that it’s a real tour de force methodologically and in terms of design it’s comprehensive, thorough and ambitious,” says Dale Stevens, a York University neuroscience professor who was not part of the research. It also gives us “a more specific understanding” of the VWFA, he adds. 

What is the Visual Word Form Area?

The VWFA is the region of the brain that recognizes written words. It develops when people learn to read, which builds neural pathways between the visual and language systems. Without it, people would be unable to read. 

Minye Zhan, the first study author and a cognitive neuroscience researcher at NeuroSpin, a research institute in France, expected to find some neurological differences between dominant English speakers, dominant French speakers, and balanced English-French speakers. Instead, the 21 English-French bilinguals didn’t demonstrate any processing differences, despite their dominance in one language over the other. 

“It’s the same system,” Zhan says. “I dug hard and didn’t see any difference. It was a very big surprise.”

Meanwhile, the brains of the ten English-Chinese speakers reacted very differently when shown Chinese characters. In this group, Chinese was the dominant language. When the researchers scanned the brains of these participants, they found distinct activity: Chinese-specific clusters of neurons in the VWFA. 

How did researchers map brain activity?

Previously, pinpointing specific areas of brain activity challenged researchers. Now, high-resolution MRI machines, such as the 7-Tesla fMRI used in this study, allow for more detailed brain scans. The research team, in turn, could see that chains of neuron clusters activated when the study participants saw Chinese. Zhan describes it as “a galaxy, a constellation of areas.” 

“The interesting part is that there are these word patches that process both languages, even different languages like English and Chinese,” Zhan says. “They’re so different, but they are processed in the same area, although there are specialized Chinese-only language patches in the brain.”

Interestingly, brain response to Chinese stimuli overlaps with a region that helps with facial recognition. The difference might have something to do with cognitive processing. The brain can perceive visual stimuli as a whole or in parts, and the strategy it chooses depends on the language read. 

Why are there language-specific areas?

When you see a face, you don’t recognize eyes, noses, and a mouth as separate parts. Instead, you see a face as a face, a unified whole. Research has shown that native Chinese speakers process Chinese characters similarly, which have combinations of strokes and radicals. Meanwhile, part-based processing is more common in alphabetic languages, such as English and French. Individual letters, or letter combinations, are processed separately and then integrated to form a coherent word. 

Another explanation has more to do with language structure. Chinese, like Japanese and some Korean, is logographic. These writing systems use characters that correspond to concepts, ideas, and words. Phonetic languages, like English and French, use characters that correspond to sounds.   

[Related: Learning a new language? Here’s how to perfect your pronunciation.]

Most Chinese characters give few clues as to how they are read. New learners, including Chinese children, pick up character pronunciation using Pinyin, which uses the Latin alphabet to spell out sounds of Standard Chinese characters. Meanwhile, when children study French or English, both phonetic languages with a strong connection between spelling and pronunciation, they’re encouraged to sound out words letter by letter. 

Learning Chinese might place unique demands on neural pathways, resulting in different connections. Still, these explanations for the VWFA’s split are speculation for now. Researchers don’t know precisely why the brain reacts differently for English-Chinese bilinguals, just that these bilingual speakers have specialized brain activity unobserved in the English-French group. 

This research wouldn’t have been possible more than a few years ago. The experiment used a high-resolution 7-Tesla fMRI scanner, which has a much stronger magnetic field that can scan brain activity in greater detail compared to previous models (a Tesla is a unit of measurement to quantify magnetic field strength). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved this model in 2017. 

In contrast, a hospital might use a 1.5 or 3-Tesla MRI machine. And while this resolution is the standard, it doesn’t reveal the same level of detail, Zhan says. 

The research raises many questions, says Zhan. Her team is interested in repeating the study with groups of participants who speak different native languages and use different alphabets. Zhan also wants to discover why these specialized patches of neurons emerge depending on what language a person can read. 

“So why do those special patches come up?” she says. “That we don’t know. We just observe them. So we report first and say that it needs more research.”

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Water is quickly flooding back into California’s Tulare Lake Basin, engulfing towns and farms, submerging roads, and reviving a so-called phantom lake. Tulare was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi until settlers diverted its source rivers, forcing it to vanish by the mid-20th century. Now, it seems Tulare Lake is back with a vengeance. 

According to a 2007 study for the US Environmental Protection Agency, Tulare Lake was once a permanent feature of the San Joaquin Valley. It covered an estimated 790 square miles, creating a biodiverse wetlands ecosystem that encompassed approximately 10 percent of California. In the late 1800s, settlers began diverting Tulare’s tributaries for agricultural purposes, incrementally drying the lake and exposing nutrient-rich soil. 

[Related: Rain, storms, and mudslides batter California]

Now, the lake-turned-farmland is one of the most important agricultural regions in the state, worth an estimated $2 billion dollars in dairy products and crops like grapes, cotton, corn, alfalfa, almonds, and pistachios. While an influx of water is a relief to many in California, easing a years-long drought and refilling reservoirs, it spells disaster for regions like the Tulare Basin. Residents are already seeing vast amounts of water threaten their livelihoods—and it’s only just beginning. If current conditions keep up, says UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain,this may be the worst flood for the Lake Tulare Basin yet.

What is a phantom lake?

A phantom lake is a seasonal body of water, typically reviving during periods of intense precipitation. These lakes are usually not very deep, as far as lakes go: Prior to water diversion, Tulare was estimated to be about 37 feet deep. Shallow lakes dry up much faster than deeper ones, owing to their larger surface area to volume ratio, allowing the sun to heat up and evaporate the water quickly. The California Central Valley’s hot, arid climate makes its phantom lakes especially ephemeral. 

Owens Lake, 220 miles north of Los Angeles, is another ghost that has recently resurrected. The construction of Los Angeles’ aqueduct depleted the freshwater body by diverting its tributary in 1913, but the lake is now rapidly refilling for the first time in 110 years. 

Tulare Lake has a similar backstory. It comprises a natural watershed for the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which feeds meltwater through multiple rivers and into the basin. Today, levees and dams prevent water from entering the basin by diverting or blocking these rivers. Though, as evidenced by the recent storms, those systems can only do so much to prevent flooding in the face of an extreme influx of water.

Why is Tulare Lake flooding again?

Atmospheric rivers—long, narrow plumes of atmospheric moisture—are to blame for the region’s recent storms. They originate in the tropics, where warm air can take up much more water than in colder climates. Climate change is raising temperatures and the atmosphere’s capacity for holding water, amplifying storms in California and many parts of the world. 

Despite the already significant flooding, most of the water that will enter the Tulare Basin hasn’t done so yet, Swain explains. Plenty of snow can still melt and flow down from the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Flood risk will likely rise across California following an uptick in extreme precipitation events, but the Tulare Lake area is the most vulnerable. With its low elevations and proximity to the Sierra Nevadas, “[the basin] is the place where we very strongly anticipate that flood risk will increase the most in a warming climate,” Swain says.

With global heating driving up temperatures and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, rain has begun to replace snow at high elevations and snowmelt has accelerated earlier in the year. Swain also points out that a much more severe flood could occur in a future scenario with slightly warmer temperatures, but the same amount of precipitation. Rain and snow create the flood, but rising temperatures intensify it.

Where is all the water coming from?

The Sierra Nevada mountain range lies east of the San Joaquin Valley. Each spring, as temperatures warm, the snowpack accumulated over the winter begins to melt. As it does so, gravity pulls meltwater down from the mountains and into the lowest regions of the valley—namely, the Tulare Lake Basin./p>

This year, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is three times larger than normal and still growing. As of April 4, 2023, the estimated snowpack for the southern Sierras is 302-percent above average.

“All of that water is eventually going to have to enter the San Joaquin watershed, and a lot of it’s going to pass through the Tulare Lake Basin,” Swain says. “That’s going to present some serious challenges—I mean bigger challenges than we’re currently seeing.”

In the coming weeks, the Tulare Lake Basin and larger San Joaquin Valley will, unfortunately, experience deeper and more widespread flooding.

“There’s just that much water up in the mountains, it can’t go anywhere else, right?” Swain adds. “… In the end, the water always wins.”

How long with the Tulare Lake flood last?

Tulare Lake is an isolated, shallow body of water. It has no tributaries or outlets, so whatever water enters the basin sits there until it evaporates. An impermeable layer of clay underneath the former lake prevents most water from exiting through the ground.

[Related: What is a flash flood?]

The lake has occasionally been revived in the past. In the last big flood event in 1982 and 1983, the second wettest period in recorded history in the area, the lake did not fully disappear until 1985, per the Fresno Bee. The amount of water that has already accumulated in this year’s flood could take months or even years to evaporate—and there’s still a lot of snow waiting to melt in the wings. As of April 5, current precipitation levels in the Tulare Lake Basin rival its wettest years on record, 1968 and 1969.

What are the solutions to the flooding?

Restoring natural floodplains, adding levee setbacks and recharge basins, and “essentially giving water more room to roam in places where we’ve pre-designated it so it doesn’t cause too many problems” are among the list of solutions for the Tulare Lake region and its residents, Swain says.

But implementing land use changes is easier said than done. The San Joaquin valley has a long history of water wars, and no single entity has the authority to make these changes. Private landowners are responsible for many of these decisions, leading to extralegal activity and political conflict.

“This is a very difficult problem legally, practically, and ethically, and I don’t think there are any obvious solutions,” Swain notes. “Even though there are some obvious land use changes that would help the broader problem, getting there and implementing them in an equitable way is far from a straightforward thing to do.”

It’s already too late to do anything this spring besides survive the influx of water and try to control the damage. The challenge now lies in long-term planning for future floods. Moving forward, local conversations about these decisions should be held, including Indigenous groups like the Yokut people who were forcibly removed from the area in the 1800s.

“We’re really in a tough spot where these are big problems that have been known for a long time,” Swain says. In the coming months, he expects water will inundate some places that are now dry. Not only that, but adding water to farmland that has been treated with fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals may mobilize contaminants. Farms with animal agriculture produce lots of fecal waste, threatening microbial contamination. Tulare County has already issued a health warning regarding floodwater contamination.

“It’s going to be a long spring for some in the San Joaquin Valley and the Tulare Basin, in particular,” Swain says.

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