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Flooding seemed to be hitting everywhere this summer, and it’s back in the news this week, with flood disasters on both coasts and in the mountains of Colorado.
When the same neighborhoods flood repeatedly, the government sometimes makes buyout offers. Buyout programs help reduce the community’s risk by paying owners for the properties and then turning them into parks or open flood plains. But not every owner takes the offer or has that option − many more put their homes on the market, passing the risk along to someone new.
In a new national mapping project, Jim Elliott, Debolina Banerjee and their colleagues at the Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience at Rice University tracked where people across the U.S. moved after flood disasters and what happened to their homes. The results tell a story about FEMA buyouts, love of community and the large number of risky homes put on the market.
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FEMA’s buyout program helped homeowners in Houston after Hurricane Harvey’s widespread flooding in 2017.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
James R. Elliott, Rice University; Debolina Banerjee, Rice University
In general, people are moving to safer homes after disasters, but the vast majority are selling, meaning someone else is now taking on that risk. Buyout programs can help.
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Politics + Society
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Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Boise State University
When websites and email systems become partisan platforms, the line blurs between state and party, diluting public trust in the idea of impartial governance.
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Susan D. Daggett, University of Denver; Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, University of Denver
Structured parking can cost as much as $50,000 per space, making housing more expensive to build and for those living there.
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Seda Saluk, University of Michigan
Banning abortion instantly oppresses a huge swath of society. And enforcing abortion bans begets a police state − an upside for dictators from Mussolini to Ortega.
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Environment + Energy
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Kate Hua-Ke Chi, Tufts University
The International Energy Agency expects global renewable energy capacity to double by 2030, even with lower growth in the US, but fossil fuels still dominate.
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Science + Technology
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Shraddha Lall, Harvard University
Variability in traits and increased individuality in behaviors is something that can evolve in response to selection, definitely in the lab and potentially also in nature.
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Valentina Dargam, Florida International University; Joshua Hutcheson, Florida International University
With the help of AI, doctors might be able to detect heart disease before it becomes audible to the human ear.
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Arts + Culture
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Ediberto Román, Florida International University; Ernesto Sagás, Colorado State University
Puerto Ricans like Bad Bunny complicate the administration’s campaign to portray America as an English-speaking, homogenous nation.
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Eric Zillmer, Drexel University
Philadelphia has become the US epicenter of squash and home to Team USA.
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Health + Medicine
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Brandon Nabors, University of Mississippi
Over half of new HIV diagnoses in the US are in the South. Black men who have sex with men are hit the hardest; for them, preventing HIV is a matter of trust, identity, family and faith.
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Tom Duszynski, Indiana University
The ways in which zombies are spawned − and contained − reflect a range of public health principles.
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