PhET is a cool site that offers dozens of free online simulations to help students better visualize STEM concepts, courtesy of the University of Colorado Boulder: phet.colorado.edu/

Natural gas prices are 8x higher than normal in Europe, and most countries are desperate to obtain and store enough natural gas to get them through the winter, but although liquified natural gas (LNG) deliveries are arriving, the capacity to regasify the LNG is maxed out. This map from Reuters shows more than 35 LNG ships waiting in the Atlantic and Mediterranean to offload their cargo at Spanish LNG terminals: graphics.reuters.com/EUROPE-ENERGY/LNG/dwvkroxdgpm/Congestion%20at%20Spain%20LNG%20Terminals.jpg  (Map from www.reuters.com/business/energy/dozens-lng-laden-ships-queue-off-europes-coasts-unable-unload-2022-10-17/.)

COVID cut global life expectancy, but the impact even among relatively affluent countries was highly uneven. Researchers studied life expectancy in 29 countries (mostly European plus the U.S. and Chile) between 2019 and 2021.  In one -- Norway -- life expectancy continued to edge upwards, as had been the long-term trend in all of the countries studied, but in each of the 28 other countries, life expectancy fell by months to years. Between 2020 and 2021, most Western European countries stopped or even reversed the decline in life expectancy, but in the U.S., Chile, and Eastern European countries, life expectancy continued to decline through 2020-2021. U.S. life expectancy declined 2.75 years through the study period, second only to Bulgaria, which saw a decline of 3.5 years. (Study summary at www.statista.com/chart/28487/life-expectancy-change-selected-countries/ includes the link to the Nature Human Behavior article.)

The Darién Gap is the southernmost section of Panama that is part Panamanian rainforest and national park, part indigenous land, and part ungoverned space in which a variety of gangs and smugglers have long held sway. The "gap" refers to a gap in the Pan-American Highway: there is no road through the Darién Gap to connect Panama with Colombia. Over the last few years, the Darién Gap has become a route for Venezuelan and other migrants heading to the U.S. (many of whom fly into Ecuador from around the world to take advantage of Ecuador's liberal visa policy). This article from The New York Times chronicles the hazards of the Darién Gap: www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/world/americas/venezuelan-migrants-us-border.html

Chad's capital of N'Djamena sits at the confluence of the two major rivers that feed Lake Chad, to the north of the capital.  A rainy season that came early and has produced unusually heavy rains, after years of drought, resulted in massive flooding in N'Djamena over the weekend, with many streets in the capital navigable only by boat. www.nationsonline.org/maps/Chad-political-map.jpg

If one-third of a rat's brain is comprised of human brain cells, is it still a rat? (Or a ratman?) What if the majority of the rat's brain was comprised of human brain cells? What about the whole thing? Should a ratman have the same moral status as a plain rat? Who decides if ratmen should be created in the first place? These are no longer purely theoretical questions: researchers have successfully implanted human brain cells into the brains of baby rats.  Over time, the human cells were integrated into the baby rats' brains and eventually comprised about one-third of total brain mass. This article from MIT Technology Review looks at some of the ethical questions arising from this line of experimentation: www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/14/1061611/rats-with-human-brain-cells

The U.S. has five territories -- American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands -- and all five have been losing population to the mainland.  This recent article from The Washington Post profiles why residents of each territory have been moving and where, on the mainland, they have been moving to: www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/23/american-territories-population-loss/

Uganda is experiencing an outbreak of Ebola in the districts shown in brown on this map (from Forbes), all of which are northwest of the capital of Kampala, on the shores of Lake Victoria. Unlike previous Ebola outbreaks, the current outbreak in Uganda is caused by a strain for which there is no vaccine, no effective antiviral treatment, and no rapid test. imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/634062ae9ae26158286461d8/960x0.jpg

Over the last two decades, China has built a vast ocean fishing fleet that has depleted China's own fishing stocks and now spends most of its time in and near the territorial waters of other countries. This recent article from The New York Times includes a series of maps profiling the journeys of a Chinese-owned refrigerated cargo ship that offloads catches from fishing vessels in South American waters, including in waters adjacent to the protected marine sanctuary of the Galapagos Islands: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/26/world/asia/china-fishing-south-america.html

Fog is a vital characteristic of biomes ranging from temperate rainforests to cloud forests and may even become a source of water commercially harvested for drinking. Yet scientists around the world are finding that fog, particularly along the coasts, seems to be in decline for complex reasons, including warming oceans.  "Fog may be the most difficult meteorological phenomenon to capture, calculate and predict. Unlike temperature, precipitation, humidity or wind, there is no reliable gauge for it. There is not even a practical definition of it. Most will say that fog is a cloud that touches the ground, which sounds simple enough. But fog is movement in three dimensions, dipping and rising, forming and disappearing. Sometimes a thin layer hugs the water below the Golden Gate Bridge, blinding mariners. Sometimes it settles about 200 feet higher, blinding drivers. Sometimes it shrouds the top of the bridge’s towers and the airspace above, blinding pilots. Sometimes it does it all. Which of those things is fog? ... Fog from the ocean is a dependable feature in several places around the globe, mostly on the west coasts of major continents. Villages in places like Peru and Chile, sometimes with almost no rain throughout the year, have for centuries sustained themselves largely on fog water. ... Using observational data at airports in the coastal redwood region — from central California to its northern border, including the Bay Area — they found that the frequency of fog, measured by fog hours per day, had dropped 33 percent since the middle of the 20th century." www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/14/climate/san-francisco-fog.html

Farmers in the Southwestern U.S. are ripping out orchards, switching to less water-intensive crops, and renting out their land to try to save water and raise money in the face of an extended drought. This map compares vegetation stress in August 2022 with the average August vegetation stress from 1984 to 2020: green is more healthy, red is more stressed.  (Map from  www.wsj.com/articles/drought-in-u-s-west-leads-farmers-to-look-elsewhere-for-revenue-11664535602.)

Art generated by artificial intelligence is all the rage.  But art-generating AI is trained up on images scraped from the internet, usually without permission or attribution. This article from MIT Technology Review looks at the problems AI-generated art is posing for actual artists: www.technologyreview.com/2022/09/16/1059598/this-artist-is-dominating-ai-generated-art-and-hes-not-happy-about-it

Interested in introducing your kids to live classical music for free?  The Washington Bach Consort is continuing to perform J.S. Bach's cantatas, for free, on the first Tuesday of every month, at noon, at the Church of the Epiphany near Metro Center in downtown DC (as well as on Capital Hill, at St. Mark's, the prior day). For more information, see bachconsort.org/noontime-cantatas/.

The second major named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season has just made its way across Cuba and Florida.  This map, based on the INFORM Risk Index, looks at the risk of hurricane-related humanitarian crises in Latin America and the Caribbean: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28317.jpeg

Geography journalist Tim Marshall takes a look at the emerging naval rivalry between India and China in this article from Geographical (UK): geographical.co.uk/geopolitics/indias-ocean-rivalry-with-china?

Partitioned from the rest of the island when Ireland (the country) was granted independence in 1921, Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, is the historically Protestant-majority northeastern section of Ireland (the island).  However, a recent census shows that Catholics now outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time. www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/world/europe/northern-ireland-census-catholics-protestants.html

Banned Books Week just concluded.  This map from Quartz looks at book bans by state: i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/f243d7078b90019860ee2c5356763ac3.jpg

Humans have a notoriously bad track record of trying to intervene "helpfully" in natural environments. Yet today, natural environments need more help than ever before *and* humans have more tools at their disposal to intervene than ever before, from CRISPR gene edits, to sophisticated reproductive technologies, to species relocations. What could go wrong? This article considers some of the ethical questions at the frontier of conservation biology: www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/opinion/conservation-ethics.html

Western Europe is one of the world's most rapidly aging regions. This geo-graphic looks at the anticipated increase in dementia rates by 2050 in a sampling of Western European countries: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28310.jpeg

You can help scientists track butterfly and moth populations worldwide by participating in the Global Butterflies Census. All you need is a camera and WhatsApp. Take a picture of a butterfly and WhatsApp it to Friend of the Earth along with your coordinates. It's an easy bit of citizen science for all ages and all locations. For more information, see friendoftheearth.org/friend-of-the-earth-launches-first-global-census/

Using data from a recent study published in Nature, this map from VisualCapitalist shows country-by-country population vulnerability to 1-in-100-year coastal and inland flooding events: www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-highest-flood-risk/

According to a recent survey, 43% of Americans polled, including more than half of Republicans polled, believe a civil war is likely in the United States within the next 10 years. www.statista.com/chart/28200/is-a-us-civil-war-likely/

Food reflects the intersection of physical geography and cultural geography. This article looks at breakfast around the world: www.cnn.com/travel/article/breakfast-food-around-the-world/index.html

Persistent drought has exacerbated wildfire damage in the American Southwest, but more housing continues to be built in areas vulnerable to wildfires. The maps in this article from The New York Times compare housing developments in 1990 and 2020 in the areas around Sacramento, CA, Denver, CO, and San Antonio/Austin, TX. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/09/climate/growing-wildfire-risk-homes.html

Most countries around the world received an invitation for their head of state plus one guest to attend Monday's funeral of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.  There were 9 exceptions: the countries shown in black on this map were not invited at all (Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela); for the countries shown in purple (Iran, Nicaragua, and North Korea) the invitation went to the country's ambassador to the UK instead of the head of state.