Your Top Science Stories for this Week
| | Fueled by extreme winds, Sonoma County’s Tubbs fire killed 22 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes and buildings last year.
Since then, the community has banded together to pick up the pieces. But it’s also been grappling with a tough question -- one that faces fire-ravaged communities around the state.
Wildfire is a normal part of the California landscape. So, how — and where — should residents rebuild to protect themselves?
In the hills above Santa Rosa, wooden frames of houses are rising among the blackened trees. Many of the rebuilt homes will include new fire-resistant building materials, something few had when the fire swept through.
Still, because of California’s decade-old zoning rules, almost 2,000 of the destroyed structures will not be required to meet building standards for wildfire-prone areas. Some homeowners are taking it on themselves to meet them anyway, dipping into their insurance payouts to cover the cost. Others are not.
At the same time, given the region's severe housing shortage even before last year’s firestorm, city and county governments are under pressure to build new housing in areas at risk for wildfire.
As people are trying to heal and recover, local leaders have been faced with balancing those delicate issues. With climate change making California’s fires more extreme, their decisions will affect lives for decades to come. | | |
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| | | Their skeletons are prized by beachcombers, but sand dollars look way different in their lives beneath the waves. Covered in thousands of purple spines, they have a bizarre diet that helps them exploit the turbulent waters of the sandy seafloor. | | |
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| | | California's Gubernatorial candidates sounded off on climate change policies, fracking, and California's new goal of obtaining all of its energy from clean sources by 2045. But did they get it right? | | |
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| | | A new study that looked at several popular sweeteners indicates as little as 1 milligram is enough to turn gut bacteria toxic. | | |
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| | Join KQED in kicking off the 2018 Bay Area Science Festival with a special screening of our award-winning science series, Deep Look.
Meet the producers and hear harrowing tales of how they captured the fascinating imagery for some of Deep Look's creepier creature videos, including black widows, flesh-eating beetles, owls, ticks and whispering bats.
This event is 21+ and free, but RSVP is required. Friday, October 26, 7-9pm at the Bluxome Center in San Francisco. | | |
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| | | Meeting the more ambitious goal of slightly less warming would require immediate, draconian cuts in emissions of heat-trapping gases and dramatic changes in the energy field. | | |
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| | | Following a winter in which more than 80,000 people died from flu-related illnesses in the U.S. — the highest death toll in more than 40 years — infectious disease experts are ramping up efforts to get the word out. | | |
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