There are several characteristics of the changing climate that are helping to increase the risks of damage from Hurricanes, even though global warming is not directly causing such a storm to spin up. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher at Texas Tech, put the relationship between climate change and storms such as Florence as follows: "Hurricanes are absolutely being affected by our changing climate, in many ways. As the world warms, the rainfall associated with hurricanes is becoming more intense; they are getting stronger, on average; they are intensifying faster; they are moving more slowly; and, as sea level rises, the storm surge from these events can be more damaging."
There is no one gene that determines a person’s sexual orientation, but genetics — along with environment — play a part in shaping sexuality, a massive new study shows. Researchers analyzed DNA from hundreds of thousands of people and found that there are a handful of genes clearly connected with same-sex sexual behavior. The researchers say that, although variations in these genes cannot predict whether a person is gay, these variants may partly influence sexual behavior.
Peche Di, a Thai beauty queen who studied at New York University, spent five years booking occasional modeling gigs and looking for an agency to represent her. "They didn't understand me," she says, "so I struggled to find work." Finally she decided to do something about the lack of opportunities for her and other transgender models. The 26-year-old walked into the county clerk's office downtown in Manhattan and filed the paperwork for Trans Models, creating New York City's first transgender modeling agency—and one of only three in the country, and perhaps the world.
The “David H. Koch Hall of Fossils — Deep Time” exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History opened June 8, 2019 after a five-year renovation. As a young paleontologist, Kirk Johnson traveled to the Arctic to excavate fossils from 50 million years ago, a time when the air was thick with carbon dioxide and so warm that even the North Pole had no ice. Johnson and his colleagues dug up fossilized crocodiles, turtles, and palm trees. “Palm trees!” Johnson recalled. “In the Arctic! . . . It blew my mind that the Earth could change that much.”
