“Emerging data of massive simulations of flooding suggest that existing flood control systems are a ticking time bomb,” said Brett Sanders, a professor of civil engineering at UC Irvine. “Southern California, in particular, is completely unprepared to deal with the consequences.” “Once the water goes outside of the structures intended to rein it in, it will go everywhere,” he said, “and there will be little time to get out of its way.

Beach replenishment projects in California date back to the 1930s …. reshaping shorelines in ways that require repeated and possibly perpetual replenishment. The consequences of modifying these beaches beyond their natural formations now burden local communities with costly projects and growing threats to beachfront infrastructure and housing.

Alon A. Gorodetsky of the University of California, Irvine, and coworkers have given some of that camouflage ability to human cells. The researchers engineered human embryonic kidney cells to make a protein called reflectin that gives somecephalopod skin cells and organs their optical properties …. Read More