A two-year budget approved by the Ohio State Senate restores the state’s Housing Trust Fund, a key source of support for affordable housing and emergency housing programs, and funds two new housing programs.

As Megan Henry explains in the Ohio Capital Journal, “The Housing Trust Fund is funded by a portion of the fees collected by county recorders, with half of the fees staying with the county and the other half going back to the fund — which requires at least 50% of the funds be spent in non-urban areas.” The House’s version of the budget would have eliminated the reallocation requirement, potentially reducing resources in parts of Ohio that need it most.

“The Senate added $100 million worth of housing provisions in the budget that will create two programs — the Residential Economic Development District grants and Residential Development Revolving Loan Program.” The first is aimed at encouraging cities to rezone areas to encourage more housing production. The revolving loan program would support new single-family residential housing in rural areas.

The budget goes back to the House and Senate, who must pass a bill they agree on before it goes to Governor Mike DeWine for his signature.

• Housing Trust Fund
• Affordable Housing
• Housing Crisis
• Housing Supply
• Emergency Housing
• Housing Assistance

Since March, two escaped North American river otters (Lontra canadensis) have been leading the staff at the New Zoo Adventure Park in northeastern Wisconsin near Green Bay on an otterly wild chase. 

During a snowstorm on March 20th, security cameras showed otters Louie and Ophelia leaving their enclosures. The zoo staff believe they escaped through a hole in a buried part of the fence that had clearly gone unnoticed. Zookeepers quickly noted their absence, and immediately set the stage for a high-stakes chase scene straight out of an episode of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Per the zoo’s updates “operating procedures for animal escapes were activated,” and they even called in a professional animal tracker. 

The otters, however, were not very subtle in their escape. They left fresh tracks in the snow, galavanting around the zoo and beyond in full view of cameras. The pair never went very far, which is consistent with normal otter territorial behavior, according to the zoo. 

“Both Louie and Ophelia were born in the wild and brought into human care through a process of rehabilitation. North American river otters are native to our area and are very comfortable and capable of surviving in Wisconsin’s climate,” the zoo reassured readers. “The Zoo is surrounded by natural ponds and other waterways which provide ample food and safe places to sleep even at this time of year.”

The zoo staff set up traps in locations where the otters were seen more than once, but like any good story, antagonistic foil characters in the form of raccoons quite literally foiled their plans by interfering with the contraptions. One raccoon even set off a trap shortly before one of the otters tried to enter it, forcing the staff to pivot toward “raccoon proof” traps. 

Nonetheless, the zoo announced Ophelia’s return on April 1 (after clarifying that the announcement was not an April Fool’s joke). After two months of Louie evading capture, the zoo concluded that he had taken his destiny into his own hands. 

“Due to the length of time that Louie has been missing, we believe he has made the decision to be a wild otter,” the zoo wrote in its latest animal update. “We accept this, although we would, of course, welcome him home if he decides to return.” 

[ Related: Female sea otters use tools more than males. ]

The zoo staff explained that, given the reports of his sightings, they believe he is “healthy and surviving well.” 

The only thing left to do now is find another male otter to keep Ophelia company. 

The post Escaped river otter takes his destiny into his own (tiny) hands appeared first on Popular Science.

The U.S. Department of Justice issued an opinion stating that the President can review and eliminate national monuments in favor of mining and resource extraction, reports Wyatt Myskow in Inside Climate News.

According to Myskow, “Tuesday’s opinion, which stems from a White House request after it attempted to eliminate two monuments earlier this year, has no influence on case law that has upheld the protection of national monuments, but it does offer insight into how the Trump administration is likely to justify dismantling protected areas in court.”

The opinion argues that using the Antiquities Act to protect land goes against the best interests of local communities. According to the opinion, “Presidents have used that power to withhold vast swaths of the American land and seascape from potentially beneficial economic use by designating over 100 national monuments, the largest of which spans 582,578 square miles or 373 million acres.”

The power to eliminate national monuments has traditionally rested with Congress, who has never used it. “Attacking national monuments to make way for development has been a priority of both the first and second Trump administrations. Many of the targeted monuments hold access to minerals like uranium, coal and copper and in some cases, prevented some mines from expanding operations.”

• Trump 2.0
• National Monuments
• Executive Actions
• Public Lands
• Bureau of Land Management
• extraction
• Mining

The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) announced $1.25 million in grants for developing areas around several subway stations and one MARC station between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C., reports Daniel Zawodny in The Baltimore Banner.

The funding will support projects including preconstruction for parking around the Odenton MARC station and street redesigns around two Baltimore stations, all aimed at accommodating more housing and other development near the transit stations. “And in Montgomery County, another $250,000 will go toward preliminary design and community engagement for a series of big changes near the 13.9-acre North Bethesda Metro Station, which is along the Red Line in the northern Washington, D.C., suburb.”

Maryland officials hope promoting TOD will help more Maryland residents reduce driving and carbon emissions. And while many train stations were originally designed as park-and-rides for people driving in, changes in work patterns have reduced the need for sprawling parking lots, offering an opportunity for denser, mixed-use development near stations.

• Transit-Oriented Development
• TOD
• Density
• Multifamily Housing
• Mixed-Use Development

You know the smell. It’s there every time the first fat raindrops hit the ground—a distinctive, earthy scent that suffuses the air, an aroma that speaks of the changing seasons and promises relief from stifling summer heat. There’s a name for the smell of rain, too: “petrichor,” a poetic portmanteau of the Greek words “petros” (stone) and “ichor” (the blood of the gods in Greek mythology). 

Petrichor: the smell of rain. But what causes it?

The name “petrichor” was coined by Australian scientists Isabel Bear and Dick Thomas in 1964, in a paper that constituted perhaps the first serious scientific attempt to explain the phenomenon. The duo used the word to refer to an oil that they distilled from samples of soil and vegetation that were left for up to a year exposed to air and daylight but shielded from rain. They found that the oil contained a complex mixture of volatile organic compounds.

One question left unanswered by Bear and Thomas was the origin of these compounds, and subsequent research has focused on one particular compound, a volatile bicyclic alcohol called geosmin. The compound was isolated a year after Bear and Thomas’s paper, and its name literally means “earth smell.” Along with another volatile organic compound called 2-methylisoborneol or 2-MIB, geosmin is primarily responsible for the characteristic smell of earth—and both contribute greatly to the smell of rain.

Ryan Busby, an ecologist at the US Army’s Corps of Engineers, tells Popular Science that these compounds exist in soil the world over, and that they’re spritzed into the air whenever soil is disturbed.

 “[The compounds] accumulate in the pore spaces in the soil,” Busby explains. “There might be some binding to soil particles. [And] research has shown that that impact with the soil surface causes the volatiles to be released into the atmosphere.”

So where do geosmin and 2-MIB come from? Busby says that while the source of both compounds remains the subject of plenty of active research, the current scientific consensus is that they are released by soil-dwelling bacteria.

Differing ratios of the two compounds may explain why the smell differs subtly from place to place. 

“Geosmin is pretty consistent across the environment, while 2-MIB is more variable. [Where 2-MIB is present], it is released in much higher concentrations, so you get areas where there’s huge concentrations, and then areas where there’s none,” Busby says. The other components that make up petrichor—a myriad less powerful plant-related volatiles, and also perhaps the distinctive acrid smell of ozone that accompanies lightning—vary from location to location.

Humans are remarkably sensitive to the smell of geosmin, in particular. In water, it can be detected at concentrations as low as 4 ng/L, which equates to about one teaspoon in 200 Olympic swimming pools. Busby says there are several theories for why this might be. 

“One [theory] is finding water sources,” he explains. “Geosmin seems to be more prevalent in moist, fertile soils.” The presence of moist soil means the presence of water, and it’s easy to see how being able to catch a whiff of geosmin on the wind and follow it to a source of water would provide a valuable evolutionary advantage. 

It’s not just humans who appear to be able to rely on the scent of these volatile compounds to find water, Busby says. “Camels can detect geosmin and find oases in the desert from 50 miles away. Mosquitoes use it to find stagnant ponds for laying eggs, and raccoons use it to find turtle nests and buried eggs.”

But while the smell of geosmin and 2-MIB are appealing to us, their taste is the complete opposite. “It’s kind of funny,” muses Busby. “We love the smell, but we hate the taste.” In water, these compounds are responsible for the musty, moldy taste that indicates that water isn’t safe to drink. Busby says, “Any time you drink water and you think, ‘Oh, this, this tastes like lake water,’ it’s because those compounds are dissolved in what you’re drinking.” 

Again, there’s most likely an evolutionary reason for this: it’s one thing for the soil around a water source to smell of bacteria, but if the water itself carries the distinctive musty odor of geosmin and 2-MIB, it also most likely carries the potential for gastrointestinal unpleasantness. Busby says that this explains why geosmin and 2-MIB are “the primary odor contaminants of drinking water globally.” 

There’s one unanswered question here, though: why are geosmin and 2-MIB there in the first place? As Busby points out, while it’s clear that “there are a number of uses for geosmin for us, we’re not sure exactly why [bacteria] produce it in such quantities. It’s a [large] energy cost to produce a chemical like that.” So why do soil-borne bacteria pump out geosmin and 2-MIB? What’s in it for them?

A paper published in Nature Microbiology in 2020 suggested a possible answer. The study examined interactions between Streptomyces—one variety of geosmin- and 2-MIB-producing bacteria—and small creatures called springtails. (Springtails are one of three varieties of six-legged arthropods that are not considered insects, and they have a taste for bacteria.) Crucially, the researchers found that in the bacteria studied, geosmin and 2-MIB were produced only by colonies that were also producing reproductive spores. In fact, they can only be produced by those specific colonies: “The genes for geosmin and 2-MIB synthases are under the direct control of sporulation-specific transcription factors, constraining emission of the odorants to sporulating colonies,” the paper explains.

Springtails are attracted by geosmin and 2-MIB, so unsurprisingly, upon arrival at the odor-emitting colonies, they helped themselves happily to a tasty microbial snack. In doing so, they also consumed the bacterial spores. The spores were then able to pass through the springtail’s digestive tracts and emerge ready for action from the other end.

Busby says this might also explain why the smell of rain is strongest when it comes from rain hitting dry soil. “As soil dries out, the bacteria are going to go dormant, and there seems to be a flush of release [at that point]. So from that respect, [the compounds] are a way to attract something that maybe will carry [the bacteria] to a more conducive environment for growth.”

It might feel like the poetic appeal of petrichor is diminished somewhat by discovering that the oh-so-evocative smell of rain most likely exists to encourage a bunch of tiny arthropods to poop out bacterial spores. But ultimately, it’s another example of nature finding a way—a co-evolutionary relationship that recalls bees and pollen, and one that extends its benefits to the rest of us. 

So the next time the rain hits dry soil, think about the tiny bacteria that both lead us to water and stop us drinking from sources that might harm us. 

This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post The science behind the smell of rain appeared first on Popular Science.

Every so often I read posts on the new urbanist-dominated PRO-URB listserv saying: “I’m not for NIMBY or YIMBY*, I’m for QUIMBY — Quality Urbanism In My Back Yard!”  After reading this sort of thing a month or two ago, I asked listserv members what they meant by “Quality Urbanism.”

Needless to say, there were a wide variety of responses. Some people focused on details of urban design; for example, buildings dominated by depressing blank walls are not “quality” if you value walkable surroundings. One person argued that every dwelling should have a certain number of windows to facilitate sunlight. Some other people argued that new buildings should be the same height as existing buildings.

This diversity of responses exhibits one problem with QUIMBY; quality is inherently subjective, and different people value different things. Having said that, there are certainly types of streets and buildings that I do not consider to be “quality” urbanism. I don’t particularly like blank walls, and I think buildings surrounded by parking make walking less safe and comfortable. So it seems to me that some versions of QUIMBY might be a useful guide for individual architects and developers. However, I'm not sure how much I want these sorts of aesthetic judgments to affect zoning; it seems to me that any idea of “quality” needs to be weighed against the risks of making housing more costly. 

Some posters responded with the idea that "quality" means that new buildings should never be taller than their older neighbors. I suspect that many people, even skilled professional architects and planners, believe that the lion of taller buildings can never lie with the lamb of smaller buildings without disrupting the tree-lined tranquility of residential streets. 

But I have lived in (and visited) more than one street where tall and small buildings coexisted.  For example, take a look at 108 East 38th Street in Manhattan on Google Maps (where I lived from 2017-19).  This street has one twenty-four story building and numerous brownstones; the larger building does not prevent East 38th from being a quiet, tree-lined street. And when my wife and I honeymooned in Chicago, we visited Astor Street in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, where old brownstones and newer, taller buildings seemed to coexist amicably.

But even if I found such a mixture of buildings aesthetically offensive for some reason, it seems to me that such matters of taste should be outweighed by other concerns. Americans get married later in life (if at all) than they did 60 years ago, and longer life spans mean that more parents are likely to become “empty nesters” without children in the house. This means that household sizes have become smaller over time, which means that cities need more houses and apartments to serve the same number of people. So even in a slow-growth city like Chicago, more housing is necessary to accommodate the population.

But if cities can never build housing that is taller than existing buildings, built-out neighborhoods can never change to meet increased demand for housing — which in turn means that the citywide supply of housing can never expand to meet changes in demand. And that in turn has contributed to some of the economic pathologies of the past 30 years: rents have risen, forcing some Americans to live on the streets and in homeless shelters, while middle-class Americans are forced to live in cheaper suburbs or even move to a cheaper part of the country. New Urbanists oppose placeless sprawl, but the housing status quo creates more sprawl as Americans are forced into suburbia or into the car-dependent Sunbelt to find affordable housing, which in turn leads to more demand and higher housing costs in those places. New Urbanists tend to worry about car-related pollution, but when people move to car-dependent places they create more pollution. 

Is a streetscape of homogenous buildings really worth the homelessness, sprawl and pollution caused by the American housing crisis? I think not. 

Some QUIMBY supporters may dismiss such concerns by claiming that new housing won’t affect housing prices. But if you believe that housing supply doesn’t affect rents, your basic economic assumptions are no different from those of the NIMBYs you claim to be different from (i.e. that new housing provides no social value because housing costs are not affected by the law of supply and demand). And as I have argued many types on this blog, this assumption is wrong: otherwise, why would some places be more expensive than others?**



—

*NIMBY= Not In My Back Yard (in the context of this post, generally used to describe people who don’t want new housing for human beings near them); YIMBY= Yes In My Back Yard (generally used to describe people who support such housing, and favor reducing or eliminating the layers of government regulation prohibiting such housing).

** I realize that there are many non-supply explanations of housing costs — but nearly all of them, to the extent that they make any sense at all, are ways of saying “demand matters too.” For example, if you believe that inequality leads to rich people bidding up the cost of housing, which in turn leads to higher rents, you are essentially saying “housing got more expensive because demand increased.” But if demand affects the cost of housing, it logically follows that supply affects the cost of housing as well.

• QUIMBY
• Housing Supply
• Housing Crisis
• Historic Preservation
• Urbanism
• Urban Design
• MIddle Housing
• Missing Middle Housing
• Density
• Affordable Housing
• housing affordability
• Housing Costs
• NIMBY
• YIMBY

• Visual Intelligence with Screenshots – Expands the camera-based AI feature to work systemwide with screenshots, allowing users to analyze captured content for shopping, calendar events, and more information gathering.


• Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime, Phone – Provides real-time translation across Apple's communication apps, automatically translating messages as you type, displaying live captions during FaceTime calls, and speaking translations aloud during phone conversations.


• Shortcuts Actions with AI Features – Adds new Shortcuts app actions that tap into Apple Intelligence models, enabling users to create images, summarize text, and access AI responses within their automated workflows.


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• New Genmoji and Image Playground Upgrades – Enhances existing Apple Intelligence image tools with the ability to mix emoji together, customize generated characters, and access ChatGPT-powered style options including anime, oil painting, and watercolor effects.


• Messages Background Creation and Poll Suggestion – Adds AI-powered poll suggestions for easy creation and enables custom background generation through Image Playground integration, beyond the standard background options available to all users.

From meteor showers to lunar eclipses and blood moons, 2025 is set to be an exciting year for space events. If you’ve tried to see any of these phenomena in the earlier months of the year, you might’ve been disappointed viewing with your eyes alone. On sale for just $89.99, these Mini Digital Night Vision Binoculars have 4x digital zoom and can record 1080p HD video.

From hunting and fishing to seeing space, these binoculars allow you to see up to 1,000 feet in the dark and are a perfect addition for warm summer nights. There are seven adjustable brightness levels and four color effects, including infrared, that you can adjust easily even when wearing gloves, thanks to the tactical silicone button. They weigh less than half a pound and easily fit into any pockets, making them great for backpacking or camping. In addition to the 4x zoom, there’s also a 10x optical magnification lens that allows users to see sharper details when identifying animals. Record your favorite findings in 1080p with the included 32 GB memory card.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

_

Mini Digital Night Vision Binoculars with 1080p HD Recording

See Deal

Make the most of summer nights and see the wonderful world around you. Usually $159.99, you can grab these Mini Night Vision Binoculars for $89.99.

The post Don’t pretend that airplanes in the night sky are shooting stars. You might actually see them with these night vision binoculars appeared first on Popular Science.

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It’s 7:30 p.m., and if you’re the parent of a toddler, you’re likely in the thick of the bedtime routine: bath, pajamas, teeth, and then comes the story. You may very well have a shelf of books to choose from, but chances are your child insists on the same one. Night after night. Week after week. Sometimes for months.

For parents, it can feel mind-numbing. But for a child, that repetition is pure gold—feeding their need for predictability, building confidence, and laying the foundation for early literacy.  

“They’re going to start recognizing that the pictures and the words might be connected, and they’re going to have the cues for bedtime and safety and connection with you,” says Aliza Pressman, a developmental psychologist and author of Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans: The 5 Principles of Parenting. “You get a lot of bang for your buck.” 

Here’s why child development experts like Pressman recommend just going with it. 

Young children thrive on structure. A systematic review of 170 studies from 1950 to 2020 found that routines are linked to positive child development, including better cognitive, emotional, social and physical health, and offer protection in stressful environments. 

Researchers are still exploring the mechanisms behind why routines nurture such important milestones, the study notes. But we do know routines offer something young ones rarely get: a sense of agency and control.

In a world where adults almost always call the shots, routines give kids a dependable framework that helps them feel more secure, confident, and in control, Pressman says. So, reading that same book over and over—especially when they can choose it—makes a little one feel a bit bigger in the world.

“Whenever a kid is seeking comfort and control and safety, they’re beautifully going to find ways to experience predictability and familiarity,” says Pressman, who also is host of the podcast Raising Good Humans. “It’s actually really responsive parenting to be like, ‘oh yeah, that must be what’s happening here’ [and allow it].” 

Routines also help young children develop their language skills—whether reading a book on repeat or singing the same song with their parents while they get dressed, says Deborah Wells Rowe, a professor in the department of teaching and learning at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development.

“These predictable frames of shared activity and shared stories become something that children build up understanding of over time,” Rowe says. “And that becomes like a launch pad for learning all kinds of things.”  

What’s more, even with a simple picture book, young children often discover something new with each reading. It’s not unlike adults who return to a favorite novel year after year—each reading revealing fresh layers of meaning for them as they age and mature. 

Over time, young children begin to understand a picture book’s storylines and illustrations more deeply. They’re able to respond to questions about the illustrations or how a character feels. They begin to anticipate a funny passage or a silly voice a parent always incorporates. What seems repetitive to an adult is a rich learning experience for the child. 

“The questions or talk that we use with kids on the first readings is very different than the kind of conversations that might happen on the 1,000th reading,” Rowe says. “Every one of these little micro interactions that you have with your child is an opportunity for learning.” 

And each time they learn a little something new about the story, they build on their confidence. Often, kids will eventually have portions of the text memorized and “read” it to their adult. “They’re figuring out how the story works,” Rowe says. “They’re gaining confidence in themselves as understanders and, eventually, as readers.” 

Still, Pressman and Rowe acknowledge reading the same book for months can get tedious. They shared some tips for mixing it up. 

Make it active: Run your finger below the words, point out the pictures as you read the text and ask your child questions about the story. Parents also can ask their child to read the book to them, Rowe says, at whatever level they’re capable of. 

Track your child’s understanding: The text and illustrations will be the same with each reading, but your child’s interactions with the book won’t be. Rowe counsels parents to pay attention to appreciate how much they grow. An infant might scratch at the bunny illustration because they think it’s real, she says. Eventually, they’ll learn to point at the bunny when you ask them to find it. And, one day, they’ll run their finger underneath the word bunny because they can read it.

Don’t sweat it: If reading that book is driving you nuts, it’s fine to switch it up, says Pressman, who regularly recommends self-compassion for parents. “Go ahead and put it away, and they’ll find another one to get to know. It’s not like you’re harming them.”
But remember: This stage, while it may feel long, is fleeting. By the time they become readers of their own, they may very well be re-reading the Harry Potter series over and over again without cuddles from mom and dad.

This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Why do kids love reading the same book over and over? Child development experts explain. appeared first on Popular Science.