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In the past few years, the U.S. has seen devastating results from hurricanes. Just last year, Florida, the state that has a population that grows by almost 1,000 people every day, was hit by Hurricane Harvey and saw extreme flooding and damages that are still being dealt with today. And now, Hurricane Florence has wreaked havoc on the Carolinas and is moving throughout Virginia. Fortunately, drone technology will make disaster relief a bit easier for these states.

As the forecasts for the hurricane change, there is a small army of drone pilots staged in areas where they can be most useful in helping with disaster response. Drones are going to play a key role in identifying and even helping to fix damages caused by the hurricane. And with machinery shipments increasing over the years, totaling $407.4 billion in 2012 alone, recovery teams have access to more drones and drone equipment than ever before.

Florence has already caused immense flooding, coastal erosion, wind, and torrential downpours. And to keep up with the damage the storm is causing, there are at least 53 drone teams with 100 operators, with recovery efforts being managed by the Edison Electric Institute, based in Washington.

There are also numerous other companies and organizations offering their drones for disaster recovery aid — Duke Energy Corp., Southern Co., and the New York Power Authority. Insurance companies like Travelers Cos. and United States Automobile Association already reported that they plan on using drone technology in order to collect evidence for damage claims once the storm has passed.

Drone technology can prove to be extremely useful in situations where it’s crucial to quickly find issues in dangerous areas, like particularly heavily flooded areas. The drones used in recovery efforts have special equipment like infrared and high-zoom sensors. These additional pieces of equipment can help locate and inspect things like downed power lines that may be too dangerous for humans to get to.

“When we’re predeployed, we have our rations—it’s an ongoing joke of beef jerky and pretzels,” said Hadley Doyle-González, who runs SMG Drones, in Palm Beach, Florida. “We have a ridiculous amount of batteries. We need to be able to fly for 24 hours with no power.”

And this isn’t the first time drones have been used in recovery efforts. Over the past few years, drones have been used more and more for commercial purposes, with Gartner reporting 110,000 drones being sold in 2016 for commercial use. Last year when Hurricane Harvey hit, drones were used to build a backup substation and also aided in checking generators at hospitals as well as other tasks.

Of course, there are other safety protocols in place, like NFPA 101, Life Safety Code, which requires workplaces and occupied buildings provide updated evacuation plan information, there are some recovery tasks that humans can’t do quickly or safely after disasters like hurricanes.

The CEO of PrecisionHawk, a North Carolina-based drone company, Michael Chasen explained, “As people, companies, cities and states come together to support safety as best possible as Hurricane Florence bears down, drones and pilots are poised to play a critical role in the triage of affected eastern states, post-Florence.”

While drones won’t necessarily be used in emergency rescue efforts after the hurricane dwindles down, but they will be utilized greatly during recovery efforts. The equipment drones are hooked up to can capture necessary data and images that can help analyze property damage and other areas damaged by the storm. And once the storm has calmed, drone companies will then work with local authorities to use the gathered information to make plans for repairs and other necessary actions.

Recovery efforts after storms like Florence generally take time, sometimes years to fully repair the damages. But with technology like drones, people have hope that they’ll be able to assess and repair damage quicker than ever before.

Feeling down about Chicagoland’s housing costs? Well, there’s a community with more snow, wind, AND higher prices.

Finding a place to call home on our planet is quite the decision, fraught with lists and lists of considerations to make before settling in.

Mortgages are a pain. Should you go for 15-year fixed or 30-year? Not a fun question to answer, but people manage. What if, to move somewhere, you were required to have your appendix removed? Maybe not quite as painful as a mortgage? Maybe more? Well, boy do we have the place for you.

Thanks to a strong economy and consumer confidence, construction spending last year hit an all-time high of $1.2 trillion, so if you’re among the millions looking to break ground on some prime real estate, look no further. The only teensy catch is that you’ll have to go under the knife. But other than that, welcome to Villa Las Estrellas.

Technically a Chilean settlement, it’s nestled in the accommodating locale of Antarctica. There are 100 permanent residents who are divided amongst 24 houses, inhabiting one of the most uninhabitable places on the planet. For perspective, on a school globe, Punta Arenas is at the very southern tip of South America. Go 994 miles further south and you’ll find Villa Las Estrellas.

To live here, residents are required to go through a battery of physical and psychological examinations to prove their abilities to withstand the environment. Anxiety disorders are common in 50% of adults and, among a variety of psychological evaluations, the place can be extremely anxiety-inducing from sheer isolation. Oh, and apart from children under six years old, one of the physical requirements is an appendectomy. If that seems extreme, just wait.

The average daily temperature is a balmy -2 degrees Celsius, but can get down -47 degrees during the winter. It’s so far south that daylight isn’t really a thing, replaced by a sort of daytime dusk, if only for a few minutes. During the winter months, they’re enveloped in complete darkness and the temperature doesn’t surpass -20 degrees. One in three adults is considered obese, which is another physical consideration made for potential residents. Because of the lack of light, vegetables are very limited and the diets are high in fats, carbs, and proteins. In fact, residents comically dismissed a suggestion for the settlement to have a nutritionist on staff. Eat, drink, and be merry.

“It gets a little intense here in winter,” says Jose Luis Carillan, a Villa Las Estrellas resident of three years with his wife and two children. 

Because the summers are so much less intense? There are stretches of time that it’s impossible to go outside and it’s popularly compared to being a place that comes closest to living on another planet. The cherry on top? There’s one way in and one way out: C-130 military aircraft. They’re huge and built for lengthy journeys that can surpass 2,300 miles.

“We must be prepared to keep a person alive two or three days, the time it takes an airplane to get out of here,” says commander Sergio Cubillos.

Yes, just getting out can be a two to three-day process. Redefines a long flight/layover, doesn’t it? The mandatory appendectomy makes a little more sense when the closest hospital is 625 miles away. A distance and timeframe at which acute appendicitis would be fatal in the majority of cases.

Still, people are chomping at the bit to get there because of the economic kickbacks from the government and the opportunity to live somewhere few others can say they have. Plus, the neighbors are great.

“People in the rest of Chile are so afraid of thieves that they build walls around their homes. Not here in Antartica. This is one of the safest places in the world,” says resident Paul Robledo.

And, along with a lively penguin population, it’s a full community. Complete with a school, post office, Orthodox church (monks and all), bank, and — hilariously — an air-conditioned gym, this place has everything it needs for the doughty contingency of residents who, predictably, become quite close.

“Family life in Antarctica is very calm and pleasant because we spend much more time together than before,” says Macarena Villarreal, a mother of two.

So, we can officially put the expressions costs an arm and a leg to bed. This’ll cost an appendix, requires formidable physiological and psychological constitutions, and you should probably not be sensitive to the cold.

And any place where penguins outnumber people is pretty special.

Death is natural. We all must face it and experience it (in some form or another) during our lives, yet many Americans are terrified of the process; they choose ignorance and denial instead because the finality of death and all the unknowns attached to it are simply too overwhelming to think about. The emerging popularity of death doulas in U.S. society is changing that perception.

The word “doula” had previous associations with birth: the word itself loosely translates to a woman who helps another woman. Doulas were employed most commonly as midwives, helping mothers with the emotional, physical, and informational aspects of childbirth — before, during, and after it occurred. They were there to assist in any way the mother needed throughout the entire process. Death doulas do the same thing, only for those at the end of their lives rather than the beginning.

Death doulas tend to be employed by those who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and have accepted the situation. They can provide a range of support, from running errands and cooking meals to talking about the things loved ones aren’t ready to hear — like the reality that this life will end, and soon. As one article described it, “Death doulas are more like traveling companions, there to walk with clients and families toward something wholly unknown.”

The National Funeral Directors Association found that 62.5% of consumers felt communicating their funeral plans and wishes to their families before their deaths was very important; death doulas provide an opportunity to do so. They can help arrange funerals and all the complicated necessities that go into them, as well as emotionally stand by all members involved.

“Death… is not a medical event,” says Tarron Estes, founder of the Conscious Dying Institute in Colorado.

She’s right; death doulas bridge the gap between doctors, families, and attitudes about dying. By offering continuous support to the dying and their families, doulas can make the journey to death much more peaceful.

As part of Flossmoor District 161’s initiative to increase school safety, they have hired two new security officers from a professional company who will be unarmed and stationed at Parker Junior High School. Parker is the largest school in District 161, with 927 students, and is currently the only one in the district to have security guards.

According to school district Superintendent Dana Smith, the decision to hire guards from a professional security company, the U.S. Security Associates, was born out of a need for consistency. While the current security staff at the school is made up of retired public safety personnel and a single state trooper, the new hires will have professional training in safety and will be full-time employees.

In addition to providing security during the school day, the new guards will also be on duty for after-school activities, such as soccer and basketball games. They are scheduled to start right away, and the other security guards will leave Parker in October.

The district’s $73,008 contract with the Georgia-based security company was approved on Sept. 10. The contract details that the district is hiring one security guard with an estimated annual wage of $34,128 and one supervisor with an estimated wage of $38,880. Both of these predicted wages exceed the average salary for a security guard of nearly $30,000 per year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Blue Line Security Solutions had put in a bid with the district for about $2,000 less, but Smith felt that U.S. Security Associates had more experience in school settings and aligned more closely with the needs of the district.

“If we have a really good experience with this group, we’ll maybe talk about the elementaries because we may want to add security guards,” says Smith.

Elementary schools in the Prince William County, Virginia, have recently take the step to hire two retired police officers as armed guards. The school board and county supervisors approved a pilot program back in April 2018 that would start with five community safety officers and a supervisor. The officers will rotate between the 60 elementary schools in the county.

Officials were spurred to make the decision in light of recent school shootings, such as the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Thanks to the developments in medicine, specialists from the site http://bostonavenue.org/buy-ativan-online/found out that improper use of an addictive drug can cause addiction, overdose, or death. Selling or distributing Ativan is against the law. School board officials hope that the presence of armed guards will simultaneously be a deterrent to any potential threats and build relationships with younger students to make them feel safe.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture was slow to get staffed since the 2016 presidential election. Things are finally picking up the past few months and crucial jobs are getting filled at national and state levels. This is according to Bill Northey, the USDA’s secretary for farm production and conservation. He visited Illinois recently and met with some local farmers who shared their concerns. Some concerns included the looming trade disruptions that could severely hurt American farmers. While corporate-owned farms are less concerned about the possibility of closing down due to their sheer size and power, around 87% of U.S. farms are individual or family-owned. They don’t have as much of a corporate safety net if things get tough. They have people like Northey.

Some government and state programs have been accessible for farmers, such as FSA loans and grants from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. Now, the USDA is trying to introduce new programs like the Market Facilitation Program, which hopes to keep farmer paychecks consistent even with a spotty trade situation and tariffs.

Northey and his colleagues seem to be doing their best to support these farmers, and the farmers have expressed some faith in the new staff at the USDA. Still, more support is always needed for these oft-struggling Americans.

So how can YOU help support local Illinois family farms? Four big ways:

1. Buy food and goods directly from them.
2. Enjoy farm-sponsored activities like corn fields, apple picking, and hay rides.
3. Vote for representatives who back the interests of small farms, and let them know your concerns.
4. Encourage others to do the above, too!

Plenty of farms across the state make extra income by offering seasonal activities. Fall, of course, is a huge time of year for farmers. Not only do they have to finish harvesting and prep for winter, but those who dabble in hayrides, pumpkin picking, and other public fall activities have a lot to organize. Take for example the brand-new apple orchard at Royal Oak Farm Orchard in Harvard, IL. It’s taken around six or seven years, but the farm succeeded in making a unique apple-shaped maze formed out of over 3,000 crab apple trees! This is in addition to their usual autumn offerings of apple picking and kid-friendly activities.

The Bell family’s Royal Oak Farm is a perfect example of innovative local farmers. Find out who the small farms are near your community, even just outside city centers, and support them in whatever ways feel appropriate to you. The effort means the world to these farmers, and supports a healthier culture around food production in the United States.

The current retail value of the U.S. coffee market is estimated to be worth approximately $48 million dollars. Coca-Cola has historically done quite well without dipping into the coffee market, but the soda manufacturer and beverage titan just placed a large bet on coffee — a $5.1 billion bet.

According to The New York Times, Coca-Cola announced its plans to purchase Costa, one of the world’s biggest coffee chains, for $5.1 billion in cash.

Though it seems like Coke has been relatively quiet in recent years, this new acquisition is its largest in nearly a decade, proving that the company is willing to spend top dollar in order to stay atop the beverage market.

Coke’s sales have actually been falling for the past five years, but the company’s jump to coffee could be exactly what it needs to get back on top. People love coffee — and now that Coke is running Costa, they’ll be able to compete with some of the biggest coffee retailers in the U.S. and the world.

The U.S. imports around 27.5 million bags of coffee, accounting for about one-quarter of global un-roasted coffee imports, making it the world’s largest single buyer. These coffee beans are constantly being shipped across oceans in order to provide coffee-lovers with tasty and affordable drinks. Standard TEU shipping containers can hold about 3,500 shoe boxes and 40ft high containers can hold more than 8,000 — that’s a lot of coffee being shipped across nations. Now, a significant percentage of all those coffee shipments will have that iconic Coca-Cola label on the side.

“It’s more important than ever that Coca-Cola make a serious and significant investment in the category because it’s the right thing to do to serve our consumers with more of the drinks they want, which in turn helps our customers,” said James Quincey, Coke’s chief executive officer.

According to Business Insider, this deal clearly outlines Coke’s long-term plans, as the $5.1 billion purchase is actually 16 times more than Costa’s projected 2018 earnings.

“Hot beverages is one of the few remaining segments of the total beverage landscape where Coca-Cola does not have a global brand,” added Quincey. “Costa gives us access to this market through a strong coffee platform.”

This deal is likely to be seen as a direct challenge to the Starbucks dominance across the United States. Costa already has more coffee shops in the UK than Starbucks and has been expanding globally. In October, Costa bought out Yueda, the second most popular coffee chain in China (behind Starbucks).

“Coca-Cola doesn’t have a broad, global portfolio in this growing category,” added Quincey. “There’s a lot of coffee stores in the U.S. There’s more room for growth in Europe and Asia. This is a coffee strategy, not a retail strategy or a food strategy.”

Coca-Cola has been producing and distributing products since the 1880s. With this latest acquisition, they are certainly hoping to remain not only relevant within the global beverage sector, but the king of the caffeinehill.

An ingredient of the weedkiller Roundup has been found in a variety of children’s breakfast cereals. According to Fox News Chicago, traces of the weed-killing chemical glyphosate have been found in a number of children’s popular breakfast cereals including Cheerios, Lucky Charms, and Quaker Oats.

The chemical was detected in a study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit organization. EWG tested over a dozen brands of oat-based foods. Approximately three-fourths of the tested samples contained levels of glyphosate that were higher than what EWG scientists say is safe for children’s health.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time glyphosate has been found in U.S. food. In April, the nonprofit organization US Right to Know found that the Food and Drug Administration had been testing food for glyphosate for up to two years.

The FDA’s internal emails, obtained by US Right to Know, reportedly contained information that proved many oat-based foods contained a fair amount of glyphosate. The organization failed to release its findings to the public.

Glyphosate was first identified as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization in 2015. Children’s foods that contain these high levels of glyphosate include General Mills’ Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Kellogg’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran, and Quaker Old Fashioned Oats.

Spokespersons with both Quaker and Kellogg’s said the brands don’t add glyphosate during their milling processes. Glyphosate, they said, is commonly used by farmers who apply the chemical pre-harvest.

The EWG’s findings were published in a report only days after a Superior Court of California awarded $289 million to a San Francisco groundskeeper. Dewayne “Lee” Johnson filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Company for failing to label their weed-killing product Roundup as dangerous.

Johnson used Roundup, which includes the chemical glyphosate, for over two years before developing terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Jurors ruled in favor of Johnson, concluding that Roundup and Ranger Pro products present a substantial danger to users.

Johnson’s case is only the first among more than 4,000 lawsuits filed against Monsanto for similar medical reasons. Monsanto plans to appeal the court’s decision on the case and says that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews, including those by the EPA, say that glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer.

Whether or not glyphosate definitely causes cancer, it’s still important that adults undergo cancer screening regularly whether in a doctor’s office or self-checking. Screening helps to detect cancer when it’s still in the early stages.

For instance, between one to two lives can be saved for every 1,000 men who undergo a prostate-specific antigen test.

Cancer screening and early detection are also important financially. Up to 45 million Americans are living below the poverty line and 36% of children in New Jersey alone live in low-income households.

Cancer care can be incredibly expensive. And if the family chooses to buy a service or therapy dog (there are up to 75 million pet dogs in the U.S.), the price can be even higher. The average price for a service dog $17,000.

That said, cancer screening is critical. Still, Dr. Olga Naidenko, the senior science adviser for EWG, says that regardless how much a child or adult would need to eat of the chemical to reach the EPA limit, glyphosate doesn’t belong in children’s food.

What’s more, there have been detectable levels of glyphosate in people’s urine due to dietary exposure. “And tests show that glyphosate levels in American’s bodies have been rising over time,” Naidenko said.