Environment

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America's usual weather diverges from the arid U.S. West to the wet East Coast, but extreme rain events are getting more frequent, dumping more water, and this summer is a case in point.

Traditional petroleum-based plastics that can survive for centuries are piling ever deeper across once pristine beaches and ocean floors around the world. According to a report from the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “the ocean is expected to contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish (by weight).”

University of California researchers are on the path to discovering genes that assist in drought resistance in sorghum, which could potentially be applied to other important cereal crops like corn, wheat, rice and barley in the years to come.