Thousands of American landmarks face significant wildfire threat

The first national assessment of its kind reveals an urgent and largely unplanned-for threat to irreplaceable cultural heritage.

When the Palisades Fire tore through Los Angeles in January 2025, it didn’t only destroy homes. It took the Will Rogers Ranch House—a beloved California landmark—with it. Six months later, the Dragon Bravo wildfire burned through Grand Canyon National Park and destroyed the Grand Canyon Lodge, originally built in 1927. Whether either landmark will ever be meaningfully restored remains uncertain.

A new study in Nature Scientific Reports suggests these losses are not anomalies, they are an early warning.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) have completed the first national-scale assessment of wildfire risk to American cultural heritage.

Of the 100,117 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, more than half face measurable wildfire exposure. For 3,446 places, that risk is severe.

“These places anchor community identity, collective memory, and national heritage,” says corresponding author Caitlin Fong, a researcher at NCEAS. “Unlike homes, they cannot simply be rebuilt—and in many cases, once lost, they are gone forever.”

The study cross-referenced every mappable National Register of Historic Places sites in the US with high-resolution wildfire burn probability models, categorizing risk by place type, geographic location, and cultural significance. Explore the map to see how your favorite place scores.

Key findings include:

• Risk is most concentrated in the western United States, with additional hotspots emerging in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and along the southeastern coast.
• Buildings and historic districts—which account for 90% of all listed resources—likely face particularly acute risk, because their cultural value is inseparable from their physical form. Destroy the structure, and the heritage is gone with it.
• Nationally significant sites face disproportionately high wildfire exposure relative to state and locally significant ones, meaning America’s most important historic places are among its most vulnerable.
• In California, New Mexico, Colorado, and Oklahoma, the concentration of at-risk sites is especially acute.
• Climate change is expected to expand wildfire hazard zones, putting sites in previously lower-risk regions increasingly in the crosshairs.

The Will Rogers Ranch House and Grand Canyon Lodge offer a sobering glimpse of what’s at stake. Rebuilding portions of the Will Rogers site is projected to cost $5.1 million, with key historic elements that were evacuated now guiding reconstruction efforts. The future of the Grand Canyon Lodge, which had already been rebuilt once after a 1932 fire, remains undecided.

The study finds that cultural heritage is largely absent from dedicated wildfire planning frameworks in most states. California, through CAL FIRE’s Cultural Resources Management Program, is among the few exceptions. Elsewhere, historic sites must compete for attention within broader all-hazards planning processes not specifically designed with heritage protection in mind.

The researchers argue that the stakes extend beyond the physical loss of individual structures. Wildfire risk assessments have long focused on homes, infrastructure and ecosystems—but the cultural and psychological dimensions of what communities lose when historic places burn have rarely entered that conversation.

“The connection people have to places, their sense of place, is a profound and deeply underappreciated dimension of what communities stand to lose from wildfire,” says coauthor Benjamin Halpern, professor at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and executive director of NCEAS.

“Our study identifies where these losses are most likely to happen.”

The researchers outline several mitigation strategies compatible with historic preservation standards, including vegetation management, structural hardening with fire-resistant materials and concealed fire suppression systems that protect structures without compromising their historic character.

Critically, the study’s open-source dataset gives federal, state and local agencies a consistent, nationally comparable foundation for prioritizing which sites to protect first, before the next fire makes the decision for them.

“By identifying where and what is most at risk, this study provides a foundation for proactive planning to safeguard the places that anchor community identity and national heritage before they are permanently lost,” says lead author Mona Farnisa.

The research was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Data and methodology are publicly available.

Source: UC Santa Barbara

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Hand-held gadget measures fat burning via breath

Researchers have created a portable device that detects when the body starts burning fat when dieting or during exercise.

The device detects the acetone content in exhaled breath nearly as accurately as a mass spectrometer. Acetone is the by-product of fat metabolism that is exhaled via the lungs. It is made when the body burns fat instead of carbohydrates such as sugar.

The device is very reminiscent of the alcohol breathalyzers used by the police in traffic checks and can be operated reliably by non-experts in combination with a smartphone app. People can therefore monitor their fat metabolism without professional support or blood tests.

This could eventually allow diets, treatments for metabolic disorders like diabetes, and ketogenic therapies used for example for epilepsy to be monitored more closely and tailored to individual patients.

“When it comes to diets, there’s no rule of thumb that works for everybody. Ideally, people should self-monitor to see how their own metabolism responds,” explains Andreas Güntner, professor of molecular sensing at ETH Zurich’s mechanical and process engineering department.

“Methods are also needed that can be carried out independently and that produce reliable results, similar to blood glucose measurements for diabetics.”

Güntner’s research group developed the measuring device in collaboration with the ETH spin-off Alivion, and tested its reliability together with the University Hospital Zurich.

In a validation study involving 12 adults, the researchers compared 312 breath readings recorded with the new measuring device with blood test results and measurements from a high-precision mass spectrometer—the analytical gold standard. The measurements were carried out using different metabolic scenarios: with light and intensive physical activity and various diets. This revealed that the results from the hand-held device were practically identical to those from the lab. In addition, the new measuring device delivered reliable results over a period of months.

In essence, the recently tested hand-held device is based on a sensor technology that has been in development at ETH Zurich for over 10 years and was presented for the first time in 2017. Already at the time, Güntner and his coauthors were able to demonstrate that the gas sensors they had developed were so sensitive that they could detect a single acetone molecule in a hundred million other molecules.

According to the researchers, readings from currently available acetone breathalyzers have only limited reproducibility and can only detect pronounced metabolic changes. They not only respond to acetone, but also to other components of exhaled air, for example if test subjects ate or drank something beforehand.

The researchers therefore developed a filter that blocks interfering molecules, and a smartphone app that guides test subjects in real time as they exhale.

“The device measures the volume of exhaled air and only takes a sample that comes from deep in the lungs after a certain time,” says lead author Simone Hersberger, adding: “otherwise, every reading would be slightly different.” In order for this to work, the devices are initially calibrated and adjusted to the patient’s lung volume.

The successful validation study is an important milestone for the researchers.

“We were able to demonstrate that our device can detect slight differences in fat metabolism accurately and reliably,” says ETH doctoral student Hersberger.

Further studies are now intended to show whether the new measuring device can really be used to personalise therapies for metabolic disorders. In partnership with the University Children’s Hospital Zurich, the researchers are currently looking at whether the hand-held device can help children with epilepsy better monitor their ketogenic diet. Other fields of application are the monitoring and optimization of medical diets or of so-called GLP-1 therapies with weight loss jabs. Applications in amateur sports are also being considered.

The ETH spin-off Alivion AG has launched the device under the name Nutrion. It is currently being deployed in international research studies and in medical facilities. To scale up further and to open up further fields of application, Alivion is seeking additional industry partners and strategic investors.

“This example shows how the results of basic research can be put into practice and ultimately help society,” says Güntner.

The research appears in the journal Device.

This work is being financially supported by Innosuisse, the Vontobel Foundation, and the Accentus Foundation.

Source: ETH Zurich

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New test detects deadly tick-borne disease in just 40 mins

New research is transforming how Rocky Mountain spotted fever is diagnosed.

The new method detects the deadly tick-borne disease in just 40 minutes—a leap that could help patients get lifesaving treatment sooner.

Early diagnosis of Rocky Mountain spotted fever is critical. Patients can go from a tick bite to a severe fever, headache, and rash within days. Yet existing diagnostic tools can be expensive, hard to access, or unable to detect small amounts of the bacteria in a blood sample.

The new method changes that, delivering clearer answers when they matter most.

The test, which involves mixing DNA from a sample with specialized reagents in two quick, 20-minute steps, can be completed at room temperature without the need for complex and costly laboratory equipment. After 40 minutes, a change in liquid color indicates a positive detection of the bacteria.

The antibiotic doxycycline is used to treat the disease, and clinicians often prescribe it while waiting on confirmatory testing. Right now, that can take too long.

“Unfortunately, this disease can be particularly deadly in children if diagnosis is delayed, and often patients may not realize they have been bitten by a tick until they feel extremely ill,” says Roman Ganta, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine and investigator in the Bond Life Sciences Center.

“Quicker diagnosis leads to quicker treatment with doxycycline, so we are hopeful our research can improve outcomes for those impacted.”

Ganta hopes this test will eventually be used in rural or under-resourced clinics around the world where the advanced laboratory equipment currently needed to detect Rocky Mountain spotted fever is inaccessible. He is in discussions with the Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory at Mizzou to see whether this test may be utilized in clinical applications in the future.

“By making this test more accessible, more patients can benefit from our work one day,” Ganta says.

The study appears in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Source: University of Missouri

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Tips to avoid the ‘explosive diarrhea’ parasite

News reports in early July that consumption of produce could lead to a parasitic infection left people wondering “what the fruit?” as their hopes for refreshing smoothies or crisp salads were dashed.

The parasite, cyclospora, spreads through food or water contaminated by infected fecal matter from human beings. Headlines warned of “explosive diarrhea” and a slew of symptoms including muscle aches, fatigue, and nausea.

Weeks later, reported cases were in the thousands, with Michigan and New York among the states with the highest numbers. Lettuce emerged as the lead culprit when a sample was found positive for cyclospora, but the clarity offered from the news was quickly lost when a recent FDA announcement negated its previous findings. Consumers are wary. Restaurants, fast-food establishments, and retailers have removed ingredients from their menus and off their shelves as a precaution.

How did this happen, and what steps can be taken to protect ourselves?

Carolyn Dimitri is an NYU Steinhardt professor who has authored numerous articles related to agricultural production, the food supply chain, and organic food systems.

Here, the food systems and policy expert explains the circumstances behind the farm-to-bathroom journey of this outbreak and others like it:

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Watch: Team creates better way to teach robots to walk on tricky terrain

Researchers have created a faster, cheaper way to teach a humanoid robot to walk over real-world terrain.

Across sand, soggy grass, and gravel. Up slopes and stairs and across level ground. Whatever uneven terrain Georgia Tech researchers could find on campus or easily simulate presented no problem for their two-legged humanoid robot.

Machine learning PhD student Feiyang Wu led development of a new kind of whole-body controller that allowed the humanoid robot to traverse all those varied surfaces. His method is computationally faster and cheaper than the leading approaches for training robotic controllers. And he was surprised how well it worked, even on surfaces that weren’t included in the training.

“For this bulky, very tall humanoid robot, it really hasn’t been proven that you can do agile locomotion on such austere terrain. Somehow our very efficient training recipe here can actually work for all kinds of terrain and environments,” says Wu, a machine learning PhD student.

“We thought, OK, it seems reasonable to do locomotion on flat ground. But can the same [control] policy do rough terrain, especially in the real world? We were kind of skeptical, even though in simulation it looked not terrible, but not great.”

Wu presented the team’s training framework at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, the world’s largest gathering of robotics researchers.

What makes the Georgia Tech controller work is a new take on training the robot’s control algorithms. Working with a team of researchers in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), Wu reimagined a reinforcement learning technique that’s known as teacher and student learning.

This kind of machine learning method teaches a robotic controller how to behave through a simulated environment where a “teacher” agent is developed first. The teacher gets as much information as researchers can provide about the simulated environment, even complex data that couldn’t be realistically estimated or known in the real world. The teacher explores the simulation and learns how to move. Then it distills what’s it learned and teaches a new agent, a “student” robot, how to operate.

Wu says the method is analogous to a professor becoming an expert in a field. Then they teach students about that field—not necessarily a bunch of specific answers, but principles and concepts so the student can solve real-world problems. Similarly, the simulated teacher robot guides the student how to problem-solve navigating the real world using real robotic hardware.

“There are two problems with this approach,” Wu says. “It takes too much time to train them sequentially. Then, you’re wasting a lot of information that’s been gathered by the teacher.”

Training time is money when it comes to these simulations, because they require many hours of computation using expensive-to-use GPU chips.

The researchers’ solution? Train the teacher and the student at the same time.

“You don’t have to wait for the teacher to be an expert for it to begin teaching the student,” Wu says. “The teacher can gradually teach the student what they’ve learned along the way.”

To extend the professor-student metaphor, Wu says it’s like having a graduate student teach undergrads. The master’s or PhD student is still learning themselves, but they have valuable knowledge that meets the needs of the undergrads.

Wu also adjusted the training so that the teacher robot learns from what the student robot experiences in the simulation. That helps close what robotics researchers call the teacher-student imitation gap—essentially that even with good instruction from the teacher, the student is still making decisions based on partial information. The student might encounter an obstacle or terrain and not have some important piece of data to properly navigate it.

“This gap can be very sinister and difficult to solve. We tried to mitigate it by letting the teacher learn from the data that’s been collected by the student as well,” Wu says.

“The teacher experiences what’s possible for the student, and the hope is that helps the teacher offer better instruction.”

After applying their new approach and training a controller in simulations, they deployed it on a two-legged humanoid robot in Ye Zhao’s lab. It worked, allowing the robot to walk smoothly across a variety of surfaces.

The team also tried to forcefully push and pull the robot to see if they could disrupt its gait, but the robot adapted and adjusted to compensate.

Though Wu and his colleagues used a two-legged humanoid robot in their experiments, his “Learn to Teach” training framework is designed to be generic. It can be used for other robots with other configurations. It also can apply to other kinds of tasks besides walking.

Zhao, who co-advises Wu with CSE Assistant Professor Anqi Wu, says the control system performed better even than the controller provided by the robot’s manufacturer.

He says Wu brings a unique perspective to robotics work because of his background in machine learning.

“Most of the PhD students in my lab come from a robotics and control background. Feiyang is starting to explore robotics problems from a more theoretical, algorithm-focused background, which is not easy,” says Zhao, associate professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow in ME.

“There’s a big barrier. If students get used to doing the programming and writing mathematics, they might not have the desire to explore working with the real hardware. Feiyang has a strong motivation to explore things on both sides, which is very unique.”

This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the US Department of Agriculture, and the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency.

Source: Georgia Tech

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Drug may protect the heart in people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Researchers have identified a potential pathway that could protect heart function in people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive and fatal genetic disease that weakens the body’s muscles.

“The results are very promising.”

Published in Molecular Therapy, the new study examined the effects of the experimental drug Setanaxib in two preclinical models of DMD.

Researchers found that the treatment preserved cardiac function, limited heart enlargement, and reduced tissue scarring.

The findings also suggest that an enzyme known as NOX4 could serve as a potential target for future treatments for cardiomyopathy, a serious form of heart disease associated with DMD.

The study was led by Da-Zhi Wang, professor in the University of South Florida Health Morsani College of Medicine and director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the USF Health Heart Institute. The research team also included USF Health’s John Mably, associate professor, and Gabriela Diniz, assistant professor, as well as outside collaborators.

“Despite great progress in the development of gene replacement therapies, Duchenne muscular dystrophy remains a devastating disease,” Wang says.

“Understanding the causes of DMD progression is urgently needed to advance therapies that alleviate symptoms and improving quality of life.”

DMD primarily affects boys because it is inherited through the X chromosome. The disease is best known for causing progressive weakness in the muscles used to walk and move. But one of the disease’s most serious effects occurs in the heart.

The condition is caused by mutations that prevent the body from producing functional dystrophin, a protein that helps stabilize and protect muscle cells.

Without dystrophin, muscle cells become more vulnerable to damage from repeated contractions. Over time, healthy muscle can be replaced by fat and stiff scar tissue.

The heart is especially vulnerable because it must contract continuously to circulate blood throughout the body. As cardiac damage accumulates, the heart can enlarge and lose its ability to pump effectively, eventually leading to heart failure.

Treatments have helped people with DMD live longer, making the protection of the heart an increasingly important part of managing the disease.

In the new study, researchers evaluated Setanaxib, an experimental drug designed to limit a damaging process known as oxidative stress.

The drug targets NOX1 and NOX4, enzymes that produce highly reactive molecules within cells. At normal levels, these molecules play useful roles in the body; however, when too many are produced, they can contribute to inflammation and fibrosis.

The researchers found that Setanaxib helped preserve the heart’s ability to pump blood while reducing inflammation and fibrosis. It also lowered the activity of genes associated with cardiomyopathy.

The results suggest that blocking this pathway may help slow the progression of DMD-related heart disease.

“The results are very promising,” Mably says.

“The Nox4 inhibitor has already been tested in clinical trials for the treatment of lung fibrosis and kidney and liver disease. We hope it will also be tested soon in clinical trials in DMD patients to slow the progression of heart disease.”

The findings build on more than 15 years of DMD research in Wang’s laboratory. During that time, the team has sought to better understand how the disease progresses and identify biological mechanisms contributing to the development of new therapies.

“Our new study represents an important step forward for the field and for our cardiac and regenerative medicine program,” Diniz says.

“It shows how efforts in basic biomedical sciences are crucial for understanding human disease and health care advancements.”

Source: University of South Florida

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Canadian wildfire smoke tied to fewer bird sightings in New York

New research links Canadian wildfire smoke to fewer bird sightings in New York State.

Despite burning hundreds of miles away, Canadian wildfires have become a familiar source of disruption in New York State.

Air quality advisories. A spike in emergency room visits for asthma.

Now, the new study has identified another consequence: fewer sightings of dozens of bird species across the Empire State.

In a study in Biodiversity and Conservation, researchers found that 40 different bird species were less likely to be observed in New York as levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the air increased during recent breeding seasons. The analysis included the 2023 season that overlapped with Canada’s worst wildfire season on record.

“Our results show a link between wildfire smoke and the probability of observing particular bird species,” says corresponding author Festus Adegbola, a PhD candidate in the geography department at the University at Buffalo.

“Wildfire smoke is often underexplored when monitoring biodiversity. Failing to account for air quality may bias models of species distributions and abundance.”

The researchers first analyzed PM2.5 levels, a key marker of wildfire smoke, during New York’s 2021–2023 breeding seasons. The highest concentrations occurred in 2023, when smoke from Canada’s historic wildfires degraded air quality across New York throughout June and July. PM2.5 levels exceeded World Health Organization guidelines on multiple occasions, at times reaching eight times the recommended limit.

The researchers then matched the PM2.5 data with nearly 99,000 birdwatching checklists submitted to Cornell University’s eBird database. The citizen science project, run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, allows birdwatchers to record the birds they observe, creating one of the world’s largest collections of bird observations.

Because the observations come from birdwatchers with varying levels of experience, the UB researchers used rigorous data filtering and statistical methods to ensure reliable results.

In all, they analyzed 84 different bird species across nearly 99,000 eBird checklists collected across all of New York during the three recent breeding seasons.

Nearly half of the species studied were less likely to be observed when PM2.5 rose. These included many migratory forest songbirds, such as warblers, thrushes and vireos.

“It’s possible that smoky conditions changed the birds’ behavior—singing and moving less, spending more time in dense forest canopy—and therefore made them harder to detect,” Adegbola says.

However, 15 species were actually more likely to be observed as PM2.5 levels rose, while another 29 showed no significant change in how likely they were to be observed. These included many aerial insectivores and some wetland-associated birds.

That doesn’t necessarily mean wildfire smoke benefited those birds.

“These species often occupy more open environments than forest songbirds, so it’s possible their increased sightings had more to do with where birdwatchers chose to observe during smoky conditions than how the birds themselves responded,” says coauthor Adam Wilson, associate professor of geography and Adegbola’s adviser.

The findings suggest that fewer bird sightings during smoky periods don’t necessarily mean there are fewer birds—they may simply be harder to detect. Understanding that distinction is crucial for biodiversity monitoring so that temporary declines in detectability aren’t mistaken for true population declines.

“Still, as climate change continues to intensify wildfires, it’s crucial we understand how birds will be affected by increased smoke pollution,” Wilson says.

“This study is hopefully a first step to better understanding how species respond to wildfire smoke exposure.”

Other coauthors are from UB and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Source: University at Buffalo

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