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Pennsylvania’s aging levees are under pressure from scarce funding and severe weather

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Pennsylvania has over 180 levees that span approximately 155 miles (255 kilometers) and keep its rivers from flooding. They protect about 158,000 people and US$26.2 billion in property across the state, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. However, those levees are aging, and funding to maintain and improve them is becoming scarcer. At the same time, extreme weather is becoming increasingly frequent and severe. As a geotechnical engineer and geohazards researcher, I study how levees respond to flooding. I also help develop solutions to evaluate, manage and improve aging ...

Understanding the part that the spleen plays in leukemia

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DEAR DR. ROACH: I’m 80. Over the past 26 years, I’ve had low blood platelet counts. (In 1998, one reading was 168,000, and in 2026, the reading was 117,000.) I have an enlarged spleen (16.1 centimeters), and I understand that this could account for my low platelet count. I do have tiny red dots on my chest. However, my doctor thinks that I have leukemia and is preparing me for a spinal tap. My doctor seems to be ignoring the spleen issue. My brother had a spleen removed (at age 5) because it was destroying his blood count. My mother did die from leukemia. My question is, would my ...

What do we know after 9/11? little, if anything

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Like most Americans who were adults on Sept. 11, 2001, my life is divided into “before” and “after” 9/11. I awoke to a phone call from a friend at the airport, where her flight had been canceled, and turned on the TV just a few minutes before the second plane hit the World Trade Center towers. At some point, I woke up my now-husband, and we went to a friend’s house to watch CNN for the rest of the day. Someone immediately suggested dropping bombs on Afghanistan, for the media had made it quickly apparent that it was the Taliban, the leaders of their nation, that was ...

Dear Annie: Family summer vacation turned stressful

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Dear Annie: This past July, my husband and I rented a house near us so our two daughters, their husbands and our grandchildren could all spend time together. Since everyone lives several states apart, we thought it would be a wonderful chance to reconnect and hopefully start a yearly family tradition. We live only about 15 minutes from the rental, so during the day we planned activities in the mountains, and in the evenings everyone would come back to our house for dinner and time together. For most of the trip, things went well. But during the last couple of days, it became obvious ...

Are we getting dumber?

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Is it the end of the Flynn effect? Decades ago, the researcher James Flynn recognized a secular increase in IQ scores around the world that amounted to humanity getting smarter all the time. Now, technology appears to be pushing the other way. The new results are in from a 2025 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development test of teenage educational achievement around the world, and it looks like the Flynn effect in reverse. “Learning outcomes have stagnated or declined in many countries, in some cases for well over a decade,” according to the OECD. It’s a ...

Dear Annie: Feeling guilty about being happy

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Dear Annie: My twin sister and I have been compared to each other for as long as I can remember. As children, people compared our grades, our looks, our friends and even our personalities. We always laughed it off, but now that we are older, I’m beginning to realize how much those comparisons still affect me. My life has turned out very well. I have a successful career, a happy marriage, a comfortable home and enough financial security to travel and enjoy things I worked hard for. My sister has had a much rougher road. She went through a painful divorce, had to sell the house she ...