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    <title>Yes, That&#39;s a Huge Floating Mass of Live Fire Ants in Texas  - The Atlantic</title>

    

        
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            <h1 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Yes, That's a Huge Floating Mass of Live Fire Ants in Texas </h1>
            
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        <section id="article-section-1"><p>When there is flooding along the Gulf Coast, there are fire ants. The invasive ants congregate into living rafts, drifting through water until they reach solid ground again. It’s a time-honed survival strategy.</p><p>But when there is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/the-houston-hospital-running-out-of-food/538266/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'0',r'538365'">Hurricane</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/will-flooding-in-texas-lead-to-more-mosquito-borne-illness/538242/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'1',r'538365'">Harvey-</a><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-leaves-houston-under-water/538215/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'2',r'538365'">level</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/1857/11/hurricane-harvey-flooding/538044/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'3',r'538365'">flooding</a>, there are not just small rafts but huge, dense mats of fire ants.</p><p>“Holy crap. I have never, in my entire career as an ant researcher, seen *anything* like this,” <a href="https://twitter.com/Myrmecos/status/902540566612901888" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'4',r'538365'">tweeted</a> <a href="http://www.alexanderwild.com/About-Alex-Wild" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'5',r'538365'">Alex Wild</a>, curator of entomology at University of Texas at Austin, in response to the image below.</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Meanwhile, in Cuero, the river has brought my aunt all of the fire ants. Yes, those are all (of the) fire ants. <a href="https://t.co/dEibWYxAdl" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'6',r'538365'">pic.twitter.com/dEibWYxAdl</a></p>
— Bill O'Zimmermann (@The_Reliant) <a href="https://twitter.com/The_Reliant/status/902536760038711296" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'7',r'538365'">August 29, 2017</a></blockquote><p>Of course, Wild told me, it is all perfectly logical. “They actually love floods,” says Wild. “It’s how they get around.” Fire ants displaced by water form rafts; a lot of fire ants displaced by a lot of water will form really big rafts. But still! The sheer size of them is incredible.</p></section><div class="ad-boxinjector-wrapper"><gpt-ad id="boxinjector1" targeting-pos="boxinjector1" class="ad ad-boxinjector" lazy-load="2" data-object-pk="1" data-object-name="boxinjector"><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[0, 0]" sizes="[[300, 250], [320, 350], [300, 350], [1, 3], [320, 520], [320, 430], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[760, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1010, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1, 3], [768, 350], [768, 520], [640, 360], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset><gpt-sizeset viewport-size="[1050, 0]" sizes="[[728, 90], [728, 350], [970, 250], [1024, 350], [1, 3], [970, 350], [760, 350], [1, 4], [1, 5]]"></gpt-sizeset></gpt-ad></div><section id="article-section-2"><p>After Hurricane Katrina, <a href="http://www.lsuagcenter.com/profiles/lhooper" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'8',r'538365'">Linda Bui</a>, an entomologist at Louisiana State University, remembers seeing evacuees from New Orleans come into a field hospital with bands of unexplained rashes around their legs and waists after wading through floodwaters. “They were like something none of the medical professionals had ever seen,” she says. “I was like, ‘Those are literally fire ant stings on top of fire ant stings.’”</p><p>The episode stuck in Bui’s head, and later, she investigated the venom of flooded fire ants. The <a href="https://www.csuchico.edu/biol/Sociobiology/volume/sociobiologyv57n22011.html#8" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'9',r'538365'">study</a>, published in 2011, found that flooded fire ants deliver higher doses of venom because they have 165 percent as much venom inside them as normal fire ants. The flooding made them more aggressive and dangerous. It is also important, she says, to be careful during post-hurricane cleanup. Piles of debris can act like islands, where fire ants have congregated during the flood.</p><aside class="pullquote instapaper_ignore">“Dawn is a not a registered insecticide, but it will break up the surface tension and they will sink.”</aside><p>Fire ant rafts do have a kryptonite: dish soap. “Dawn is a not a registered insecticide, but it will break up the surface tension and they will sink,” says Bui.</p><p>Hurricane Katrina ended up permanently depressing fire-ant populations around New Orleans. The rafts can last as long as three weeks, says Bui, but most start to fall apart after a week. Because parts of New Orleans stayed flooded for weeks in the time it took water to be pumped out from behind the levees, a lot of those ants ultimately drowned. Afterwards, Bui and her colleagues also initiated a pesticide <a href="http://www.lsuagcenter.com/portals/communications/publications/agmag/archive/2007/fall/fast-prevention-fire-ants-in-new-orleans-postkatrina" data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'10',r'538365'">program to prevent fire ants</a> from returning and colonizing the previously flooded areas. It seems to have worked so far.</p><p>What will happen to the fire ant rafts in Texas will depend in part on how fast the waters recede. It could also depend on who exactly is in these rafts. Fire ants originally formed colonies around a single queen (monogyne), but somewhere along the line, some populations lost the ability to recognize other colonies. These mutant fire ants live in one big interconnected colony with multiple queens (polygyne). “If they’re polygyne, then that’s basically one giant interconnected colony and they’ll disembark and spread out but they’ll be fine,” says Wild. “If they’re monogyne, it’s going to be a territorial mess. Fights. Battles.”</p><p>Whoever lives will have the land all to themselves. There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks. The area where the fire ants landed may be crawling with stinging ants for a while. “But it’ll have absolutely no ticks. So it’ll be lovely from that perspective,” says Wild.</p></section>
    
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<p>J.G. started drinking at 15, when he and a friend experimented in his parents’ liquor cabinet. He favored gin and whiskey but drank whatever he thought his parents would miss the least. He discovered beer, too, and loved the earthy, bitter taste on his tongue when he took his first cold sip.</p>

<p>His drinking increased through college and into law school. He could, and occasionally did, pull back, going cold turkey for weeks at a time. But nothing quieted his anxious mind like booze, and when he didn’t drink, he didn’t sleep. After four or six weeks dry, he’d be back at the liquor store.</p>


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<p>Smart-city devotees all over this world will agree that London is particularly smart. Why? London is a huge, ungainly beast whose cartwheeling urban life is in cranky, irrational disarray. London is a god-awful urban mess, but London does have some of the best international smart-city conferences.</p>

<p>London also has a large urban-management bureaucracy who emit the proper smart-city buzzwords and have even invented some themselves.  The language of Smart City is always Global Business English, no matter what town you're in.</p>


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<p>She cited his actions on judicial nominees, climate policy, regulatory reform, tax cuts, guidelines on how colleges should adjudicate sexual assault, and foreign policy.</p>

<p>Large swaths of the Republican Party and the conservative movement have now reconciled themselves to supporting President Trump, including figures far more famous, powerful, and influential than any journalist. A strong case could be made that this particular endorsement didn’t really change anything, especially since its author was already openly anti-anti-Trump in her orientation.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Winners of the 2018 Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest</h3>
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        <p class="dek">The organizers of the Underwater Photographer of the Year have just announced the winning photographers and images for 2018.</p>
        
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            <p>Organizers of the <a href="http://www.underwaterphotographeroftheyear.com/">Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest</a> have just announced the winning photographers and images for 2018, with German photographer Tobias Friedrich being named Underwater Photographer of the Year 2018. More than 5,000 images were submitted this year by photographers from around the world. Prizes and commendations were handed out in a number of categories including Wide Angle, Macro, Wrecks, Behavior, Portrait, Black &amp; White, Compact, Up &amp; Coming, and, in British waters, Wide Angle, Compact, and Macro shots. UPY was once again kind enough to share some of this year's honorees with us below, with captions written by the photographers.</p>

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            <p>When an Israeli jet crashed after being shot down over Syria over the weekend, it marked a serious escalation in the Syrian Civil War. But it also reflected an ongoing reality, one that is growing more dangerous: Syria’s war encompasses at least three other international conflicts, each of which are heating up.</p>

<p>In the last few weeks alone, Turkey has clashed with Syrian Kurds and threatened a U.S.-controlled town in Syria; an Israeli fighter jet that was part of a response to an incursion into Israeli territory by an Iranian drone launched from Syria <a href="https://www.idf.il/en/minisites/israeli-air-force/air-force-strikes-iranian-targets-in-syria/">took Syrian anti-aircraft fire</a>, forcing its two pilots to eject and parachute into Israeli territory; and U.S. forces repelled an attack by Russian fighters, killing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html?action=click&amp;contentCollection=Middle%20East&amp;module=Trending&amp;version=Full&amp;region=Marginalia&amp;pgtype=article">an unknown number of them</a> that <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-13/u-s-strikes-said-to-kill-scores-of-russian-fighters-in-syria">reports</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/europe/russia-syria-dead.html">suggest</a> could be in the hundreds.   </p>


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                <figcaption class="credit">Brian Snyder / Reuters</figcaption>
                
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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">The American Dream on Thin Ice</h3>
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        <li class="byline"><span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><a href="/author/erik-malinowski/" itemprop="url" title="Erik Malinowski" data-omni-click="inherit"><span itemprop="name">Erik Malinowski</span></a></span></li>
        

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        <p class="dek">A decision by the International Olympic Committee has all but guaranteed a loss for Team USA in hockey. But don’t count them out just yet.</p>
        
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            <p>It’s an undeniable fact that the United States’ standing as an international power has taken a serious hit over the past year. And this emerging, still unfamiliar reality is about to be put on full display. As America falls a few notches in the eyes of its peers, Russia and other nations stand to gain in tremendous ways.</p>

<p>This dire-sounding analysis centers on—what else?—the Olympic men’s ice hockey tournament, which <a href="https://www.olympic.org/pyeongchang-2018/results/en/ice-hockey/daily-schedule.htm">commences Wednesday</a> as the United States faces Slovenia and Russia tussles with Slovakia in the first two matches of the opening round. As two-time Olympic champions, the Americans have a history of capping off historic runs at just the right time. But their status as a quadrennial medal contender all but evaporated in the wake of a controversial decision last spring.</p>


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        <h3 class="hed" itemprop="headline">Google’s Guinea-Pig City</h3>
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        <p class="dek">Will Toronto turn its residents into Alphabet’s experiment? The answer has implications for cities everywhere.</p>
        
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            <p class="dropcap" dir="ltr">Q<span class="smallcaps">uayside is a</span> nondescript, 12-acre chunk of land on the southern edge of Toronto’s downtown. It’s just three miles from my apartment, but getting there takes almost an hour by subway, bus, and foot. When I finally arrive at 333 Lake Shore Boulevard East on a windy day in early January, I find a vacant parking lot full of snow. The abandoned Victory Soya Mills silos loom at its edge—a remnant of the city’s industrial heyday. The plot is half of the future site of Sidewalk Toronto, a “<a href="https://sidewalktoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Sidewalk-Labs-Vision-Sections-of-RFP-Submission.pdf">neighborhood built from the internet up</a>” by Google’s sister company, Sidewalk Labs. Lake Ontario is frozen and it’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/cold-weather-united-states-mars/549386/">colder</a> than the surface of Mars the day I go to look at the site.</p>

<p>It’s a far cry from the vision that fills the Sidewalk Toronto <a href="https://sidewalktoronto.ca/">webpage</a>, where a crisp video shot on a sunny day makes the Victory silos look cheerful and full of potential. Torontonians in puffer vests and toques describe a vibrant city bursting at the seams. Toronto’s population <a href="http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/Page.cfm?Lang=E&amp;Geo1=CSD&amp;Code1=3520005&amp;Geo2=PR&amp;Code2=35&amp;Data=Count&amp;SearchText=Prince&amp;SearchType=Begins&amp;SearchPR=01&amp;B1=All">grew</a> by 4.5 percent between 2011 and 2016. The city tolerates a <a href="https://www.lowestrates.ca/blog/finance/how-much-it-costs-live-young-person-toronto-2018">high cost of living</a> and a <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/11/28/rental-vacancy-rates-lowest-in-16-years.html">low rental-vacancy rate</a>.</p>


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        <p class="dek">The intelligence community has a stark warning about Russia’s intentions to interfere in the 2018 elections.</p>
        
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            <p>The country’s leading intelligence officials said Tuesday that Russia intends to  interfere in the upcoming midterm elections. But they wouldn’t discuss in an open setting what the U.S. intelligence community is doing to stop it—or how it could be combatted without the support of the White House.</p>

<p>“There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, said during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual worldwide-threats hearing on Tuesday.</p>

<p>“We have seen Russian activity and intentions to have an impact on the next election cycle,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said later. Other top intelligence officials, including the FBI Director Chris Wray, agreed.</p>


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        <p class="dek">Officers involved in fatal incidents keep getting acquitted, but a team of Baltimore cops who stole from suspects and taxpayers alike during a years-long criminal spree are facing serious jail time.</p>
        
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            <p>Something amazing happened over the course of a recent trial in Baltimore: Witnesses laid out the way that the city’s Gun Trace Task Force <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/baltimore-gun-trace-task-force-abuses/551663/">acted as a de facto criminal gang</a>, but with the advantages of a police badge and the power of the state. Officers assigned to the unit robbed hundreds of thousands of dollars from drug dealers, pocketing the money. They targeted cars for searches based on makes and models, and stopped adult black men just for carrying backpacks. They drove at groups of men and detained anyone who ran. They bilked taxpayers by charging for fraudulent overtime.</p>

<p>On Monday, something even more amazing happened. Two officers were <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-gttf-verdict-20180208-story.html">convicted</a> of racketeering and robbery charges in federal court. They joined six others who had already pleaded guilty. Stories of police misconduct have become bracingly common in recent years, but convictions have remained rare. The failure to convict any Baltimore officer in the 2015 death of Freddie Gray is the obvious contrast, but similar cases all over the country, from Tamir Rice to Eric Garner to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/footage-of-a-police-killing-that-jurors-didnt-punish/547868/">Daniel Shaver</a>, have also ended without convictions.</p>


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