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Summertime Sadness Could Be a Type of Seasonal Affective Disorder

Has the heat got you down? You’re probably not alone.

Wintertime—with its long, dark nights—is the season most associated with low mood and depression. But sun-filled summer days can also bring on the doldrums, particularly for the subset of people who experience a summertime version of seasonal affective disorder (SAD)—a type of depression with a periodic pattern.

Multiple studies have documented that heat can affect mood disorders and behavior, says Kim Meidenbauer, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University, who studies heat’s psychological effects. Increases in aggression and violent crimes have been well documented on hotter days and during summertime, Meidenbauer says.

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Scientific American

‘A history of resistance’ WSU class documents east Pasco Black history for National Parks

Community members and visitors will soon be able to learn more about east Pasco’s Black history on the National Parks Service app and website. Additions include a walking tour, digital exhibit, research essays, and audio and video content.

WSU Tri-Cities assistant professor of history Robert Franklin explained there is a lack of documentation of east Pasco’s history and the non-white communities that have lived there.

The effort to capture and share the area’s history is years in the making. In late February, 21 WSU architecture students and two history students in their last semester visited east Pasco from Pullman as part of a graduate student class, “Issues in Architecture.” Following weeks of readings, discussions and seminars about east Pasco history, they experienced being in the community and learned about the history live. Franklin and WSU Pullman architecture professor Phil Gruen led the course. Franklin, who lives in the Tri-Cities, serves as assistant director of the Hanford History Project.

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Tri-City Herald (plus 1:00 video)
Yahoo! News

Visualized: the parts of the US where summer heat has risen the most

An onslaught of record-breaking heat across much of the US has provided yet another indicator of a longer-term issue – summers are progressively getting hotter for Americans in all corners of the country. Studies have found that summers are generally getting hotter, including much warmer night-times which reduces the amount of relief people get from the elevated temperatures. Heatwaves are getting fiercer and are moving more slowly as the planet warms, with heat now the largest weather-related cause of death in the US.

“We are now starting to have this complicated relationship with summer,” said Deepti Singh, a climate and extreme events expert at Washington State University. “The extreme events are happening more quickly than the rate of mean temperature warming, which is putting a strain on everything we depend upon as a society.

“If you talk to climate scientists, there’s certainly an anxiety as summer approaches. It can be distressing.”

[A] county-level map of summer temperature increases shows that the warming isn’t uniform, however, with large jumps in heat across much of the US west and in the north-eastern US.

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The Guardian
Yahoo! News