Agencies

Public Invited to Appeal or Comment on Flood Maps in Latimer County, Oklahoma

Published: 8 May 2025
Categories: FEMA News

RSS feed source: Federal Emergency Management Agency

DENTON, Texas – Preliminary flood risk information and updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) are available for review in Latimer County, Oklahoma. Residents and business owners are encouraged to review the latest information to learn about local flood risks and potential future flood insurance requirements.

The updated maps were produced in coordination with Tribal. local, state and FEMA officials. Significant community review of the maps has already taken place, but before the maps become final, community residents can identify any concerns or questions about the information provided and participate in the 90-day appeal and comment period.

The 90-day appeal and comment period will begin on or around May 8, 2025.

Appeals and comments may be submitted through Aug. 6, 2025, for:

The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma; the city of Wilburton; the towns of Fanshawe, Red Oak and Talihina; and the unincorporated areas of Latimer County

Residents may submit an appeal if they consider modeling or data used to create the map to be technically or scientifically incorrect.

An appeal must include technical information, such as hydraulic or hydrologic data, to support the claim. Appeals cannot be based on the effects of proposed projects or projects started after the study is in progress.If property owners see incorrect information that does not change the flood hazard information — such as a missing or misspelled road name in the Special Flood Hazard

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FEMA May Assist With Disaster Affected Wells and Septic Systems in Kentucky

Published: 8 May 2025
Categories: FEMA News

RSS feed source: Federal Emergency Management Agency

FRANKFORT, Ky. – Kentucky homeowners in disaster-declared counties whose wells or septic systems were damaged by the April severe storms, straight-line winds, flooding, landslides and mudslides may be eligible for financial help from FEMA. Septic systems and wells are generally not covered by flood insurance.

Who may be eligible? 

To be considered eligible for assistance, your pre-disaster primary home must be located in one of the Kentucky counties designated for Individual Assistance: Anderson, Butler, Carroll, Christian, Clark, Franklin, Hardin, Hopkins, Jessamine, McCracken, Mercer, Owen and Woodford. The damage must have occurred during the severe storms that began April 2.

What assistance may be available? 

Eligible services for septic tanks may include cleaning, repairing or replacing the septic system as needed. Awards are also available for the repair or decontamination of private wells that are the sole source of water for a home. 

How can I find out if I may be eligible? 

Check with your homeowner’s and flood insurance providers to determine if your well and/or septic are covered under your policy. Uninsured or underinsured property may be eligible for FEMA assistance.

How to apply for FEMA assistance

FEMA is encouraging Kentuckians affected by the April storms to apply for federal disaster assistance as soon as possible. The deadline to apply is June 25.

You can visit any Disaster Recovery Center to get in-person assistance. No appointment is needed. To find all

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Lab-synthesized botanical compound shows promise for fighting aggressive breast cancer

Published: 8 May 2025
Categories: National Science Foundation

RSS feed source: Federal Emergency Management Agency

Chemists funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation have developed a new process to synthesize a plant-based compound that shows effectiveness against triple-negative breast cancer cells. According to the American Cancer Society, triple-negative breast cancer is one of the most aggressive types of breast cancer and accounts for 10-15% of all breast cancer cases. The process also increases the compound’s potency against these cancer cells and provides a method for it to be mass-produced to enable further testing as a potential treatment.

The new process can also be used broadly to help discover new medicines by synthesizing and testing other complex organic compounds. The findings were achieved by Emory University researchers and published in The Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The compound — called phaeocaulisin A — is extracted from the flowering plant Curcuma phaeocaulis, a relative of ginger and turmeric used for centuries in traditional medicine.

“We not only efficiently replicated a complex natural product, we also improved upon it by turning it into a more potent compound,” says Mingji Dai, professor of chemistry and co-lead of the study.

“It is only the first step in a long process,” says Yong Wan, professor of pharmacology and chemical biology and study co-lead. “But the new analogue of phaeocaulisin A we have reported shows promising efficacy against triple-negative breast cancer cells, which are very aggressive and

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Using machine learning to speed up discovery for drug delivery and disease treatment

Published: 7 May 2025
Categories: National Science Foundation

RSS feed source: Federal Emergency Management Agency

A new computational tool developed with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation could greatly speed up determining the 3D structure of RNAs, a critical step in developing new RNA-based drugs, identifying drug-binding sites and using RNAs in other biotechnology and biomedicine applications.

The tool, NuFold, leverages state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to predict the structure of a wide variety of RNA molecules from their sequences. This new capability will allow researchers to visualize what a given RNA structure could look like based on its sequence and identify its potential use in drug delivery, disease treatment and other applications.  The research leading to NuFold was published in Nature Communications.

RNAs are critical biological molecules — encoding information, like DNA, and performing cellular functions, like proteins — but relatively few RNA structures have been determined through experimentation thus far, which severely limits understanding of their functions. For example, RNAs in the NSF-funded Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB) represent only about 3% of total entries. Experimentally determining RNA structures is often time-consuming and costly. By providing a path to reliably predicting RNA structure from sequence, NuFold could greatly expedite the discovery of RNA function and enable quicker development of RNA-based therapeutics and technologies.

Credit: Daisuke Kihara, Purdue University. Figure taken from the Nufold

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