Justin Worland

And it might not be ending anytime soon

California’s three years of low rainfall is the region’s worst drought in 1,200 years, according to a new study.

Record high temperatures combined with unusually low levels of precipitation have been the primary causes of the dry conditions, according to the study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“It was a surprise,” study author Kevin Anchukaitis told the Los Angeles Times of the findings. “I don’t think we expected to see that at all.”

The drought has led to tremendous economic costs in the state, including an expected $2.2 billion and 17,000 farming jobs this year alone, according to a report from the University of California, Davis. It’s also expected to increase food prices across the country.

And the problem may not be going away soon. About 44% of three-year droughts last continue past their third year, according to the Times.

"I wish I could have had the pleasure of meeting you in person"

Hours before Brittany Maynard ended her life she sent an email to a stranger thanking her for fighting for “the choice of dignity in death,” People reports.

“Stories like yours and mine put human faces on a controversial topic that many politicians are happy to sweep under the rug,” Maynard wrote to Barbara Mancini, who helped her ailing father end his life last year. “I wish I could have had the pleasure of meeting you in person.”

Mancini had emailed Maynard, whose decision to end her life in the face of terminal illness reignited national debate on the topic, to thank her for her contributions.

Read more at People

Akai Gurley was unarmed when he was shot dead by a NYPD officer

A grand jury will decide whether to indict the New York City police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project last month, the local prosecutor said Friday.

The news, reported by the Wall Street Journal, follows on the heels of protests over grand jury decisions not to indict police officers in the deaths of unarmed black men in New York City and Ferguson, Mo.

Akai Gurley, 28, was shot dead on Nov. 20 by rookie officer Peter Liang, who officials say discharged his weapon accidentally. Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson’s decision comes after conducting an investigation with the New York Police Department. The New York Daily News, citing unnamed sources, reports that Liang texted his union representative rather than calling for help as Gurley lay dying.

“I’m going to do it because it’s important to get to the bottom of what happened to Mr. Gurley, who was an innocent unarmed man who lost his life,” Thompson told the Journal of his decision to convene a grand jury. “So on behalf of the people of Brooklyn, we need to figure out and determine what exactly happened in that stairwell.”

[WSJ]

U.S. Navy officials are investigating the incident

U.S. Navy officials are investigating who secretly filmed female officers showering and changing clothes while aboard a submarine, according to a CNN report.

“Incidents that violate the trust of our sailors go against every core value we hold sacred in our naval service,” Navy Vice Admiral M.J. Connor wrote in a letter, according to CNN.

At least three female officers were videotaped over the course of a year aboard the USS Wyoming, and the recordings were sent to members of the crew, according to an incident report cited by CNN.

Read the full story from CNN.

'We have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,' the magazine's managing editor says

The magazine that published a detailed account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia said Friday that it no longer considers the woman behind the story to be a reliable source.

Rolling Stone‘s vivid depiction of a gang rape suffered by a woman it called “Jackie” at a fraternity house drew national headlines and renewed conversations about sexual assault on college campuses. The magazine apologized to readers about the story Friday.

“In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,” managing editor Will Dana wrote in a note to readers.

MORE: No police investigation yet in UVA rape case

The story has come under growing scrutiny after its author acknowledged not contacting the men accused of wrongdoing.

“We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account,” Dana wrote. “We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

MORE: The sexual assault crisis on American campuses

The story prompted UVA’s president to temporarily suspend fraternity activity and to promise an investigation, along with wider calls to reform the way sexual assault allegations are handled on campuses.

The fraternity in question, Phi Kappa Psi, released a statement Friday detailing what it said were a number of factual inaccuracies in the Rolling Stone account. And in a series of Twitter messages later Friday, Dana said the story was Rolling Stone‘s responsibility, not Jackie’s.

And in a statement, UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan said administrators were aware of the new reports. “The University remains first and foremost concerned with the care and support of our students and, especially, any survivor of sexual assault,” she said. “Our students, their safety, and their wellbeing, remain our top priority. Over the past two weeks, our community has been more focused than ever on one of the most difficult and critical issues facing higher education today: sexual violence on college campuses. Today’s news must not alter this focus.”

Read next: Questioning an Accuser’s Story: A Rape Victim Group Weighs In

Increased wolf control meant more dead livestock, study found

Killing wolves that prey on sheep and cattle leads to the death of more livestock, according to a new study.

Prior to the Washington State University study, the practice of culling wolves to save livestock had been a “widely accepted, but untested, hypothesis,” according to the authors. But it may be that killing wolves disrupts wolf packs in a way that leads them to hunt for livestock, which are relatively stationary, rather than the more mobile deer and elk.

“The odds of livestock depredations increased 4% for sheep and 5–6% for cattle with increased wolf control,” the study found.

The study, which looks at 25 years of government data, found that killing wolves only helps protect livestock after 25% of a wolf population has been killed. But regulations designed to protect wildlife make it unfeasible to kill that many of the animal.

“The only way you’re going to completely eliminate livestock depredations is to get rid of all the wolves,” said study author Rob Wielgus, a Washington State University wildlife biologist. “Society has told us that that’s not going to happen.”

"There is an increasing appreciation by people that they actually own their data"

In the field of health research, data have long been held closely by the researchers who collected it. The knowledge is considered proprietary information owned by whoever conducted and funded the study, even if it has the potential to lead to future health advances.

Now, a slew of new companies and organizations promise to tear down the barriers to data collection and sharing by encouraging patients to give away their data. In addition to fostering diverse research projects, data donation helps patients learn about themselves and improve their own treatment, the companies say. The change has taken root in the medical community, and if roadblocks to privacy and data ownership can be overcome, data sharing efforts may just change the nature of research.

“Increasingly people are realizing this is an ethics issues,” says Yale Professor Harlan Krumholz of the need for relevant data to be shared among researchers. “If our job is to save lives, then it doesn’t make sense that we not share data and get as many people working on the problems as possible.”

Generally, here’s how it works: Patients contribute information about their health and receive a personal benefit of some sort. At PatientsLikeMe, for instance, patients can get treatment tips from others who have the same ailment. 23andMe, another service, provides participants with genetic information that can be used to trace ancestry. There’s also the benefit of knowing you’re contributing to medical advances.

Garth Callaghan, who suffers from kidney cancer and shares his data with PatientsLikeMe, says sharing gave him a sense of control over an ailment that he felt had taken over. “Other patients help me direct my medical team instead of me just being a participant and listening to my doctors and saying yes,” he says, adding that he hopes that sharing his data means other patients won’t need to “reinvent the wheel.”

With data in hand, the companies collecting information then act as intermediaries, deciding which research projects are worthy and facilitating access. But unlike in the long-standing research model, in which a single set of data is typically used for one study, data can be used for many projects with many different goals. In most cases, participants are also notified of the results of studies in which their data was used.

Collecting data without an initial driving question also upends traditional procedures of medical research, says James Heywood, co-founder of PatientsLikeMe.

“The world is built on this old model of raise a question, design an experiment, recruit a group of people to solve it…not in this model that we’ve built,” he says, which he calls an integrative learning model.

Health data sharing companies are only a few years old, but their influence has grown quickly. Prominent academic institutions like Yale University have signed on, along with big pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer.

“When we started this, it was seen as amusing. People were thinking ‘Are you kidding me?’” says Stephen Friend, who runs a non-profit he co-founded that builds platforms to facilitate data sharing. Now, he says “hubris has turned into humility” as researchers have realized the potential.

Still, Friend acknowledges there’s a long way to go and that research money spent on data intended to be shared still represents the “0.1%” of research funding.

Privacy and the question of who owns medical data are some of the concerns holding back data-sharing efforts. Typically, scientific data has been owned by whoever collects it, often universities or academic institutions that fund research. Each company has its own philosophy about who owns data when it’s shared.

Emily Drabant Conley, director of business development at 23andMe, says her company’s policy is “you own your data.” PatientsLikeMe has a policy of “mutual license,” in which both patients and the organization have rights to the data. Regardless of which model prevails, the notion that study participants have any right to their data is a noteworthy change.

“There is an increasing appreciation by people that they actually own their data, and that can actually be useful to them,” says Krumholz. “All these things are coming together in a movement to empower patients and people.”

After three postponements Thursday