Health, Science & Environment

Private insurance companies in Ohio are now required to cover doctor visits over the phone or on the computer.

The recently approved state budget includes a provision requiring insurance companies to cover remote doctor visits called telemedicine.

Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed the two-year budget bill July 18. Authorization of telehelath coverage is just one of the many state programs the sweeping $69 billion document covers.

In Florida, the Army Corps of Engineers is working to combat a growing environmental menace: blue-green algae. Nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from farms and subdivisions combines with warm summer weather to create massive blooms of algae in rivers and lakes that can be toxic.

A University of Cincinnati space professor who studies everything from Mars to maps is taking a deeper look into why so many people are coming to the U.S. Twenty-five years of satellite maps show deforestation and subsequent climate change are driving migrants to leave Central America.

Viktoriia Radchuk, an evolutionary ecologist at Berlin's Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, wanted to know how animals were responding to climate change.

So she scoured the results of more than 10,000 animal studies — on species from frogs to snakes, from insects to birds to mammals — looking for information on how changing environments were affecting animal behavior. Based on the available data, she decided to focus on birds in the Northern Hemisphere.

Graduate student Shahab Haghayegh has long had trouble sleeping. But when the biomedical engineering student began his doctoral program at the University of Texas at Austin five years ago, his issues worsened. "I would go to bed at 3 or 4 a.m. and wake up at 8 a.m.," he says. The exhausted Haghayegh was getting an average of just 4 or 5 hours sleep a night.

Cleveland City Council passed new lead paint requirements for landlords Wednesday, giving Mayor Frank Jackson’s administration 18 months to develop a citywide program to reduce childhood lead poisoning.

The law requires owners of rentals built before 1978 to have their properties inspected for lead hazards every two years. Cleveland’s Building and Housing Department will start enforcing the new rules in March 2021 and require all rentals to be certified as lead safe by 2023. The legislation also doubles the rental registration fee, raising it from $35 to $70.

The Senate has voted 97-2 to approve a bill that will virtually ensure permanent funding for rescue workers whose work after the Sept. 11 attacks caused health problems.

The House passed the bill last month, and President Trump is expected to approve it, ending a years-long ordeal for the victims after concerns that the fund was on the verge of running out of money.