Exothermic is the leader in self-reliance brand marketing, but we like to share our wisdom with the world. Here are the top stories we’ve identified this week in our markets:

Survivalism

• The Hunger Games Helped a 12-Year-Old Girl Become a Real-Life Hero, A 12-year-old Massachusetts girl helped an injured friend over the weekend thanks to quick thinking—and a makeshift tourniquet she whipped up using a technique she read about in The Hunger Games.

  

• Tesla Model X the First SUV Ever To Achieve 5-Star Crash Rating in Every Category, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has awarded the 2017 Tesla Model X five-star crash safety ratings in every category.
• Cyber Firms Warn “Industroyer” Malware Could Knock Out Power Grids, Known by the names Industroyer and Crashoverride, two cyber security companies warned that it could be repurposed with little effort by other groups intent on causing further havoc around the world targeting not only power supply operations, but also water and gas systems, and transportation networks.
• Multi-million dollar upgrade planned to secure ‘failsafe’ Arctic seed vault, Improvements aim to ensure the vault’s role as an impregnable deep freeze for the world’s most precious food seeds after a recent flooding by melting permafrost.

Sustainability

• Roomba Inventor Launches ‘Tertill’, a Weed-Killing Robot For Your Garden, iRobot veteran and Roomba co-inventor, Joe Jones is a modest man with a big mission: to create robots that make agriculture more efficient, less tedious, and yes, maybe even one day feed the world.
• Amazon is buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, Amazon is buying American supermarket chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, the online retail giant announced today.
• 11 States Sue Trump Administration’s Energy Department After Weeks of No Movement On Efficiency Standards, New York, California and nine other states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its failure to finalize energy-use limits for portable air conditioners and other products. The new standards would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save businesses and consumers billions of dollars, and conserve enough energy to power more than 19 million households for a year, but the U.S. Department of Energy has not met a requirement to publish them by now.
• This Startup Wants To Turn America’s Yard Waste Into A Petroleum Substitute, Alliance Bio-Products says its fuel will be cheaper than oil–and that there’s enough yard waste in the country to make more than we need.
• Canada is Using Genetics to Make Cows Less Gassy, Bovine livestock are responsible for about 9.5 percent of global greenhouse gas output, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Farmers are trying to reduce those emissions with lots of different strategies, starting with their diets.
• Arctic Climate Change Study Canceled Due to Climate Change, A Canadian expedition to study climate change in the Arctic has been canceled due to climate change. Specifically, the icebreaker CCGS Amundsen had to be cancelled “due to complications associated with the southward motion of hazardous Arctic sea ice,” reports University of Manitoba.

Self-Improvement

• US tops charts in study finding a third of world is overweight, ~10% obese, Battle of the bulge is global, and experts blame junk food and kid-aimed food ads.
• If You Want to Be More Attractive, Get More Sleep, The study, authored by Tina Sundelin, Mats Lekander, Kimmo Sorjonen, and John Axelsson, sought to discover if people were less willing to socialize with sleep-deprived individuals, and if sleep deprivation affected other qualities like attractiveness or trustworthiness.
• Coursera Raises $64 Million & Gets a New CEO, Online education

  

  company Coursera has raised $64 million in a series D round of funding. CEO Rick Levin is stepping down and will be replaced by Jeff Maggioncalda.

• Dog Owners Walk 22 Minutes More Per Day. And Yes, It Counts As Exercise, The study found that the dog owners walked briskly and got their heart rates up. At times, their pace was about 3 miles per hour, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers moderate intensity.
• Humans may be able to regrow skin after severe burns, PolarityTE fully regenerated pig skin and hair follicles in third-degree burns.
• Udacity: Reno pilot shows the future of tech job training, What if job training was treated not as an event, as in teaching coal miners to code, but rather as a critical, ongoing part of keeping a local workforce employed, one that could lessen the need to retrain fired workers for entirely new careers?
• How Much Are People Making from the Sharing Economy?, We found that 85% of side-gig workers make less than $500 a month. And of all the side-gig platforms we examined, Airbnb hosts earn the most by far.