What civil engineers are reading this week

• With apologies to that first little pig in the fable, building with straw has lots of upside

  A new housing development in Oregon is leveraging straw bale construction to make the residences there more eco-friendly and energy efficient. What does the future hold for this material?

• Fire evacuees begin returning to some communities in Manitoba after wet weather

  Cool, wet weather has allows Canadian fire crews to get an upper hand in parts of northern Manitoba to clear the way for some of the 21,000 or more evacuees to start returning home.

• Could changing the message help attract more to engineering?

  While there is more than one way to become a civil engineer, firms can struggle to reach interested people outside the standard bubble. Here's some inspiration from three leading civil engineers.

• Flash flooding kills 5 in West Virginia, rescue teams searching for missing people

  Torrential rains leading to flash floods have killed five people in northern West Virginia; rescue crews are searching for three people missing.

• Mississippi River endangered by becoming over-engineered, author concludes

  “The river we’ve built is coming apart,” warns Boyce Upholt in The Great River, his expansive exploration of the most important river in the United States.

• The sun’s south pole captured in photos for the first time ever

  Scientists have captured images of the elusive south pole of the sun. The images captured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft reveal our star's magnetic field is a powder keg ready to blow.