Quick hits: Honeybees have feelings, too; $50 million in venture capital raised to bring more doctors to rural America

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The U.S. must embrace climate-smart agriculture, but some provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act meant to encourage such practices are off the mark, write an environmental studies professor and a Harvard Law School policy fellow. Read more here.

A company has raised $70 million in venture capital to bring more doctors to rural America. Read more here.

Aging farmers and ranchers are much more likely to die by suicide than their younger counterparts, a new study shows. A big part of that may be because they're less likely to talk about mental-health struggles. Read more here.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department have announced a new pilot program to help 11 underserved rural communities get proper wastewater sanitation. EPA and USDA will partner with state and tribal governments to help communities identify and pursue federal funding opportunities. The communities are in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, West Virginia, and on tribal lands. Read more here.

The Department of Health and Human Services will distribute more than $15 million in grants to help rural communities combat drug abuse and overdose deaths related to psychostimulants such as methamphetamines and cocaine. The rate of overdose deaths associated with psychostimulants is generally higher in rural areas. Read more here.

Scientific experiments indicate that bees are surprisingly intelligent and appear to have basic emotions, according to a new book. Read more here.

Speaking of: the critter commonly known as the Asian giant hornet or murder hornet (which eats honeybees) is getting a gentler name: the Northern giant hornet. The name change proposal to the Entomological Society of America cited the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, and posited that "connecting a scary insect, already associated with murder and attempted eradication, to Asia, might stoke more anti-Asian sentiment," Oliver Whang reports for The New York Times.