FARGO — As flood waters approached Rose Creek Golf Course in the spring of 2011, city workers were unrolling what was, in effect, a very long water balloon across a low-lying area near the creek.

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Nathan Boerboom, a city engineer overseeing flood control efforts, said the city wanted to test the water-filled dam to see how it would work in a real flood. The golf course was expected to flood anyway and it wouldn't have mattered if the dam failed, he said.

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As flood risks rise with climate change, many products are getting tested under realistic conditions. For example, during a 2011 flood along the Mississippi River in Memphis, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers developed and tested a cell phone app that allowed flood fighters to respond faster to failing levees. During a 2016 flood along the Winooski River in Vermont, the University of Vermont used unmanned aircraft to produce 3D maps that helped state officials understand how they might make roads more resistant to flooding in the future.

RURAL MAYVILLE N.D. – When meteorologists in the Red River Valley talk about Doppler radar and point to maps filled with swirling rainbow-hued clouds, this radar by the side of a quiet country road is what they’re talking about.

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The WSR-88D now allows a tornado warning about 14 minutes ahead of the storm. In the early 1990s, when Doppler technology was unavailable, warning time averaged five minutes.

FARGO, N.D. – When hackers released in August 2015 a trove of data stolen from Ashley Madison, a dating website catering to adulterers, some 1,600 North Dakotans and 12,700 Minnesotans were among the hundreds of thousands paying U.S. customers exposed.

Analysis of the data offered a rich, albeit incomplete, portrait of infidelity in the two Upper Midwest states. It showed, for example, that more North Dakotans and Minnesotans were paying customers adjusted for population than the nation as a whole. It showed a greater participation rate in oil-rich cities such as Williston, Dickinson and Minot, including Minot Air Force Base.

It also suggested that North Dakotans on Ashley Madison were thriftier than the average customer while Minnesotans tended to pay more.

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – In her hands, University of North Dakota professor Holly Brown-Borg holds up two mice born on the same day in separate litters.

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The larger mouse likely will stay spry and active until age 18 months before dying at 2 years. That’s about as long as a normal mouse can expect to live in ideal lab conditions, without the threat of predators or the ravages of cold and hunger.

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The dwarf mouse, on the other hand, likely will stay active until at least 30 months and die at three years. In human terms, this is the equivalent of living to 120 and not showing signs of aging until 100.

CAMP GRAFTON SOUTH, N.D. – The tractor, the plow, the sprayer, the harvester and the unmanned aircraft. That could be a list of basic farm machinery if the future plays out the way some UND students want.

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This week, they were testing a lightweight airborne camera system that could tell farmers almost instantly which plants need fertilizer and pesticide and which don’t.