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If you've flown across Nebraska, Kansas or western Texas on a clear day, you've seen them: geometrically arranged circles of green and brown on the landscape, typically half a mile in diameter. They're the result of pivot irrigation, in which long pipes-on-wheels rotate slowly around a central point, spreading water across corn fields.

Yet most of those fields are doomed. The water that nourishes them eventually will run low.

That water comes from a huge pool of underground water known as the Ogallala Aquifer, part of a larger system called the High Plains Aquifer. Scientists calculate that farmers are pulling water out of the aquifer about six times faster than rain or rivers can recharge it.

That can't go on forever. In some areas, wells have already gone dry. Yet families and entire towns depend on that flow of water for their survival.

In one small section of northwestern Kansas, farmers now have agreed to do something unprecedented. For the next five years, all the farmers in this area, covering 99 square miles, will pump 20 percent less water out of the ground.

It's a remarkable agreement, but it's also fragile. Whether it survives will depend, in large part, on whether other farmers follow their lead.

Hoxie, the small town where farmers have taken this bold step, is the kind of place where people keep track of how many children go to the town's school. It's a barometer of the town's health.

"When I was in high school, we had 36 to 42 in every class," says farmer Mitchell Baalman. "Now, these classes are down to 15. Ten to 15 in every class."

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There were 1.9 percent fewer existing homes sold in September than in August, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.

But the slip came after two months when sales were touching four-year highs and as mortgage rates were edging up. So there's a case to be made that a bit of a drop shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Also, sales in September were still 10.7 percent above the pace of the same month a year earlier — a sign that the housing sector's recovery hasn't been stopped in its tracks.

What's more, The Associated Press writes that "many economists expect home sales will remain healthy, especially now that [mortgage] rates have stabilized and remain near historically low levels."

We'll learn much more about how the economy fared in September when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its delayed monthly jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday. As NPR's Marilyn Geewax has reported for us, the report's released was postponed by the partial government shutdown.

According to Reuters, economists expect to hear that there were 180,000 jobs added to payrolls in September and that the jobless rate was 7.3 percent. If they're right, that would mean the unemployment rate was unchanged from the month before and that job growth picked up just a bit from the initial August figure of 169,000.

Alexandra Chen, a specialist in childhood trauma, is on her way from the Lebanese capital Beirut to the southern town of Nabatiyeh, where she's running a workshop for teachers, child psychologists and sports coaches who are dealing with the Syrian children scarred by war in their homeland.

"All of the children have experienced trauma to varying degree," explains Chen, who works for Mercy Corps and is training a dozen new hires for her aid group.

Her intense five-day workshop is based on skills and techniques developed in other conflict zones, used for the first time here.

"They need to know enough to understand exactly what's going on in the brain of the children they are working with," Chen says of her trainees. Her course stresses the science of severe trauma, which can be toxic for the brain.

"The human memory remembers negative memories almost four times more strongly than positive ones," she says.

Some 2 million Syrian children have been displaced by the war and more than 1 million of them now refugees in neighboring countries. One of the biggest challenges for international aid agencies is healing the invisible scars of war in the youngest victims.

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All Is Lost

Director: J.C. Chandor

Genre: Action, drama

Running Time: 106 minutes

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language

With: Robert Redford

(Recommended)