LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Konocti Unified School District adjusted homecoming events over the past week after Lower Lake High School’s football teams were placed in modified quarantine because of contacts with individuals who tested positive for COVID-19.
Lower Lake High’s homecoming festivities typically stretch across two days, including a Friday night football game and a Saturday night dance, said Konocti Unified Superintendent Dr. Becky Salato.
However, Salato said both football teams had to go into modified quarantine due to close contacts with a few staffers and one or two students who had tested positive for COVID-19.
She said the contact tracing process required by the California Department of Public Health included about 85 students and 20 staff members.
“The contact tracing is huge,” said Salato, noting principals have to do it daily.
“We always err on the side of doing more than not to make sure we’re keeping everyone safe,” she said.
Ultimately, about 60 students on the football teams ended up being placed in modified quarantine, Salato said. “It was a big group.”
While on modified quarantine, students can attend school but can’t take part in extracurricular activities, Salato said.
The California Department of Public Health’s latest health guidance for K-12 schools in the 2021-22 school year, updated on Oct. 20, explains that modified quarantine is used for unvaccinated students who are close contacts with COVID-19-positive cases; close contact is defined as more than 15 minutes over a 24-hour period within zero to 6 feet.
Students in modified quarantine may continue to attend school in-person if they have no symptoms; continue to appropriately mask, as required; undergo at least twice weekly testing during quarantine; and continue to quarantine for all extracurricular activities at school, including sports, and activities within the community setting, based on the state requirements.
While the homecoming rally took place on Friday, Salato said the homecoming games scheduled for Friday night, matching the Lower Lake Trojans junior varsity and varsity football teams against the Willits High School Wolverines’ teams, had to be canceled.
With so many students missing out on that event, Salato said the school administration wanted to make some adjustments to ensure everyone had a chance to participate in a homecoming event.
So they moved the homecoming dance, which had been scheduled for Saturday night, to the night of Saturday, Nov. 6, the night after the final football game of the season against Kelseyville High School.
Friday, Nov. 5, also is senior night, and Salato said moving the homecoming dance to the following night fit nicely.
Salato said the intent is to keep the students involved. “We know these extra things are important when they've missed so much in other years,” she said.
While COVID-19 is a key concern for educators, it’s not shut down schools so far this academic year, Salato said.
“Fortunately, we have not had any incidents that are considered outbreaks, where we’ve had to shut down completely,” she said.
There have been a few classes, including a special education classroom with 10 kids, that she said had to be placed on distance learning after a contact with a COVID-19-positive individual, a measure taken out of caution.
Salato said Lake County Public Health has been great, and works with the district’s team daily to address COVID-19 requirements such as contact tracing.
“It’s a difficult time for everybody,” she said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The two community college districts that serve Lake County are now in the process of conducting decennial redistricting of their trustee area boundaries.
Mendocino-Lake Community College District and Yuba Community College District each have seven trustee areas, which must now be adjusted in accordance with the recently released demographic results from the 2020 U.S. Census.
Similarly, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission is leading the work of redrawing congressional, State Senate, State Assembly and State Board of Equalization district lines, and the Board of Supervisors is working to adjust boundaries for its five districts.
California Community College District governing boards are subject to the federal Voting Rights Act and the one person, one vote principle of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Mendocino-Lake Community College District officials reported.
“The Voting Rights Act prohibits electoral systems that deny or abridge the voting rights of protected racial and language minority groups,” the district reported.
As a result, the district said governing board member districts must be as equal in population as possible and that election systems that are at-large meet the one person, one vote test.
For both districts, their trustees must live in their particular districts.
The Mendocino-Lake Community College District’s coverage area of Lake and Mendocino counties has a population of 100,000 divided into seven areas, with each trustee area needing to equal 14,300 people.
The Yuba Community College District spans eight counties — Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Placer, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba — and has a reported population in its coverage area of 313,828 people, based on latest census data, the district said. That puts their ideal trustee area size at 44,833 residents.
The law requires getting to within 10% of the ideal numbers.
Community members are urged to offer input on how the redistricting process should take place.
For the Mendocino-Lake Community College District, public input can be shared at the following scheduled meetings:
· 5 to 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 25: North County Center, Willits, Room 8000. · 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28: Lake County Center, Lakeport, Room 7050. · 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2: Mendocino College, Ukiah, Room 1060. · 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 3: Coast Center, Fort Bragg, The Commons.
Members of the public may mail feedback to Mendocino College, Office of the President, 1000 Hensley Creek Road, Ukiah, CA 95482.
Yuba Community College District held an update on its process timeline at its Oct. 14 meeting.
A consultant, Cooperative Strategies, will be preparing proposed maps through Nov. 9. Draft maps will be posted on the district’s website on Nov. 1.
Once those maps are published, Kathryn Wilkins, executive assistant to the chancellor and board of trustees, said the district will provide information to the local media with the URL members of the public should use to access and review those maps before the regular board meeting.
The board will then review draft maps at its Nov. 10 regular meeting. Wilkins said a public hearing will also be agendized at that meeting to provide for public input and comments on the redistricting process and draft maps as required.
She said the meeting and public hearing will be virtual, and the agenda and Zoom link to attend the meeting will be provided to the public 72 hours before the meeting.
Cooperative Strategies will revise the maps based on public and board input from Nov. 11 to Dec. 15.
The district board will review updates on Dec. 16, and the consultant will continue to make revisions from Dec. 17 to Jan. 12.
The board of trustees is tentatively scheduled to adopt the final trustee areas on Jan. 13, with Cooperative Strategies to send the final trustee area map and descriptions to the registrars of voters offices across the eight county service area in January 2022.
For more information about the background of California Community College redistricting, criteria, key dates, and meeting information, visit https://www.mendocino.edu/redistricting.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
In 2021, California significantly increased the protection under the “homestead exemption” and the “homestead declaration.”
Until 2021, the amount of the homestead exemption (protection) varied from $75,000 to $175,000 depending on circumstances.
Now, the exemption amount varies between $300,000 and $600,000, adjusted annually for inflation, based on the countywide median sale price for a single-family home.
These two important exemptions can protect either all or a portion of a homeowner’s equity in one principal dwelling (home), owned either in their name or in the name of their spouse (or both), even if the spouses reside separately, against any unsecured creditors who obtain judgment liens against the home.
These exemptions apply regardless of whether the principal dwelling is owned outright or in a living trust. A dwelling includes a residence but can also include a mobile home, a trailer or a boat.
A judicial sale can only occur when the amount of a bid at a judicial auction exceeds the amount of the homestead exemption plus any additional amount necessary to satisfy all liens and encumbrances on the property.
If a sale occurs then a portion of the proceeds are exempt for six months after receipt, during which time they can be used to buy a new dwelling.
The homestead exemption, which applies automatically, protects a certain amount of equity against judicial foreclosures by judgment creditors of a person’s or a family’s principal dwelling in California. It also applies when a homestead is damaged, destroyed, or acquired for public use to the proceeds.
Equity is the amount by which the value of your principal residence exceeds the combined value of all secured loans (typically mortgages and equity lines of credit).
The automatic homestead exemption does not protect proceeds from a voluntary sale. That additional protection requires a declaration of homestead.
Next, the declaration of homestead requires the homeowner to file a sworn and notarized declaration of homestead form with the county where the principal dwelling is situated.
Once filed, the declared homestead protects the same amount of equity as the homestead exemption, but this time also with respect to sale proceeds from voluntary sales of the principal dwelling.
If a home is sold voluntarily, then the homeowner has six months protection to use the proceeds to purchase a new dwelling and record a new homestead declaration within that same period.
The date when the declaration of homestead is filed is very important. The declaration does not pertain to judgment liens filed with the county prior to the declaration. So filing one’s declaration early when no judgment liens are imminent is prudent.
Moreover, if the homeowner buys a new home within six months, the homeowner can record a new declaration of homestead. Any equity from the sale of the first home that is used to buy the second home is also protected.
The declaration of homestead, however, does not protect against the recordation of child, family, or spousal support judgments. Like elsewhere, California law treats support obligations as exceptional and sacrosanct.
Consider an example: John and Mary Smith, a hypothetical married couple who own a house worth $400,000, with an unpaid balance of $200,000 owed on the mortgage; the Smiths have $200,000 of equity.
The Smiths owe $80,000 to a judgment creditor who has filed a judgment lien against their home. The Smiths qualify for a homestead exemption amount of at least $300,000. Thus, all $200,000 equity is protected from judgment creditors.
However, if the Smiths had paid off their mortgage then their equity would be the full $400,000 house value and the exemption amount would depend on in which county they reside in California.
Thus, having some unpaid mortgage can help keep the equity within the exemption amount and avoid a forced sale of the residence.
The foregoing is not legal advice. If needing guidance regarding the homestead exemption or homestead declaration consult an attorney.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235.
Even before the pandemic, the U.S. workforce increasingly relied on remote collaboration technologies like videoconferencing and Slack. The global crisis accelerated the adoption of these work tools and practices in an unprecedented way. By April 2020, about half of companies reported that more than 80% of their employees worked from home because of COVID-19.
That shift was made possible by decades of research into, and then development of, technologies that support remote work, but not everyone uses these technologies with the same ease. As early as 1987, groundbreaking research identified some of the challenges facing women working from home using technology. That included the difficulties of child care, work-home separation and employee growth opportunities.
Since that time, we have learned much more about virtual collaboration. As an associate professor of information systems, I’m interested in what we can expect as we eagerly anticipate a post-pandemic future. One thing stands out: Hybrid work arrangements – that is, employees who do some tasks in the office and others virtually – is clearly going to be a big part of the picture.
One survey from April 2021 shows 99% of human resources leaders expect employees to work in some kind of hybrid arrangement moving forward. Many have already begun. As just one example, Dropbox, the file hosting service, made a permanent shift during the pandemic, allowing employees to work from home and hold team meetings in the office.
The definition of “hybrid” varies in other organizations. Some workers might be in the office a couple days a week or every other day. Other businesses may require only occasional face-to-face time, perhaps meeting in a centralized location once each quarter.
Either way, research does show many companies fail in their implementation of a virtual workforce.
Remote work versus in the office
In-office work promotes structure and transparency, which may increase trust between management and workers. Developing an organizational culture happens naturally. Casual office conversations – a worker walking down the hall for a quick and unscheduled chat with a colleague, for instance – can lead to knowledge-sharing and collaborative problem-solving. That’s difficult to replicate in a virtual environment, which often relies on advance scheduling for online meetings – although that’s still feasible with enough planning and communication.
But if you look at different metrics, in-office work loses out to working from home. My recent research discovered remote workers report more productivity and enjoy working from home because of the flexibility, the ability to wear casual clothes, and the shortened or nonexistent commute time. Remote work also saves money. There is a significant cost savings for office space, one of the largest budget line items for organizations.
Hybrid arrangements attempt to combine the best of both worlds.
It’s not perfect
It’s true that hybrid work faces many of the same obstacles of face-to-face work. Poor planning and communication, ineffective or unnecessary meetings and confusion about task responsibilities happen remotely as well as in-person.
Perhaps the largest issue when working at home: technology and security concerns. Home networks, an easier target for cyberthreats, are typically more vulnerable than office networks. Remote workers are also more likely to share computers with someone else outside of their organization. Hybrid organizations must invest upfront to work through these complicated and often expensive issues.
With hybrid work, managers cannot see the work taking place. That means they must measure employee performance based on outcomes with clear performance metrics rather than the traditional focus on employee behavior.
Another potential pitfall: Fault lines can develop within hybrid teams – that is, misunderstandings or miscommunication between those in the office and those at home. These two groups may start to divide, potentially leading to tension and conflicts between them – an us-versus-them scenario.
Establishing a hybrid environment
Numerous recommendations exist on the best way to develop a hybrid model. Here are a few of the best ideas.
Meeting too often or with little purpose – that is, meeting for the sake of meeting – leads to fatigue and burnout. Not everyone needs to be at every meeting, yet finesse from management is required to make sure no one feels left out. And meeting-free days can help with productivity and allow employees a block of uninterrupted time to focus on complex projects.
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Listening to employees is critical to making sure the hybrid environment is working. Continually seeking feedback, through one-on-one conversations, focus groups or human resources surveys, is important too. So is recognizing and rewarding employees with in-person or virtual kudos for their achievements. Performance incentives, such as financial rewards or tokens of appreciation including food delivery, help develop a supportive culture that increases employee commitment.
Finally: Both managers and employees must be transparent in their communication and understanding of hybrid plans. Policies must be in place to define what tasks happen in the office and remotely. Access to reliable communications is essential, particularly for remote work. All employees must receive the same information at the same time, and in a timely manner. After all, whether in the office or online, workers don’t want to feel they’re the last to know.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for Lake County due to the series of storms expected to bring heavy rain through Tuesday.
The flood watch is in effect from late Saturday night through Sunday night.
The National Weather Service said an atmospheric river is forecast to focus over northwestern California during Sunday before shifting southward Sunday night or Monday, with the system expected to bring periods of moderate to heavy rainfall.
The forecast calls for 4 to 6 inches of rain to fall Sunday for coastal and valley locations, with 5 to 8 inches possible along southwest facing mountains and ridges.
Heavy rain combined with saturated soil from recent rains across the mountains will contribute toward possible flooding, and the forecast warns that low lying areas, creeks, streams, culverts and portions of urban areas may experience flooding due to heavy rainfall.
The Lake County forecast calls for the potential for up to a quarter of an inch on Saturday and between 1 and 2 inches of rain on Saturday night, coupled with gusty winds.
On Sunday the heaviest rain is expected, with up to 4 inches during the day and another three quarters of an inch possible on Sunday night. Winds of more than 30 miles per hour, with gusts of nearly 50 miles per hour, are forecast for parts of the county.
On Monday, rainfall amounts will taper off, totaling about a tenth of an inch. There also are chances of rain on Tuesday.
Temperatures through Friday will drop into the 40s at night, and range between the mid 50s to high 60s during the day.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Scientists thought Bennu's surface was like a sandy beach, abundant in fine sand and pebbles, which would have been perfect for collecting samples.
Past telescope observations from Earth had suggested the presence of large swaths of fine-grained material smaller than a few centimeters called fine regolith.
But when NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission arrived at Bennu in late 2018, the mission saw a surface covered in boulders.
The mysterious lack of fine regolith became even more surprising when mission scientists observed evidence of processes potentially capable of grinding boulders into fine regolith.
New research, published in Nature and led by Saverio Cambioni, of the University of Arizona, used machine learning and surface temperature data to solve the mystery.
Cambioni conducted the research at the university's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. He and his colleagues ultimately found that Bennu's highly porous rocks are responsible for the surface's surprising lack of fine regolith.
"The 'REx' in OSIRIS-REx stands for Regolith Explorer, so mapping and characterizing the surface of the asteroid was a main goal," said study co-author and OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta, a Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona. "The spacecraft collected very high-resolution data for Bennu's entire surface, which was down to 3 millimeters per pixel at some locations. Beyond scientific interest, the lack of fine regolith became a challenge for the mission itself, because the spacecraft was designed to collect such material."
A rocky start and solid answers
"When the first images of Bennu came in, we noted some areas where the resolution was not high enough to see whether there were small rocks or fine regolith. We started using our machine learning approach to distinguish fine regolith from rocks using thermal emission (infrared) data," Cambioni said.
The thermal emission from fine regolith is different from that of larger rocks, because the size of its particles controls the former, while the latter is controlled by rock porosity.
The team first built a library of thermal emissions associated with fine regolith mixed in different proportions with rocks of various porosity.
Next, they used machine-learning techniques to teach a computer how to "connect the dots" between the examples, Cambioni said. They analyzed 122 areas on the surface of Bennu, that were observed both during the day and the night.
"Only machine learning could efficiently explore a dataset this large," Cambioni said.
Cambioni and his collaborators found something surprising when the data analysis was completed: the fine regolith was not randomly distributed on Bennu.
Instead, it was up to several tens of percent in those very few areas where rocks are non-porous, and systematically lower where rocks have higher porosity, which is most of the surface.
The team concluded that very little fine regolith is produced from Bennu's highly porous rocks because these are compressed rather than fragmented by meteoroid impacts. Like a sponge, the voids within rocks cushion the blow from incoming meteoroids. These findings are also in agreement with laboratory experiments from other research groups.
"Basically, a big part of the energy of the impact goes into crushing the pores restricting the fragmentation of the rocks and the production of new fine regolith," said study co-author Chrysa Avdellidou, a postdoctoral researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) – Lagrange Laboratory of the Côte d'Azur Observatory and University in France. Additionally, Cambioni and colleagues showed that cracking caused by the heating and cooling of Bennu's rocks as the asteroid rotates through day and night proceeds more slowly in porous rocks than in denser rocks, further frustrating the production of fine regolith.
"When OSIRIS-REx delivers its sample of Bennu (to Earth) in September 2023, scientists will be able to study the samples in detail," said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This includes testing the physical properties of the rocks to verify this study."
Other missions have evidence to support the team's findings. The Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission to Ryugu, a carbonaceous asteroid like Bennu, found that Ryugu also lacks fine regolith and has high-porosity rocks.
Conversely, JAXA's Hayabusa mission in 2005 revealed abundant fine regolith on the surface of asteroid Itokawa, an S-type asteroid with rocks of a different composition than Bennu and Ryugu.
A previous study also from Cambioni and colleagues provided evidence that its rocks are less porous than Bennu's and Ryugu's using observations from Earth.
"For decades, astronomers disputed that small, near-Earth asteroids could have bare-rock surfaces," said study co-author Marco Delbo, research director with CNRS, also at the Lagrange Laboratory. "The most indisputable evidence that these small asteroids could have substantial fine regolith emerged when spacecraft visited S-type asteroids Eros and Itokawa in the 2000s and found fine regolith on their surfaces."
The team predicts that large swaths of fine regolith should be uncommon on carbonaceous asteroids, the most common of all asteroid types observed, and which the team expects to have high-porosity rocks like Bennu. By contrast, they predict terrains rich in fine regolith to be common on S-type asteroids, the second-most populous type of asteroids observed in the solar system, which they expect to have denser, less porous rocks than carbonaceous asteroids.
"This is an important piece in the puzzle of what drives the diversity of asteroids' surfaces," Cambioni said. "Asteroids are thought to be relics of the early solar system, so understanding the evolution they have undergone in time is crucial to comprehend how the solar system formed and evolved. Now that we know this fundamental difference between carbonaceous and S-type asteroids, future teams can better prepare sample collection missions depending on the nature of the target asteroid."
Cambioni is continuing his research on planetary diversity as a distinguished postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The University of Arizona leads the OSIRIS-REx science team and the mission's science observation planning and data processing. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Mikayla Mace Kelley is with the University of Arizona.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has many new dogs, big and little, awaiting adoption this week.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of American bulldog, American Staffordshire terrier, Belgian malinois, Doberman, German shepherd, hound, husky, Labrador retriever, mastiff, pit bull, Rottweiler, schnauzer, shepherd and Yorkshire terrier.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control website not listed are still “on hold”).
“George” is a 1-year-old male American bulldog mix with a short gray coat.
He is in kennel No. 4, ID No. LCAC-A-1430.
‘Teddy’
“Teddy” is an 11-year-old Yorkshire terrier-schnauzer mix with a long silver, tan and black coat.
He is in kennel No. 5, ID No. LCAC-A-1896.
Female shepherd-husky
This female shepherd-husky has a short tan coat with black markings and blue eyes.
She is in kennel No. 9, ID No. LCAC-A-1745.
Female shepherd-husky
This 1-year-old female shepherd-husky mix has a short tricolor coat and blue eyes.
She’s in kennel No. 10, ID No. LCAC-A-1746.
Female American Staffordshire terrier
This 7-year-old female American Staffordshire terrier has a short gray coat and white markings.
She is in kennel No. 11, ID No. LCAC-A-1890.
‘Einstine’
“Einstine” is a young Labrador retriever-pit bull mix with s short black coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 12, ID No. LCAC-A-1860.
Labrador-pit bull mix
This 5-year-old female chocolate Labrador retriever-pit bull mix has a short chocolate-colored coat.
She is in kennel No. 13, ID No. LCAC-A-1769.
‘Cynthia’
“Cynthia” is a 1-year-old female Doberman pinscher-hound mix.
She is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-1891.
‘Rocky’
“Rocky” is a 1-year-old female German shepherd mix with a short black coat and tan markings.
She is in kennel No. 19, ID No. LCAC-A-1719.
Female Rottweiler
This 5-year-old female Rottweiler has a short black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-1833.
Male mastiff
This 2-year-old male mastiff has a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 21, ID No. LCAC-A-1869.
Female German shepherd
This 2-year-old female German shepherd has a short black coat with tan markings.
She is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-1733.
Female American Staffordshire mix
This 3-year-old female American Staffordshire mix has a short black coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-1727.
Female husky-pit bull
This 1-year-old female husky-pit bull mix has a short brown coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-1725.
Male husky-pit bull
This 1-year-old male husky-pit bull mix has a short coat.
He is in kennel No. 25, ID No. LCAC-A-1726.
‘LuLu’
“LuLu” is a 1-year-old female Rottweiler with a short black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-1658.
Male shepherd mix
This 2-year-old male shepherd mix has a short black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-1743.
Male pit bull
This young male pit bull has a short black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 29, ID No. LCAC-A-1699.
Female pit bull
This 1-year-old female pit bull mix has a short gray coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-1683.
‘Dozer’
‘Dozer’ is a 5-year-old American pit bull terrier mix with a short brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 33, ID No. LCAC-A-1483.
Male Belgian malinois
This 2-year-old male Belgian malinois has a short black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-1779.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Administration released Cal-Secure, the state of California’s first multi-year cybersecurity roadmap.
Built on industry-leading best practices and frameworks, Cal-Secure addresses critical gaps in the state’s information and cybersecurity programs while enabling the state to manage existing and future threats more effectively.
Cal-Secure defines a path for state entities to strengthen our cybersecurity measures and prioritize resources to manage the most significant cyber risks and safeguard those services for Californians who depend on them.
“Hackers steal our time, money and peace of mind. Protecting our data is among the most important things we can do to prevent disruption to our daily lives and our economy.” said Gov. Newsom. “We have to do more to safeguard the state’s critical infrastructure, intellectual property and our status as one of the world’s leading economies.”
Cal-Secure’s roadmap outlines actionable steps, with measurable success criteria, to ensure California’s Executive Branch has a world-class cybersecurity workforce, an empowered and right-sized federated cybersecurity oversight governance structure and effective cybersecurity defenses to all technology, including critical infrastructure.
The roadmap is broken into three categories — people, process and technology — each containing strategic priorities to address critical shortfalls or concerns.
These priorities include developing and unifying California’s diverse, innovative cybersecurity workforce to safeguard the data and systems used to deliver public services; providing effective oversight supported by a flexible governance model; and investing in technology and services to enhance cybersecurity capabilities at all state entities.
Cal-Secure is designed to improve cyber defenses statewide, regardless of the existing baseline capabilities of state government agencies and entities.
This plan builds on the key objectives of the California Homeland Security Strategy, or HSS, under which California established a goal to strengthen security and preparedness across cyberspace by enhancing safety and preparedness with state, federal, local, tribal and private sector stakeholders.
The Newsom Administration has advanced $260 million in recent investments at the Department of Technology and other state entities to bolster the state’s ability to prevent and respond to cyberattacks.
The state budget also includes $11.3 million one-time and $38.8 million ongoing to mature the state’s overall security posture, improve statewide information security initiatives, analyze cyber threat intelligence and mitigate potential threats.
Cal-Secure was created through a collaborative process with the California Cybersecurity Integration Center and its four critical partners: California Department of Technology, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, California Highway Patrol and California Military Department and the state government security community.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Police said they are investigating the death of a Clearlake man that occurred last week.
Clearlake Police Chief Andrew White reported that his agency is trying to determine what led to the death of 44-year-old Steven Chrisman of Clearlake, who died after being assaulted.
At 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 16, the Clearlake Police Department received a call from a citizen reporting an unresponsive male lying on the ground in the rear parking lot of the Burns Valley Shopping Center, located in the 14900 block of Olympic Drive.
Police said officers and paramedics were dispatched to the scene, where officers located a male adult in the rear parking lot of the shopping center.
Paramedics with Lake County Fire Protection District attempted life saving measures but the victim, identified as Chrisman, was pronounced deceased on scene.
Police concluded Chrisman was the victim of an assault by an unknown subject. Detectives with the Clearlake Police Department responded to the scene for processing of evidence.
At this time, the department said the motive is unclear and the investigation is ongoing.
The circumstances which led to Chrisman’s death are being withheld by police at this time to preserve the case integrity.
Anyone with information related to this case is encouraged to call Det. Leonardo Flores at 707-994-8251, Extension 315.
The surface of Venus is completely inhospitable for life: barren, dry, crushed under an atmosphere about 90 times the pressure of Earth’s and roasted by temperatures two times hotter than an oven.
But was it always that way? Could Venus once have been a twin of Earth — a habitable world with liquid water oceans? This is one of the many mysteries associated with our shrouded sister world.
Twenty-seven years have passed since NASA’s Magellan mission last orbited Venus. That was NASA’s most recent mission to Earth’s sister planet, and while we have gained significant knowledge of Venus since then, there are still numerous mysteries about the planet that remain unsolved. NASA’s Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging, or DAVINCI, mission hopes to change that.
Here are 10 mysteries of Venus that NASA scientists are still grappling with.
1. Did Venus ever host life?
Big questions are often asked when thinking about other planets: Is there life? WAS there ever life? If so, what sort of life? Tiny microbes that that resemble simple life on Earth? Or like nothing we have ever recognized?
Venus is no exception.
“The community has speculated about possible life on Venus, but until we know whether Venus was ever actually habitable in the past, it’s difficult to say much more beyond these speculations,” said Dr. Giada N. Arney, deputy principal investigator for DAVINCI at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. “DAVINCI aims to help us understand whether Venus was ever habitable, which will provide a more concrete grounding on which we can study it as a possible past abode for life … It’s exciting to think there’s a possibility our solar system had two habitable worlds side-by-side for perhaps even billions of years, but we don’t yet know if this was the case.”
To determine whether life was ever possible on Venus, we first need to understand the past environment on Venus. This involves studying the atmosphere, geology and history of the planet.
“We always want to ask the life question, but until we understand the context in which we’re asking it, we won’t know what we’re looking for and may be even more confused or tantalized,” explained Dr. James B. Garvin, principal investigator for DAVINCI at NASA Goddard.
2. How did Venus and Earth come to be so different?
Venus and Earth are similar in size and density, so hypothetically, these planets could be very similar. And yet, they are strikingly different. Air pressure at the surface of Venus is 90 times that of Earth, Venus rotates on its axis backwards compared to the other planets in the solar system, and the surface of Venus is over 900 degrees Fahrenheit (over 482 Celsius), making it the hottest planet in our solar system — hot enough to melt lead.
This extreme heat on the surface of Venus is due to a carbon dioxide atmosphere with thick clouds of sulfuric acid, which could have resulted from a runaway greenhouse phase earlier in Venus’ history that forever changed our sister world.
So, what happened? Was Venus always so inhospitable? “Why are we so good and they so bad?” said Garvin. “That is the central question, because in the long haul, that is going to affect the evolution of our own planet. Maybe Venus is a destiny storyboard that will help us fill in the longer story of our planet.”
The evolution of Venus through time may help us understand processes that govern global-scale changes in a planet’s environment, including evolution of the planet’s habitability, with implications for where we might find habitable planets beyond the solar system.
“Venus represents an important illustration of how planetary environments can evolve over time, and understanding that evolution is critical to our thinking in the search for life beyond Earth,” explained Dr. Stephanie A. Getty, deputy principal investigator for DAVINCI at NASA Goddard.
3. How did Venus form?
Even this seemingly basic question about the origin of Venus is still a mystery. “It’s amazing to me that we don’t know whether Venus formed from the same early solar system materials as did Earth and Mars,” says Getty. “We still don’t know whether Venus was bombarded by comets and asteroids, rich in water, the way Earth was.” These comets and asteroids that bombarded our home planet are considered to have been an important source of water for Earth. Understanding the delivery of water to Venus is important for evaluating its potential to host oceans in the past.
4. What is the atmospheric composition at Venus?
The atmospheric composition of Venus is an important piece of the context we are seeking as we aim to better evaluate Venus’ potential habitability over time.
“We really do not know the important trace chemicals in the Venus atmosphere,” said Garvin. “We don’t understand the chemical cycles that provide clues to how it has evolved and the role of these chemical cycles in Venus’ history — these unknowns are the fingerprints that have been missing for way too long.”
The DAVINCI probe will measure chemistry, pressure, temperature, and dynamics at least every 200 meters (about 656 feet) as it descends through Venus’ atmosphere.
One of the biggest mysteries of Venus’ atmosphere lies in the lowermost or “deep” atmosphere. Typically, planetary atmospheric gases behave like those we study in high-school chemistry — their behavior can be estimated as “ideal gases” and is well understood.
But in Venus’ lower atmosphere (nearest the surface of the planet), carbon dioxide is heated and pressurized to the point where it acts more like a hot liquid than a gas — only about twelve times less dense than liquid water.
“This bizarre behavior is called ‘super-critical,’ and on Venus, the atmosphere that sloshes around the surface landscapes and rocks is supercritical carbon dioxide, which is poorly understood,” said Garvin. “We have to go there and measure what is going on to find out how this works on a planetary scale. That means there’s a whole new frontier on Venus. That’s a new environmental state that we’re not used to.”
5. How were the rocks of Venus formed?
The last spacecraft to successfully descend through the atmosphere and land on Venus was the Soviet VeGa-2 mission in 1985, which survived for 52 minutes on the planet’s inhospitably hot surface on the “night side” of the planet.
At its landing site, it was surrounded by basaltic plains that were formed by volcanism, but some highland regions on Venus are thought to be different. Thus, the surface of Venus remains quite the mystery, especially in regions beyond the volcanic plains.
The DAVINCI spacecraft will be equipped with a suite of four cameras together called Venus Imaging System for Observational Reconnaissance, or VISOR, which will be able to identify rock composition on the planet’s surface.
“Most of the surface of Venus is made of basalt, which is produced by volcanism,” said Arney. “But there are some intriguing mountainous highland regions called ‘tesserae’ (regions of heavily deformed terrain) that suggest hints of having a different composition. They may be made of rocks that form from water-rock interactions and continent-building processes (which could imply Earth-like plate tectonics), and if so, that’s really exciting because it would suggest more hospitable conditions in the Venus past.”
The DAVINCI probe will descend over one of these “tesserae,” called Alpha Regio, and will make measurements with its Venus Descent Imager (VenDI) instrument. “This will help us better understand what this ‘tessera’ is made of,” explained Arney.
6. How much water did Venus have?
Liquid water is essential for life. We cannot assess Venus’ past habitability without knowing how much water Venus may have had — and when and how it lost that water.
Scientists can use the bulk chemical composition of rocks found on Venus to unravel the mystery of water on the planet.
“If we discover ‘granites’ in the mountains of Venus, then we can infer they must have involved large amounts of water in the Venus crust to allow them to form as they do on Earth,” explained Garvin.
Scientists can also use measurements of the atmosphere to understand the history of water at Venus.
The DAVINCI probe’s Venus Mass Spectrometer and Venus Tunable Laser Spectrometer will measure atmospheric composition throughout its entire descent toward the surface of the planet.
The atmospheric signatures measured may provide clues to the story of past water, which may help scientists determine whether the planet previously had an ocean.
“We suspect but do not know whether there were oceans on Venus, and if so, when in Venus’ history the water evaporated,” said Getty.
7. What is the nature of surface activity at Venus?
Scientists are still making discoveries to understand whether Venus ever had Earth-style plate tectonics, and how those mountain-building processes are similar or different from Earth’s. Earth’s crust hosts a network of relatively thin plates jostling around on the planet’s surface in constant horizontal motion.
If similar plate tectonics exist on Venus, now or in the past, the planet’s crust must experience movement of crustal plates over geologic time, mid-ocean-ridge volcanism (volcanic activity present at oceanic boundaries between two plates), and subduction (the movement of one plate sinking underneath another plate).
The history of Venus tectonics is still an active area of research with many open questions. Some scientists believe Venus has retained plate tectonics with laterally moving blocks of crust, while others hypothesize that this period in Venus’ history is long in the past, perhaps when liquid water was either at the surface or abundant within the crust.
At some point, Venus may have had its own form of plate tectonics — possibly different from the plate tectonics here on Earth.
Water and rock measurements obtained from the DAVINCI mission, combined with the Venus global mapping information by NASA’s VERITAS mission, another recently selected mission to Venus that is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, can be used to decipher how these tectonic patterns may have operated on Venus, and why the planet was unable to sustain them in a fashion similar to Earth.
Venus is an ideal test-case for examining how plate tectonics or some other type of crustal movement persists or disappears on big, rocky planets with atmospheres and a changing (but large) budget of both crustal and surface water.
Another key mystery about the surface of Venus is volcanism. All planets must get rid of their internal heat, and Earth’s method of doing so involves volcanism as an associated process. Scientists are still speculating whether the surface of Venus is currently volcanically active, and to what degree eruptions occur today.
Together, the DAVINCI and VERITAS missions hope to address these questions. DAVINCI can measure gases in the Venus atmosphere that could signal if volcanoes have erupted or are erupting on Venus today, while the VERITAS orbiter will be able to see the deformation of the crust, the chemical signature of recent volcanism, and the thermal signature of major erupting lavas.
8. What do the mountains look like on Venus?
Previous Venus landers (Venera & VeGa) have taken photographs of the Venusian plains after landing on basaltic regions of the surface, but DAVINCI’s cameras will snap the first-ever high-resolution aerial photos of a mountainous tessera surface as the probe descends over the rugged Alpha Regio highlands region.
“Where we’re landing on Venus is in the mountains,” explained Garvin. “No one’s ever gone to the mountains before … When we see them from a mile up, they may look like nothing ever seen by woman or man before, because no one’s ever been there to experience them.”
Such rugged mountain landscapes may hold clues to how erosion on Venus works today. Similarly, they might indicate whether sedimentary rocks were important in the formation of the highlands of Venus as they commonly are on Earth.
9. Are there Venus-like planets beyond our solar system (exoplanets)?
Scientists are excited about the idea of taking what we learn from Venus and applying it to exoplanets — planets outside our solar system.
Venus-like exoplanets are expected to be a common type of planet observed by the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, and better measurements of Venus may help us to understand these distant worlds.
“We’ll be able to relate what we discover at Venus to what we discover from observations of Venus-like exoplanets observed by the James Webb Space Telescope in the 2020s,” said Arney. “For instance, data from Venus can improve computer models of Venus-like exoplanets that we will use to interpret our future James Webb observations. Also, if Venus was habitable in the past, that means some of these ‘Venus-like’ exoplanets may be habitable too. Understanding the history of Venus may therefore help us to understand and interpret exo-Venus planets observed at varied ages and stages of evolution.”
10. New mysteries we haven’t even thought of yet
“One of the most exciting aspects of planetary exploration is discovering new mysteries that we can’t currently anticipate,” said Arney. “Those new mysteries we can’t yet imagine are what I’m looking forward to the most.”
This is the essence of curiosity-driven exploration, and DAVINCI will offer plenty of opportunities for new mysteries to be identified and even resolved.
What might Venus be hiding? We must go there to find out! “Venus here we come” is the catch-phrase of the DAVINCI team.
Glenn J. Rapsinski, University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences
Many Americans now have the green light to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster – and the flexibility to receive a different brand than the original vaccine they received.
On Oct. 21, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recommended these vaccinations in light of the FDA’s authorization. The CDC’s signoff will make the Moderna booster shot available to people 65 and older, younger adults at higher risk of severe COVID-19 due to medical conditions and those who are at increased risk due to their workplace environment. People are now eligible for the Moderna booster six months after completion of their original series – as is already the case for the third Pfizer shot. The authorization made all Johnson & Johnson vaccine recipients eligible for a second shot two months after the initial dose.
As an infectious disease expert, I have closely followed the development of the COVID-19 vaccines and the research on how immunity and vaccine efficacy shift over time.
With the swirling mass of news around how effective the COVID-19 vaccines are and who needs booster shots and when, it can be challenging and confusing to make sense of it all. But understanding how the immune system works can help bring clarity to the reasons some people could benefit from the authorized shots.
How vaccine efficacy evolves
The discussion and perceived urgency around booster shots has partially been driven by the occurrence of “breakthrough” COVID-19 infections in fully vaccinated people. The term breakthrough misleadingly implies that the vaccines failed, but this is not the case. The intention of the vaccine is to reduce hospitalizations and deaths, a goal that the COVID-19 vaccines continue to meet.
A clinical study of the Moderna vaccine showed that antibody levels remain strong after six months as well. But studies after the six-month mark have been mixed, with reports of waning antibody levels leaving some researchers concerned that a booster shot strategy is essential. However, the limited data left too many questions for the FDA and CDC to approve a booster shot for all Americans, at least at this time.
Still, the overwhelming majority of intensive care admissions and deaths from COVID-19 continue to be in unvaccinated people. The rare deaths from COVID-19 in vaccinated people are mostly in people with immune systems weakened either by age or underlying conditions, which is why booster shots have been authorized for these groups. While boosters clearly help the individual, it is just as important for everyone to get fully vaccinated to protect vulnerable people by reducing the overall number of cases in the community.
Vaccines rev up the immune system
All three of the authorized vaccines in the U.S. work by giving the body instructions for making the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The spike protein, which resembles a stem with three buds on the end, is what enables the actual virus to invade cells and cause infection. The mRNA vaccines by Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna provide the blueprint for the spike protein in the form of mRNA in a drug-delivery system called a lipid nanoparticle. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine gives DNA instructions inside the coat of a different virus, called a viral vector.
The immune system quickly recognizes that these foreign proteins do not belong, and it generates an immune response to fight them off. These newfound defenses gear the body up to protect against the real virus. During this primary immune response, immune cells encounter spike proteins and, as a defense, they produce antibodies, “memory” cells and T-cells that can kill infected cells to prevent the virus from multiplying. Some of these antibodies and T-cells from the primary immune response persist over time, though they decrease during the first month after vaccination, while memory cells last much longer.
Then, when someone gets an additional dose of vaccine, the immune system goes through a secondary immune response. Thanks to the memory cells, the secondary immune response activates more rapidly, triggering lots of antibody production and T-cell activation. More mature antibodies are produced as well, and they are even better at trapping the spike proteins. And T-cells proliferate, helping to stop the intruder in its tracks. This type of secondary immune response can be activated again and again when repeat exposures to a vaccine – or booster doses – occur. Each time, the immune response mounts a stronger and more effective defense.
Mix-and-match vaccine boosters
Multiplestudies, including preliminary research from the National Institutes of Health that is not yet peer-reviewed, have shown that the mix-and-match strategy is safe and effective at providing a significant immune boost.
Additionally, mixing vaccine types may be most beneficial in those who initially received a non-mRNA vaccine. The NIH data suggests that people who got the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine had a bigger increase and achieved a higher antibody concentration after receiving an mRNA booster than if they received the Johnson & Johnson booster. For people who first received one of the mRNA vaccines, Pfizer or Moderna, followed by a third shot with Johnson & Johnson, the antibody response was similar to that seen in those who got a third, or homologous, mRNA dose.
Studies exploring why the mix-and-match strategy is more effective with some initial vaccines and not others are underway. Understanding this and the effectiveness of different vaccine combinations, including using vaccines that are authorized in other countries, will help improve vaccination strategies all over the world.
Interchanging vaccine types may have greater advantages in some people than in others, which will become clearer as more data is gathered. But the good news is that the immune response seems to get a solid boost from booster shots, regardless of which vaccine combination is used.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Just two months after the Cache fire tore through a portion of the city of Clearlake, a state cleanup effort is about to start.
The fire, which began on Aug. 18, burned 83 acres and destroyed 138 structures, including 57 homes, many of them in the Cache Creek and Creekside mobile home parks.
In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency for Lake County in response to the fire, which made the city and impacted residents eligible for state assistance with fire recovery, including debris removal.
During an update on the fire at its Thursday night meeting, which begins at the 1:16:37 mark in the video above, Clearlake City Council members heard from staff that the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, or Cal OES, is set to begin its part of the recovery work this week.
Finance Director Kelcey Young said city staff has been working with the community to get right of entry forms from property owners completed so Cal OES can begin the hazardous debris and tree removal.
As of Thursday night, 51 of the forms had been completed, with four pending signatures that are expected early next week, and the city unable to contact the owners of five other properties, Young said.
Enough of the forms have been completed and submitted that the cleanup process can move forward, she said.
Young said Cal OES is planning to be in Clearlake on Friday to start with asbestos abatement before moving directly into debris removal. She said they’re grateful to Cal OES for its support.
“We’re very excited to finally be at this point,” she said.
Due to the weather — several inches of rain are forecast to fall in Lake County through early next week — there may be additional delay in the cleanup, Young said. However, she said Cal OES is aware of the urgency to start the debris removal because of the weather conditions.
“We’re very pleased with where we are,” City Manager Alan Flora said about the process.
He said almost every employee in the city has touched this process at some point, and the work of Young and other staff has resulted in the city of Clearlake being one of the first — if not the first — community impacted by wildfire that will begin debris removal under this contract, “which is exceptional.”
Flora said Public Works has been monitoring protective measures installed for stormwater and, according to the Public Works director, everything looks good. Cal OES has been impressive in coordinating with the city, Flora added.
He said he’d gotten a call earlier that day from Cal OES to check on whether the city had any concerns about measures put in place to protect the watershed.
Flora said a third of an inch of rain is one thing, 3 to 6 inches “is something quite different,” so they’re hoping what’s in place will hold up and the debris removal will start next week.
In response to questions from Councilwoman Joyce Overton about the water systems for the impacted mobile home parks, Flora said Sen. Mike McGuire has been pushing the state water board to move Konocti County Water District’s plans and the needed fundings for improvements in that area through the state approval process.
Before the fire Konocti County Water District already had a plan for providing water for Cache Creek Mobile Home Park. Creekside Mobile Home Park has had its water provided by the county’s Lower Lake water district.
Flora said the long-term expectation is that Konocti County Water District will provide water for both parks.
While some people had been living in Creekside Mobile Home Park after the fire, due to issues with water supply Flora said the city had to red-tag the park and provide housing. Cache Creek has a temporary water connection through Konocti County Water.
Council holds bond hearing, approves water park demolition contract
In other business, the council held a Fiscal Responsibility Act hearing to adopt a resolution approving the issuance of tax-exempt bonds not-to-exceed $8 million by the California Statewide Communities Development Authority, or CSCDA.
The bonds in question are not for the city, but for HPD Clearlake II LP to finance the acquisition and rehabilitation of the 72-unit multifamily Clearlake Apartments, located at 7145 Old Highway 53. Previous financing was done in 2005.
James Hamill of CSCDA, who attended via Zoom, said the hearing was a federal and local requirement, with Clearlake a longtime member of the authority.
He said the bonds are to refinance the Clearlake Apartments, where the plan includes spending $60,000 per unit for rehabilitation and extending affordability covenants for up to 55 years.
There is no liability to the city, and the hearing was merely a perfunctory requirement of tax code, said Hamill, noting they don’t issue bonds in the city without letting officials know about it.
Councilman Russ Cremer moved to approve the resolution, which the council approved 5-0.
On Thursday the council also approved a $239,800 contract with Resource Environmental for the demolition of the remaining structures at the former Outrageous Waters water park.
That property had previously been part of the former Pearce Field airport, now owned by the city, and the city’s plans are to include it in a larger commercial development plan for the land.
Public Works Director Dale Goodman said the demolition is a small project but an important one to the city.
“As part of the cleanup, it is necessary to remove all of the infrastructure that was placed there for the water park,” Goodman said.
The city received two bids, with Resource Environmental’s being the lowest. The only other bid, from Chernoh Excavating, was for $496,464.
After some consideration of the bid — which was higher than the city’s rough estimate of $150,000 — and council concerns that the company could do the work for the price and that rebidding may not bring a lower price, the contract was unanimously approved.
The council on Thursday also met one of the city shelter’s adoptable dogs; awarded a $100,000 contract to All In One Auto Repair and Towing contract for the city’s Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Program towing, storing, dismantling and disposal services; appointed Cremer to attend upcoming Board of Supervisors redistricting meetings; and reached consensus for a plan for a storage facility for disaster supplies at the senior center to come back for a formal vote in November.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.