The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, or ABC, encourages the public to celebrate July 4 responsibly by designating a sober driver for celebrations involving alcohol.
Licensees can help keep the public safe by checking IDs and not serving obviously intoxicated patrons.
“If you choose to celebrate with alcohol, make sure to designate a sober driver or arrange a ride with an app or taxi service,” said ABC Director Eric Hirata. “We can all do our part to keep communities safe by preventing drinking and driving.”
ABC suggests licensees offer nonalcoholic drinks for designated sober drivers and monitor who is drinking alcohol.
If you see people leaving who have been drinking alcohol, check on how they are getting home and offer alternate transportation if needed.
The California Highway Patrol has deployed extra patrol officers over the holiday weekend as part of a maximum enforcement period, or MEP, that began at 6:01 p.m. on Friday, June 30, and continues through 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, July 4.
There were 44 people killed in crashes on California’s roadways during the 2022 Independence Day MEP, and CHP made 998 arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
In addition to speeding violations, officers will be on the lookout for distracted drivers and motorists suspected of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
The average cost of a first-time DUI arrest is approximately $13,500, accounting for vehicle impound fees, fines, attorney fees, auto insurance hikes and other penalties.
Scott A Imberman, Michigan State University and Katharine O. Strunk, Michigan State University
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
The COVID-19 pandemic had a stark negative impact on students’ math scores, new data from Michigan shows. Math achievement growth over the three-year period from spring 2019 through spring 2022 was substantially lower – approximately 7 national percentiles – than among comparable students the three years prior.
There were even larger decreases among students who are Black or Latino, low income or who attended the majority of schools that taught remotely for at least part of the 2020-2021 academic year.
Effects on scores for English language arts, which include reading and writing, were small and generally not statistically significant.
To arrive at these findings, we looked at individual test scores and other data from Michigan.
First we looked at how math and English language arts test scores on Michigan’s annual statewide M-STEP exam grew between 2019 and 2022 for a group of students in third grade through fifth grade in spring 2019.
We compared these students’ test score growth with growth achieved by similar students who were in those same grades three years earlier, before the pandemic began. This provides us with a broad view of the impact of the pandemic on school learning as measured through test scores.
We also looked at scores from a series of benchmark tests taken between fall 2020 and spring 2022 to measure how achievement growth changed within each school year leading up to and following the height of the pandemic.
While other studies also show how the pandemic set back student achievement, our research looks at how achievement was affected over the course of the pandemic rather than just the end result. And the picture is pretty clear: Using a set of exams given at the beginning and end of each school year, we found a large drop in achievement between fall 2020 and spring 2021.
While student achievement began to improve in spring 2021, that recovery has been too slow to enable students to reach pre-pandemic expectations for test scores.
And, just as Black, Latino and low-income students suffered the largest drops in test scores during the pandemic, their math recovery has also slightly lagged behind white students and students who were more affluent.
Why it matters
This study adds to the research on how the pandemic appears to have exacerbated racial and economic achievement gaps. These gaps are important because lower achievement among disadvantaged groups could lead to lower college enrollment rates and, in turn, lower earnings.
What still isn’t known
Research is starting to show how quickly students are recovering and whether students are catching up at a rate fast enough to overcome pandemic learning disruptions. Some interventions, such as tutoring and after-school programming, are in place to attempt to speed up the recovery, but we do not yet know how effective they are.
We also don’t know for sure why there were disproportionate learning delays in math relative to English language arts. One possibility is that families found it easier to supplement reading instruction at home compared to math.
What’s next
Our next study looks at how the pandemic affected how students were identified for special education services. We are assessing how the inability to have in-person contact between teachers, school professionals and students made it harder to assess and serve students who might benefit from special education. Delays in access to these services could have substantially affected their academic, developmental and behavioral progress.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The long Independence Day weekend will once again bring with it celebrations including parades and fireworks.
The following is a list of major community events planned for the weekend.
SATURDAY, JULY 1
Clearlake
The Lakeshore Lions Club of Clearlake will sponsor the 65th annual Redbud Parade and Festival, beginning at 11 a.m. with the parade starting at Redbud Park.
At Austin Park, the Lakeshore Lions and Lakeshore Lioness will feature an assortment of food, cold drinks and beer. Arts and craft vendors, games and entertainment for all will be offered, and the Clearlake Chamber of Commerce will sponsor the International Worm Races.
The city of Clearlake will host a free concert showcasing Def Leppard Revisited and Journey Revisited at 7 p.m.
The Midway of Fun Carnival presale tickets are available at Clearlake Automotive, Bob’s Vacuum and A+B Collision. For ticket information call 707-350-7100.
The Lakeshore Lions Club also will sponsor the firework display at dark off of Austin Beach.
Lakeport
The Lakeport Speedway will hold its annual fireworks display after the evening’s races.
The grandstands open at 5 p.m., racing action begins at 7 p.m. and fireworks will follow.
There will be modifieds, bombers, legends and West Coast mini modifieds.
General admission is $15 per person, with seniors 55 and over and members of the military paying $12 each. Children ages 4 to 12 are $12, children age 3 and under are admitted for free.
The speedway is located at the Lake County Fairgrounds, 401 Martin St.
SUNDAY, JULY 2
Clearlake Oaks
The Maxine Sherman Memorial annual fireworks display will take place beginning at 9 p.m.
Fireworks will be launched from the lake at the Clearlake Oaks public launch ramp.
For more information, contact the Clearlake Oaks-Glenhaven Business Association, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 707-596-0248.
Lakeport
Konocti Vista Casino Resort will hold a free community fireworks show.
A party with vendors, a DJ, food for purchase and a bar begins at 6 p.m., with the Fun Zone Arcade open indoors.
The fireworks will start at dusk, at approximately 9:30 p.m., and will be viewable from the marina and parking lot.
Konocti Vista is located at 2755 Mission Rancheria Road, Lakeport.
TUESDAY, JULY 4
Lakeport
Lakeport’s July 4 celebration will take place from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
At Library Park, there will be a street fair, craft vendors, food trucks, and a beer and wine booth.
There will be fireworks over the lake beginning at dusk.
Lindsey Schier, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Scott Kanoski, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Do low-calorie sweeteners help with weight management? And are they safe for long-term use?
This is among the most controversial topics in nutritional science. In early May 2023, the World Health Organization issued a statement that cautions against the use of nonsugar sweeteners for weight loss except for people who have preexisting diabetes.
Based on its interpretation of that large-scale review, the WHO recommended against using artificial sweeteners for weight control and concluded that there may be health risks associated with habitual consumption of nonsugar sweeteners over the long term. However, the WHO also acknowledged that the existing evidence is not conclusive and that more research needs to be done.
As neuroscientists, we study how dietary factors such as sweeteners affect the brain’s ability to perform critical functions, including metabolism, appetite, and learning and memory.
We found the WHO’s advisory surprising based on the study’s equivocal results. Determining the answers to these questions is immensely challenging, and public health messaging around recommendations can send mixed messages.
‘Healthy’ versus ‘unhealthy’ sugars
Natural sugars like glucose and fructose, together with fiber and other nutrients, are found in many food sources that are considered healthy, such as fruit. However, these simple carbohydrates have been increasingly added into manufactured food products, especially beverages. Sugar-sweetened beverages are usually high in calories and offer little else in the way of nutrition.
In the early 20th century, food and beverage manufacturers began incorporating naturally and chemically derived substances that satisfy sweet cravings but contain significantly fewer calories than natural sugars – and, in some cases, zero calories. Sugar substitutes became particularly widespread in the 1950s with the increasing popularity of diet sodas. Since then, consumers have increasingly turned to these sugar substitutes in their everyday lives.
Sugar substitutes go by many names, including high-intensity sweeteners, artificial sweeteners, nonnutritive sweeteners, low-calorie sweeteners and, as termed in the WHO report, nonsugar sweeteners.“ These include synthetic compounds like sucralose, acesulfame potassium and aspartame, and naturally derived ones, such as those from the plant Stevia rebaudiana, among many others.
Each nonsugar sweetener has a unique chemical structure, but they all activate sweet taste receptors at very low concentrations. This means that you need to add only a tiny amount of them to sweeten your coffee or tea, as opposed to heaping spoonfuls of natural sugar.
Sugar substitutes and the quest for weight loss
Obesity and its associated metabolic conditions, like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, are now among the leading causes of preventable death in the U.S. The obesity epidemic has been linked in part to an increase in added sugar consumption over the past century.
Sugar substitutes were designed to help. The math seems straightforward: Replacing your favorite 12-ounce sugar-sweetened beverage that contains 150 calories with an artificially sweetened beverage of the same volume that contains zero calories should allow you to reduce the number of calories you take in each day and reduce your body weight over time.
However, there are conflicting studies from animal modelsand humans that have not found significant body weight gain associated with nonsugar sweeteners consumption.
Parsing the health impacts
Regardless of any potential benefits nonsugar sweeteners may have for weight control, their use must also be considered in the context of overall health.
Agencies like the WHO and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration periodically review available evidence and assess the safety of various food additives, including nonsugar sweeteners, for use in foods and beverages within what is called an acceptable daily intake limit. In this context, the acceptable daily intake is based on the estimated amount of a specific nonsugar sweetener that can be safely consumed daily over one’s entire life without adverse effects on health.
Each agency sets its own daily allowance based on the best available data. But because these experiments cannot account for all possible conditions in which these substances are used in real life, it is critical that scientists continue to investigate the health effects of food additives.
The authors of the WHO report relied on three main types of published research studies to determine whether nonsugar sweetener consumption was linked to adverse health effects. The gold standard for assessing causation is what are called randomized controlled trials.
In these studies, people are randomly assigned to either an experimental group – which receives the experimental substance, such as a nonsugar sweetener – or a control group – which receives a placebo or different substance. Participants in both groups are then tracked for a period of time, typically weeks or months. The majority of studies involving randomized controlled trials on nonsugar sweeteners to date involve this type of comparison, with nonsugar sweeteners replacing consumption of natural sugar-sweetened beverages.
The analysis of almost 50 randomized controlled trials on which the WHO based its recommendation found modest benefits of using nonsugar sweeteners for weight loss and determined that the habitual use of those nonsugar sweeteners did not lead to diabetes symptoms or indicators of cardiovascular disease. But it did find that the use of nonsugar sweeteners was associated with a higher ratio of total cholesterol to HDL, short for high-density lipoprotein, which is considered the "good cholesterol.”
That means that habitual consumers of artificial sweetener had more of the low-density lipoprotein, or LDL version, in their system. That form of “bad cholesterol” is a risk factor for heart disease.
However, other potential adverse consequences of consuming nonsugar sweeteners may take more time to appear than can be identified in the limited time frame of a randomized controlled trial.
The authors also evaluated what are called prospective cohort studies. Those studies track participants’ self-reported use of sweeteners alongside health outcomes, oftentimes over many years. They also took into account case-control studies, which identify people with or without a certain health issue, such as cancer, and then use available health records and interviews to determine the extent of nonsugar sweetener use in their past.
Examination of the cohort and case-control studies found that regular consumption of nonsugar sweetener was associated with increased fat accumulation, higher body mass index and increased incidence of Type 2 diabetes. Those findings differ from the outcomes of the randomized control studies.
Analysis of the cohort and case-control studies also concluded that a history of regular nonsugar sweetener use was linked to increased frequency of stroke, hypertension, other adverse cardiovascular events and, in pregnant people, an increased risk for premature birth. The frequency of cancer in nonsugar sweetener consumers was very low in general, though saccharin, an FDA-approved sweetener found in many food products, was associated with a bladder cancer.
Caveats and takeaways
On the face of it, these results are alarming, but they need to be taken with a grain of salt. As the WHO report points out, these studies have significant limitations that need to be considered.
Take, for example, in the cohort and case-control studies, that higher body mass index, or BMI, was associated with greater nonsugar sweetener intake and poorer health outcomes. One possibility is that people with obesity used nonsugar sweeteners to help cut calories more than others without obesity. This makes it difficult to determine whether the disease is caused by sustained artificial sweetener use or by the other underlying conditions associated with obesity.
Additionally, the way nonsugar sweeteners are consumed is not controlled in these types of studies. So negative health outcomes could be associated with other affiliated harmful behaviors, such as more sugar or fat in the diet.
The picture is very mixed on both the benefits of nonsugar sweeteners for weight loss and their ties to adverse health issues. The WHO’s recommendation seems to have weighed the cohort and case-control studies over the randomized controlled ones, a decision that we found puzzling in light of the limitations of these studies for assessing whether nonsugar sweeteners have a causal role in disease.
As with all health-related choices, the science is complex. In our view, grabbing a diet drink to offset the calories in a slice of chocolate cake every once in a while will likely not be harmful for your health or lead to a significant weight change.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has new dogs — big ones, little ones, seniors and puppies — waiting to be adopted this week.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Anatolian shepherd, Belgian malinois, Catahoula leopard dog, Chihuahua, German shepherd, hound, mastiff, pit bull, plott hound, pointer and 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.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
Female terrier
This 6-year-old female terrier has a gray coat
She is in kennel No. 68, ID No. LCAC-A-5393.
Male German shepherd puppy
This 6-month-old male German shepherd puppy has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 2, ID No. LCAC-A-5315.
‘Zeus’
“Zeus” is a 2-year-old male mastiff with a short brown coat.
He is in kennel No. 3, ID No. LCAC-A-5070.
Female German shepherd
This 3-year-old female German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 4, ID No. LCAC-A-5396.
Anatolian shepherd-mastiff mix
This 3-year-old male Anatolian shepherd-mastiff mix has a short fawn coat.
He is in kennel No. 5, ID No. LCAC-A-5276.
‘Zeta’
“Zeta” is a 1-year-old female pit bull terrier with a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 6, ID No. LCAC-A-5427.
Female pit bull terrier
This 3-year-old female pit bull terrier has a brown and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 10, ID No. LCAC-A-5400.
Female hound-shepherd mix puppy
This 3-month-old female hound-shepherd mix puppy has a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 11, ID No. LCAC-A-5370.
Male Catahoula leopard dog puppy
This 3-month-old male Catahoula leopard dog puppy has a short tan and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 13, ID No. LCAC-A-5354.
Female pointer-retriever mix
This 9-year-old female pointer-retriever mix has a short white coat with brown markings.
She is in kennel No. 15, ID No. LCAC-A-5404.
Male German shepherd
This two and a half year old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 16, ID No. LCAC-A-5337.
Male German shepherd
This 1 year old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 17, ID No. LCAC-A-5324.
Male plott hound
This 2-year-old male plott hound has a short brown coat.
He is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-5143.
Female pit bull terrier
This 5-year-old female pit bull terrier has a short gray and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 19, ID No. LCAC-A-5321.
Male Chihuahua-terrier mix
This 2-year-old male Chihuahua-terrier mix has a short white coat.
She is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-5381.
Female Chihuahua
This 2-year-old female Chihuahua has a short brown and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 21, ID No. LCAC-A-5379.
Male shepherd
This 2-year-old male shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-5423.
Male pit bull terrier
This 5-year-old male pit bull terrier has a short white coat with red markings.
He is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-5322.
Female pit bull terrier
This 6-year-old female pit bull terrier has a short tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-5410.
Male shepherd
This 1 and a half year old male shepherd has a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 26, ID No. LCAC-A-5424.
Female shepherd
This 2-year-old female shepherd has a short yellow and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-5369.
Male pit bull puppy
This 5-month-old male pit bull puppy has a white coat.
He is in kennel No. 29, ID No. LCAC-A-5325.
Male Belgian malinois
This 1 and a half year old male Belgian malinois has a tan and black coat.
He is in kennel No. 30, ID No. LCAC-A-5409.
Male shepherd
This 2-year-old male shepherd has a short tan coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-5344.
Male shepherd mix puppy
This 6-month-old male shepherd mix puppy has a black coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. LCAC-A-5408.
Female shepherd
This 10-month-old female shepherd has a tricolor coat.
She is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-5323.
‘Jojo’
“Jojo” is a one and a half year old female pit bull terrier with a short tricolor coat.
She is in kennel foster care, ID No. LCAC-A-5312.
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. — In 2016, the Woodland-based nonprofit Tuleyome purchased 1,280-acres along a portion of the north fork of Cache Creek in Lake County.
Known as Silver Spur Ranch, the property is located in the heart of the 330,780-acre Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument.
Since the purchase, Tuleyome has been working with multiple agencies and partners on several ongoing scientific studies.
The California Department of Water Resources has a water quality monitoring station on Cache Creek as it flows through Silver Spur.
The Department of Water Resources California Data Exchange Center installs, maintains and operates an extensive hydrologic data collection network including snow reporting gages for the Cooperative Snow Surveys Program as well as precipitation and river stage sensors for flood forecasting. The monitor has been collecting data since late 2000.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, or CDFW, uses Silver Spur as one of its annual deer survey locations. Their study utilizes game cameras and the collection of fecal pellets to study DNA.
The annual, five-week study has taken place since 2017, shortly after Tuleyome acquired the ranch.
While Tuleyome does not permit hunting on the property, hunters are allowed pass through the ranch to utilize the Bureau of Land Management-managed lands to the west, east, and north.
In 2018, the Pawnee fire burned through Silver Spur Ranch. Tuleyome applied for and received funding from the Sacramento Zoo to study how wildlife, especially mammals, returned to the area after the burn. A dozen wildlife cameras were set up in different habitat types to monitor the property.
The cameras provided us the opportunity to see what happens when humans are not around. It became clear that deer, bear, bobcats and mountain lions utilize Silver Spur.
The fire in 2018 also put Silver Spur on the radar of Dr. Timothy Stark from the University of Illinois -Urbana Champaign. He and his team are monitoring the impact of wildfires on landslides in Lake County.
There are multiple landslides of varying sizes — some have burned, some have not. Dr. Stark has installed weather stations on Silver Spur as part of a USDA-funded study. The weather stations collect data including precipitation, wind speed and direction, temperature, and soil moisture.
The most recent study to utilize Tuleyome’s Silver Spur Ranch is CDFW’s Vegetation Classification and Mapping Program.
This program is conducting vegetation surveys in Lake County to include in their North Coast and Ranges Vegetation Classification and Mapping Project.
They will use the information to create a description of plant communities (vegetation types) and a vegetation map of a section of the North Coast, including Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, and portions of Lake counties.
Tuleyome’s Silver Spur Ranch is a gorgeous place in the heart of Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. These studies are helping us understand the importance and uniqueness of the Monument and will provide information when the Monument Management Plan is being developed by the BLM and U.S. Forest Service.
Nate Lillge is the adventures and engagement director for Tuleyome.
What's up for July? Mars and Venus go their separate ways, Saturn cruises with a dusty young star, and it's prime time for the Milky Way.
You'll find Venus and Mars in the west after sunset throughout July. The pair moved ever closer in the sky during June, and they begin July appearing quite near to each other, but it's time for them to part company. You'll notice them trending lower as the month goes on, with Venus in particular being noticeably lower each night.
During the second week of July, reddish-colored Mars will appear very close to the blue-white star Regulus. Mars is quite distant from Earth right now, and appears at its dimmest for the year in July and August.
This month it appears at about the same brightness as Regulus, and you should easily be able to see the difference in their color with your eyes, or a pair of binoculars. They're closest together on July 9 and 10.
And on July 20, the Moon will pass through, appearing just next to Mars. Mercury also pops up – quite low in the sky – in the second half of July, for those with views of the horizon.
During July, you'll have giant planets Jupiter and Saturn keeping you company in the late night and early morning hours. And notably, you'll find Jupiter shining brightly beneath the crescent moon on the morning of July 11. Now, Jupiter appears quite a bit brighter than Saturn, and it's not just because Jupiter's a little bigger.
See, the farther away something is in space, the fainter it tends to be, and Saturn's certainly farther away from Earth than Jupiter. But it's also farther away from the Sun, and being more distant means it receives much less sunlight than Jupiter to begin with.
So it's the combination of being both farther from the Sun and farther from Earth that makes Saturn appear so much fainter.
Now, Saturn cruises across the sky with bright star Fomalhaut in July. At around 440 million years old, Fomalhaut is a fairly young star. NASA's Webb Space Telescope recently revealed new details in the dusty debris disk that surrounds it.
Webb showed that there's more structure in the disk than was previously known, with three distinct belts made of debris from collisions of larger bodies, probably not unlike the asteroids and comets in our own planetary system.
And researchers think the belts most likely are carved by the gravitational forces produced by unseen planets. It's a nice reminder that most stars you gaze upon represent entire planetary systems. Each one is a sun, and most have a family of worlds in orbit around them.
Finally, a reminder that July is prime time for viewing the bright core of our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
The Milky Way core is visible looking toward the south in July, as a faint, diagonal band of light, as soon as it's fully dark.
Packed with enormous numbers of stars, along with dark clouds of dust, you can view its faint glow with your own eyes from locations away from bright urban centers.
So if you have the opportunity to go camping or skywatching away from the city, it's truly one of the most awe inspiring sights of the night sky, and not to be missed!
Stay up to date with all of NASA's missions to explore the solar system and beyond at www.nasa.gov.
Preston Dyches works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has many dogs waiting to begin their summer in new homes.
There are 35 dogs listed this week on the Clearlake Animal Control website.
This week’s dogs include “Tink,” a female Doberman pinscher mix with a short red coat.
Another adoptable dog is “Emma,” a female Rottweiler mix with a short black coat.
Also waiting for a new home is “Dennis,” a male Rottweiler mix with a short black coat.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
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.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — The Clearlake Police Department is attempting to locate a missing man.
They are seeking information about Charles Ness.
Police said Ness was on Friday between 6 and 6:30 p.m. in the area of 6101 Old Highway 53 in Clearlake. He was possibly headed to J&L Market on a mountain bike.
Ness is described as a white male adult, 6 feet, 1 inch tall, and 250 pounds, with brown hair shaved on sides and short on top, with hazel eyes.
When last seen, he was wearing a shirt of unknown color and blue baggy jeans.
If you have any information regarding Ness’ whereabouts please contact the Clearlake Police Department at 707-994-8251, Extension 1.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Health officials and forecasters are warning of extreme heat this weekend and urging community members to take measures to protect themselves.
The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for Lake County and other parts of Northern California through Sunday night due to the increasing temperatures.
The advisory, in effect through 9 p.m. Sunday, warns of temperatures as high as 108 degrees.
Temperatures are expected to top the century mark on Saturday and Sunday before dropping into the 90s by Monday. By Thursday, temperatures are forecast to drop into the high 80s.
“This weekend, millions of people across five states will experience unusual heat. Human-caused climate change made this event more likely and more intense,” said Dr. Andrew Pershing, vice president of science at Climate Central, an independent group of scientists and communicators who research and report the facts about the changing climate and how it affects people’s lives.
Climate Central said forecasts indicate a three-day stretch of “anomalous and extreme heat” is expected across California and the rest of the southwest through Monday.
The California Department of Public Health urged Californians to protect themselves from extreme heat over the Fourth of July weekend and remaining summer months by staying cool, hydrated, connected and informed.
“Summer heat waves can be dangerous, especially for young children, older adults, people with chronic diseases and disabilities, outdoor workers, people who are unhoused and those who are pregnant,” said CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Tomás Aragón. “It's important to protect yourself and your loved ones by checking in on friends and family who may need assistance, monitoring weather forecasts, staying hydrated, limiting time outdoors, and visiting cooling centers.”
CDPH said extreme heat is defined in most of the U.S. as an extended period — two to three days — of high heat and humidity with temperatures above 90 degrees.
Extreme heat often results in the highest annual number of deaths among all weather-related disasters, the agency said.
California is experiencing more frequent episodes of extreme heat, posing a greater danger to Californians from heat-related illness, state health officials reported.
Community members are urged to follow the following guidelines to stay safe.
Stay cool (during the hottest times of the day):
• Those without air conditioning should check with their city or county for cooling centers or visit public locations such as a library or shopping mall. • Avoid physical exertion or exercising outdoors. • Wear lightweight, light colored, loose clothing, hats, sunglasses and sunscreen.
Stay hydrated:
• Drink plenty of fluids, especially water, even when not thirsty; drink sports drinks (in moderation with water) to help replace electrolytes lost during exercise. • Avoid sugary, alcoholic, and very cold drinks. • Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.
Stay connected:
• Monitor those at high risk of heat-related illness including infants and young children; people 65 years of age or older; individuals with chronic illness, disabilities or who are pregnant. • Use a buddy system when working in the heat.
Stay informed:
• Check the local news for weather forecasts, extreme heat alerts and cooling centers.
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.
A new space telescope named Euclid, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with important contributions from NASA, is set to launch in July to explore why the universe’s expansion is speeding up.
Scientists call the unknown cause of this cosmic acceleration “dark energy.” By May 2027, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will join Euclid to explore this puzzle in ways that have never been possible before.
“Twenty-five years after its discovery, the universe’s accelerated expansion remains one of the most pressing mysteries in astrophysics,” said Jason Rhodes, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Rhodes is a deputy project scientist for Roman and the U.S. science lead for Euclid. “With these upcoming telescopes, we will measure dark energy in different ways and with far more precision than previously achievable, opening up a new era of exploration into this mystery.”
Scientists are unsure whether the universe’s accelerated expansion is caused by an additional energy component, or whether it signals that our understanding of gravity needs to be changed in some way.
Astronomers will use Roman and Euclid to test both theories at the same time, and scientists expect both missions to uncover important information about the underlying workings of the universe.
Euclid and Roman are both designed to study cosmic acceleration, but using different and complementary strategies. Both missions will make 3D maps of the universe to answer fundamental questions about the history and structure of the universe. Together, they will be much more powerful than either individually.
Euclid will observe a far larger area of the sky – approximately 15,000 square degrees, or about a third of the sky – in both infrared and optical wavelengths of light, but with less detail than Roman. It will peer back 10 billion years to when the universe was about 3 billion years old.
Roman’s largest core survey will be capable of probing the universe to a much greater depth and precision, but over a smaller area – about 2,000 square degrees, or one-twentieth of the sky. Its infrared vision will unveil the cosmos when it was 2 billion years old, revealing a larger number of fainter galaxies.
While Euclid will focus on cosmology exclusively, Roman will also survey nearby galaxies, find and investigate planets throughout our galaxy, study objects in the outskirts of our solar system, and much more.
The dark energy hunt
The universe has been expanding ever since its birth – a fact discovered by Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître in 1927 and Edwin Hubble in 1929. But scientists expected the gravity of the universe’s matter to gradually slow that expansion.
In the 1990s, by looking at a particular kind of supernova, scientists discovered that about 6 billion years ago, dark energy began ramping up its influence on the universe, and no one knows how or why. The fact that it’s speeding up means that our picture of the cosmos is missing something fundamental.
Roman and Euclid will provide separate streams of compelling new data to fill in gaps in our understanding. They’ll attempt to pin down cosmic acceleration’s cause in a few different ways.
First, both Roman and Euclid will study the accumulation of matter using a technique called weak gravitational lensing. This light-bending phenomenon occurs because anything with mass warps the fabric of space-time; the bigger the mass, the greater the warp. Images of a distant source produced by light moving through these warps look distorted, too. When those nearer “lensing” objects are massive galaxies or galaxy clusters, background sources can appear smeared or form multiple images.
Less concentrated mass, like clumps of dark matter, can create more subtle effects. By studying these smaller distortions, Roman and Euclid will each create a 3D dark matter map.
That will offer clues about cosmic acceleration because the gravitational attraction of dark matter, acting like a cosmic glue that holds together galaxies and galaxy clusters, counters the universe’s expansion.
Tallying up the universe’s dark matter across cosmic time will help scientists better understand the push-and-pull feeding into cosmic acceleration.
The two missions will also study the way galaxies clustered together in different cosmic eras. Scientists have detected a pattern in the way galaxies congregate from measurements of the nearby universe. For any galaxy today, we are about twice as likely to find another galaxy about 500 million light-years away than a little nearer or farther.
This distance has grown over time due to the expansion of space. By looking farther out into the universe, to earlier cosmic times, astronomers can study the preferred distance between galaxies in different eras.
Seeing how it has changed will reveal the expansion history of the universe. Seeing how galaxy clustering varies over time will also enable an accurate test of gravity. This will help astronomers differentiate between an unknown energy component and various modified gravity theories as explanations for cosmic acceleration.
Roman will conduct an additional survey to discover many distant type Ia supernovae – a special type of exploding star. These explosions peak at a similar intrinsic brightness. Because of this, astronomers can determine how far away the supernovae are by simply measuring how bright they appear.
Astronomers will use Roman to study the light of these supernovae to find out how quickly they appear to be moving away from us. By comparing how fast they’re receding at different distances, scientists will trace cosmic expansion over time. This will help us better understand whether and how dark energy has changed throughout the history of the universe.
A powerful pair
The two missions’ surveys will overlap, with Euclid likely observing the whole area Roman will scan. That means scientists will be able to use Roman’s more sensitive and precise data to apply corrections to Euclid’s, and extend the corrections over Euclid’s much larger area.
“Euclid’s first look at the broad region of sky it will survey will inform the science, analysis, and survey approach for Roman’s deeper dive,” said Mike Seiffert, project scientist for the NASA contribution to Euclid at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Together, Euclid and Roman will add up to much more than the sum of their parts,” said Yun Wang, a senior research scientist at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, who has led galaxy clustering science groups for both Euclid and Roman. “Combining their observations will give astronomers a better sense of what’s actually going on in the universe.”
Three NASA-supported science groups are contributing to the Euclid mission. In addition to designing and fabricating Euclid's Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) instrument sensor-chip electronics, JPL led the procurement and delivery of the NISP detectors. Those detectors were tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI), at Caltech, will support U.S.-based investigations using Euclid data.
For more information about Euclid go to: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid/.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
Ashley Balzer works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.