LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Lakeport Economic Development Advisory Committee will meet this week to discuss city projects and business-related plans.

The committee, or LEDAC, will meet via Zoom from 7:30 to 9 a.m. Wednesday, July 12, in the council chambers at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St.

The meeting is open to the public.

On Wednesday, LEDAC will get updates on city projects and the 2023-24 budget.

Committee members also will discuss the LEDAC business plan for 2023-24, including the business walk, its 2022 findings and the review survey for the fall of 2023; the strategic plan; and arts and culture plan.

LEDAC’s next meeting will be Sept. 13.

LEDAC advocates for a strong and positive Lakeport business community and acts as a conduit between the city and the community for communicating the goals, activities and progress of Lakeport’s economic and business programs.

Members are Chair Wilda Shock, Vice Chair Denise Combs and Secretary JoAnn Saccato, along with Bonnie Darling, Jeff Davis, Candy De Los Santos, Bill Eaton, Monica Flores, Barbara Flynn, Pam Harpster, Laura McAndrews Sammel, Bob Santana and Tim Stephens. City staff who are members include City Manager Kevin Ingram and Community Development Department representatives.

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. — Is marriage a fate worse than hanging?

This is just one of many disturbing, yet thought-provoking questions you may ask yourself when you come to see Shakespeare at the Lake’s production of “Measure for Measure” this summer.

Performances take place at Library Park in Lakeport on July 29 and 30, and at Austin Park in Clearlake on Aug. 4, 5 and 6.

Although this is the eighth annual Shakespeare at the Lake, or SATL, production, this year boasts a few notable firsts.

Up until now, all of the live SATL shows have been lighthearted comedies, but “Measure for Measure” is the first drama.

Really, it’s considered a very dark comedy, exploring themes of power (and its abuse), justice (or injustice) and mercy (or lack thereof).

Sex, religion, and mistaken identity (a Shakespearean trademark) are also sprinkled in, for good measure.

Another first for SATL is the addition of preshow entertainment. Faire Measure, a string quartet featuring Renaissance-era music, will delight audiences starting about an hour before the actors take the stage. Bring your appetites, because local food and drink vendors will be set up and ready ahead of time as well.

When SATL went online in 2020 and 2021, the cast included several actors from outside Lake County. However, this is the first live production featuring a leading actor hailing from outside the county.

Phaedra Swearengin, who portrays the dichotomous Duke, travels from Willits multiple times a week for rehearsal. Though new to SATL, she is not new to Shakespeare. This is her sixth time playing a lead in one of the Bard’s great works.

Other new cast members include Adam McGee, who plays the ruthless Angelo, and his partner, Krista Kenny, portraying the saintly Isabella. McGee and Kenny were encouraged to audition by Adam’s daughter Catilynn, a spirited and energetic high schooler.

Luke Del Bosco, another talented young high schooler, is a welcome addition to SATL. Claire Jacobs (recently seen onstage in “Fishwrap”), Lillian Bowers, Emily Fordham, Dan Fossa (a Mr. Lake County contestant) and Ashley Haubner are also brand new to the Shakespeare at the Lake experience.

Along with the many new faces, you may recognize a few actors from previous SATL performances. Alan Fletcher, Kaleb Sanderson and Barbara Clark have been in multiple productions, and Ed Borg joins the cast for the eighth time. If you did the math, that means he has been in every single production.

“Now it’s just a habit,” Borg said.

Cast members, both new and veteran, are thoroughly enjoying the rehearsal process. They’ve described it as “engaging, educational, intense,” and “challenging.” Discovering who their characters are and how they relate to one another is a fascinating exercise.

Director John Tomlinson “makes you reach deep to figure out who your character is and why he does what he does. It's not always comfortable, but it's always worth the journey,” Borg explained.

Making sense of what can seem like a foreign language is the central task of the actors, with the help of Tomlinson. “We spend a lot of time analyzing the text so that the performers really know what the characters are saying,” added Jacobs. “If we don't know what we're saying, how is the audience supposed to understand?”

It is the goal of the cast, crew, and production team that audiences will not only understand, but thoroughly enjoy, this year’s presentation of “Measure for Measure.”

Performances are free of charge. Preshow entertainment and food/beverage sales begin at 6 p.m.

Shakespeare at the Lake is a coproduction of the Lake County Theatre Co. and Mendocino College, with generous support from the Lake County Friends of Mendocino College, the city of Lakeport, the city of Clearlake and the Clear Lake Chamber of Commerce.

For more information, visit the Lake County Theatre Co. website at www.lctc.us.

Laura Barnes is the producer for Shakespeare at the Lake.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. — The Clearlake Police Department is attempting to locate a woman who has been reported missing.

Police are seeking Vanessa Rowe, 33.

Rowe is described as a white female adult, 5 feet 7 inches tall and 200 pounds, with red hair and blue eyes.

She was last seen on June 4 in Lakeport, when she was wearing a white dress and pants.

If you have any information regarding Rowe's whereabouts please contact the Clearlake Police Department at 707-994-8251, Extension 1.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control is offering numerous dogs of various ages and breeds to new homes 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.

‘Roasie’

“Roasie”is a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier with a short black and white coat.

She is in kennel No. 7, ID No. LCAC-A-5434.

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.

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.

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.

 

For anyone who enjoys nature, summer is a fascinating time to be outside. Animals are on the move: Turtles are nesting, baby birds are testing their wings, snakes are foraging and young mammals are emerging.

In central Pennsylvania, where I live, last year’s hatchling painted turtles have overwintered in their nests and emerged looking like tiny helpless snacks for raccoons and ravens. I’ve already rescued a baby killdeer – a shorebird that nests in parking lots – that ran off the road and got stuck in a grate. And I’ve watched an eastern chipmunk prey on a nest of towhee chicks.

I moved the killdeer to safety because it had fallen into what we call an “ecological trap.” Humans create these traps when we degrade habitat that looks suitable to animals. For killdeer, parking pads and roofs give off all the vibes of a great nesting site – except for the drains – and they have less natural habitat available these days.

But I didn’t intervene with the towhees. Their exposed nest site may have been a bad parental decision, or perhaps the chicks’ begging called too much attention. Either way, natural selection helped ensure that these birds and their genes were unlikely to survive. Ultimately, that may be better for the population and species than if I had intervened.

As a wildlife biologist, I know that relocating animals can be bad from a scientific perspective. It also can easily harm the creature you want to help.

Based on my experience as a scientist and university teacher, I’ve developed guidelines for when to get involved in the lives of animals I encounter outside. When I do intervene, it is after carefully considering the potential reasons for the animal’s situation, the species’ population status and the potential harm my actions might inflict upon the whole population – not just on one adorable creature.

Reasons for caution

Wild animals have genetic associations with specific habitats that have evolved over many generations. Relocating them can disrupt those connections.

Moving animals means they can’t contribute their offspring and genes to the local population through breeding. That could be catastrophic for species with slow population growth, like many reptiles, who may take years to mature and might only manage a few successful broods in their lifetime.

For species like these, mature females are critical to keeping population sizes high. When populations are small, they lose genetic diversity that helps them resist environmental change.

Moving wildlife also may introduce new genes elsewhere, leading to genetic shifts over time that didn’t evolve through natural selection. Animals that are successful in a region tend to leave more offspring, and the heritable genetic variation tied to that success becomes more common and associated with the local environment. These are important relationships to safeguard.

Moving animals also can cause immediate harm. Transported animals often can’t survive in a territory other animals have already claimed, or the new arrivals may do damage – for example, by preying on vulnerable local species. Wildlife managers may have to move them into captivity or even euthanize them.

Some species can spread pathogens to other wildlife or humans. At a minimum, moving animals can disorient them and make it hard for them to settle, find food and water or avoid predators.

It’s usually best to keep your distance

In general, your default choice should be not to interfere or interact with wildlife. Knowing that humans are nearby stresses animals. It makes them move away or forage and behave differently, and it can harm their body condition by triggering stress responses that ultimately reduce their fertility.

It’s especially common for people to see baby animals or birds, seemingly alone, and feel compelled to help. In fact, the parents may have secured their young and be actively caring for them, or the young animals may already be independent.

The amount of parental care that different species provide ranges from zero to a lot. For example, once a female turtle chooses a nest site with warm temperatures and the right amount of soil moisture, she lays her eggs and moves on. Hatchling turtles don’t need help unless they’re near pets or roads.

Rattlesnakes will bask in the sun to help their embryos be born live and healthy. Many mammals hide their young during the day and care for them for months.

Bluebirds and tree swallows work tirelessly to feed their young, even after fledging. In contrast, other birds kick their young out at an early stage so they can start the next clutch.

Whatever the species, young and inexperienced animals without parents nearby may either be learning how to navigate or have been left hidden by their parents on purpose.

Parents do occasionally abandon their young. They may do it on purpose because their offspring are unfit, or because the parents aren’t fit enough to raise them. Or perhaps the parents have gotten lost. Whatever the reason, natural selection likely means these individuals and their gene complexes will not continue forward – and that benefits the species overall.

Put the animal’s needs before your own

It’s well established that getting close to nature is good for people’s mental health. I believe it’s very important to foster human connections to nature and facilitate these connections for people who have little exposure to the outdoors.

I advocate a mindful and hands-on approach to being outside. For example, I don’t touch animals that are rare unless it’s part of my research or covered by permits. If I handle an aquatic animal, I make sure my hands are wet and free of chemicals.

However, animals’ needs should come first. Whenever humans are active in an animal’s habitat, they can degrade it and lead the animals to seek other space.

Some wild animals may be abandoned or alone acting strangely because they are sick or generally unfit. People who handle these animals risk contracting zoonotic diseases, such as rabies, plague and avian influenza. Sometimes an unhealthy animal needs to be left alone to avoid spreading infection.

There also are animals that pretend to be injured or dead as a defense strategy. A casual observer may think a rescue is necessary, but don’t make assumptions. For example, Virginia opossums play dead in an involuntary fixed response to fear called defensive thanatosis. They can’t control it, but within minutes to hours, they’re up and back to normal.

 

When and how to help

Here are some guidelines for when and how to intervene in ways that minimize harm to wildlife.

First, don’t relocate animals over significant distances. An animal that accidentally hitches a ride over long distances, such as a treefrog under your bumper, shouldn’t be released in a new host area.

Helping an animal cross a busy road is OK if you move it in the direction in which it is already headed. This is particularly true for animals that live a long time and reproduce slowly, like box turtles, which are declining across North America. Ensuring the survival of a single adult female box turtle can be very important to the success of a local population.

Second, respect the rules at national, state and local parks. Parks often protect at-risk species that can’t safely interact with humans. For example, desert tortoises may urinate as a defense when picked up, which reduces their internal water supply.

Learn to identify common species that can handle human curiosity and make good ambassadors for biodiversity. Many state agencies have a website or atlas for major wildlife groups that will help you learn which species are widespread or more rare. Most ponds have a common frog that’s sure to catch your eye.

 

Third, if you think an animal is truly in danger, call a local game warden, wildlife officer, rehab professional or park ranger for advice. If the animal is immediately at risk from a pet or approaching car, and you can reach it safely, put on some gloves and help it – but leave it traveling in the same direction it was moving, or near its local area, so that it doesn’t become disoriented and try to disperse into dangerous habitat.

Fourth, get out and explore. But remember that you’re a guest in the animals’ habitat – tread softly and respectfully. A fallen log can shelter all kinds of creatures. Look underneath, and then place it back as it was so that it continues to be a home for them.

Julian Avery, Associate Research Professor of Wildlife Conservation, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

BERKELEY, Calif. — The universe is humming with gravitational radiation — a very low-frequency rumble that rhythmically stretches and compresses spacetime and the matter embedded in it.

That is the conclusion of several groups of researchers from around the world who are simultaneously publishing a slew of journal articles on June 28 describing more than 15 years of observations of millisecond pulsars within our corner of the Milky Way galaxy.

At least one group — the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration — has found compelling evidence that the precise rhythms of these pulsars are affected by the stretching and squeezing of spacetime by these long-wavelength gravitational waves.

"This is key evidence for gravitational waves at very low frequencies,” says Vanderbilt University’s Stephen Taylor, who co-led the search and is the current chair of the collaboration. “After years of work, NANOGrav is opening an entirely new window on the gravitational-wave universe."

Gravitational waves were first detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, in 2015.

The short-wavelength fluctuations in spacetime were caused by the merger of smaller black holes, or occasionally neutron stars, all of them weighing in at less than a few hundred solar masses.

The question now is: Are the long-wavelength gravitational waves — with periods from years to decades — also produced by black holes?

In a paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJ Letters), University of California, Berkeley, physicist Luke Zoltan Kelley and the NANOGrav team argue that the hum is likely produced by hundreds of thousands of pairs of supermassive black holes — each weighing billions of times the mass of our sun — that over the history of the universe have gotten close enough to one another to merge.

The team produced simulations of supermassive black hole binary populations containing billions of sources and compared the predicted gravitational wave signatures with NANOGrav’s most recent observations.

The black holes' orbital dance prior to merging vibrates spacetime analogous to the way waltzing dancers rhythmically vibrate a dance floor. Such mergers over the 13.8-billion-year age of the universe produced gravitational waves that today overlap, like the ripples from a handful of pebbles tossed into a pond, to produce the background hum.

Because the wavelengths of these gravitational waves are measured in light years, detecting them required a galaxy-sized array of antennas — a collection of millisecond pulsars.

“I guess the elephant in the room is we're still not 100% sure that it's produced by supermassive black hole binaries. That is definitely our best guess, and it's fully consistent with the data, but we're not positive,” said Kelley, UC Berkeley assistant adjunct professor of astronomy. “If it is binaries, then that's the first time that we've actually confirmed that supermassive black hole binaries exist, which has been a huge puzzle for more than 50 years now.”

Kelley joined Taylor and three other members of the collaboration in a public event that was streamed live on YouTube on June 29 from the National Science Foundation, which funds NANOGrav.

"The signal we're seeing is from a cosmological population over space and over time, in 3D. A collection of many, many of these binaries collectively give us this background," said astrophysicist Chung-Pei Ma, the Judy Chandler Webb Professor in the Physical Sciences in the departments of astronomy and physics at UC Berkeley and a member of the NANOGrav collaboration.

Ma noted that while astronomers have identified a number of possible supermassive black hole binaries using radio, optical and X-ray observations, they can use gravitational waves as a new siren to guide them where in the sky to search for electromagnetic waves and conduct detailed studies of black hole binaries.

Ma directs a project to study 100 of the closest supermassive black holes to Earth and is eager to find evidence of activity around one of them that suggests a binary pair so that NANOGrav can tune the pulsar timing array to probe that patch of the sky for gravitational waves. Supermassive black hole binaries likely emit gravitational waves for a couple of million years before they merge.

Other possible causes of the background gravitational waves include dark matter axions, black holes left over from the beginning of the universe — so-called primordial black holes — and cosmic strings. One NANOGrav paper appearing in ApJ Letters today lays out constraints on these theories.

"Other groups have suggested that this comes from cosmic inflation or cosmic strings or other kinds of new physical processes which themselves are very exciting, but we think binaries are much more likely. To really be able to definitively say that this is coming from binaries, however, what we have to do is measure how much the gravitational wave signal varies across the sky. Binaries should produce far larger variations than alternative sources," Kelley said. "Now is really when the serious work and the excitement get started as we continue to build sensitivity. As we continue to make better measurements, our constraints on the supermassive black hole binary populations are just rapidly going to get better and better."

Galaxy mergers lead to black hole mergers

Most large galaxies are thought to have massive black holes at their centers, though they're hard to detect because the light they emit — ranging from X-rays to radio waves produced when stars and gas fall into the black hole — is typically blocked by surrounding gas and dust.

Ma recently analyzed the motion of stars around the center of one large galaxy, M87, and refined estimates of its mass — 5.37 billion times the mass of the sun — even though the black hole itself is totally obscured.

Tantalizingly, the supermassive black hole at the center of M87 could be a binary black hole. But no one knows for sure.

“My question for M87, or even our galactic center, Sagittarius A*, is: Can you hide a second black hole near the main black hole we've been studying? And I think currently no one can rule that out,” Ma said. “The smoking gun for this detection of gravitational waves being from binary supermassive black holes would have to come from future studies, where we hope to be able to see continuous wave detections from single binary sources.”

Simulations of galaxy mergers suggest that binary supermassive black holes are common, since the central black holes of two merging galaxies should sink together toward the center of the larger merged galaxy.

These black holes would begin to orbit one another, though the waves that NANOGrav can detect are only emitted when they get very close, Kelley said — something like 10 to 100 times the diameter of our solar system, or 1,000 to 10,000 times the Earth-sun distance, which is 93 million miles.

But can interactions with gas and dust in the merged galaxy make the black holes spiral inward to get that close, making a merger inevitable?

“This has kind of been the biggest uncertainty in supermassive black hole binaries: How do you get them from just after galaxy merger down to where they're actually coalescing,” Kelley said. "Galaxy mergers bring the two supermassive black holes together to about a kiloparsec or so — a distance of 3,200 light years, roughly the size of the nucleus of a galaxy. But they need to get down to five or six orders of magnitude smaller separations before they can actually produce gravitational waves."

“It could be that the two could just be stalled,” Ma noted. “We call that the last parsec problem. If you had no other channel to shrink them, then we would not expect to see gravitational waves.”

But the NANOGrav data suggest that most supermassive black hole binaries don't stall.

“The amplitude of the gravitational waves that we're seeing suggests that mergers are pretty effective, which means that a large fraction of supermassive black hole binaries are able to go from these large galaxy merger scales down to the very, very small subparsec scales,” Kelley said.

NANOGrav was able to measure the background gravitational waves, thanks to the presence of millisecond pulsars — rapidly rotating neutron stars that sweep a bright beam of radio waves past Earth several hundred times per second.

For unknown reasons, their pulsation rate is precise to within tenths of milliseconds. When the first such millisecond pulsar was found in 1982 by the late UC Berkeley astronomer Donald Backer, he quickly realized that these precision flashers could be used to detect the spacetime fluctuations produced by gravitational waves.

He coined the term "pulsar timing array" to describe a set of pulsars scattered around us in the galaxy that could be used as a detector. Several of the new papers are dedicated to Backer.

In 2007, Backer was one of the founders of NANOGrav, a collaboration that now involves more than 190 scientists from the U.S. and Canada.

The plan was to monitor at least once each month a group of millisecond pulsars in our portion of the Milky Way galaxy and, after accounting for the effects of motion, look for correlated changes in the pulse rates that could be ascribed to long-wavelength gravitational waves traveling through the galaxy.

The change in arrival time of a particular pulsar signal would be on the order of a millionth of a second, Kelley said.

"It's only the statistically coherent variations that really are the hallmark of gravitational waves," he said. "You see variations on millisecond, tens of millisecond scales all the time. That's just due to noise processes. But you need to dig deep down through that and look at these correlations to pick up signals that have amplitudes of about 100 nanoseconds or so."

The NANOGrav collaboration monitored 68 pulsars in all, some for 15 years, and employed 67 in the current analysis. The group publicly released their analysis programs, which are being used by groups in Europe (European Pulsar Timing Array), Australia (Parkes Pulsar Timing Array) and China (Chinese Pulsar Timing Array) to correlate signals from different, though sometimes overlapping, sets of pulsars than used by NANOGrav.

The NANOGrav data allow several other inferences about the population of supermassive black hole binary mergers over the history of the universe, Kelley said. For one, the amplitude of the signal implies that the population skews toward higher masses. While known supermassive black holes max out at about 20 billion solar masses, many of those that created the background may have been bigger, perhaps even 40 or 60 billion solar masses. Alternatively, there may just be many more supermassive black hole binaries than we think.

“While the observed amplitude of the gravitational wave signal is broadly consistent with our expectations, it's definitely a bit on the high side,” he said. “So we need to have some combination of relatively massive supermassive black holes, a very high occurrence rate of those black holes, and they probably need to be able to coalesce quite effectively to be able to produce these amplitudes that we see. Or maybe it's more like the masses are 20% larger than we thought, but also they merge twice as effectively, or some combination of parameters.”

As more data comes in from more years of observations, the NANOGrav team expects to get more convincing evidence for a cosmic gravitational wave background and what's producing it, which could be a combination of sources. For now, astronomers are excited about the prospects for gravitational wave astronomy.

“This is very exciting as a new tool,” Ma said. “This opens up a completely new window for supermassive black hole studies.”

NANOGrav's data came from 15 years of observations by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a facility that collapsed and became unusable in 2020; the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia; and the Very Large Array in New Mexico. Future NANOGrav results will incorporate data from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope, which was added to the project in 2019.

The NANOGrav collaboration receives support from the National Science Foundation Physics Frontiers Center (1430284, 2020265), Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, NSF AccelNet (2114721), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant, and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).

Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Are you doing the right thing the wrong way?

That’s the question being posted by Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit in the wake of recent reports of fires caused by mowing in the heat of the day.

Cal Fire is reminding everyone that dry grasses and dry vegetation is extremely flammable.

Lawn mowers, weed-eaters, chain saws, grinders, welders, tractors and trimmers can all spark a wildland fire.

Firefighters urge residents to do their part, the right way, to keep the community fire safe.

Here’s how to do it the right way.

Mowing

Mow before 10 a.m., but never when it’s windy or excessively hot and dry. Lawn mowers are designed to mow lawns, not weeds or dry grass. Metal blades striking rocks can create sparks and start fires. Use caution.

Spark arresters

In wildland areas, spark arresters are required on all portable gasoline-powered equipment. This includes tractors, harvesters, chainsaws, weed-eaters and mowers.

• Keep the exhaust system, spark arresters and mower in proper working order and free of carbon buildup.

• Use the recommended grade of fuel and don’t top it off.

Individuals who cause fires by mowing can be held personally liable for damage to neighboring properties, and also can face citations and fines, and even jail time in some instances.

For more information about being prepared for wildfire, visit www.ReadyForWildfire.org.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has a shelter full of dogs waiting to be adopted by new families.

The Clearlake Animal Control website continues to list 35 dogs for adoption.

This week’s dogs include “Ivy,” a female Labrador retriever mix with a short fawn coat.

“Doc” is a male pit bull terrier-Rottweiler mix with a short black coat.

“Kubota” is a 4 and a half year old male German shepherd mix with a short tan and white 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.

 

Fiber might just be the key to healthy weight management – and nature packages it in perfectly balanced ratios with carbs when you eat them as whole foods. Think unprocessed fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds. Research suggests that carbohydrates are meant to come packaged in nature-balanced ratios of total carbohydrates to fiber. In fact, certain types of fiber affect how completely your body absorbs carbohydrates and tells your cells how to process them once they are absorbed.

Fiber slows the absorption of sugar in your gut. It also orchestrates the fundamental biology that recent blockbuster weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic tap into, but in a natural way. Your microbiome transforms fiber into signals that stimulate the gut hormones that are the natural forms of these drugs. These in turn regulate how rapidly your stomach empties, how tightly your blood sugar levels are controlled and even how hungry you feel.

It’s as if unprocessed carbohydrates naturally come wrapped and packaged with their own instruction manual for your body on how to digest them.

I am a physician scientist and gastroenterologist who has spent over 20 years studying how food affects the gut microbiome and metabolism. The research is clear – fiber is important not just for happy bowel movements, but also for your blood sugar, weight and overall health.

Carbohydrates without their wrappers

Unfortunately, most Americans get the majority of their carbohydrates stripped of their natural fibers. Modern processed grains like white rice and white flour as well as many ultraprocessed foods like some sugary breakfast cereals, packaged snacks and juices have removed these fibers. They essentially come unwrapped and without instructions for the body on how much it should absorb and how it should process them. In fact, only 5% of Americans eat the recommended amount of carbohydrates with enough of their natural packaging intact. Guidelines recommend at least 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day from food.

It may not be surprising that lack of fiber contributes to diabetes and obesity. What is surprising is that the fiber gap also likely contributes to heart disease, certain types of cancer and maybe even Alzheimer’s disease.

One popular approach to mitigating some of the ill health effects of low fiber and high refined carbohydrates has been to limit carbohydrate intake. Such approaches include the low-carb, keto, paleo and Atkins diets. Each diet is a variation on a similar theme of limiting carbohydrates to varying amounts in different ways.

There is scientific backing to the benefits of some of these diets. Research shows that limiting carbohydrates induces ketosis, a biological process that frees energy from fat reserves during starvation and prolonged exercise. Low-carbohydrate diets can also help people lose weight and lead to improvements in blood pressure and inflammation.

That said, some keto diets may have negative effects on gut health. It is also unknown how they may affect heart health, some forms of cancer and other conditions in the long term.

Even more confusing, research shows that people with diets high in plant-sourced carbohydrates, like the Mediterranean diet, tend to lead the longest and healthiest lives. How can this be reconciled with studies that suggest that low-carbohydrate diets can benefit metabolic health?

Is a carb a carb?

The answer may have to do with the types of carbohydrates that studies are evaluating. Limiting simple sugars and refined carbohydrates may improve certain aspects of metabolic health, as these are some of the most easily digested and absorbed calories. But a more sustainable and comprehensive way of improving health may be increasing the percentage of unprocessed, more complex and slowly absorbed carbohydrates that come with their natural packages and instructions intact – those that have fiber.

These natural carbohydrates can be found in whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. They come in ratios of total carbohydrate to fiber that rarely exceed 10-to-1 and are often 5-to-1 or lower. Eating mostly whole foods is a simple way to ensure you’re consuming quality carbohydrates with the right ratios.

But who doesn’t like to have a big bowl of pasta or cake with ice cream on occasion? Focusing on packaged processed foods that maintain carb-to-fiber ratios of at least as low as 10-to-1 or ideally 5-to-1 can help you make the best choices when picking more processed foods at the store. Take a look at the nutrition facts label and simply divide total carbohydrates by dietary fiber.

On occasions when you’re eating out or celebrating someone’s birthday, consider taking a fiber supplement with your meal. One pilot study found that a supplement containing a blend of fibers decreased the blood sugar spike – an increase in glucose levels in the blood that if too high can damage the body over time – after a meal in healthy individuals by roughly 30%.

Listen to your body

While almost all fiber is generally good for health in most people, not all fiber affects the body in the same way. Consuming a range of different types of fiber generally helps ensure a diverse microbiome, which is linked to gut and overall health.

But certain medical conditions might preclude consuming certain types of fiber. For example, some people can be particularly sensitive to one class of fiber called FODMAPS – fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols – that are more readily fermented in the upper part of the gut and can contribute to symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome like bloating and diarrhea. High-FODMAP foods include many processed foods that contain inulin, garlic powder and onion powder, as well as whole foods including those in the onion family, dairy products, some fruits and vegetables.

Listen to how your body responds to different high-fiber foods. Start low and go slow as you reintroduce foods like beans, seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables to your diet. If you have trouble increasing your fiber intake, talk with your health care provider.

Tools like this online calculator I’ve created can also help you find the highest-quality foods with healthy fiber and other nutrient ratios. It can also show you what proportions of fiber to add back to sugary foods to help achieve healthy ratios.

I wouldn’t endorse eating sweets all the time, but as my three daughters like to remind me, it’s important to enjoy yourself every once in a while. And when you do, consider putting the carbs back in their fiber wrappers. It’s hard to improve upon nature’s design.

Christopher Damman, Associate Professor of Gastroenterology, School of Medicine, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

People can be unaware and lax about updating their estate planning, both when major life events occur and also after time, as life incrementally creeps up over the years; the second shortcoming leaves people with misplaced confidence in old estate planning documents that are outdated as the law and/or the estate planning goals materially changed.

Let us discuss some possible life scenarios within different generational contexts where they often occur.

Naturally, this discussion involves generalizations and assumptions; individual situations may vary.

When a minor becomes an adult they are often unaware that their parents no longer have the legal authority to control their health, property and legal affairs.

As adults they now need a power of attorney and an advanced health care directive to protect them in the event of an incapacity; otherwise a court supervised conservatorship may become necessary.

Since Jan. 1, 2023, California also recognizes supported decision-making which may enhance the capacity of a disabled person with borderline understanding to enable them to sign estate planning documents, including a supported decision-making agreement itself.

Furthermore, when young people get married and when they have children their estate planning goals expand to protect not only themselves but also their dependents.

Specifically, this includes transferring their real property into a living trust to both avoid probate and to control assets for the benefit of their dependents.

It also means updating death beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance policies accordingly.

Next, a middle aged person needs to consider updates if and when they get divorced or remarried, adopt children or raise stepchildren.

Specifically, a middle aged person in a second marriage is often concerned about preserving the separate property character of assets they earned or inherited before marriage.

They may also be concerned about balancing how their estate plan provides for their new spouse and their own children from before the second marriage, often a careful balancing act.

In second marriages, a married person may want a trust just for their own separate property assets to avoid commingling separate assets with community property assets acquired in the second marriage.

The separate property trust may provide some support for the surviving spouse, including, for example, lifetime use of a residence and also protect their children’s inheritances.

A second trust may be used to hold community property assets if the couple acquires a residence together that will benefit the surviving spouse.

Also, a middle aged person with a disabled dependent child (e.g., developmentally disabled) will consider how best to protect their children if and when they are no longer able to do so themselves.

They may consider placing assets into a special needs trust that will supplement and preserve any needs based government benefits received by the child.

An elderly person needs updates to their estate plan if and when their spouse dies and/or if a child unfortunately were to predecease them.

Also, they will need updates when they sell their real property and move into an assisted living, skilled nursing or other dependent care situation.

A person who has sold their real property may also no longer need a living trust and may, depending on the situation, prefer to avoid any post-death administration of their estate, including a trust administration.

They can do so using pay on death bank accounts and transfer on death beneficiary forms to brokerage investment and retirement accounts.

The elderly person may still need a will (usually), a power of attorney, advanced health care directive, and (nowadays) possibly a supported decision-making agreement.

Too often people neglect to administer and/or to update their estate planning (such as after the death of a spouse).

Anyone whose life situation has substantially changed, or more than 5 years has elapsed since when they last did estate planning, may want to revisit their estate planning arrangements.

The foregoing raises a variety of concerns. It is neither exhaustive nor legal advice. Consult an estate planning attorney for guidance.

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.

Researchers have discovered the most distant active supermassive black hole to date with the James Webb Space Telescope.

The galaxy, CEERS 1019, existed just over 570 million years after the big bang, and its black hole is less massive than any other yet identified in the early universe.

Not only that, they’ve easily “shaken out” two more black holes that are also on the smaller side, and existed 1 and 1.1 billion years after the big bang. Webb also identified eleven galaxies that existed when the universe was 470 to 675 million years old.

The evidence was provided by Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science, or CEERS, Survey, led by Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin.

The program combines Webb’s highly detailed near- and mid-infrared images and data known as spectra, all of which were used to make these discoveries.

CEERS 1019 is not only notable for how long ago it existed, but also how relatively little its black hole weighs. This black hole clocks in at about 9 million solar masses, far less than other black holes that also existed in the early universe and were detected by other telescopes.

Those behemoths typically contain more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun — and they are easier to detect because they are much brighter. (They are actively “eating” matter, which lights up as it swirls toward the black hole.)

The black hole within CEERS 1019 is more similar to the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which is 4.6 million times the mass of the Sun. This black hole is also not as bright as the more massive behemoths previously detected.

Though smaller, this black hole existed so much earlier that it is still difficult to explain how it formed so soon after the universe began.

Researchers have long known that smaller black holes must have existed earlier in the universe, but it wasn’t until Webb began observing that they were able to make definitive detections.

CEERS 1019 may only hold this record for a few weeks — claims about other, more distant black holes identified by Webb are currently being carefully reviewed by the astronomical community.

Webb’s data is practically overflowing with precise information that makes these confirmations so easy to pull out of the data.

“Looking at this distant object with this telescope is a lot like looking at data from black holes that exist in galaxies near our own,” said Rebecca Larson of the University of Texas at Austin, who led this discovery. “There are so many spectral lines to analyze!”

Not only could the team untangle which emissions in the spectrum are from the black hole and which are from its host galaxy, they could also pinpoint how much gas the black hole is ingesting and determine its galaxy’s star-formation rate.

The team found this galaxy is ingesting as much gas as it can while also churning out new stars. They turned to the images to explore why that might be. Visually, CEERS 1019 appears as three bright clumps, not a single circular disk.

“We’re not used to seeing so much structure in images at these distances,” said CEERS team member Jeyhan Kartaltepe of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. “A galaxy merger could be partly responsible for fueling the activity in this galaxy’s black hole, and that could also lead to increased star formation.”

The CEERS Survey is expansive, and there is a lot more to explore.

Team member Dale Kocevski of Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and the team quickly spotted another pair of small black holes in the data. The first, within galaxy CEERS 2782, was easiest to pick out. There isn’t any dust obscuring Webb’s view of it, so researchers could immediately determine when its black hole existed in the history of the universe — only 1.1 billion years after the big bang.

The second black hole, in galaxy CEERS 746, existed slightly earlier, 1 billion years after the big bang. Its bright accretion disk, a ring made up of gas and dust that encircles its supermassive black hole, is still partially clouded by dust.

“The central black hole is visible, but the presence of dust suggests it might lie within a galaxy that is also furiously pumping out stars,” Kocevski explained.

Like the one in CEERS 1019, these two black holes are also “light weights” — at least when compared to previously known supermassive black holes at these distances. They are only about 10 million times the mass of the Sun.

“Researchers have long known that there must be lower mass black holes in the early universe. Webb is the first observatory that can capture them so clearly,” Kocevski added. “Now we think that lower mass black holes might be all over the place, waiting to be discovered.”

Before Webb, all three black holes were too faint to be detected. “With other telescopes, these targets look like ordinary star-forming galaxies, not active supermassive black holes,” Finkelstein added.

Webb’s sensitive spectra also allowed these researchers to measure precise distances to, and therefore the ages of, galaxies in the early universe. Team members Pablo Arrabal Haro of NSF's NOIRLab and Seiji Fujimoto of the University of Texas at Austin identified 11 galaxies that existed 470 to 675 million years after the big bang. Not only are they extremely distant, the fact that so many bright galaxies were detected is notable. Researchers theorized that Webb would detect fewer galaxies than are being found at these distances. “I am overwhelmed by the amount of highly detailed spectra of remote galaxies Webb returned,” Arrabal Haro said. “These data are absolutely incredible.”

These galaxies are rapidly forming stars, but are not yet as chemically enriched as galaxies that are much closer to home. “Webb was the first to detect some of these galaxies,” explained Fujimoto. “This set, along with other distant galaxies we may identify in the future, might change our understanding of star formation and galaxy evolution throughout cosmic history,” he added.

These are only the first groundbreaking findings from the CEERS survey. “Until now, research about objects in the early universe was largely theoretical,” Finkelstein said. “With Webb, not only can we see black holes and galaxies at extreme distances, we can now start to accurately measure them. That’s the tremendous power of this telescope.”

In the future, it’s possible Webb’s data may also be used to explain how early black holes formed, revising researchers’ models of how black holes grew and evolved in the first several hundred million years of the universe’s history.

Several initial papers about CEERS Survey data have been accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters: “A CEERS Discovery of an Accreting Supermassive Black Hole 570 Myr after the Big Bang: Identifying a Progenitor of Massive z > 6 Quasars,” led by Larson, “Hidden Little Monsters: Spectroscopic Identification of Low-Mass, Broad-Line AGN at z > 5 with CEERS,” led by Kocevski, “Spectroscopic confirmation of CEERS NIRCam-selected galaxies at z≃8−10,” led by Arrabal Haro, and “CEERS Spectroscopic Confirmation of NIRCam-Selected z ≳ 8 Galaxy Candidates with JWST/NIRSpec: Initial Characterization of their Properties,” led by Fujimoto.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

REDWOOD VALLEY, Calif. — On Thursday, tribal leaders, local law enforcement and lawmakers gathered to learn how a new tool — the Feather Alert — will work to help law enforcement quickly notify the public about missing Native Americans and enlist their aid.

The law, AB 1314, which took effect in January was authored by Assemblymember James C. Ramos (D-San Bernardino).

Assemblymembers Ramos and Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) and representatives from the California Highway Patrol, the Department of Justice and local and tribal law enforcement participated in a roundtable discussion about when and how the alert is activated.

In April, the Round Valley Indian Tribes who participated in Thursday’s event, declared a state of emergency after two of their members were found murdered. The Yurok Tribe issued a similar declaration last year.

Between 1999 and 2019, homicide was the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls. On reservations, the homicide rate for Native American women is 10 times the national average.

“It gets too easy to cite these staggering statistics,” Ramos said. “I am gratified that the governor approved this bill to help stop the violence afflicting California’s Native American communities. The Feather Alert will aid law enforcement and families in getting the word out quickly when a Native individual is missing or endangered by alerting the public in a broad and effective manner. Creating an alert or advisory system was a top recommendation from tribal leaders last year for dealing with the disproportionate number of missing Native Americans, particularly women and girls.” Ramos also noted that California, the state with the greatest population of Native Americans in the nation, is also among the states with the highest rates of reported cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, or MMIWP,

Wood observed, “I am here today to celebrate the implementation of the Feather Alert notification system. One life of a missing and murdered indigenous person is too many, and my hope is that immediate distribution of their missing status will help us solve these tragic occurrences and return people to their communities. Their lives are meaningful to me and they deserve our support.”

Diana Billy-Elliott, ASW, Vice Chairwoman of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians stated, “This is an important first step to addressing the MMIWP emergency response. The faster the notifications go out the quicker the response to save lives occurs. Without this alert there is valuable time lost, and we can't afford any lost time when it comes to the lives of our Indigenous People.”

Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall said, “Mendocino County has long faced issues of communication for numerous reasons including the rural and geographically challenging areas our communities are in. Effective communications and strong partnerships with our communities will help us move forward with positive outcomes in our investigations. Providing information to the public in a timely manner strengthens partnerships with our communities and allows all of us to work together with a goal of public safety. The Feather Alert System will begin a process which helps bridge these gaps we have seen in the past.”

Feather Alert criteria

To activate the Feather Alert, the following criteria that must be met:

• Missing person is an indigenous woman or an indigenous person.
• Investigating law enforcement agency has utilized available local and tribal resources.
• Local law enforcement agency determines that the person has gone missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstance.
• Local law enforcement agency believes that the person is in danger because of age, health, mental or physical disability, or environment or weather conditions, that the person is in the company of a potentially dangerous person, or that there are other factors indicating that the person may be in peril.
• Information is available that, if disseminated to the public, could assist in the safe recovery of the missing person.

A report by the Sovereign Bodies Institute indicated only 9% of murders of indigenous women in California have ever been solved.

At a May 4 hearing of the Select Committee on Native American Affairs, which Ramos chaired, tribal leaders urged legislators to take more urgent action to stem the tide of unsolved cases and provide more immediate support when suspected abductions or other acts of violence occur against California Indian people who suffer a disproportionate number of those crimes.

Among other recommendations, witnesses at the hearing called for more immediate notification to the public and enlisting the aid of news outlets to help locate possible victims.

This year, California joined Washington State and Colorado in enacting similar notification systems.

Other California public alert systems

In California, the Feather Alert joins these other special notifications overseen by the CHP:

• The AMBER Alert, which stands for America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response is used when children age 17 or younger have been abducted. It has been in use since 2002.
• The Blue Alert, approved in 2011, notifies the public when a suspect in the assault or killing of a police officer remains at large and the search is active.
• The Silver Alert, used when elderly, developmentally or cognitively-impaired persons are missing and are determined to be at-risk. Adopted as the top priority of the California Senior Legislature in October 2011, it was enacted through SB 1047, legislation introduced by state Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara) and Sen. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana). The bill was approved in 2012 and went into effect in 2013.

The general endangered missing advisory is used when an individual is missing under unexplained or suspicious, and is believed to be in danger due to issues with age, physical and mental health issues, weather, being with a potentially dangerous person or other circumstances.