Some awareness - California's renewables are producing more supply than demand for hours at a time

 Some good news and progress in the implementation of using renewable energy sources (primarily this refers to wind and solar energy) and battery storage on large scales: California, by itself the 6th largest economy on the planet, has been generating and storing more energy than the state uses for 30 of the last 38 days. While it is for periods of time on order of a couple hours, this is huge progress in the US. 

California has been leading the nation in energy and climate policy for decades, and this is part of that trend and commitment. Projections have the state running itself with renewables and battery storage in full by 2035. That is the goal, and is so encouraging for progress to cut back on using fossil fuels and cutting down on greenhouse gases! It is also a model for every other state to try and continue to make progress in this vital issue. 

Science is cool! Always new things to discover - it's a BIG Universe!

 OK, so humans have been watching the sky for millenia, and we have discovered a lot of objects orbiting the Sun, we've learned a lot about our own galaxy, the Milky Way; and we have learned a lot about how we are not the only galaxy in the universe, but one of more than a trillion of galaxies flying away from each other in all directions through the vastness of space and time! Because there are a mind-numbing number of objects out there in space-time, we still do not have a solid handle on our own neighborhood, our solar system. For many years, some scientists have wondered and even expected to find "Planet 9" or "Planet X", another planet well beyond the orbits of Neptune and the former planet Pluto. There are reasons for this suspicion, of course, but no direct evidence for it. 

But now, there is a new paper that provides the BEST statistical analysis and reasoning yet that requires the existence of Planet 9, which is needed to explain small perturbations in the orbits of the outer planets. This is why science is so cool! There will always be new information, measurements, observations, and theories coming in and out of existence as scientists try to piece together countless objects moving around the universe, all of which influence each other through gravity. It is ridiculously complicated and hard, but that's where the fun is for us, trying to figure it out! The diagram is via Wikipedia.

Article about progress on understanding why the Strong Force is so strong

 Check out this article in Scientific American! 

Southern Africa, including Malawi, face drought and increased levels of hunger

 The combination of El Nino and climate change continues to hit some of the poorest countries in the world, with widespread drought and increased levels of hunger in southern Africa. This includes our friends in Malawi. For the fourth consecutive year, the Malawian President has had to call for a state of disaster due to climate issues; this includes Malawi and some of the schools we help being hit by Cyclone Freddy last year. The drought is the worst that has been experienced in the last 50 to 100 years, depending where one is.

This further encourages us to continue to help support our Malawi friends into the future. They need additional funding to maintain crops, drill wells, and create irrigation systems to continue to survive through the extreme weather they experience in Sub-Saharan Africa.