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The critical importance of brake safety in commercial vehicles is the focus of Brake Safety Week, a nationwide campaign Sept. 6 to 12.
The weeklong campaign provides the California Highway Patrol an opportunity to educate drivers, mechanics, and others on the importance of proper brake inspection and maintenance.
The CHP’s 51 Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facilities (CVEF), located throughout the state, will participate with enforcement or educational activities.
Educational events, such as information booths at rest areas and truck stops, are valuable ways for the CHP to enhance commercial vehicle safety.
“Whether you are behind the wheel of a big rig, city bus, or family car, safe and reliable brakes are fundamental to protecting everyone on our roads,” CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow said. “The ultimate goal of the Brake Safety Week campaign is to reduce the annual number of highway collisions caused by faulty braking systems on commercial vehicles and improve brake safety throughout California year-round.”
More than 1,000 CHP employees are dedicated to commercial vehicle enforcement. The CHP conducts an average of 500,000 commercial vehicle inspections each year.
The inspections, conducted both on highway and off by the CHP, help ensure commercial vehicle owners and operators comply with state laws.
During Brake Safety Week in 2014, 9,989 vehicles were inspected and 1,514 were taken out of service.
Brake-related violations are the most frequent reason for commercial vehicles to be taken out of service during roadside inspections by the CHP.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Fair kicked off in hilarious style on Thursday evening with the inaugural donkey baseball game.
The hour-and-a-half-long game pitted firefighters and law enforcement – plus their donkeys – against each other.
In addition to firefighters from agencies around the county, the game featured representatives from the California Highway Patrol, including Clear Lake Area Commander Lt. Hector Paredes; the Clearlake Police Department; the Lakeport Police Department, with Chief Brad Rasmussen helping direct the action; the Lake County Sheriff's Office and Sheriff Brian Martin; Lake County Probation; and the Lake County District Attorney's Office.
The fire team won 11-10, with the law enforcement team making a late scoring run.
The winning team got to choose a charity to receive the $500 purse, and the fire team selected the American Red Cross as the recipient this year.
Check out the action above in the video by John Jensen of Lake County News.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Mark your calendars – on Sept. 27 a total eclipse of a supermoon will occur.
This is a rare event you do not want to miss.
What’s a supermoon? It is a full moon when the moon is closest to the Earth.
The moon’s orbit around the Earth is elliptical. When it is the furthest from Earth it is at apogee. Perigee is when it is closest.
A supermoon occurs at perigee, and can appear to be up to 30-percent brighter and 14-percent bigger than your run-of-the-mill full moon.
What makes September’s supermoon spectacular is the total eclipse. The eclipse begins at 6 p.m. and ends at 9:30 p.m.
In Lake County, the supermoon will rise at 7:50 p.m.
This is a rare event. The last eclipse of a supermoon happened in 1982. It won’t happen again until 2033.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon is in the Earth’s shadow.
While waiting for the supermoon at the end of September, the rest of the month can be spent admiring the Milky Way.
It is directly overhead, running north and south through the constellations Cygnus and Aquila.
The Milky Way looks like a large cloud. In reality it is made up of millions of stars.
When you look at the Milky Way, you are looking toward the center of our galaxy.
We believe our galaxy looks like our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.
John Zimmerman is a resident of Lake County and has been an amateur astronomer for over 50 years. For more information about astronomy and local resources, visit his Web site at www.lakecountyskies.com .
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has another big group of dogs – from a unique variety of breeds – needing homes this week.
The dogs offered for adoption this week include mixes of border collie, cattle dog, corgi, dachshund, German Shepherd, pit bull, Rottweiler, Shetland Sheepdog, wheaten terrier and wirehaired 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.
If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.
In addition to the animals featured here, all adoptable animals in Lake County can be seen here: http://bit.ly/Z6xHMb .
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).
Male pit bull terrier mix
This male pit bull terrier mix has a short brown and white coat.
He's in kennel No. 2, ID No. 3226.
Corgi-dachshund mix
This female corgi-dachshund mix has a short gold and white coat.
She's in kennel No. 4, ID No. 3169.
Wheaten terrier mix
This wheaten terrier mix has a long curly coat.
He's in kennel No. 5, ID No. 3168.
Wirehaired terrier mix
This male wirehaired terrier mix has a tan and white coat.
He's in kennel No. 6, ID No. 3112.
Male Rottweiler mix
This male Rottweiler mix has a short black and tan coat.
Shelter staff said he had a sweet temperament.
He's in kennel No. 7, ID No. 3158.
Border collie-shelter mix
This male border collie and Shetland Sheepdog mix has a medium-length multicolored coat.
He's in kennel No. 8, ID No. 3197.
Pit bull terrier mix
This male pit bull terrier mix has a short mostly white coat with brown markings.
Shelter staff said he has no food aggression and does well with female dogs. He was introduced to the cats, and was scared, but curious, so they think he might not do well with cats.
Overall, he is a very sweet boy, shelter staff reported.
He's in kennel No. 10, ID No. 3105.
Border collie-shepherd mix
This male border collie-shepherd mix has a short black and white coat.
He's in kennel No. 12, ID No. 3166.
German Shepherd mix
This beautiful female German Shepherd mix has a short black and tan coat.
She's in kennel No. 14, ID No. 3179.
Female German Shepherd
This female German Shepherd has a short black and tan coat.
Shelter staff said she will do great in a home with children ages 7 and above and no cats. She has no food aggression, and does fine with other dogs once she warms up. This friendly shepherd also has a ball drive, and loves getting into the kiddie pool.
She is available for a very low adoption fee of $45.
She's in kennel No. 23, ID No. 1918.
'Prince'
“Prince” is a male pit bull terrier mix with a short, steel-gray coat.
Prince is in kennel No. 25, ID No. 3162.
Male pit bull terrier mix
This male pit bull terrier mix has a short chocolate and white coat.
Shelter staff said he has no issues with food aggression, and didn't mind when a trainer pulled on his tail or skin.
He would do good in a home with no cats, and needs some work with other dogs, as shelter staff said he is under-socialized, and gets very excited when introduced to another dog.
He's in kennel No. 26, ID No. 3163.
'Penny'
“Penny” is a female cattle dog mix.
Shelter staff said she is a very sweet girl, loves treats and has a docile temperament.
Penny is in kennel No. 34, ID No. 3188.
To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – California agencies fighting the spread of invasive quagga and zebra mussels remind boaters to remain vigilant over the Labor Day weekend.
People who launch vessels at any body of water are subject to watercraft inspections and are encouraged to clean, drain and dry their motorized and nonmotorized boats, including personal watercraft, and any equipment that comes into contact with the water before and after recreating at a waterway.
Quagga and zebra mussels, non-native freshwater mussels native to Eurasia, multiply quickly and encrust watercraft and infrastructure, and compete for food with native and sport fish species.
These mussels can be spread from one body of water to another attached to nearly anything that has been in an infested waterbody, or via standing water from an infested waterbody entrapped in boat engines, bilges, live-wells and buckets.
To ensure that watercraft is clean, drained and dry, many local agencies are conducting boat inspections.
CDFW has posted a list of these inspections on its Web site ( www.wildlife.ca.gov/mussels ) along with additional information about the invasive mussels and what people can do to help prevent their spread in California.
Boaters should call ahead to check for restrictions prior to visiting their destination.
Take the following steps before traveling to a waterbody to prevent spreading invasive mussels, to improve your inspection experience and to safeguard California waterways:
– CLEAN: Inspect exposed surfaces and remove all plants and organisms;
– DRAIN: All water, including water contained in lower outboard units, live-wells, and bait buckets; and
– DRY: Allow the watercraft to thoroughly dry between launches. Watercraft should be kept dry for at least five days in warm weather and up to 30 days in cool weather.
CDFW has developed a brief video demonstrating the ease of implementing the clean, drain and dry prevention method, which can be viewed above.
In addition, a detailed guide to cleaning vessels of invasive mussels is available on the California State Parks Division of Boating and Waterways (DBW) at www.dbw.parks.ca.gov/quagga .
Travelers are also advised to be prepared for inspections at California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Border Protection Stations.
Over the past eight years, more than one million watercraft entering the state have been inspected at the Border Protection Stations.
Inspections, which can also be conducted by CDFW and California State Parks, include a check of boats and personal watercraft, as well as trailers and all onboard items. Contaminated vessels and equipment are subject to quarantine or impoundment.
Quagga mussels were first detected in the Colorado River system in January 2007 and were later found in San Diego and Riverside counties.
They are now known to be in 29 waters in California, all in Southern California. Zebra mussels were discovered in San Justo Reservoir in San Benito County in January 2008.
Both species can attach to and damage virtually any submerged surface. They can:
– Ruin a boat engine by blocking the cooling system and causing it to overheat;
– Jam a boat's steering equipment, putting occupants and others at risk;
– Require frequent scraping and repainting of boat hulls;
– Colonize all underwater substrates such as boat ramps, docks, lines and other underwater surfaces, causing them to require constant cleaning;
– Cost the owners of these items a lot of money.
A multi-agency effort that includes CDFW, DBW, California Department of Water Resources, and CDFA has been leading an outreach campaign to alert the public to the quagga and zebra mussel threats.
A toll-free hotline at 1-866-440-9530 is available for those seeking information on quagga or zebra mussels.
A team of Caltech researchers that has spent years searching for the earliest objects in the universe now reports the detection of what may be the most distant galaxy ever found.
In an article published Aug. 28 in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Adi Zitrin, a NASA Hubble postdoctoral scholar in astronomy, and Richard Ellis – who recently retired after 15 years on the Caltech faculty and is now a professor of astrophysics at University College, London – describe evidence for a galaxy called EGS8p7 that is more than 13.2 billion years old.
The universe itself is about 13.8 billion years old.
Earlier this year, EGS8p7 had been identified as a candidate for further investigation based on data gathered by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Using the multi-object spectrometer for infrared exploration (MOSFIRE) at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the researchers performed a spectrographic analysis of the galaxy to determine its redshift.
Redshift results from the Doppler effect, the same phenomenon that causes the siren on a fire truck to drop in pitch as the truck passes.
With celestial objects, however, it is light that is being “stretched” rather than sound; instead of an audible drop in tone, there is a shift from the actual color to redder wavelengths.
Redshift is traditionally used to measure distance to galaxies, but is difficult to determine when looking at the universe's most distant – and thus earliest – objects.
Immediately after the Big Bang, the universe was a soup of charged particles – electrons and protons – and light (photons). Because these photons were scattered by free electrons, the early universe could not transmit light.
By 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled enough for free electrons and protons to combine into neutral hydrogen atoms that filled the universe, allowing light to travel through the cosmos.
Then, when the universe was just a half-billion to a billion years old, the first galaxies turned on and reionized the neutral gas. The universe remains ionized today.
Prior to reionization, however, clouds of neutral hydrogen atoms would have absorbed certain radiation emitted by young, newly forming galaxies – including the so-called Lyman-alpha line, the spectral signature of hot hydrogen gas that has been heated by ultraviolet emission from new stars, and a commonly used indicator of star formation.
Because of this absorption, it should not, in theory, have been possible to observe a Lyman-alpha line from EGS8p7.
“If you look at the galaxies in the early universe, there is a lot of neutral hydrogen that is not transparent to this emission,” said Zitrin. “We expect that most of the radiation from this galaxy would be absorbed by the hydrogen in the intervening space. Yet still we see Lyman-alpha from this galaxy.”
They detected it using the MOSFIRE spectrometer, which captures the chemical signatures of everything from stars to the distant galaxies at near-infrared wavelengths (0.97-2.45 microns, or millionths of a meter).
“The surprising aspect about the present discovery is that we have detected this Lyman-alpha line in an apparently faint galaxy at a redshift of 8.68, corresponding to a time when the universe should be full of absorbing hydrogen clouds,” Ellis said. Prior to their discovery, the farthest detected galaxy had a redshift of 7.73.
One possible reason the object may be visible despite the hydrogen-absorbing clouds, the researchers say, is that hydrogen reionization did not occur in a uniform manner.
“Evidence from several observations indicate that the reionization process probably is patchy,” Zitrin said. “Some objects are so bright that they form a bubble of ionized hydrogen. But the process is not coherent in all directions.”
“The galaxy we have observed, EGS8p7, which is unusually luminous, may be powered by a population of unusually hot stars, and it may have special properties that enabled it to create a large bubble of ionized hydrogen much earlier than is possible for more typical galaxies at these times,” said Sirio Belli, a Caltech graduate student who worked on the project.
“We are currently calculating more thoroughly the exact chances of finding this galaxy and seeing this emission from it, and to understand whether we need to revise the timeline of the reionization, which is one of the major key questions to answer in our understanding of the evolution of the universe,” Zitrin said.