James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

Two decades ago, renewable energy was a bit player on the world stage. Today renewables account for nearly half of all global electrical capacity, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, and there’s a lot more in the pipeline. It’s a stunning surge showing that the renewable revolution appears unstoppable. Clean energy still faces challenges, though. To meet them, countries and companies are taking some big swings to push this revolution into a new phase—with ambitious projects that may or may not pan out.

One of the most significant problems is that solar and wind are intermittent, and the lithium-ion batteries currently available can’t store enough energy from renewables to reliably meet demand. To squeeze the most juice out of solar and wind, we need longer-term storage, leading some in the industry—notably in China—to reach for a technology that has been shelved for decades. Chinese companies are also pushing the limits on how large and how far offshore turbines can be so they can take advantage of steadier, stronger winds. Other ventures are trying to broaden the appeal of geothermal energy and crack the code on tidal power, one of the biggest untapped sources of power on the planet. Here are some of the most audacious of these projects. —Andrea Thompson

Geothermal Energy for (Almost) Anywhere

Pulling heat from the earth without perfect geology

Name of project: Fervo Energy’s Cape Station
Location: Utah
Name of technology: Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS)
Power generation: A projected 100 megawatts by early 2027, with 500 megawatts in total under construction

How it works: Fervo drills down and then sideways, creating a network of long fractures in rock as deep as almost 2,750 meters (although future depths may vary); it then pushes water through these cracks to draw heat out of the earth. The large network of fissures exposes much more water to much more hot rock than single-pipe geothermal setups do, increasing efficiency. To execute the design, Fervo has translated oil and gas fracking’s pressurized fluid injections from softer sedimentary shale rock to hotter, harder volcanic rock. (Experts say seismic monitoring is advanced enough that work can be paused if risks of quakes above magnitudes people can feel rise too high.) At a demonstration facility called Project Red, Fervo connected test wells to a preexisting power plant, where it has been generating three megawatts of power since late 2023.

Why it’s needed: Unlike solar and wind, geothermal energy can be used 24/7. But to be economical, traditional geothermal requires perfect geology: hot rock that water naturally passes through and a reliably recharged water source to keep the heat flowing. This necessity has limited its use to a handful of spots on Earth. By adding fractures, EGS creates more places where geothermal is economically feasible. Other companies have targeted different geothermal strategies, and geothermal has been met with a wave of enthusiasm from the U.S. government.

What the experts say: Jefferson Tester, a Cornell University engineering professor, says he’s excited by the work Fervo is doing but worries that the company might have promised its funders too much too soon. “You’ve got to prove that this thing actually works for a sustainable period of production,” he says. “The proof will come only with what you find out in the field.” (Fervo Energy did not reply to interview requests.) —Meghan Bartels

The Power of the Tides

Predictable motions of the ocean can provide reliable, renewable energy

Name of project: MeyGen
Location: Scotland
Name of technology: Tidal stream energy
Power generation: Six megawatts (increasing to 65 megawatts by 2031)

How it works: Since 2016, MeyGen, located between the Scottish mainland and the Orkney Islands, has been the world’s largest tidal stream energy project. It exploits the fact that the tides that ebb and flow along our planet’s coastlines carry tremendous energy, with a harvestable potential estimated at 1,200 terawatt-hours per year, more than a quarter of annual power generation in the U.S. That energy can be harnessed in much the same way that wind farms harness moving air. “In very simple layman’s terms, you’re putting a wind turbine underwater,” says Drew Blaxland, CEO of Proteus Marine Renewables, which developed MeyGen’s four 1.5-megawatt turbines. The turbine blades spin with each incoming and outgoing tide, capturing the ocean’s kinetic energy to power a generator that produces electricity.

Why it’s needed: Unlike other renewable energy sources, tides are highly predictable. “We can tell at any point in time, any day, exactly how much energy we’re producing,” Blaxland says, “which you can’t do with wind or solar.” Tides are as brutal as they are reliable, though; saltwater corrosion, ocean debris and the sheer force of rushing water often cause turbines to fail. But one of MeyGen’s turbines has reached a major milestone in performance, running for more than seven years without unplanned maintenance. Built on massive foundations and equipped with blades that adjust to align with the tide, the turbines are engineered to withstand extreme, fast-flowing marine currents. MeyGen plans to add 20 turbines by 2031, boosting its capacity to 65 megawatts. According to Ampeak Energy, which owns the project, the site could ultimately produce nearly 400 megawatts.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

But Moss is Jewish, is running to represent a district with a strong Jewish community, and is a supporter of Israel. His backing of a two-state solution and disdain for Benjamin Netanyahu had traditionally been Democratic orthodoxy. However, that’s no longer the case.

In contrast, El-Sayed is a virulent critic of Israel. Earlier this summer, he told CNN: “Every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one.” And he said that if you’re “a Democrat and you believe in human rights,” the only reason one could support Israel is campaign contributions.

The candidate, who is Muslim, also said, “My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as the commitment I’ve got to my own kids,” but to many, his criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitic tropes. That’s particularly true after he campaigned with Hasan Piker, who has made antisemitic remarks and praised Hamas. The result has left many in Michigan’s Jewish community wary of El-Sayed and looking for outreach from him and his campaign to assuage their concerns.

“I think we both recognize it’s going to take Jeremy Moss voters and Abdul El-Sayed voters to vote for the same ticket to beat Mike Rogers and Donald Trump and MAGA extremism, and as we saw on Tuesday night’s results, there is a lot of overlap there,” Moss tells Slate. “But we’re going to sit down, and Abdul’s going to have to demonstrate some serious outreach to Oakland County’s Jewish community.”

As the political season turns from primaries to the general election, much has been made of the tension between centrist and progressive candidates. But some of those divides are more easily healed than others. Democratic differences over healthcare can be brushed aside by all parties involved, agreeing that their positions are superior to the GOP approach. Same with questions about policing or immigration or a host of other issues. But it remains to be seen if the divide in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians can be bridged when a growing number of Democrats no longer support Israel’s existence as a Jewish state—and when, at times, anti-Zionist rhetoric has spilled over into antisemitic rhetoric.

.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Finn Gomez/Getty Images, USA Today Network via Reuters Connect, Sarah Rice/Getty Images, and Getty Images Plus.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

The surest sign of democratic collapse is the unwillingness of an elected political party to leave office. The party rewrites laws and changes election rules to prevent its opponents from gaining power. The shift often starts slowly but can ultimately end in autocracy.

President Trump has taken worrisome steps down this path since returning to office in January 2025. He has directed Republican-run states to enact newly gerrymandered maps to increase the chances that Republicans maintain control of Congress even if they receive fewer votes this year. He has tried to pass legislation that could keep many eligible voters from voting. And he has sent signals that he may use the power of the federal government to disallow legitimate ballots this fall. On July 16, Mr. Trump took the remarkable step of giving a prime-time White House address devoted to lies and misleading statements about voter fraud.

The New York Times editorial board is tracking 12 categories of democratic erosion in the United States, based on historical patterns and interviews with experts. Our index places the United States on a scale of 0 to 10 for each category. Zero represents the United States before Mr. Trump began his second term — not perfect, surely, but still a strong democracy. Ten represents the condition in a true autocracy, such as China, Iran and Russia. Based on Mr. Trump’s statements and actions about the 2026 midterms, we are moving our assessment of one of the categories — manipulating the law to stay in power— up one notch, to Level 3:

Together, Mr. Trump’s actions have left constitutional scholars and democracy experts anxious about this year’s midterm elections. They wonder if the Trump administration may use false pretenses to send federal agents to Democratic-leaning areas to intimidate people and suppress voting. Experts are also worried that after the elections, Mr. Trump may pressure legislators not to certify the winners, as he unsuccessfully tried to do after the 2020 presidential election. Even if he does not take these extreme steps, the gerrymandering campaign he has demanded has probably tilted the competition for control of the House of Representatives at least 2.5 percentage points in Republicans’ direction.

It remains unclear how far Mr. Trump will go this fall. He does often make statements that amount to little. But his extended attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election should make clear that the threat is real. He has demonstrated that he prioritizes his own interests over the national interest. He is often willing to defy bipartisan traditions and even act illegally.

Politicians from both major parties and federal judges should be prepared to push back forcefully against any attempt he and his allies make to interfere with the 2026 elections. If the president succeeds in perverting the results, he will be emboldened to take similarly unconstitutional steps in 2028.

This editorial is our fourth version of the autocracy index, which we first published in October 2025. The updated version includes chronological lists of the antidemocratic steps Mr. Trump has taken in all 12 categories, and we plan to update them again in the months ahead.

.

The surest sign of democratic collapse is the unwillingness of an elected political party to leave office

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

For most of my adult life, I have noticed something odd. Some evenings, I can barely remember what I did that day. Ask me what I had for breakfast and you will be met with a blank look. On other days, I can tell you the details of interviews I did, the plans I made, which snacks I packed my daughter for school and how much of each she ate.

The difference between them doesn’t seem to correlate to how I slept. In fact, only one factor seemed to matter: how much I rested. I have long thought that, on days when I am rushing around, I am just more stressed, which may affect memory formation.

But there could be another reason: the role of rest itself.

We all know that a lack of restorative sleep impairs our cognitive abilities. When we are sleep-deprived, we can struggle to recall what we have learned, absorb new information and sustain focus. We may also be aware that resting while awake seems to partially restore our sleep-deprived minds.

Now, neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and his collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are revealing how certain housekeeping and cognitive tasks that happen during sleep can also occur, to some extent, while we are awake.

This is “the last piece of the puzzle” that may answer why wakeful rest helps to fulfil some of the functions of sleep, says neuroscientist Thomas Andrillon at the Paris Brain Institute.

Local sleep

For decades, sleep was understood to be a global state that affects the whole brain at once. In deep sleep, the brain reverberates with slow brainwaves – in which neurons slowly cycle in sync between firing and silence – and mostly disconnects from the surrounding environment.

But in recent years, research has complicated that perspective. In 2011, a team of sleep researchers, including Tononi and his long-time collaborator Chiara Cirelli, also at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published a paper describing an odd phenomenon. When rats were sleep-deprived yet awake, their brains showed sudden bursts of sleep-like slow waves – but only in clusters of neurons at a time. The team called it local sleep and considered it to be part of a broader phenomenon that exists in various forms across the animal kingdom (see “Sleeping with part of the brain”, at the end of this story).

These bouts of local sleep were incredibly brief: a few hundred milliseconds, at most. But they had a noticeable impact. When rats were trained to reach for sugar pellets, they were more likely to fall short if their sleep-deprived minds had slipped into local sleep first. “If it happens at the wrong time, in the wrong area, you have impaired performance,” says Cirelli.

That isn’t just true of sweet-toothed rats. Humans also show local sleep states just before experiencing an attentional lapse. And we are more likely to experience both when we are tired, which is why doing something routine but with high stakes – like driving a car down a highway – can be dangerous when we are sleep-deprived.

But Tononi, Cirelli and their colleagues’ latest study, published in June, indicates there is an upside to local sleep.

In addition to describing local sleep, Tononi and Cirelli are known for coming up with one of the most compelling explanations for why we sleep: the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis. As we take in information all day long, our brains form and strengthen thousands of neural connections. These connections are energy-hungry, so we can’t keep them all. Sleep, they posit, is when our brains go to work decluttering what we don’t need, which helps with storing what we do.

Could local sleep offer the same sort of housekeeping, just on a micro-scale? To find out, they genetically modified brain cells in mice so that a laser light could switch those neurons “on” or “off”, mimicking the pattern of slow-wave sleep. In one experiment, they put a local neural network to sleep in awake mice that were sleep-deprived.

Afterwards, they found that the part of the mice’s brains that had “snoozed” for 30 minutes showed reduced markers of synaptic strength – a sign that decluttering had already started – unlike the part that had stayed fully awake. They also noticed that, during global sleep later on, there was less slow-wave activity in the bit of the brain that had napped, presumably because its housekeeping function had already partly been done – which also indicated that local sleep seemed to have reduced that brain region’s need for sleep.

These changes in brain activity were also reflected in behaviour. Normally, if a mouse learns a new task and then is sleep-deprived, its later recall is diminished. But when, in a different experiment, the sleep-deprived mice had local sleep induced across multiple networks for an hour after learning something new, they remembered the task just as well as the mice that took an actual nap. “This is the first piece of evidence that suggests that local sleep can do the job of sleep, and not badly,” says Tononi.

Both Tononi and Cirelli are quick to point out that local sleep is no replacement for sleep in general. While they pushed the phenomenon to its limits in the laboratory to see what it was capable of – and what its underlying purpose might be – the fleeting bursts of local sleep that we experience in the real world aren’t the same as a night’s rest. If your brain can get to wo

rk on decluttering connections all at once, as in global sleep, that is clearly better and more efficient, says Tononi.

.

Jason Ford

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2582666-how-wakeful-rest-may-boost-brain-power-in-a-manner-similar-to-sleep/

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

We’ve all done the infinite scroll on the Netflix app, spending an hour looking for something to watch before giving up. Sometimes there are just too many shows to choose from. And the last thing anyone wants is to get a few hours into a series that’s not worth finishing.

To save your precious time, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite shows on Netflix. From some of the streamer’s most iconic flagship series, such as Stranger Things and The Crown, to reliable comfort watches including Younger and Scandal, the platform has something for everyone. We’ve also found underrated or critically acclaimed originals you can’t find anywhere else. We’ll let you know which series have just arrived or are about to leave, too, so you can prioritize your watch list.

Sometimes the best shows aren’t the ones that win all the awards; they’re just the ones that let you unwind and have fun. This week, we recommend Outer Banks, which is heading into its fifth and final season this week. The show is an action-adventure-mystery about a group of teens living is coastal North Carolina who are on a hunt for a long-lost treasure that might save their beloved home. The series introduced us to stars like Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline and is a fun, breezy binge. And if you love entertainment industry inside jokes, check out all four seasons of the fun French series Call My Agent! The show is a wry look at the inner workings of a French talent agency, and a feature film version of the show will drop on Netflix in September.

If you’re looking for your next favorite series, here’s our roundup of some of the best shows you can stream on Netflix right now. And if you’d rather go with a movie instead, here are our picks for the best movies on Netflix.

Outer Banks (2020 to present)

Netflix’s original action-adventure series Outer Banks has been a massive hit for the streamer since it first premiered in 2020, and it’s coming to an end this summer. The show is set in a coastal town in North Carolina’s Outer Banks and pits the haves (the “Kooks”) against the have-nots (the “Pogues”). Naturally, the Pogues are the heroes of the story as the Kooks try to take what little land and assets the Pogues have left. And while all of that is happening, the Pogues, led by John B. (Chase Stokes) are constantly on a hunt for (literal) treasure, stemming from the disappearance of John B.’s father who was on a hunt for gold before he vanished. Check the show out now; the fifth and final season arrives on Aug. 20.

Call My Agent! (2015 to present)

The French series Call My Agent is about a group of talent agents at a fictional firm. Though the agents aren’t real, the show is filled with real celebrities playing often egotistical and difficult versions of themselves (almost all of them are French, you’ll see the likes of Isabelle Huppert, Jean Dujardin, Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno appear throughout the series). The show consists of four hilarious seasons, and a feature film, Call My Agent! The Movie is arriving in September. If you’re a fan of inside-Hollywood style shows, it’s a fun option.

.

Click the link below the picture for 55 more titles!

Netflix

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

“It’s one of the surprising successes,” said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a shipping analyst at Windward, a maritime analysis firm. “They have been extraordinarily effective in keeping that southern corridor operating, despite the attacks.”

But the U.S. effort, which Iran opposes, has come at a cost.

The U.S. military is deploying significant resources to get a limited amount of oil through the strait — something it did not have to do before the war, when tankers sailed freely through the waterway.

“It’s extremely labor intensive to provide for that kind of persistent defense,” said Joshua Tallis, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses.

To try to protect vessels on the southern corridor, Central Command uses a range of weapons that can intercept Iranian drones and missiles. Ship operators say they register any planned trips through the strait with the U.S. military, and then report possible threats or attacks as they occur. The United States uses ships, helicopters and planes to launch weapons to intercept attacks. It has helped over 1,000 ships transit the strait, according to Central Command.

The U.S. tanker protection operation has drawn attacks by Iran. At least 15 ships taking the southern routes have been hit since the start of June, injuring 16 mariners and killing two, according to a New York Times analysis of data collected by the International Maritime Organization, a part of the United Nations. Another ship was struck this week while it was sailing close to Oman, killing a crew member, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, an entity administered by Britain’s Royal Navy, said on Tuesday.

The Iranian military retains the ability to escalate its attacks on all shipping in the area, as well as on oil and gas facilities in Gulf countries. And Iran is demanding permanent control over ship traffic in the strait, something it did not have before the war.

“Iran’s threat over the strait will remain significant for the foreseeable future,” said Mona Yacoubian, a director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization.

Many large shipping companies have chosen to stay away from the strait until there is a lasting cease-fire, and traffic through the strait remains far below what it was before the war.

.

The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, in a handout photo, conducting operations related to the Strait of Hormuz in April. The Navy has said it has about 20 warships in the Gulf of Oman.  Credit…U.S. Navy, via Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

A warming climate and a dearth of summer sea ice have opened the Arctic to cargo shipping—a reality that seemed impossible just decades ago.

Some countries believe the Arctic route could provide an alternative for international traders seeking to avoid the conflict-stricken Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz.

Already, one Chinese company has started container ship voyages during the summer on the Northern Sea Route, which runs along the northern coast of Russia to Europe via the North Sea. China especially views the route as an “Ice Silk Road” that avoids Middle East trouble spots.

The decision to try the Northern Sea Route is also, at least in part, practical: The subpolar route is shorter than the standard one—so the trip takes about 20 days compared with around 40. And it may be cheaper for Asian exporters than the regular path. The latter goes through the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indo-Pacific with the Indian Ocean, and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean via the Gulf of Aden.

“The Arctic shipping routes offer an alternative trade corridor with the potential to overcome the Malacca Dilemma—China’s lack of control over strategic shipping lanes,” says Arctic shipping analyst Malte Humpert, who founded the nonprofit Artic Institute in Washington, D.C.

The move is also seen as a sign of growing economic cooperation between Russia and China, he adds. China uses the Northern Sea Route to deliver cargo to Europe, and Russia uses it to deliver oil to Asia. The conflicts in the Middle East make it more attractive. “The situation around Hormuz and the Red Sea has encouraged some niche container operators to give the [Northern Sea Route] a try,” Humpert says.

None of this would be possible without climate change. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration–funded research group, 17 summers with the lowest sea-ice cover on record have occurred in the past 20 years. NASA data, meanwhile, show the Arctic sea-ice extent is shrinking by about 12 percent every decade.

The shrinking ice cover will “absolutely” result in increased shipping along the Northern Sea Route during the summer months, says Anastasios Leonburg, a marine risk consultant for the insurer Allianz Commercial and a former merchant ship captain. “The implication for shipping is more accessible routes and more navigable seasons,” he says.

Expanding Arctic shipping is also triggering environmental concerns. Campaigners worry it will result in more black carbon emissions from shipping fuel that could cause the sea ice to melt more quickly. For this reason, the use of heavy fuel oil—a cheap, high-energy, tarlike material that is left over from refining crude oil—has been banned in the Arctic by the International Maritime Organization since 2024, but loopholes still exist.

The Oslo-based environmental watchdog Bellona Foundation analyzed a journey on the Northern Sea Route last year by a large Chinese cargo ship named Istanbul Bridge. The group’s analysis found the ship may not have been built to properly withstand ice along the route—exposing it to potential accidents—and that it may have used heavy fuel oil.

Given geopolitical tensions, new international agreements to govern Arctic shipping seem unlikely. Russia alone sets regulations for the Northern Sea Route—and environmentalists fear that, without enforcement, efforts to open the region to global shipping risk destroying the fragile ecosystem that made the shortcut available in the first place.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Ask a retiree how much income they need, and they’ll give you a number. Ask how much cash flow their portfolio generates, and many will give you the same number. Ask what they actually spend, and you’ll often get a third answer — or a shrug.

That’s the problem. These are three different things, and mixing them up can quietly cost money. Here’s a breakdown.

Cash flow is the movement of money, regardless of tax implications.

Move money from savings to checking? Cash flow, but no tax.

Take a qualified withdrawal from your IRA? Cash flow with a tax implication.

Sell $50,000 of stock you bought for $40,000? That’s $50,000 of cash flow, but only the $10,000 gain is taxed.

Harvest a loss on a position that’s down? That’s cash flow, too, and it can actually lower your tax bill.

Much of what moves through your accounts is simply your own money changing seats.

Income is what gets taxed (and it comes with a decision). Income shows up on your tax return:

• Dividends paid
• Interest earned
• Rent collected
• Capital gains realized
• IRA withdrawals taken

Here’s the part many people miss: Income comes with a decision. You can spend the money or reinvest it.

Depending on the account, your decisions are taxed differently. For example, in a brokerage account, the dividend (income) is taxed whether you spend it or not. If the dividend comes into your qualified account (IRA or Roth), it’s not taxed.

It’s important to pay attention to these little differences.

Spending is what’s gone. This is the money that leaves your accounts to support you and your lifestyle (groceries, travel, property taxes). Once it’s spent, it’s gone. It isn’t coming back as shares, basis or anything else.

Spending is the number your plan actually has to cover. Not your cash flow. Not your income. Your spending.

The drag many miss

Once the terms are straight and the plan is in place, the leaks start to become visible. Many retirees generate more taxable income than they spend.

A $1 million portfolio in your brokerage account, yielding 3% in dividends, puts about $30,000 of income on your tax return each year, whether you spend it or reinvest it.

Let’s say you spend only $10,000 of it — you still pay tax on all $30,000. You wrote the IRS a check for the privilege of reinvesting money you’d already had invested. Do that for a decade, and the drag compounds quietly, every April.

Even withdrawal coordination can make a big difference. A retiree younger than 65 who funds an entire year from long-term capital gains might pay mostly 0% in capital gains tax. That’s because only the realized gains count as income.

If they keep their gains/income low enough, they may also be able to lower their ACA health insurance premiums. That’s a very different situation than taking a little from an IRA, a little from a brokerage account, collecting dividends along the way and layering on Roth conversions.

Same spending, very different tax bill.

Total return still wins

This is why I push retirees toward “total return” thinking. There’s little difference between a stock that grows by 7% and a stock that grows by 4% while paying a 3% dividend.

The grower lets you decide when to realize income. The dividend payer decides for you, every quarter, whether you need the money or not.

Sometimes growth may be better than dividends, and vice versa.

The same is true in real estate: Rent plus appreciation is the whole picture, and the rent is taxed as it arrives.

.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Lakes Powell and Mead, the nation’s largest reservoirs, are drying up, sending a Colorado River system that provides water and electricity for millions of people into a state of crisis with no end in sight.

Water levels in Lake Powell, along the Utah-Arizona border, fell to a record low on Saturday. Lake Mead, the larger of the two and farthest downstream on the Colorado River, dropped to its lowest recorded point a week earlier.

The combined reservoir system, an essential water source for cities and farms across Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, has not held so little water since 1957, before Lake Powell was filled. That was long before climate change brought three decades of drought, the worst dry spell for the Southwest in at least 1,200 years, scientists said.

Federal and state officials and communities across the region have taken emergency steps to try to head off catastrophe. They shifted water from a smaller reservoir to try to save Powell and have called for water conservation, though those requests are mostly voluntary so far.

The water shortage could have dire implications for growing Sun Belt cities such as Phoenix, for key industries including agriculture and data centers, and for hydroelectric dams that power millions of homes across the Southwest.

The shrinking reservoirs are the immediate result of record-low snowpack this winter, which was erased by record heat in the spring. Melted snowpack creates most of the Colorado’s flow during the dry summer months. But as the Southwestern climate has grown hotter and drier, the river’s flow has become smaller and less reliable.

“We expected to be in a very unpleasant place, and that’s where we find ourselves,” said Kathryn Sorensen, the director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “Mother Nature is in charge of this system.”

At the same time, a booming population in the Southwest and intensive agriculture mean that the region is consuming far more water than the river can now provide.

Here is what to know about the crisis.

Who uses the reservoirs?

The Colorado River supplies water to 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of farmland across parts of seven states. About two dozen native tribes and two Mexican states also hold rights to the river’s water.

Lakes Powell and Mead are central to maintaining that water supply in the lower half of the Colorado basin. While the river’s upper basin — which stretches across Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico — relies more heavily on seasonal stream and river flows for water, the two man-made lakes have served as a predictable supply for the more populous lower basin, which includes parts of Nevada, Arizona and California.

Agriculture is the biggest user of the Colorado River, with alfalfa and other sources of livestock feed accounting for nearly half of the water consumed. Municipal water systems use about a quarter.

And a growing share — about 10 percent of the river’s flow — is not consumed at all, but evaporates as temperatures climb across the Southwest.

How much has the water supply declined?

Dry and hot conditions across the Colorado River basin have cut the river’s flow by about 20 percent over the past two decades.

The current water use levels are unsustainable, too. While about 12 million acre-feet of water now flows down the Colorado in an average year, the century-old rules that govern the use of the river have allocated the rights to more than 16 million acre-feet. One acre-foot, or enough water to cover an acre a foot deep, is about 326,000 gallons, enough to supply two or three households for a year.

Diminishing supply, combined with decades of overuse, has caused water levels in Lakes Powell and Mead to decline steadily over the past 30 years. In both reservoirs, water storage has not been close to capacity since the late 1990s. Lake Mead is now about 27 percent full, while Lake Powell is about 23 percent full.

.

The Glen Canyon Dam near Lake Powell in Arizona last month. Lakes Powell and Mead, the country’s largest reservoirs, have been recording new lows this summer. Credit…John Locher/Associated Press

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Take a flashlight – the one on your phone will do – turn it on and place the pad of your index finger over the bulb. See that red glow? You might think it’s something to do with blood, but you’d be wrong. It’s photons of red light bouncing around inside your finger, looking for somewhere to land.

This simple experiment is a doorway to one of the most profound and surprising biological discoveries of recent years. “Light is a nutrient,” says Bob Fosbury, who was an astrophysicist at the European Southern Observatory before he turned his attention to the biology of light. That’s obviously true for plants, which use light to make carbohydrates. But it turns out it’s also true for animals and fungi, all of which exploit light in a hitherto unappreciated way. All living organisms – including us – are solar-powered.

Sunlight has long been understood to be critical to life on Earth. But the fact that light is also used to oil the wheels of metabolism is only just, er, coming to light. Long wavelengths, which come from red and infrared (IR) light, are particularly beneficial for creating energy, and are readily available from sources including sunlight and incandescent bulbs.

But changes in lighting intended to help save energy have inadvertently deprived us from this crucial supply. The irony is that just as we have discovered the benefit of red light, we are unintentionally starving ourselves of it.

How modern bulbs starved us of red light

The story begins in the early 2000s with the widespread adoption of two now-ubiquitous energy efficiency technologies. The first was the light-emitting diode (LED), which largely replaced energy-guzzling incandescent bulbs. Although this change helped conserve energy, it had other unforeseen consequences. The second was window glass that filters out IR, designed to prevent heat leaking into or out of buildings. Together, these dramatically narrowed the spectrum of light we are exposed to indoors, an environment where most humans spend up to 90 per cent of their time. “We lost about 95 per cent of the spectrum,” says neuroscientist Glen Jeffery at University College London. “Suddenly, without warning, boom, the long wavelengths go. And that’s a problem.”

For the vast majority of human existence, those long wavelengths of light were unavoidable. Daylight is rich in visible red light, which has wavelengths of about 650 to 750 nanometres. It also emits vast and invisible (to us, at least) quantities of IR, which extends out to about 2500 nanometres.

People who spend much of the day outside are naturally exposed to these long wavelengths, even when fully clothed. When long-wavelength light hits a human body, it sails through clothing and penetrates deep into tissues (short-wavelength light such as UV, in contrast, is absorbed by clothing, which is why covering up helps prevent sunburn). Red and IR are also abundant in moonlight and in the glow of a campfire. Indoor light, too, used to be full of these wavelengths, either from sunlight streaming through windows or light sources such as open fires, candles, and oil and gas lamps. The invention of the electric light didn’t change that, as the spectrum of an incandescent light bulb closely matches that of the sun.

But the adoption of energy-efficient lighting and windows robbed us of longer parts of the spectrum. Glass that filters out IR obviously blocks that portion of sunlight, and while LEDs throw out a lot of visible light, they produce nothing beyond about 750 nm. “LEDs are completely dark in the infrared,” says Fosbury. Scott Zimmerman, founder of the lighting company Silas Inc. in New Jersey who collaborates with Fosbury and Jeffery, calls LED light “ultra-processed”, an analogy with ultra-processed food. The combined effect of ultra-processed light and modern glass means that the average human today receives much less long-wavelength light than their ancestors did.

At the same time, conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, dementia and early-onset cancers are on the march. The usual suspects for this are poor diet and lack of exercise. But according to Fosbury, Jeffery and others, these are only a piece of the puzzle; another reason, perhaps the principal one, is red-light deprivation. “There’s not a single cause, but I do increasingly think that light is the most fundamental and dominant one,” says Fosbury. “And it’s probably the easiest one to solve.”

To understand why light is so vital, we have to go back in time again, to the Soviet Union of the late 1980s, where, at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a biophysicist called Tiina Karu was experimenting with red and near-infrared light as a therapy. She discovered that they were useful in wound healing and pain management and wondered what the mechanism was. Eventually she hit on energy metabolism, specifically the pace at which mitochondria inside the body’s cells produce a molecule called ATP. Red light, she found, accelerated this process.

Karu’s work never found a wide audience, mainly because she came from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, according to Jeffery. But she was right, and today red-light therapy is everywhere, used to promote wound healing and treat skin conditions, hair loss, cognitive impairment, chronic pain, osteoarthritis and much more. The evidence of its efficacy is patchy, but growing, according to John Mitrofanis, a neurologist at the University of Grenoble Alpes in France. There is much debate over the correct doses and wavelengths, but researchers are in agreement that its effects are mediated by mitochondria.

The key to this is the electron transport chain, a complex and highly orchestrated metabolic process that takes in energetic electrons and passes them down a chain of proteins, creating ATP in the process. ATP is biology’s principal energy currency, analogous to cash in an economy. When a cell needs energy to perform a task – say, building new proteins – it uses ATP.

When mitochondria are bathed in red or IR light, the electron transport chain runs a little faster and more ATP is produced – a process Fosbury calls “photometabolism”. The exact mechanism by which ATP production is accelerated remains a point of contention, but what’s certain is that diseased cells are often short of ATP, so a boost can make up the deficit. That, says Jeffery, explains why red-light therapy is beneficial.

It also explains why taking away red light can be harmful. Jeffery points out that all life on Earth evolved in an environment rich in red light and IR, but humans now mostly live in one stripped of those wavelengths. The result is more sluggish ATP production. To add insult to injury, we have also flooded our indoor environment with shorter wavelengths in the form of blue light from screens and LEDs. Blue light inhibits ATP production by slowing down the electron transport chain. Lose, lose.

The effects are insidious. Fosbury likens long-wavelength light to a vitamin and calls the effects of deprivation “21st-century scurvy”, a nod to the disease of vitamin C deficiency that killed and sickened tens of thousands of sailors in the 18th century. Like scurvy, it creeps up on you. “It’s something that accumulates over a period of time,” says Jeffery.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________