Carl Mears has been studying the weather for years. Now he’s trying to do something about it.

Carl Mears will be the featured speaker at a community gathering June 30 at 5:30 pm at the Universalist Unitarian Church in Santa Rosa.  His topic:  “What’s really going on with the Climate? A scientists’ perspective.”

For some, the phrase "climate change" has supplanted "global warming" as this issue is discussed. Mears says he understands the scientific reasoning behind that, but dislikes the political connotations.

The Business Cluster at Sonoma Mountain Village, an incubator for green entrepreneurs, is getting a boost from the state's Innovation Hub (iHub) initiative for  new companies intended to become a prime source for new, local jobs.

Sustainability looks beyond energy use and building materials, adds Geof  Syphers. He notes that part of their systemic focus at Sonoma Mountain Village, the former Agilent campus on the southern edge of Rohnert Park,  is on water.

The business cluster at Sonoma Mountain Village was one of the first elements of their 200 acre redevelopment project to get up and running, in part because it could make use of existing buildings there, explains Chief Sustainability Officer Geof Syphers. But he is also looking ahead to the new residential construction that will dramatically transform the site.

One of the eye-catching aspects of the event yesterday was a demonstration module for Pix2o, one of the start-ups in the Business Cluster that Executive Director Michael Newell says is closest to bringing their product to market.

The full roster of Business Cluster members is available here.

It’s hard to imagine anything more personal than the genetic information encoded in your DNA. But it’s only protected by privacy laws some of the time.

The actual status of California’s law protecting genetic information with regard to long term care insurance is currently a bit murky, says health journalist April Lynch. It is generally assumed to have ended, but it seems to have lapsed rather than having been repealed.

As genetic information becomes increasingly available, Lych suggests that consumers will more and more have to make decisions about how much they themselves want to know about it, as well as how much is shared with doctors and insurers.

April Lynch