What segment of California’s population is healthiest?  It’s probably not what you would think.

As Alameda County’s Public Health Officer, Dr. Anthony Iton (left) directed efforts to correlate data from death certificates, parole offices, income reports from the national census and other sources and see where they overlapped in his county. And he found a high correspondence to the areas where poverty is most prevalent.

Taking their cue from the social support systems that many immigrant families enjoy, Dr. Iton suggests that public health departments also instigate informal gatherings of residents in impoverished neighborhoods, as an additional tool for improving their collective well-being.

Dr.  Iton  also co-authored this report (pdf, 87 pages) detailing the relative medical and social factors that shape health outcomes among the population of Alameda County. Similar results apply in Sonoma County and much of California.

The earliest known forms of written communication have now been traced to eastern Europe, from a long-standing agricultural society that predates the Greeks and Egyptians.

Joan Marler is Executive Director of the Institute of Archeomythology, an emerging field that integrates a broad array of academic disciplines.

The multi-disciplinary field was established byMarler's mentor, Marija Gumbutas (seen here in a 1987 photograph). Marler will talk more about archeomythology at the Science Buzz Café tonight at the youth annex of the Sebastopol Community Center at 7 pm.

The surviving artifacts from this ancient civilization, such as the vase below, suggest it was deeply ritualistic, and Marler believes those rites were enmeshed in their culture of sustainability.

The closely guarded internal financial workings of the Sonoma State Academic Foundation may be about to see the light of public review.

Robert Karlsrud, dean emeritus of the SSU School of Social Sciences, is concerned that the administration of the Sonoma State University Academic Foundation is concentrated in just a few top officials at the school, and particularly that the finances of the campus and its foundation are directed by the same individual:  Laurence Furukawa-Schleret, SSU's Vice President for Administration & Finance and Chief Financial Officer.

The high priority given to fund-raising for the construction of the Green Music Center by the Arminana administration has rankled many on campus, especially as the cost of the structure sopared to $120 million. The partially completed building, seen here earlier in the construction process, still needs around $20 million to be finished, and even then, says Karlsrud, it may be a fiscal drai for many years to follow.

SB 218, by San Francisco State Senator Leeland Yee, was prompted in part by the public disclosure of the SSU Foundation’s loans to a former board member. The bill has passed the state legislature and is now awaiting the governor’s signature to become law.  Dean Karlsrud says the campus community is also waiting to see if the measure has any real teeth.

Karlsrud's detailed critique of the Foundation's fiscal operations was published online by the  Empire Report.

There may be a lot of beached jellyfish on the sand along the coast these days, but that’s primarily  an indicator of a productive year for the strange and ancient creatures.

Jellyfish occur in many parts of the world, from the tropics to much cooler northern waters, but there are specific types that frequent the northern California coast, such as the "sea nettles" pictured here.

Carl Menard, Director of Aquatic Resources at the U.C.Davis Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory,  says the rich upwelling of nutrients the jellies have been feeding on is not indicative of a possible El Nino in the coming winter, but because of other factors, that can’t be ruled out altogether.

Two other common types of jellyfish often found along the North Coast are the Moon jellies (below left) and the valella valella, which has a sort of "sail" that can catch the breeze on the surface of the sea to propel it. But if it happens to catch on onshore wind, it may end up stranded on a beach.