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July was the 365th consecutive month of above average temperatures on planet Earth, and the hottest month since record keeping began in 1880. According to paleoclimatologists, it may have been the hottest month since the Bronze Age 4,000 years ago. The reason for the extraordinary and rapid heating that is taking place worldwide is that the oceans are no longer absorbing heat and are instead themselves warming to record levels. In addition, substantial increases in methane emissions across the arctic are contributing to record arctic heating and reducing atmospheric circulation, especially in the northern hemisphere.
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Yet another fossil discovery may push the origins of humankind back further than what was previously accepted. Paleoanthropologists have unearthed what may be the oldest-known fossil of a human-like hand. The fossilized left-hand pinky bone, excavated at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, has been dated to be at least 1.84 million years old.

This fossil also has the distinction of appearing more like the bone of a modern human, as opposed to those of finger bones belonging to other contemporary hominids found in previous excavations, such as Homo habilis and Paranthropus boisei. Homo habilis was about three feet tall, so this finger bone, which is the size of a modern human’s, suggests that it must have belonged to an individual closer to five feet or more.
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Solar energy is a great idea because it’s nonpolluting and freely available. But solar panels are expensive and inefficient, so adoption of the technology around the world has been slow. The reason they are inefficient is that they don’t capture energy from all the wavelengths of light the sun emits. Now a group of scientists has discovered a way to inexpensively retrofit solar panels so that conversion efficiency can be vastly increased.

“Most of the light from the sun is emitted over a very broad window of wavelengths,” says Challa V. Kumar, Ph.D. “If you want to use solar energy to produce electric current, you want to harvest as much of that spectrum as possible.”
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Anne Strieber was a wonderful essayist, and left behind a lovely collection in the form of Anne’s Diary, which ran from 2000 to 2015. In this final entry, written by Whitley Strieber, many of her favorite entries are linked. Enjoy this wonderful outpouring of wisdom, love, humor and humility from the founder of Unknowncountry.com and Whitley Strieber’s beloved wife Anne.

To read the final entry and explore a collection of Anne’s favorites, click here.
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