Education's underground railroad

Across the seas, some people are denied education because of religious beliefs -- creating a nomadic schooling system that operates largely like a black market. A Bay Area woman who had to deal with that in Iran now hopes to bring a safer alternative to people that share similar circumstances as herself. 

Mercury News' Katy Murphy reports: "Banned from college in Iran because of her Baha'i faith, Niknaz Aftahi risked everything to learn, studying architecture at a storied underground university that moved from living room to living room, at times meeting at her family's home in Tehran."

"Now in the Bay Area, with a master's degree and architecture job, Aftahi is repaying her debt of gratitude, offering the same hope to the next generation of Baha'i students. She is part of a growing network of mostly Baha'i faculty locally and around the world who teach and mentor the students from afar, for free."

"Just the fact that I feel like I'm contributing a little bit brings me a lot of satisfaction and happiness," she said. "Some of my students are such good designers and when I teach them, I really want to do my best because I feel like I'm the only resource they have."

The TSA faces tumultuous times with passenger volume at an all-time high, employment rates plummeting and fear of terrorism skyrocketing; Lawmakers are looking for incentives to help remedy the situation. 

Hugo Martin with L.A. Times reports: "The starting pay is about $34,000 a year with no automatic pay raises based on tenure. They are on the front line in the battle against terrorism but don’t carry a gun. Their employer is routinely the punchline of jokes on late-night television shows."

"Such is the life of a TSA screener."

"Every now and then, we get thanked by the public, but for the most part, it’s a pretty thankless job,” said Bobby Orozco Jr., a Transportation Security Administration screener at Los Angeles International Airport."

Heliotropism -- or 'solar tracking'-- is a phenomena exhibited by plants in which a body 'tracks' or follows the movement of the sun in the sky, nodding from east-to-west as the day travels forward, and now a team of researchers at UC Davis have a better understanding of how sun flowers and other plants benefit from this innate ability.

Robert Kuo reporting for Sac Bee writes: "Summer drivers cruising along Interstate 5 through Yolo County are treated to breathtaking views of sunflowers growing by the side of the road. Many pull over to take an obligatory selfie, but these snapshots don’t capture the fascinating ability of young sunflowers to track the sun’s movement."

"It is a pretty sight when they’re all blooming,” said Steve Soares, a Woodland farmer who rents out land for growing sunflowers and volunteers occasionally as a photographer when travelers stop by his fields to admire the flowers."

"Young sunflowers have been known to tilt their flower heads from east to west over the course of each day. Stacey Harmer, a UC Davis professor of plant biology, and her colleagues now have a better understanding of how sunflowers exhibit the solar tracking behavior known as heliotropism."

The rise and fall of 53-year-old pot czar 'Papa Winks' provides a narrative about the booming marijuana market in California, whether medicinal or illicit.

Sac Bee's Peter Hecht writes: "Out of work and angry after the worst years of his life, David Winkle didn’t have to look far from his property in Humboldt County to see his comeback."