Nolasco ends winless drought, Angels end Dodgers’ win streak.
The only thing that stopped him was a liner that hit him in the shin and ended his night.
Still, Nolasco pitched into the seventh inning to pick up his first win in almost two months, Yunel Escobar drove in two runs and the Los Angeles Angels snapped the Dodgers’ 10-game winning streak, 4-0 on Monday night.
Just trying to give us a chance to win and make a lot of good pitches."
The Dodgers also ended a streak of 17 consecutive games with at least one home run, which was tied for the longest stretch since moving to Los Angeles before the 1958 season.
We don’t look too much into it," Bedrosian said of stopping the Dodgers win streak.
Dodgers starter Rich Hill (4-4) gave up three runs and four hits in a season-high seven innings, striking out seven and walking two.
The Angels took the lead on Escobar’s two-out, two-run single in the third.
Hernandez then hit the liner back at the mound and the ball ricocheted off Nolasco and past first base into the foul territory in right field.
"Ricky knows he’s a better pitcher than what his numbers show so far this year," Mike Scioscia said.

Animals, not drought, shaped our ancestors’ environment.
The shores of Lake Turkana, in Kenya, are dry and inhospitable, with grasses as the dominant plant type.
Over the last four million years, the Omo-Turkana basin has seen a range of climates and ecosystems, and has also seen significant steps in human evolution.
It’s tough to prove that hypothesis, however, because of the difficulty of reconstructing four million years of climate data.
Researchers from the University of Utah have found a better way.
The results show that, unexpectedly, no long-term drying trend was associated with the expansion of grasses and grazing herbivores.
Story Source: Materials provided by University of Utah.
Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference: Scott A. Blumenthal, Naomi E. Levin, Francis H. Brown, Jean-Philip Brugal, Kendra L. Chritz, John M. Harris, Glynis E. Jehle, Thure E. Cerling.
Aridity and hominin environments.

May’s frost, June’s drought damages strawberry production at local farm.
GALESBURG, Mich. — When Ben Martin and his team started to pick strawberries Monday morning from his farm it became a more tedious task than expected.
So they quickly stopped and “threw in the towel.” “Everybody’s looking at me like ‘Hey, it’s not even worth being out here,’" said Martin about the conversation they had on the field.
However by the end of the month, they only had enough for 400.
He said they came in too small in size and it all began with the frost in May.
“And what most people don’t know is that the flower blossoms are what turns into the fruit.
There was little rainfall and strawberries need 2-3 inches of rain a week in order to fully blossom.
“It doesn’t help knowing it keeps it dry,” said Martin about the near-drought conditions.
Last year’s strawberry season was a blockbuster.
“We have an annual event which was held the 17th of June [to] get a lot of people out to the farm for our ice cream social,” said Martin.

For more than six months, despite recent rainfall, the Savannah River basin and counties on both sides of the river have struggled through drought status.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Department and the U.S. Drought Monitor currently list Richmond and Columbia counties in level 1 drought status, and counties up river have been listed in higher categories since earlier this year.
Birdwell said the current drought contingency plan has different thresholds to initiate water flow control from the dams at Lake Hartwell and Thurmond Lake.
Current lake levels are low enough that the Corps is in what they call trigger level two.
While tributaries below the dam help flow rates downstream, industry and municipalities depend on the water for production and clean drinking water.
The Corps studied several different contingencies, including a “no action” plan.
“The flow will change downstream as we reduce the water flow, which it does now anyway,” Birdwell said.
Birdwell noted two dams on the river, the hydroelectric dam at Steven’s Creek and the New Savannah River Bluff Lock and Dam, are pass through dams.
“The water flowing into those dams flows right back out.
Birdwell said the new plan to conserve water sooner than the current plan allows would be beneficial to residents and would maintain a steadier flow throughout times of drought.

Published in Nature Plants, the study reports a newly discovered biological pathway that is activated in times of drought.
Led by Jong-Myong Kim and Motoaki Seki at RIKEN CSRS, the large collaborative effort began with the discovery of novel Arabidopsis mutants that have strong drought tolerance, although the reasons were unknown.
Kim and Seki say that this project has led to several important discoveries.
Not only did they discover that external application of vinegar can enhance drought tolerance in the Arabidopsis plant, but they also found that this pathway is regulated epigenetically and conserved in common crops such as maize, rice, and wheat.
Initial testing in normal Arabidopsis under drought stress showed that genomic-wide expression of hda6 was linked to activation of the biological pathway that produces acetate, the main component of vinegar.
In the mutated plants, they found that under the same conditions, this pathway was activated even more, and plants produced larger amounts of acetate.
The team next measured acetate levels in normal plants and found that the amount of acetate produced by plants during drought directly correlated to how well they survived.
These results predicted that increasing the amount of acetate in plants could help them survive drought.
The team tested this hypothesis by growing normal plants in drought conditions and treatment with acetic acid, other organic acids, or water.
We expect that external application of acetate to plants will be a useful, simple, and less expensive way to enhance drought tolerance in a variety of plants."

Endangered Species Act.
From the Department of Water Resources: “Federal agencies responsible for the protection of species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) today provided biological opinions on the proposed construction and operation of California WaterFix.
Under the ESA, other federal agencies must consult with the Service and NOAA when their activities have the potential to impact federally endangered or threatened species.
The Service biological opinion is available here, and the biological opinion from NOAA Fisheries is here.
“The wisest thing to do in the face of uncertainty is to monitor constantly, test hypotheses regularly, adjust operations accordingly, and reassess,” said California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Acting Director Bill Croyle.
“In the Delta, we always will be adjusting to improve resiliency and protect the environment.
The biological opinions are important components of the analysis of the environmental effects of WaterFix.
These biological opinions will also be considered by permitting agencies, including the State Water Resources Control Board in its hearing now underway on a petition by DWR and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to allow for the change in points of diversion to add three new intakes on the Sacramento River as part of WaterFix.
WaterFix would not change the volume of water to which the SWP and CVP are entitled to divert, but would add additional diversion points in a more environmentally protective place that also is easier to safeguard against natural disaster such as earthquake and sea-level rise due to climate change.” Stay tuned to Maven’s Notebook for coverage later today from the media call; Reactions to be posted tomorrow … ——————————————– Sign up for daily email service and you’ll always be one of the first to know!
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THIS JUST IN … California Water Fix biological opinions posted.
From NOAA: California WaterFix is an infrastructure project that would include constructing two tunnels to convey water from the north to the south Delta.
The purpose of WaterFix is to modernize water infrastructure and provide a secure and reliable source of water to meet the needs of farmers and communities, while including measures to address the needs of fish and wildlife.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources are consulting with the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service concerning the impact of the project.
Questions & Answers (PDF) California WaterFix Biological Assessment (PDF)
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After 2016 drought, Tennessee’s flush with water.
Last year was, well, last year.
It was Eisentrout’s way of explaining how East Tennessee is 3.65 inches of rain above normal year-to-date after being an inch below normal and well on its way to a historic drought at this time last year.
The 2016 drought Today there are virtually no counties in Tennessee experiencing drought; last year at this time drought covered nearly all of Middle Tennessee and all of East Tennessee.
A dry April and May there had put Davidson County at 18.9 inches last year at this time.
The drought there came later in the year.
Those few inches of rain can make all of the difference.
"Last year we were looking at a severe drought by late fall, and this year we are looking at a much better situation."
“They have seen a great yield (of hay for their cattle).
“Water and excess humidity are the epicenter for fungal organisms.” Denton said tomatoes – the big crop in Grainger County – are especially prone to problems with fungus in the type of weather conditions East Tennessee is experiencing.

Mustard seeds without mustard flavor.
Climate changes threaten our oilseed crops Professor Barbara Ann Halkier, Head of DynaMo Center of Excellence, University of Copenhagen, is one of the scientists who has worked on developing a new oilseed crop with better properties.
The result is an oilseed crop with improved agronomic traits that is tolerant to global warming.
From model plant to oilseed crop The scientists from the DynaMo Center have invented a technology that can keep the bitter defense compounds out of the seeds while maintaining them in the rest of the plant so that the plant can defend itself against herbivores and pathogens.
Postdoc Svend Roesen Madsen from DynaMo Center and shared first author of the publication in Nature Biotechnology says: "The field trials have shown that we have come a long way.
In the coming years, the scientists from University of Copenhagen and Bayer CropScience will work towards reducing the content of bitter defense compounds in the mustard seeds even further.
"Mustard seeds without mustard flavor: New robust oilseed crop can resist global warming."
ScienceDaily, 28 March 2017.
Mustard seeds without mustard flavor: New robust oilseed crop can resist global warming.
"Mustard seeds without mustard flavor: New robust oilseed crop can resist global warming."

Satellites reveal bird habitat loss in California.
Drought and reduced seasonal flooding of wetlands and farm fields threaten a globally important stopover site for tens of thousands of migratory shorebirds in California’s Sacramento Valley, a new Duke University-led study shows.
The researchers’ analysis of historical biweekly NASA Landsat satellite images of the valley reveals that flooded habitat near the peak time of spring migration has shrunk by more than twice the size of Washington, D.C. over the last 30 years.
"On average, we’re losing an area about four times the size of Central Park each year, during a critical window of time in late March," said Danica Schaffer-Smith, a doctoral student at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who conducted the study with researchers from the nonprofit Point Blue Conservation Science.
"The fact that these highly mobile species are increasingly struggling to find flooded habitat on their migrations is an indicator that our freshwater wetland systems are in trouble," Schaffer-Smith said.
Many other species rely on these same habitats, too."
Analysis of recent satellite images by Schaffer-Smith and her team shows that open water covers just three percent of the landscape during peak migration in April, when the birds urgently need flooded habitat to rest and feed.
"One season of plentiful rainfall can’t undo the effects of years of habitat destruction and increased water consumption for a growing number of competing uses," she said.
The new study’s findings could help guide the future timing and location of such initiatives.
Three decades of Landsat-derived spring surface water dynamics in an agricultural wetland mosaic; Implications for migratory shorebirds.