ANR news blog

Quarles quoted in LA Times blog

A Los Angeles Times home improvement blog, titled "Pardon Our Dust," discusses a ember-blocking roof vent invented by a San Bernardino firefighter. Blogger Kathy Price-Robinson pulled a quote by UC Cooperative Extension wood durability advisor Stephen Quarles from a UC ANR news story to add to her post with a link to the complete story. Here's the quote:

"Quarter-inch mesh cannot stop embers and flames during wildfires. This is an example of conflict in code preferences between building and fire officials. Smaller mesh screens would do a better job of keeping out fire and embers, but these same screens plug up more easily."

The new invention is a baffled vent cover, made of 26-gauge galvanized steel, that allows air to flow freely but blocks embers from passing through. An article about the baffled vent covers in Fire Engineering magazine says the baffle material acts as a heat sink, virtually eliminating the threat of fire embers entering through a structure's vent openings.

 

Sensory lab a Fresno Bee sensation

The new sensory laboratory at the UC Kearney Research and Extension Center won high visibility over the weekend in a prominent story on the front page of the Fresno Bee business section. The new lab was dedicated in April and is the subject of the ucanr.org feature story for May.

Fresno Bee reporter Dennis Pollock wrote that sensory research mixes science with people's senses -- especially taste -- to come up with fruit that shoppers are more likely to enjoy.

"Such results will benefit not only the consumer but our agricultural industries," the article quoted Mary Lu Apaia, a UC Riverside sub tropical horticulturalist based at Kearney.

The story said the new lab takes the place of a "makeshift" facility with less than optimal conditions because of distracting sounds from cooling equipment and odors from fruit stored in a freezer.

"This is a people science. People [the tasters] are my instruments," it quoted staff research associate Sue Collin. "I don't want any distractions."

The Fresno Bee story included mention of all the commodity and grower groups who contributed cash to construct the new laboratory.

The new KREC sensory lab.

Heat wave generates hits

With a heat wave settling in on California for the next few days, the UC ANR news and information office shared its collection of helpful information for preventing heat stress in outdoor workers, which is compiled in a media kit on the news and information Web site, http://news.ucanr.org. The news release went out yesterday, and the information was made available to the Fresno Bee's 157,546 readers this morning.

Cool!

Glassy-winged sharpshooter back in the news

Glassy-winged sharpshooters made a tremendous spash in the California media back in the 90s when they were first introduced into California and began spreading Pierce's disease in grapes. They were never far from the minds of grape researchers and farmers, but the stories in the press almost completely disappeared. Until yesterday.

The Riverside Press Enterprise ran a 500-word story about renewed concerns of a Pierce's disease outbreak in Temecula wine country. According to the article, a grower and a UC Riverside scientist are warning that not enough wineries are applying a pesticide that kills the glassy-winged sharpshooter.

UC Riverside entomologist Nick Toscano told the paper that as many as 40 percent of Temecula-area wineries do not apply the pesticide to control GWSS, which sets the winery back $175 to $210 an acre.

There have been no widespread outbreaks of Pierce's disease since the late 1990s, but sharpshooters are still found in local vineyards, according to the article. The week of April 28, it said, close to 40 sharpshooters were caught in UC Riverside's sticky traps.

An interesting side note: The Press Enterprise posted a four-minute podcast with the story, which is simply an automated text reader robotically saying the words in the story.

A GWSS poses on a leaf.

It's not easy being green

Kermit the Frog's cute lament about being green was used to introduce a story in the Vacaville Reporter recently on the movement to eat "green" by purchasing organic food.

Organic producers say their products are more nutritious, safer, tastier and better for the environment because herbicides and pesticides are not used, wrote freelance reporter Elizabeth Long.

Critics, however, say organic agriculture requires more land to produce the same amount of food, land that should be conserved for wildlife.

For the story, Long spoke with Tom Tomich, director of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute housed at UC Davis. According to the article, he noted that organic production makes sense in the highly productive Sacramento Valley.

The risk of lower crop yields could be balanced by the benefit of fewer pesticides in the air and water, the article said. Selling to local metropolitan areas, such as Sacramento and San Francisco, could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.

In other parts of the world, being green won't be so easy. Africa and Asia may have to look to other methods to grow food as their populations increase and the cost of importing foreign crops rises with fuel prices, according to Long's story.

Kermit couldn't be more right.

 

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