- Author: Wendy Powers
I mentioned last week that visits to the counties really help me see successes and challenges in context. Today was full of that sentiment.
I had event-free travel from the USDA building in DC to the airport, such that I arrived early enough to catch the flight scheduled to leave 2 hr ahead of my ticketed flight! That sounds great until you realize that the flight was already an hour behind schedule and when we landed in Chicago, the tram that takes you from E to C was not running. But I still managed to get to my flight back to CA ahead of schedule so overall, better than my usual travel luck particularly given that my ticketed flight was delayed such that I would have missed my connection back to CA.
I had spent the day with EPA, ARS, USDA Office of Climate, a few industry representatives and a few other scientists from around the country talking about the Greenhouse Gas Inventory that is open at present for public comment. It was an interesting discussion that reinforced a couple of concepts: 1) poor data in means poor data out; 2) there's no need to perpetuate the problem of poor data if alternatives can be found; and 3) taken out of context, everything appears alarming. The other ‘Ah ha' I had was that despite the fact that the EPA contractor was only paying my travel, I likely have a boat load of paperwork to submit to UCOP now because they wrote the contract as though I was consulting and they will likely send me a 1099-MISC. But that's a challenge for another day.
We started the discussion by looking at a pie chart that illustrated the contribution to methane from various sectors, including manure management (10% of U.S. CH4) and enteric fermentation (25%). Coal represented 9% of U.S. CH4 emissions. Then we looked at a pie chart that did the same for nitrous oxide emissions with about 5% of U.S. N2O emissions attributed to manure management and 75% attributed to agriculture. This was followed by a figure that conveyed agriculture as contributing to 9% of total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) production. Immediately concern was raised that in previous inventories, coal surpassed manure management for CH4 contribution. Similarly, in past years, agriculture accounted for 5 to 6% of total U.S. greenhouse gas production. How could this happen? Were the data reliable? As sectors reduce their contribution, because the data are shown as a pie chart and sectors are reported as percent of 100% (total), those sectors that haven't seen as much reduction make up a larger part of the whole pie. But without considering mass of cumulative production, there is insufficient context to see the whole picture. While agriculture may be contributing a greater portion of the total, this doesn't mean agriculture is contributing more than it once did. Furthermore, if all sector data were normalized to something like ‘per capita' we would have even a different picture. Sure, transportation and power generation sectors have seen reduced GHG production per capita over the last few decades and perhaps agriculture's reduction hasn't been as large, but are we really aiming for zero? And if we considered food production per capita, the increased production efficiency may very well exceed increased efficiencies observed in other sectors. This discussion had me thinking about one I had last week in that it mirrored one that focused on a report recently released in CA that has many upset, and not necessarily without reason. I haven't read that report yet but, again, a percent of total sources without trends in mass, doesn't tell the whole story. Instead, a large fraction conveys something bad when in fact it may all be good news – particularly when one considers that the report indicated that agriculture may contribute as much as 45% of the nitrogen oxide production in CA and the EPA GHG inventory reports that, nationally, agriculture contributes 75% of N2O.
Time to board a plane. More later on the impact of poor model inputs.
- Author: Wendy Powers
Regardless of whether or not the groundhog saw his shadow, budgets were due this week. The Resource Planning & Management team goes to great lengths to improve, streamline and clarify the process but even so there's a mad rush to get things in on time. Given what we are hearing about state and federal budgets, preparing the UC ANR unit budgets had unit directors not needing to spend much time dreaming about increasing budget requests but rather figuring out how to do more in a way that is cost-neutral, at best.
Fortunately, we have Zoom which really helps reduce travel and still provide more of a face-to-face experience than Skype or Adobe Connect ever did. Program Council used Zoom at the meeting earlier this month and for the topics covered and the time it saved those not in Davis, I think it was a great option, saving time and travel expense for most of the Program Council members. It's a sound step towards a goal of reducing travel expenditures.
The 2018 position call process is now open so between that and budget season as well as requests to fill positions off-cycle, recruiting for on-cycle positions, and restructuring administrative positions in a cost-neutral manner, I've been mentally summing up the cost to fill a vacancy. When you consider the cost to advertise, interview, relocate, and provide start up, it's staggering. Rough estimates suggest that Specialist positions need to be open for almost 2 years in order to accrue sufficient salary savings to put a new person in place; Advisor positions about 6 months assuming the positions are filled during the first recruitment. The difference is the startup package. I guess this explains why positions at most universities aren't open for recruitment until after a vacancy has occurred as opposed to a forthcoming, or planned, departure.
While that may seem like gloom and doom, I believe our numbers of academics are up over last quarter. I'm eagerly awaiting the numbers later this month and will share them as well as last quarter's. Because people come and go throughout the year, a snapshot isn't as useful as seeing changes quarterly. Hopefully it doesn't look like my fun curve but no doubt there are ups and downs.
The World Ag Expo is over for 2018! There was good traffic through the UC ANR tent for the period of time I was there. Surendra Dara (@calstrawberries) seemed to have a good-sized crowd. A few of us took a tour of the Vet Med Teaching and Research Center in Tulare today – incredible new facility there that Jeff Dahlberg and I guess had to cost $100 million and counting while it wraps up construction. Tomorrow I have an opportunity to meet with Kevin Day and his team that work out of Kings and Tulare Counties though a few have other commitments.
More travel next week so I'm looking forward to 3 nights at home where I don't have to wonder what plumber thought it was a good idea to install the shower head at a height of 5' 2”, be surprised to learn, first hand, that they do still sell cars without remote entry and clocks in them, fight with the car gadgets to figure out how to turn on the headlights.
- Author: Wendy Powers
It's hard to find enough time these days to keep up on the essential things so some of you might be wondering how I justify taking time and incurring the expense to visit our facilities around the state. It's because I consider it essential to my role and one of my key responsibilities to convey the work going on. Seeing the work, as opposed to just hearing it, gives me context. I learn far more through the conversations than what might result from a meeting sitting in Davis or Oakland.
On Monday, Mark Bell and I spent the day with the group in Kern County. The day went far too quickly and we didn't have time for one-on-one conversations with all of the academics, much less the staff. Things are so different from where they were a year ago. Despite what seems to have been a warmer winter, the trees didn't seem to be as far in bloom as they were last year. And, of course, it is much drier. At this time last year, I recall driving back from World Ag Expo knowing that there were evacuations of dairy farms underway.
I learned a bunch of things while visiting the group in Kern County, from high tech approaches to mating disruption, to creative approaches to averting fumigant use, to UC ANR's impact on developing evapotranspiration models. All was impressive and fascinating. And clearly the group works with colleagues across the state on all of these efforts, despite being tucked away far from just about everywhere. David's mating disruption work involves a cadre of Advisors all the way up to Butte and Mohammed readily referred to Brent's orchard recycling efforts are the driver behind his own research. Blake talked at length about his collaborations with Allan Fulton.
I was fascinated by the Giant cane plot we visited. While not your usual plot study, it's a crop that is really important to musicians that play woodwind reed instruments. Two of my sisters, including the fencer, played double reed instruments (oboe and bassoon) and another sister played clarinet and saxophone (single reed). I also played saxophone and I think the fencer played it as well. If you have played reed instruments you know how important a good reed is to sound quality. What I had managed to forget was how expensive reeds are - $12 and up for an oboe reed on Amazon! Brian shared that manufacturers employ the likes of Kenny G to test out reed quality. Imagine the opportunity we have to connect a new clientele group with importance of agriculture!
We ended our day at what David calls his happy place. It's a four corner intersection, still in the middle of nowhere, with a different crop on each corner. And each corner demonstrates the impact that the work of UC ANR has. One corner was a citrus orchard where glassy-winged sharpshooter control was deployed in order to spare the vineyard across the road from becoming infected with Pierce's Disease. Kiddy-corner to the vineyard were cherry trees demonstrating the gains made from all of the Spotted Wing Drosophila work that went on years ago. And opposite the cherry trees were high-bush blueberries, one of the highest value crops.
It made for a long night and I didn't catch up on emails until this evening but it was great to see just a small slice of what UCCE Kern County is up to. I can't wait to be invited back.
- Author: Wendy Powers
I don't get much time these days to connect back to my academic training. But next week I'm headed to Kern County and John Karlik has proposed that we spend some time talking about air quality. Now, given that this is California, I suspect John is thinking about particulate matter. Dust and particles are interesting but odor and olfaction are where the real excitement lie. Consider this:
- Olfaction (the science of smell) is the least understood of the five senses
- At the age of 20, the average person retains 80% of the olfactory acuity that they had at birth; at age 80, the average person has only 20% of the capacity they had at birth
- Children under the age of 5 often rate the smell of feces as pleasant suggesting that they may detect compounds that adults may not or that the unpleasantness is learned
- Humans possess far less sense of smell than other mammals
- Odor is the response elicited from a mixture of compounds, each of which is an odorant
- The difference between the concentration below which an odorant can't be detected and the concentration above which an odorant is overwhelming to the senses such that it can no longer be detected may be as low as ten-fold, compared to other senses that have a ten thousand-fold or greater difference
- Women have a keener sense of smell than men
- Smoking dulls the sense of smell
- Odor fatigue refers to a temporary situation when a person can no longer distinguish a specific odor due to prolonged exposure (nose-blind)
- Anosmia refers to a condition where a person can't detect a particular smell (odorant) regardless of the concentration
- One in one thousand people can't detect methyl mercaptan – the compound that is often used in propone tanks as an alert when the propane level is low
- One in ten thousand people can't detect ethyl mercaptan, the primary odorant in the spray of skunks
- Odor is a conditioned response; in blind studies, panelists often rate the smell of chocolate as 'unpleasant' (I happen to be one of these people) but when told that the smell is chocolate they rate the odor as 'pleasant'
- How odorants interact to create odor is poorly understood thereby making odor and odor nuisance difficult to predict
I don't want to stir up too much excitement over the topic so I'll hold off sharing manure-specific facts until some other post. Needless to say, I welcome the chance to talk about air quality a bit. Occasionally I do have the opportunity to talk about air-related things. This morning started off with a conversation about enteric methane emissions. I'll be part of additional conversation on that topic and other greenhouse gas emissions in a couple of weeks in DC, if we can avoid further government shutdowns.
I ran into Yolva and Claudia on my way out of the Davis ANR building this evening. I didn't want to keep them too long because Russell, Steven, and others from the Latino Initiative were waiting but they updated me that Malena and her mom had a great time at the Regents meeting and Malena's club were excited to hear all about her big adventure. I also learned that Malena has always wanted to attend Berkeley so she was well-prepared for President Napolitano's question. Once Malena enrolls at UCB, we'll have to be sure to lure her towards a career with UC ANR!
- Author: Wendy Powers
I missed the Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdales. Was there one? I was busy doing other things, including enjoying the weather, and I forgot to stay on top of the commercials. I did like the one with Steven Tyler, a Yellow Tail commercial with a party kangaroo, and the Crocodile Dundee commercial. My favorite was the Jack in the Box commercial with Martha Stewart. I left for a bit during half time so I'm not sure if Pink stayed home with the flu or performed. Either way, the real highlight was the final score.
I'm in town all this week – Oakland and Davis, that is. It will be nice to not have to check into a hotel or remember where I am headed. Program Council is only meeting Tuesday afternoon so that frees up some time. And the California Farm Demonstration Network is having a partners meeting on Tuesday. Today and Wednesday I have some work to do to prepare for submitting budget requests that are due next week.
At the end of this week I start ‘annual review' meetings. Due to a couple vacancies, I will have far more meetings this year than what, I hope, will be customary. It's been difficult to schedule much else for the next month or so. Over the weekend I received a jury summons for the week of March 12. That entire week is booked with annual review meetings so I'm glad I was able to reschedule it to mid-April though it will mean needing to reschedule an all-day budget meeting. I'm surprised I have been summoned already – less than 8 months living in the county! Sadly, criminals are everywhere.
A couple weeks ago my flight was delayed because there were more passengers on the plane than there were checked in. As we waited, fully loaded, at the gate, we each had to show our ID. I've only recently heard about people sneaking onto planes but unfortunately, not everyone is trustworthy. It took a while to check everyone's ID and, as you can imagine, several people were concerned about their connections. One of the flight attendants was a former law enforcement officer so he was able to deploy his skills to calm passengers and diffuse the situation. Honing or building those skills seems like a good continuous improvement opportunity, even for those who consider themselves talented in that area.
About 2 months ago I shared with a colleague the personal statement I submitted when I applied for my current position. I read through it and recalled that as I was writing it I questioned whether it was the right place to address my personal core values. I'm fortunate that the three I shared in that personal statement happen to appear in the 2016 UC ANR Strategic Plan. What is unfortunate is that not everyone shares these values or behaves in a manner that is consistent with the values. Some choose to cheat, whether it be on their taxes or the football field, while others do unspeakable things to hundreds of kids, and yet others cover up poor or criminal behavior. As a result, we have jury duty and ID checks.
Here's hoping the Olympics reflect strong values, from the athletes, to the trainers and physicians, to the judges, and the fans as well.
