- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A jury in Bakersfield this week found Vincent Brothers guilty of five counts of murder. The story was widely covered in the media. Here is the report from KGET Channel 17. You might be wondering what this has to do with UC Agricuture and Natural Resources news. One of the 137 witnesses in the landmark trial was UC Davis entomology professor Lynn Kimsey.
Brothers claimed he couldn't have killed his family in Bakersfield on July 4, 2003, because he was in Ohio at the time and traveled in a rental car to Missouri the day before the prosecution said the murders took place. Kimsey examined the rental...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
I love living in the San Joaquin Valley. Almost year-round you can find roadside stands with "farm-fresh" fruit in season. A recent edition of the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center's newsletter quoted a writer, Thomas Semon, who believes the phrase "farm fresh" is helping debase the English language.
"The phrase 'farm fresh' is part of a long-established practice of advertisers to use language that doesn't really mean what it says but sounds good, and is not specific enough to be clearly deceptive," he says.
In my usage of the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
This Saturday morning, San Diego boaters are invited to attend a UC Cooperative Extension Boat Hull Invasive Species & Water Quality Seminar. Experts will share information about research on boat hull coatings that don't pollute the bay.
According to a "UC Delivers" article by Leigh Taylor Johnson of the Sea Grant Extension Program, boat owners have been using copper paints to control "hull fouling," the buildup of aquatic plants and animals on the hull. Hull fouling slows sailboats and increases powerboat fuel consumption. Copper leached from the paints into the bay, however, harms marine life. Johnson and program...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Madera County organic farmer Tom Willey weighed in yesterday with what I would describe as cautious appreciation for the decision to dedicate 10 acres at the UC Kearney Research and Extension Center to research on organic farming. Willey’s comments were published in the weekly newsletter “What’s Growin’ On,” which accompanies the boxes of fruit and vegetables that go to his farm’s “subscribers.”
Willey runs a Community Supported Agriculture program, in which consumers pay a monthly subscription to receive a weekly box of fruit and vegetables. Here's a link to his farm's Web site. Since I am a subscriber, I receive the delicious fresh produce and the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The news media can't resist a great story. That tenant was confirmed this weekend when fascinating results of a UC Riverside research project were shared with the media and then published widely.
UC Riverside environmental microbiologist David Crowley and postdoctoral researcher Jong-Shik Kim discovered bacteria in the La Brea tar pits that are uniquely adapted to the harsh environment and contain three previously undiscovered classes of enzymes that can naturally break down petroleum products, according to a news release by Iqbal Pittalwala of UC Riverside news service.
