- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Activities, free and open to the public, will take place inside the museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane, and outside the building where black lighting will be set up to observe and collect moths and other insects.
Entomology graduate student Jessica Gillung will participate, "so there will be an entomologist fluent in Spanish and Portuguese on site," said Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator.
Visitors are invited to view the Bohart Museum's vast collection of worldwide moth specimens and participate in family friendly craft activities featuring a moth motif. Scientists will explain how to differentiate a moth from a butterfly. Free hot chocolate will be served.
The event is in keeping with International Moth Week: Exploring Nighttime Nature, July 23-31, a citizen science project celebrating moths and biodiversity. The annual event is held the last week of July.
Moths continue to attract the attention of the entomological world and other curious persons. Scientists estimate that there may be more than 500,000 moth species in the world. They range in size from a pinhead to as large as an adult's hand. Most moths are nocturnal, but some fly during the day, as butterflies do. Finding moths can be as “be as simple as leaving a porch light on and checking it after dark,” according to International Moth Week officials (http://nationalmothweek.org/), “Serious moth aficionados use special lights and baits to attract them.”
The Bohart Museum, directed by Lynn Kimsey, professor of entomology at UC Davis, is a world-renowned insect museum that houses a global collection of nearly 8 million specimens. It also maintains a live “petting zoo,” featuring walking sticks, Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tarantulas. A gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and on major holidays. Admission is free.
More information on the Bohart Museum is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The European Grapevine Moth Team received the 2016 "distinguished service award for outstanding team." The members "coordinated a program that saved the wine and table grape industries from economic disaster caused by an invasive insect,” according to UC ANR Vice President Glenda Humiston.
“The impact of the team's work has reduced quarantines for European grapevine moth from 10 counties in 2010 to a portion of one county at the end of 2015 and no moths have been trapped in the last remaining quarantine zone since 2013," Humiston noted. "If no European grapevine moths are trapped in this zone in 2016, the last remaining quarantine for the pest will be lifted."
Humiston called the team "an excellent example of UC ANR working with government and industry partners under the Endemic and Invasive Pests and Diseases Strategic Initiative.”
Zalom, a past president of the 7000-member Entomological Society of America (ESA) and a past director of the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management (UC IPM), is the lead author of the European Grapevine Moth provisional guidelines page on the UC IPM website. Co-authors are Lucia Varela, UC Cooperative Extension, North Coast and Mountain Region, and Monica Cooper, UC Cooperative Extension, Napa County.
In addition to Zalom, Varela and Cooper, the European Grapevine Moth Team included:
- Walter Bentley, UC IPM entomologist emeritus
- Larry Bettiga, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Monterey County
- Kent Daane, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM)
- Rhonda Smith, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Napa County
- Robert Van Steenwyk, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the UC Berkeley ESPM
- Joyce Strand, UC IPM academic coordinator emeritus
The distinguished service awards are given biennially for outstanding contributions to the teaching, research and public service mission of UC ANR.
The European Grapevine Moth is a serious pest of grapes; it causes significant damage to the flowers and berries. Native to Southern Italy, it was first reported in the United States in Napa County vineyards in October 2009. It is now found throughout Europe, North and West Africa, the Middle East, and eastern Russia.
(Editor's Note: See other UC ANR awards presented)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
He will receive the award in September at the ESA meeting in Orlando, Fla., being held in conjunction with the International Congress of Entomology (ICE).
Loeb's laboratory is located at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y., where he has research and extension responsibilities for grapes and small fruit crops.
Loeb received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1989, studying with Professor Rick Karban. He earlier (1977) received his bachelor's degree at UC Davis, majoring in vertebrate zoology. "I was really into ornithology as an undergraduate but shifted to insect ecology as I was finishing up my master's (in ecology) at San Diego State," he said.
Excerpts from the ESA award announcement:
"Broadly speaking, his research focuses on species interactions involving plants, herbivores, natural enemies, and, more recently, microbes, with the specific applied goal of developing novel approaches to pest management. Along with collaborators, his research on tritrophic interactions involving leaf morphology (acarodomatia) and predatory and mycophagous mites has established new directions in plant breeding for enhancing conservation biological control.
"He is currently directing considerable research effort toward developing a better understanding of the biology and management of the invasive species spotted wing drosophila (Drosophila suzukii), a significant pest of soft-skinned fruit crops throughout much of North America and abroad. Projects include the chemical ecology and behavior of host finding as a basis for behavioral management, overwintering and spring biology, monitoring and decision making, interactions with microbes, including biological control with entomopathogens, mechanical control using netting, and optimizing chemical control.
"Other research projects ongoing in his lab include vector-pathogen interactions and biological control and pollination ecosystem services. In addition to research and extension responsibilities, he co-teaches a course on grape pest management and serves as program leader for the Department of Entomology and Geneva Experiment Station."
IPM specialist Frank Zalom, distinguished professor of entomology at UC Davis, received the Excellence in IPM award in 2010. His former PhD student, Douglas Walsh, now a professor at Washington State University, won the award in 2013. See list of other recipients.
(Editor's Note: Richard Levine of ESA contributed to this news story.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Hammock, a distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, just received a copy of the magazine listing the research as No. 76. The space exploration of Pluto made No. 1. The top stories encompassed space exploration, medicine, technology, paleontology and the environment.
The UC Davis research was singled out for “Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in the Peripheral Nervous System is a Significant Driver of Neuropathic Pain,” published in July 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (See UC Davis news story)
Lead researchers Bora Inceoglu of the Hammock lab UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology/UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Ahmed Bettaieb, then of the Fawaz Haj lab, Department of Nutrition, pinpointed the key mechanism that causes neuropathic pain--a complex, chronic and difficult-to-treat pain caused by nerve injuries from trauma or from such diseases as diabetes, shingles, multiple sclerosis and stroke.
They found that a biological process, termed endoplasmic reticulum stress or ER stress, is the significant driver of neuropathic pain. The research is expected to ignite the discovery of a new generation of therapeutics, paving the way for more efficient and effective ways to alleviate neuropathic pain.
Discover magazine headlined its story on the UC Davis research: “A Key Piece of the Pain Puzzle Is Solved.” Writer Heather Stringer quoted Hammock as saying: “Medications have historically focused on turning down the nerve response to pain, but now we've found one way to block the stress signal that generates the pain.
“Neuropathic pain, however, affords its sufferers no such luxuries,” Stringer pointed out. “It's chronic and unrelenting, and its cause is unknown, making treatment difficult. It turns out that neuropathic pain is triggered when the body experiences endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, a condition in which the production and transport of protein exceeds the cells' capacities, say researchers from the University of California, Davis. Because diabetics are at high risk of having neuropathic pain, the team studied diabetic rats that had neuropathic symptoms: hypersensitivity to touch and lack of heat sensation. And the rats' nerve cells showed clear signs of ER stress.”
“When the researchers treated the rats with a compound that blocks ER stress, the pain symptoms disappeared. Conversely, healthy rats developed neuropathy when they received chemicals that induce the stress response.”
Hammock, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, discovered a human enzyme termed sEH which regulates a new class of natural chemical mediators. He and his lab then developed inhibitors of the sEH enzyme which degrades natural mediators reducing hypertension, inflammation and pain.
The UC Davis research was earlier recommended for F1000 (Faculty 1000), a continually updated collection of more than 145,000 recommendations of top articles in biology and medicine.
The research is the work of a six-member research team: Inceoglu, Bettaieb, Haj, and Hammock, as well as K.S. Lee and Carlos Trindade da Silva, both of the Department of Entomology and Nematology and UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Related Links:
- Discover Magazine 100 Top Stories of 2015
- Discover Magazine: Key Piece of the Pain Puzzle Is Solved
- PNAS article
- UC Davis News Story: Groundbreaking Research on Neuropathic Pain
- Faculty 1000 Honor
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And that's grounds for concern, researchers say.
Agricultural entomologist Christian Nansen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and four colleagues analyzed 15 brands of roasted coffee beans, purchased at an area supermarket on two dates about six months apart, and using hyperspectral imaging technology, found “they were all over the board.”
“There was no consistency in the protein/sugar content and within the roasting classes of light, medium, medium dark, and dark or between sampling dates,” said Nansen, who specializes in insect ecology and remote sensing and uses imaging technology to quantify variability and identify trends and patterns in biological systems. “I thought this would be interesting to apply my hyperspectral imaging technology to a commercial system rather than a biological system.”
The research, “Using Hyperspectral Imaging to Characterize the Consistency of Coffee Brands and Their Respective Roasting Classes" is published in the current edition of the Journal of Food Engineering. Hyperspectral imaging involves collecting and processing information from across the electromagnetic spectrum.
Co-authors of the paper are postdoctoral research Keshav Singh of the Nansen lab; assistant professor Christopher Simmons and doctoral candidate Brittany Allison, both in the UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology; and Ajmal Mian of the University of Western Australia's Computer Science and Software Engineering.
The study is not only relevant to the coffee industry and consumers but to a wide range of commercial food and beverage brands, Nansen said. Statistics show that Americans, the leading consumers of coffee in the world, consume 400 million cups of coffee per day. They spend an average of $21 per week on coffee.
Nansen, a coffee drinker, came by the topic naturally and also out of curiosity. “I got interested in this topic because I like coffee but also because I am certain that many food and beverage products vary markedly in quality. I thought this would be interesting to apply my hyperspectral imaging technology to a commercial system rather than a biological system.”
“The uniqueness and consistency of commercial food and beverage brands are critically important for their marketability,” the researchers wrote in the abstract. “Thus, it is important to develop quality control tools and measures, so that both companies and consumers can monitor whether a given food product or beverage meets certain quality expectations and/or is consistent when purchased at different times or at different locations.”
“We acquired hyperspectral imaging data (selected bands out of 220 narrow spectral bands from 408 nanometers to 1008 nanometers from ground samples of the roasted coffee beans, and reflectance-based classification of roasting classes was associated with fairly low accuracy.”
Their research provides evidence that the “combination of hyperspectral imaging and a general quality indicator (such as extractable protein content) can be used to monitor brand consistency and quality control,” the scientists wrote. “We demonstrated that a non-destructive method, potentially real-time and automated, and quantitative method can be used to monitor the consistence of a highly complex beverage product.”
The research was funded in part by Mian's ARC Fellowship.