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Science/Health

OSU Extension Service •

Extension cattle specialists seek to uncover how wildfire smoke affects cows

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Cattle ranchers east of the Cascades spent much of the summer evacuating their herds from wildfires that scorched nearly 2 million acres.

Even if the animals were moved safely away from the flames, they faced another potential danger: smoke exposure.

Across the state, on both dairy and beef operations, cows have been getting sick. Juliana Ranches, an Oregon State University Extension Service beef specialist, describes a rancher with cattle experiencing “running rose, running...
OSU Extension Service •

OSU researcher demonstrates bee pesticide monitoring is due for an upgrade

CORVALLIS, Ore. — By the time she was studying the mechanics of stag beetle pinchers as an undergraduate student, Emily Carlson knew she had been bit by the research bug.

Literally.

“Basically, I just got them really angry, saw how hard they could pinch, and then dissected their heads,” Carlson said.

Disclaimer: Beetles aren’t “true” bugs, but in the United States they are referred to colloquially as bugs.

Carlson went on to work in natural resources nonprofits and local governance as she fi...
OSU Extension Service •

OSU researcher trades chef uniform for lab coat to tackle wine grape pest

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Alexander Butcher’s passion for food — which led to culinary school and a 10-year career as a professional chef — has now brought him to Oregon State University to pursue a Ph.D. in entomology.

You read that correctly. We’ll let Butcher connect the dots.

“Working in the restaurant industry, I noticed so much food waste and it just really started to bother me,” Butcher explained. “That led me down a track towards agriculture and pest management and really trying to reduce food...
OSU Extension Service •

Dormant-season grazing is a win for all, Extension researcher shows

ONTARIO, Ore. — In 2015, the Soda Fire burned 280,000 acres in southwest Idaho and southeast Oregon, including large swathes of Malheur County.

One of the biggest contributors to the fire — and others like it — are invasive grasses, otherwise known as “fine fuels.” Not only do fine fuels worsen wildfires, they can also out-compete native plants that make up the unique biodiversity of the Northern Great Basin, where Malheur County is located.

Sergio Arispe, who’s been with the Oregon State Uni...
OSU Extension Service •

Oregon researchers part of first-of-its-kind national research partnership in organic seed production

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Often, growers must use organically produced seeds to produce organically-certified produce. But despite a growing demand for organic seed, growers lack research-based information about best production practices.

A coalition that includes three Oregon State University Extension Service researchers was awarded a $3.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to improve organic seed production, both in the Pacific Northwest and nationally.

The Organic Seed Alliance...
Washington Blade •

How data helps — and hurts — LGBTQ communities

When Scotland voted to add questions about sexuality and transgender status to its census, and clarified the definition of “sex,” it was so controversial it led to a court case.
It got so heated that the director of Fair Play for Women, a gender-critical organization, argued: “Extreme gender ideology is deeply embedded within the Scottish Government, and promoted at the highest levels including the First Minister.”
Data, like the census, “is often presented as being objective, being quantitative...
OSU Extension Service •

OSU engages with onion growers to demonstrate an alternative method for plastic waste reduction

ONTARIO, Ore. – Onion farming is big business in Malheur County, where over 12,000 acres are dedicated to growing the vegetable that makes food taste good.

But with onion production comes an unexpected drawback: plastic pollution from the irrigation systems that are instrumental to crop success. Drip tape irrigation in particular produces two million pounds of plastic waste each year in Malheur County.

Stuart Reitz, the director of the OSU Malheur Experiment Station, said finding a solution to...
OSU Extension Service •

Extension faculty jump into action as Eastern Filbert Blight returns

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Nik Wiman thinks about things in the big picture.

Wiman, an orchard crop specialist with the Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences and Extension Service, said that this is what brought him to the specialty in the first place. “Orchards are really interesting agricultural systems because they're somewhat permanent.”

Unlike annual crops, Wiman explained, “where you kind of start from zero every year, with an orchard you have the opportunity to do things that...
OSU Extension Service •

OSU studies the effects of pathogen attacking Pacific Northwest hop fields

CORVALLIS, Ore. – When Cynthia Ocamb was invited to tour a hop field in the early 2000s, she did not expect to see a prevalence of Fusarium canker higher than the single digits.

Driving around the field in Marion County, Ocamb was gobsmacked. A disease that generally affected 5% of the crop plants was affecting 75% in this field.

“I was shocked,” the Oregon State University professor of plant pathology remembered.

It was sign of the shift of what diseases the Oregon hop industry would be comb
Mother Jones •

First they tried to "cure" gayness. Now they're fixated on "healing" trans people.

The conversion therapists met last November at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. Behind the closed doors and drawn blinds of a Hampton Inn conference room, a middle-aged woman wearing white stockings and a Virgin Mary blue dress issued a call to arms to the 20-some people in attendance. “In our current culture, in which children are being indoctrinated with transgender belief from the moment they’re out of the womb, if we are confronted with a gender-confused child, you must help,” declared
Mother Jones •

The future of natural history is here, and it’s open-source

It’s 1963. You’re an African spiny mouse in Egypt. You mostly eat dates, but you’re known to consume the dried flesh of local mummies; your species was here long before they were.

In another 60 years, it’ll be discovered that your fur hides regenerative, bony scales called osteoderms—an incredible adaptation long thought exclusive to armadillos and reptiles. The finding is pure accident: a herpetologist on an unrelated project, Dr. Edward Stanley, happens to scan you and catch “something strang
Mother Jones •

The UK's new study on gender affirming care misses the mark in so many ways

Last month, the UK’s four-year-long review of medical interventions for transgender youth was published. The Cass Review, named after Hilary Cass, a retired pediatrician appointed by the National Health Service to lead the effort, found that “there is not a reliable evidence base” for gender-affirming medicine. As a result, the report concludes, trans minors should generally not be able to access hormone blockers or hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and instead should seek psychotherapy. While t
Mother Jones •

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Scientists might finally have the answer.

This just in: The scientists have solved it. After a millennium of taunting young biologists and philosophers as Plutarch pondered: “Which was first, the bird or the egg?” the great chicken and egg debate is perhaps coming to a close.

The chicken (or, rather its amniote ancestor) has beat the egg.

Obviously, eggs of some form or another existed long before chickens—they are female sex cells, which evolved somewhere between 1 billion and 2 billion years ago, before even our ancestor’s ancestor’
Mother Jones •

A bunch of new research puts this winter's wild weather in frightening context

The earth is already breaking all sorts of records this year, and they’re not good ones. As I type, California’s historic rainfall pours down the coast and residents face over 300 mudslides, on top of widespread flash flooding. At the peak of the storm, over 800,000 lost power. Just weeks before, snowfall across the US shattered expectations. In Nashville, residents got their yearly average of snow in less than a day.

And that’s just the tip of the (quickly melting) iceberg.

Since the start of
Mother Jones •

Colonialism's link to the Maui wildfires

Fires have been raging across Hawaii’s Maui Island since Tuesday night. It is already the second deadliest wildfire in United States history, with 270 structures and 2,000 acres burned, 55 people dead, and 11,000 people without power. More than 11,000 people were evacuated on Wednesday, says Hawaii Department of Transportation director Ed Sniffen. The population of Maui is 164,000.

The fires are especially horrifying because Hawaii is not a natural fire ecosystem and has not evolved to rebound
Mother Jones •

What the fight over one small amphibian in Nevada says about the future of green energy.

The Endangered Species Act has been one of the country’s most valuable environmental tools, but it faces new threats. As the law turns 50, we’re asking whether this “pit bull” of an environmental law, as one expert described it, can survive the challenges of our time—from political attacks to climate shocks. You can read all the stories here.

Almost as quickly as the Dixie Valley toad was discovered, it became apparent the toad could be lost.

Richard Tracy, a biology professor at the Universit
5280 •

A Dinosaur Lover's Guide to Colorado

In 2021, Jonathan Charpentier was walking in a field behind his grandparents’ home in south Boulder when he spotted what appeared to be an especially shiny rock. Curious, the then 14-year-old pocketed it. Later, after he washed off the dirt, he compared the serrations on the curved mass to images of fossilized dinosaur teeth online; it looked enough like what he was seeing for him to email a photo to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS).

Charpentier didn’t have to wait long for an answe
5280 •

More Exciting Than Watching Grass Grow: Restoring Colorado’s Prairie Could Help Fight Climate Change

At first look, the shortgrass prairie is not exceptional. Located east of Denver, the expanse of green and golden stalks stretches to the horizon with only the occasional muted shrub and forb adding texture to the landscape. “It’s called the plains because it’s pretty plain,” says Fendi Despres, natural resource specialist with the City of Aurora. “The prairie is boring for most people.”

But even if the North American Plains aren’t marked by towering trees or flashy flowers, like in tropical ra
5280 •

Colorado Could Look Drastically More Arid, Less Green in 100 Years

When Dr. Rebecca Finger-Higgens and her colleagues perform their work, they must jump into the future. But it’s not science fiction. It’s the science of climate change. And the future Colorado, according to their recent findings, could look less green, more arid, and more unstable. Finger-Higgens and a team of fellow scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Southwest Biological Science Center in Moab, Utah recently examined results from a decade-long study simulating predicted decreases