Issue 28   |   March 31, 2014   |   Archive

News & Events

Coffee Outlaw

There’s a new pest in town, but sheriffs Scot Nelson and Mike Melzer (PEPS) and Andrea Kawabata (TPSS) are donning their badges and rounding up the posse to make sure it doesn’t get too comfortable. The latest crop bad guy, which has not been reported anywhere else in the world as yet, was discovered on the Big Island in January 2014 through Scot’s Plant Doctor app. It creates lesions on the leaves and petioles of coffee and reportedly renders the cherries unmarketable, though much still needs to be learned about it. Check out more pictures of the intruder at the website Scot has created to monitor it, and report any sightings there or to Scot at snelson@hawaii.edu. Also see Scot’s interview on the pest on KITV.

Nalo Kala

The Waimanalo Research Station has just launched a crowdsourcing campaign to raise funds to build a roof to complete the construction of an On-Farm Learning Pavilion, and everyone is asked to spread the word about this great initiative! Since their original classroom collapsed in a 2011 storm, the station has been using temporary tents to provide a venue for their increasing number of classes and workshops and shelter for visitors. Partial funding has been granted by the Castle Foundation, O‘ahu County, and a CTAHR capacity-building grant, but $30,000 more is needed. And the campaign, hosted on the Indiegogo website, is already garnering support for its goal. Go, Waimanalo!

Controlling Organic Pests?

Well, the Organic Pest Control class at LCC may not teach precisely that, but it will tell you how to get rid of unwanted insect interlopers without synthetic chemicals. The class will be held in room CE-303 on Friday, April 4, from 1:00 to 3:30 p.m. It’s intended to assist organic farmers in defining what “organic” means in regard to USDA certification, determining whether a pesticide is organic or not, and clarifying what role the Hawaii Department of Agriculture has in regulating organic operations. Other hot topics of interest for organic farmers will be discussed, such as “Integrated Pest Management” and “How to Protect Pollinators.” Regulatory requirements such as the Worker Protection Standard will be reviewed to assure compliance by organic operations. The class, conducted by HDOA, will cost $25, and you can register here. This class is also good towards 2 recertification credits for private applicators of restricted-use pesticides! Its course number is AGR5040.

The Peaceful, Heroic Rose

There’s a lot going on at the Urban Garden Center! Two new rose gardens, the Heroes Rose Garden and the Peace Rose Garden, have been established there. Tended by the Honolulu Rose Society, they are planted with roses whose names relate to heroes or to peace (pictured is the Peace rose) and were the impetus for a recent writing contest in which schoolchildren were encouraged to write about what peace or heroes meant to them. The winners will be honored at a ceremony on April 12 that will also feature a Hawaiian blessing for the gardens and the newly built Rose Pavilion. On the same day, the OUG will offer its traditional Second Saturday programs, which this month will include a free seed- and plant-sharing workshop and event. Experts will speak on seed saving and selection, and then members of the community are encouraged to bring their own saved seeds, huli, cuttings, and rhizomes to share and barter with others. Add in the usual plant sales, docent tour, garden demos, and plant question booth staffed by Master Gardeners, and it’s a full and fun—and peaceful and heroic—day! Pre-register to secure your seat by calling 453-6050, but walk-ins are welcome as space allows.

A Milestone in the Journey

Everyone is invited to attend the CTAHR Spring 2014 Graduation Convocation on Wednesday, May 7, to help graduating students celebrate their academic achievements (pictured, last year’s event). Check out this website for more information. Please RSVP by Friday, April 18, for seating and refreshment purposes by completing the online form on the website (some questions will not pertain to you, so just fill in the first four questions and click the submit button). Check-in begins at 5:15 p.m. in the Campus Center Ballroom, followed by the program from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Sylvia Trinh at strinh@hawaii.edu.

Grants & Awards

Lori Yancura’s Awesome Teaching Skills

A big congratulations to Lori Yancura (FCS) for her wonderful and well-deserved honor as a recipient of the 2014 UH Manoa Chancellor’s Citation for Meritorious Teaching Award. Lori will be recognized at the UH-Manoa Award ceremony on April 30. Lori provides excellence in teaching research methods to the department's more than 300 majors. Students create research projects and improve their science literacy for the investigation of factors underlying the resiliency of both individuals and fashion businesses. Congratulations, Lori!

Researching Their Futures

Jinan Banna (HNFAS) (left) and FSHN undergraduate students Maili Huck (right) and Samantha Erin De Leon (center) received a travel grant from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology/Maximizing Access to Research Careers Program, which will provide funding for their attendance at the Experimental Biology annual meeting. Experimental Biology is a multidisciplinary scientific meeting open to those with interest in research and life sciences. Among the participating societies is the American Society for Nutrition, which will offer sessions hosted by various research interest sections. At the meeting, the students will have ample opportunity to network and identify career opportunities. Both students have an interest in incorporating research into their future careers; Maili plans to pursue a master’s degree in nutrition and obtain a credential as a registered dietitian, while Samantha wishes to practice medicine as a physician. Attending Experimental Biology will assist them in further clarifying their research interests as they move to the next steps in their career paths.

Oyster Mushrooms

PEPS Tropical Plant Pathology graduate student Shelby Ching received a Western Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (WSARE) Graduate Student Grant Award to work on “Spent oyster mushroom compost for nematode management” under the guidance of Koon-Hui Wang (PEPS). Beside many uses of oyster mushroom in the kitchen, Shelby and Koon-HuiuiHui are looking at fine-tuning the use of oyster mushroom compost for pre- and post-plant management of root-knot nematodes on fresh basil in Hawai‘i. Congratulations, Shelby and Koon-Hui!

Spotlight on Our Community

Spreading Mindfulness

Thao Le (FAMR) is everywhere! She was featured on Hawai‘i News Now March 18 and 19 for her mindfulness program to provide skills for stress reduction, self-regulation, and resiliency to incarcerated youth at the Hawai‘i Youth Correctional Facility. Thao also chaired the first panel at the Numata Conference sponsored by UH Department of Religion and the Numata Foundation, and presented her paper “Preventing Violence: Implementation and Outcome of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention in Hawai‘i and Vietnam.” In addition, her poster on this mindfulness program was also selected through a competitive selection process to participate in the special poster session “Adolescence in Diverse Contexts” at the Society for Research in Adolescence conference in Austin, Texas. Great work, Thao!

Fun With Alumni

The CTAHR Alumni Association banquet on March 21 was enlivened by a tour of Kapi‘olani Community College's Culinary Arts program's aquaponics system, garden, and food-composting facility, led by pastry chef and KCC instructor Dave Brown. A yummy dinner prepared by the Culinary Arts students included poi bread pudding with haupia sauce and Bananas Foster cheesecake made with fruit provided by CTAHR student Gabe Sachter-Smith. Gabe, who is a member of the CTAHRAA board, also shared both bounty from his garden in Manoa and, in speech to the gathering, his bountiful information on growing food in the tropics. If you're new to gardening, skip the exotic bell peppers and beefsteak tomatoes in favor of plants such as cassava and pigeon peas, that like to grow in the tropics, he advised. Among the seeds and plant starts he shared was luffa, whose gourds can be eaten when young or harvested later for loofah sponges. The evening concluded with a raffle drawing for coveted prizes from golf balls to a queen-size quilt. Proceeds go toward CTAHR student scholarships.

Life After CTAHR?

Yes! About 50 students and 9 employers gathered in Gilmore Hall on last week for the “Careers After CTAHR” workshop, which focused on careers related to the fields of study of Family Resources (FAMR), Animal Sciences (ANSC), and Food Science and Human Nutrition (FSHN). Local professionals, many of whom are CTAHR alums, came from a wide array of companies and organizations, including the Susannah Wesley Community Center, University Lab School, UH-Manoa Office of Admissions, WIC Services, HPC Foods, Kokua Hawaii Foundation, UH-Manoa Office of Research and Compliance, Hawaii Medical Veterinary Association, and WCC Veterinary Technology Program. Students learned about potential internship/career opportunities and the personal career pathways and experiences of those working in jobs related to their fields of study, and they received tips on how to prepare themselves for the workforce. Both students and employers benefited from the experience. Many thanks go to all the professionals who volunteered their time to share their valuable knowledge and experiences with the students, ASAO for organizing this event, CTAHR student volunteers, and the students who attended.

Conserving Resources for Sustainability

The UHM Generation Anthropocene project, inspired by a similar project by graduate students at Stanford University, is a series of podcast interviews with faculty to discuss human impacts on the environment. The project’s creators, Brian LaCarter and Erin VanGorden, point out that humans are directly changing the earth, unlike at any other point in time, and invite various experts to focus on particular ways this is happening. The project’s video interviews have been selected for presentation at this year’s Sustainability Summit. An interview about community economics with Linda J. Cox (NREM) is now posted at the site, discussing the importance of controlling feral cats in order to keep them from killing native birds. Linda also stresses the necessity of thinking in the long term, pointing out that a time frame of one hundred years is appropriate for assessing the health of a community and that society’s tendency to consume all resources as quickly as possible is counter to the very notion of sustainability.

Ag-Aware Out There

About 600 fifth-grade students and teachers attended the 2014 Agriculture and Environmental Awareness Day on March 7 out at the Pearl City Urban Garden Center. The purpose of this yearly outdoor event is to create a greater awareness and understanding of agriculture and the environment among today’s youth, teachers, and general public, as well as to introduce young students to potential Hawai‘i-based career opportunities in these fields. University faculty, staff, and students; government agencies; private industry; and community members volunteered their time to educate the students with 16 presentations and 12 interactive exhibits. Several exhibitors returned the next day for the Second Saturday at the Garden event open to the general public. CTAHR’s O‘ahu Cooperative Extension Office and Academic and Student Affairs partnered again to organize this annual event, while funding support was provided by USDA through CTAHR’s Agribusiness Education, Training, and Incubation Program. The City and County of Honolulu also provided generous funding for this event and gave the crowd of 600 a warming welcome in the middle of the morning. Thanks go to the Pearl City Urban Garden Center staff and volunteers, ASAO staff, and Waimanalo Research Station staff for planning and setting up the event, along with a big mahalo to the CTAHR faculty and staff, government agencies, community members, and company representatives who volunteered their time and knowledge for the presentations and exhibits at the Friday and Saturday events. Dr. Po-Yung Lai of the City and County of Honolulu also deserves gratitude for helping to acquire funding for this year’s event. Check out pictures of the day here!

Research in the News

PEPS’s Dan Rubinoff and William Haines’s citizen science-powered Pulelehua Project has captured the imagination of many as it seeks to capture images and locations of the elusive, iconic Kamehameha butterfly. The latest shout-out to the project comes from Kaunana Magazine, a compilation of UH-Manoa research news, which posted a video and description of the project. Nor is this CTAHR’s only recent mention in the magazine, which also features MBBE’s Dan Jenkins and the half-million-dollar grant he received to create and refine hand-held technology to detect Salmonella and other harmful bacteria quickly in crops growing in the field. CTAHR research—it has roots and wings!

Persidangan Rayap!

Ken Grace (Interim Associate Dean of Research) was keynote speaker in February at TRG10, the 10th conference (persidangan) of the Pacific Rim Termite (rayap) Research Group in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ken discussed CTAHR research on two of the most destructive termites worldwide, the Formosan and the Asian subterranean termites. In addition to two days of discussion on wood chewers, the group also took time to chew some delicious Malaysian food in a closing banquet in the Kuala Lumpur Tower, and visited Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), the government center for wood and forestry research.

Going the Distance (Education!)

About 25 faculty members attended CTAHR’s first Distance Education Open House, both in person and from a distance. Distance Education Specialist Kellie Kong shared tips and resources for successful online teaching and offered a preview of instruction projects in the works from extension (GoFarm Hawai‘i and Maui Master Gardeners) to academic (FAMR 331). Helen Spafford (PEPS), who earned CTAHR’s Excellence in Teaching award and the Association for Education Communication and Technology’s Division of Distance Learning’s Crystal Award for her online course (PEPS 250 World of Insects), pointed out the value of being able to deliver Manoa coursework to students statewide. Susan Miyasaka (TPSS) shared the opposite experience, teaching courses to Manoa students from Hilo. Her Komohana colleague J.B. Friday (NREM) recommended approaching online teaching more like a science meeting than a traditional lecture. Young-Jin Bahng (FCS) said the efficiencies of teaching online allow her to include more non-majors in her course (FDM 471 International Apparel Trade Issues), which expands insights shared. Brent Sipes (PEPS) has adopted an asynchronous, unit-mastery module approach. “The students seem pretty independent, even eschewing email contact but doing pretty well,” he said; “maybe I need the interaction of the traditional classroom more than they do!”

Likeable Bug Science

Hawai‘i insects are very special! Dan Rubinoff (PEPS) discussed the diversity of Hawai‘i’s bugs, the Insect Museum, and the science of bugs on Likeable Science, an offshoot of ThinkTech Hawai‘i on ‘Olelo Community Media. He shared facts about some of the unique insects in Hawai‘i, including carnivorous caterpillars (complete with video of caterpillar carnage), amphibious caterpillars, and the Pulelehua Project’s Kamehameha butterfly. And speaking of pulelehua, according to the Project’s Facebook page the project has received many photo submissions from the public thanks to last week’s media exposure, with 10 new confirmed sightings of the Kamehameha butterfly on four islands, Moloka‘i, O‘ahu, Kaua‘i, and Hawai‘i! Check out What Bugs Hawai‘i on Youtube, as well as a funny comic strip about the hunt for the Kamehameha butterfly. Go, team insects!

Fashionable Honolulu Streets

Andrew Reilly’s new book Honolulu Street Style (last seen in the January 22 edition of CTAHR Notes) was featured in the Star Advertiser. 'One thing I hope this book will accomplish is to show people that Hawai‘i does have a style and aesthetic beyond what they think it is, and understand there is a fashion industry here that I think is on an upswing now,” Andy says. “Hawai‘i had an impact on fashion from the 1930s through '60s, and I think it will make an impact again.' Honolulu Street Style is available from Amazon. Read the whole Star Advertiser article here!

Studying Abroad and Beyond

Kacie Ho, a FSHN alumna, was featured in the UHM Study Abroad Newsletter. She studied in Seville, Spain in the fall of 2011 with her academic advisor Wayne Iwaoka (HNFAS) and credits Wayne with encouraging her to gain a broader cultural understanding outside of Hawai‘i. After her experiences and work in Spain, Kacie presented the seminar 'Spanish Olives: Growing, Harvesting, and Processing.' Currently, Kacie is a graduate student in the Food Sciences Department at Purdue University, where she was featured in a Graduate Ag Research Spotlight. Her research focuses on lycopene, the compound that gives tomatoes their red-orange color. She is studying the use of microwaves to enhance the efficiency of extracting lycopene from tomato peels, a major and often discarded by-product of processing. Encapsulating the lycopene in nanoemulsions might allow it to be added to food products as a natural color or nutritional enhancement. Go for it, Kacie!

New Publications

Biotech, Plants, and Pests

Two new issues of Biotech in Focus are available! First, Plant Breeding Goes High-Tech looks at the history of selective breeding of plants and how science has kicked up the process through mutagenesis breeding, propagation, tissue culture, and hybrids. Then in Challenges for Farmers: Pests Take Their Toll, guest writer Mark Wright (PEPS) explores the toll pests take on farmers. The issue explains natural resistance, biological control, what we’ve learned from synthetic insecticides such as DDT, and more. Checkout these new issues and back issues on the Biotech in Focus website.

The Poetics of Resource Management

Does the very thought of economic theory make you wax poetic? No? It does Chennat Gopalakrishnan (NREM, Emeritus), who has just published two poems in the Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research. He describes the first one, “To build or not to build? - That’s the question” as “a meditation on the well-known economic concept of benefit-cost analysis,” while the second, “Externalities,” includes reflections on the more complex idea of, yes, externalities. It just goes to show that to a poet’s eye all is poetry.

Farewells

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Nelson!

Charlie Nelson (MBBE) recently retired after decades of dedicated service to CTAHR. In 2006, Charlie received the CTAHR Dean’s Award for Outstanding Civil Service, and was part of the Quarantine First Responders team named State Team of the Year in 2010. The Quarantine First Responders worked extensively on controlling the coqui frog. Charlie also made major contributions to Arnold Hara's development of the mobile hot water treatment system for plant exports from the Big Island, a major defense against coqui frogs, nematodes, and other pests. He designed the fluid, electrical, and heating systems and installed them Matson containers, then he had trailers made so that they can be hauled to farms wherever they’re needed. These containers are also used to make sure Christmas trees are safe for import into the Islands. He also contributed to a dairy waste treatment facility on the Wai‘anae coast and a fruit fly heat-treatment facility on Kaua‘i for papaya export. But Charlie’s biggest contributions were behind the scenes—he kept many projects and PIs going with both major and minor repair and fabrications jobs. He was even a hero to a family of kittens caught in a storm drain! A big mahalo nui loa, Charlie, and enjoy your retirement!