Fifteen New Jersey 4-H youth are ready to take on the challenges of leadership in the 21st century after experiencing the vibrant, living classroom of the nation’s capital as part of Leadership Washington Focus (LWF), an intensive 4-H leadership development program for middle-school youth. The conference was held at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center […]
Archives for July 2014
Fellowship for Outstanding Early Career Scientists Awarded to Rutgers Bioinformaticist Yana Bromberg
How can you tell one microbial species from another? One way is to compare species functional abilities encoded in microbial DNA. To do so experimentally, that is to design and carry out bench experiments to establish the molecular functions of every gene in every microbial genome, is not feasible. Bioinformatics, an interdisciplinary field that combines […]
Gypsy moths, destroyer of forests, virtually gone in South Jersey
The gypsy moths that destroyed or severely damaged hundreds of thousands of acres of trees throughout the state for about a century have virtually disappeared in South Jersey. An aerial survey performed in June and earlier this month showed evidence of…
What’s in Season from the Garden State: Legendary Jersey Tomatoes and the Role NJ Farmers Played in Selecting Winners
Alumni Note: Rutgers’ work in tomato breeding was greatly influenced by the farm families growing test plants for the university. These families in turn were influenced by their connection to Rutgers. Read about Joe Musumeci’s (CAES ’67) journey from the family farm to Rutgers. Several of the classic Jersey tomato varieties that were grown on […]
Mini tomatoes are garden gems
They have names like Jolly Elf, Indigo Rose, Orange Fizz, Baby Cakes and Cherry Buzz. They come in stop-sign red, deep ruby, golden yellow, chocolate brown and pale orange. They can look like a big gum ball or a plump olive. They are some of the more than 100 varieties of cherry and grape tomatoes that can be found on a list compiled by the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (njaes.rutgers.edu/tomato-varieties)…”People are attracted to small-fruited tomatoes due to the wide reputation they have for extra sweetness and probably subacid tartness compared to other tomatoes,” says Jack Rabin, of the Rutgers Agricultural Experiment Station.
It’s fairly obvious: tents and rides and good times
The county fair has been around longer than Cooperative Extension. But Extension has been involved in county fairs since its establishment in the early 1900s. Nearly every county has a county fair, in which staff, volunteers, and families invest a great deal of time and effort to organize, promote, and run every year…”This event is the culmination of hard work by our 4-H leaders, members, and parents,” said Chad Ripberger, 4-H agent for Rutgers Cooperative Extension in Mercer County. “Our fair is an excellent place for the members of Mercer County 4-H and the residents of Mercer County to showcase their talents and receive recognition for their individual entries.”
Travelers from Caribbean bring new mosquito-borne virus to N.J.; West Nile remains threat
It’s a virus with a name that sounds silly in English: chikungunya. The pain it brings, however, is expressed in the translation of the African dialect’s word: “that which bends up.” The mosquito-borne virus got its name from the almost incapacitating bone pain that causes its victims to bend in contortions. And 25 people in New Jersey have now experienced its effects…”The only way this disease is going to become established is if a person gets infected and doesn’t stay at home,” said Dina Fonseca, a medical entomologist at the Center for Vector Biology at Rutgers University. Although patients may feel awful for weeks, the window of opportunity when a mosquito could transmit the disease to another human is quite small, she said – just three or four days.
From Flurry to Blizzard: Ranking Weather-Themed Desserts With A Meteorologist [AUDIO]
There are a lot of desserts named after different weather phenomena, but while some pack a whollop, others are pretty mild. We asked legendary Oklahoma meteorologist Gary England, who’s spent the past 40 years predicting severe weather in Tornado Alley…
Rutgers 4-H Helps Host Sicilian Youth in Collaborative Program Funded by U.S. State Department
Over the course of three weeks in May and June this year, 14 youth and two adult educators from three communities in Sicily, Italy, participated in a Youth Leadership Program funded by the U.S. Department of State and facilitated by the University of Delaware and Rutgers University. During this exchange program, which focused on the […]
Alumni Story: Andrea Cochran’s Journey from Art to ‘Artist of the Land’
Editor’s Note: In this series of alumni accounts prepared by the Office of Alumni and Community Engagement, a thread that binds them is the recurring reference to the enormous transformational impact our students have experienced during their days at Rutgers. This is one of those stories. It is June 2014. The year is just half […]