Researchers examined soil core samples taken from two constructed freshwater wetlands and compared them to data from previous studies of the same wetlands over 29 years to determine how well human-made wetlands sequester — or capture and store — carbon as they age. 

Findings showed both wetlands captured similar amounts of carbon over the decades, but neither has shown a net gain or loss since year 15.

But their value in sequestering carbon is remarkable, the researchers said.

“Wetlands are generally thought of as the kidneys of our world because they can clean water naturally and sequester carbon well,” said Jay Martin, a distinguished professor in food, agricultural and biological engineering at The Ohio State University and a co-author of the study. “As we try to combat climate change, they also provide habitat for many species that are important to us.”

The researchers analyzed data from the Schiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park (ORWRP), a site ideal for long-term study due to the overwhelming amount of environmental data it generated over the past three decades.

Previous studies of the park revealed that its soil has shown an increase in carbon levels. But by using detailed measurements taken in the wetland’s 29th year post-construction, Martin’s team found that wetlands’ ability to sequester carbon diminishes as they mature. 

The study was recently published in the journal Ecological Engineering. 

Under current conditions, the wetlands have become a stable ecological force, and this equilibrium isn’t expected to change anytime soon. 

“When you first construct a wetland, the initial plant growth is often what causes carbon to be sequestered so quickly,” said Daniel Ruane, a former master’s student in ecological engineering and the lead author of the study. “But it just isn’t possible to have infinite growth.” 

Although there are limits to how much atmospheric carbon artificial wetlands can effectively store, since their carbon sequestration and storage rates are still far greater than other ecosystems, they still represent a potential solution to counter climate change, said Ruane. 

As a result, future research into the health of the ORWRP is likely to analyze the various plant communities that grow within the area as well as investigate methane emission levels to determine how long the land can function as a carbon sink. 

“The benefits that wetlands provide are increasingly positive,” said Martin. “Our findings emphasize that these ecosystems should be looked at in a better light now than ever before.”

Due to an increase in urban and agricultural land use, more than 50% of Earth’s natural wetlands have disappeared over the last few centuries. This decline has impacted ecosystem services all around the U.S., but most notably in the Midwest, said Martin. 

In Ohio, for example, projected wetland loss is closer to 90%, jeopardizing many essential processes that humans rely on, like water quality improvement and flood mitigation. 

This provides even more reason why policymakers should be trying to build and maintain wetland ecosystems, Ruane said.

“If we started to create and restore more wetlands now, that could solve a lot of our problems down the road,” he said. 

Co-authors of the study include Michael Brooker and William Mitsch of Ohio State, Blanca Bernal of Greencollar US Inc., Chris Anderson of Auburn University, and Robert Nairn of the University of Oklahoma.

• Researchers are working directly with water treatment plant operators to optimize removal of cyanotoxins.
• Several HABRI projects have helped the Ohio EPA understand the nature of how nutrients move from the working landscape to streams and, ultimately, Lake Erie. This allows us to better plan for and support nutrient reduction implementation actions.
• Researchers at Bowling Green State University and Ohio State are collaborating with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and local farmers on cutting-edge research on the beneficial use of Lake Erie dredge sediment as an agricultural soil amendment, evaluating its effects on soil health, nutrient retention and exports to waterways, crop yields, and its economic feasibility. This research is providing information for stakeholders on using dredge sediment as an alternative fertilizer source, returning sediment with optimal nutrient levels back to the land to restore soil loss by erosion and improve soil health.
• Research on ways water and nutrients move across the landscape has strengthened models that help Ohio evaluate Gov. Mike DeWine’s H2Ohio Initiative and overall progress toward the state’s nutrient reduction goal.
• HABRI 2022 research has demonstrated that blending 10% Drinking Water Treatment Material (DWTM) with manure will permanently bind 90% of the dissolved reactive phosphorus in manure. Based on the results of the research, the Ohio EPA is working with Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Ohio State University Extension to update the NRCS 590 standard to include blending manure with DWTM prior to land application to farm fields. This would stop the immediate phosphorus pollution of waters in the Lake Erie watershed. Adding two-stage ditches with or without DWTM will further reduce dissolved reactive phosphorus and soil erosion in the watershed.
• New information regarding nutrient loss pathways, as well as losses from nutrient application activities and losses from residual soil phosphorus, is helping the ODA adjust program practices and specifications to better address nutrient loss from row crop agriculture.
• The ODNR H2Ohio Wetland Restoration Program is building connections to the academic community to align research with management decisions related to optimizing and maintaining restored wetlands to enhance the capacity for nutrient reduction.

“So many HABRI research projects have informed us about the effectiveness of programs and projects included in Ohio’s Domestic Action Plan and the H2Ohio best management practices being employed,” said Ohio Lake Erie Commission Executive Director Joy Mulinex on behalf of ODNR, Ohio EPA and ODA.

HABRI is funded by the Ohio Department of Higher Education, with $24.5 million made available since 2015. Matching funding from participating Ohio universities increases the total investment to more than $37 million, demonstrating the state’s overall commitment to addressing the harmful algal bloom issue. 

Final results from 19 projects funded from 2021-2024 make up this year’s report, in addition to one-year results of 12 projects funded in 2022. A new round of 17 projects were just awarded funding in 2024 and are highlighted by name in the 2024 report.

“In the nearly 10 years since we began funding this program, the collaboration of our campuses and state agencies, coupled with Gov. DeWine’s leadership through the H2Ohio program, have made great strides in addressing water quality issues,” said ODHE Chancellor Mike Duffey. “I know this work will continue to improve the quality of life in our state and I’m proud of the role our universities play in this effort.” 

HABRI comprises 114 expert research teams from Bowling Green State University, Case Western Reserve University, Central State University, Defiance College, Heidelberg University, Kent State University, Oberlin College, Sinclair Community College, The University of Akron, the University of Cincinnati, Miami University, Wright State University, Youngstown State University and consortium leaders the University of Toledo and Ohio State. 

Information about HABRI projects, as well as partner organizations and background on the initiative, is also available on the Ohio Sea Grant website at go.osu.edu/habri. The report can be downloaded directly at http://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/p/k6g31

Ohio Sea Grant is supported by The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University Extension, and NOAA Sea Grant, a network of 34 Sea Grant programs nationwide dedicated to the protection and sustainable use of marine and Great Lakes resources. Stone Laboratory is Ohio State’s island campus on Lake Erie and is the research, education and outreach facility of Ohio Sea Grant and part of SENR.

In a survey of people currently on GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic, 25% of respondents agreed they had wasted more food since taking the drugs, compared to 61% who disagreed. People who were nauseated by the drugs were more likely to report increased food waste. Being on the medications for a longer period of time and eating more vegetables were associated with less food waste. 

Scientists at The Ohio State University see this study of consumer behavior as an initial effort to consider the effects of these increasingly popular anti-obesity drugs on food production and waste nationally and globally.

“This was a pilot study to start looking at implications of these medications and get in the ballpark of understanding which broad categories of food are more or less preferred after starting the medication,” said senior author Brian Roe, professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at The Ohio State University.

“The fact that food waste appears to decrease as patients acclimate to the medication suggests there may be a fairly simple remedy – advising patients new to these medications about the possibility of discarding food as their diets change, which could reduce food waste and lower their spending.”   

The research was published recently in the journal Nutrients. 

About one-third of food in the United States is wasted, and about half of that is attributable to consumers who waste an average of 1 pound of food per person per day, according to National Academies estimates. 

As of spring of this year, 6% of U.S. adults reported taking GLP-1 agonists, which treat type 2 diabetes and obesity by acting on a hormone in the small intestine to lower blood sugar, slow emptying of the stomach and signal fullness to the brain. In the study, almost 70% of respondents were taking semaglutide (Ozempic, Rybelsus, Wegovy) and nearly a quarter were taking terzepatide (Mounjaro). 

The researchers surveyed 505 U.S. adults currently on anti-obesity medications through an online questionnaire focused on sociodemographic factors, personal characteristics, and questions concerning changes in eating habits, weight and food waste since starting on the medications. The data analysis looked for various influences on how much participants agreed with one key statement: “Since beginning this medication I have found I waste more of the food that I purchase.” 

Participants represented a range of ages, household incomes and education levels, and most had insurance. On average, the group had lost 20% of their body weight if they had been on the medications for at least one year. 

The one-fourth of participants who had been on the drugs for a year or longer were less likely to report wasting food than people who had taken the medication for 90 days or fewer – about 30% of the respondents. 

Though nausea was the main driver of food waste, the results hinted at another possible influence: changes in preferences and habits that led people to toss foods that had fallen out of favor. Overall, participants reported adding produce, protein, fish and healthy fats to their diets and consuming less alcohol, pasta and other carbohydrates, fried foods, sweets and dairy. 

“Meat is neutral in terms of eating more or less after starting this medication,” Roe said. 

The addition of vegetables to the diet – the most commonly wasted food group in the United States – was linked to a lower likelihood of wasting food, another sign of changing habits that, in this case, involved eating more veggie-dense meals. 

Roe is planning another paper examining changes to household finances linked to taking anti-obesity medicines – in terms of both pharmacy and food costs. Given the steady rise in GLP-1 agonist prescribing, there are broad local and global economic and environmental impacts at play, he said. 

“People taking these medications in all likelihood will be spending less on food, but whether there is a chance to offset the cost of the drug through reduction in food spending remains to be seen,” he said. 

Other research labs have used simulations to show that reducing population-level food consumption can lower energy costs, preserve land and water resources, and reduce greenhouse gas creation by keeping discarded food out of landfills. But considering how relatively new anti-obesity medications are, there isn’t enough data to make predictions about the extent of their societal effects just yet. 

“I think it’s clear that novel anti-obesity medications have a chance to impact global public health, and research suggests changes in intake of food can affect indicators of environmental impacts,” Roe said. “There are lots of compelling questions as we think about sustainability of the food system and health care.” 

First author Jamil Mansouri, a Purdue University agricultural economics student, completed this work as a summer intern at Ohio State as part of the Big Ten Academic Alliance Summer Research Opportunities Program. 

This research was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Ohio State’s Van Buren Fund, which supports the professorship held by Roe in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

The Rocahepevirus ratti strain is called “rat HEV” because rats are the primary reservoir of the virus. Since the first human case was reported in a person with a suppressed immune system in Hong Kong in 2018, at least 20 total human cases have been reported – including in people with normal immune function. 

People infected with rat HEV did not report exposure to rats, leaving the cause of infection undefined. The suspected cause during other human HEV infections, in many cases, is consumption of raw pork – making it a potential route for rat HEV as well. 

Researchers at The Ohio State University found that a strain of rat HEV isolated from humans could infect pigs and was transmitted among co-housed animals in farm-like conditions. Rats are common pests in swine barns – suggesting that the pork production industry may be a setting in which rat HEV could make its way to humans. 

“We always want to know which viruses might be up and coming, so we need to know the genetics behind this virus in the unlikely event something happens in the United States that would enable rat HEV to expand,” said senior author Scott Kenney, an associate professor of animal sciences and veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State based in the Center for Food Animal Health at the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences’ Wooster campus.  

The study was published recently in PNAS Nexus. 

Hepatitis E is the leading cause of the acute viral liver infection in humans worldwide, mostly in developing regions where sanitation is poor. The virus is also endemic in pigs in the United States – though it is present mostly in liver rather than muscle, and is killed when the meat is cooked.  

Past studies testing the cross-species infectiousness of rat HEV showed the strain used in experiments did not infect non-human primates. 

“It dropped off the radar for six or seven years because it was thought not to be a human pathogen. And now it’s infecting humans, so we need to figure out why,” Kenney said. 

One strain linked to human disease is known as LCK-3110. First author Kush Yadav, who completed this work as a PhD student in the Center for Food Animal Health, used the viral genomic sequence to construct an infectious clone of LCK-3110. 

The team first showed the cloned virus could replicate in multiple types of human and mammal cell cultures and in pigs. Researchers then injected pigs with an infectious solution containing the LCK-3110 strain or another HEV strain present in pigs in the U.S., as well as saline as a control condition. 

Viral particles in the blood and feces were detected one week later in both groups receiving HEV strains, but levels were higher in pigs infected with rat HEV. Two weeks later, co-housed pigs that received no inoculations also began to shed rat HEV virus in their feces – an indication the virus had spread through the fecal-oral route. 

Though infected pigs’ organs and bodily fluids were also positive for viral RNA, the animals did not show signs of feeling sick. Previous research suggests rats don’t have clinical symptoms, either. 

Even so, the rat HEV virus was detected in cerebrospinal fluid of infected pigs – a finding that aligns with growing concern that various strains of HEV that infect humans can harm the brain. One human death linked to rat HEV was caused by meningoencephalitis. 

“HEV is gaining importance for neurological disorders, and a lot of the research now points toward how neuropathology is caused by the hepatitis E virus,” Yadav said. “And even though we have a small number of known human cases, a high percentage of them are immunosuppressed. That means transplant recipients in the United States could be at risk of infection by general HEV as well as rat HEV. 

“Research could now focus on whether pork liver products contain rat HEV and explore food safety procedures to block the disease.”

Yadav is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech. Co-authors of the study, all from Ohio State, were Patricia Boley, Carolyn Lee, Saroj Khatiwada, Kwonil Jung, Thamonpan Laocharoensuk, Jake Hofstetter, Ronna Wood and Juliette Hanson.

The jobs done by microbes – bacteria, viruses, fungi and other single-cell organisms – enable all other species living by land, sea and air, and in our guts, to survive. Boosted by fast-paced technological advances in recent decades, scientists are learning more every day about microbial functions and how they can be put to use in protecting human health and the global environment. 

And yet, microbial research remains underrepresented in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – something the scientists say should change to accelerate progress toward meeting the objectives. 

Four faculty researchers at The Ohio State University are among the co-authors:

• Justin North, assistant professor of microbiology and the Ohio State lead of the Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots Initiative aimed at achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
• Devin Peterson, professor of food science and technology and faculty director of the Foods for Health research initiative investigating the effects of food and nutrition on human health
• Virginia Rich, associate professor of microbiology and co-director of the National Science Foundation-funded EMERGE Biology Integration Institute based at Ohio State, which organizes microbiome science conducted at the permafrost in northern Sweden
• Matthew Sullivan, professor of microbiology and civil, environmental and geodetic engineering and the founding director of Ohio State’s Center of Microbiome Science, which was established in 2020 and currently has over 130 investigators from 10 colleges 

The U.N. has outlined 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, to be addressed globally by developed and developing countries. Broadly, the U.N. describes the set of goals as an effort to end poverty and other deprivations while improving health and education, reducing inequality and spurring economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve oceans and forests.

Although microbial activity is fundamental to sustaining all life (by producing oxygen, as one example), the authors wrote, any mention of their role is largely absent across the hundreds of multilateral treaties and intergovernmental policy agreements of the U.N. 

In the review, the authors detail seven key pathways through which microbial research and technology can be used to reach the goals: nurturing health and addressing disease; food production and nutrition; clean energy production; synthesizing and recycling products; bioremediation; facilitating health ecosystems; and global biogeochemical cycles and climate change. 

“An ever-expanding field of research shows how different microbial groups perform different functions, and the effective management of microbial communities can provide solutions for improving various aspects of life, from human health to energy or food production,” they wrote. 

Part of microbes’ exclusion from the global goals could be a lack of public and political awareness of how important microoorganisms are, researchers say. While we are most familiar with the bacteria and viruses that make us sick, there are 1 trillion more species of microbes functioning in highly interconnected communities to process nutrients, initiate chemical reactions, consume gases and clean up waste – all functions that can be harnessed for an ever-growing list of practical uses that benefit the planet. 

Among the many examples outlined in the paper, the authors report on such microbe-based innovations as designing bacteria that can deliver toxins to tumors and employing living organisms to extract contaminants from soils, sediment and water. 

“Microbiomes impact everything,” Sullivan said. “And by its very nature, microbiome science is highly interdisciplinary – which gives us a head start in exploring the ways in which this research can be scaled up to the levels necessary to make a big impact. 

“We see improved understanding of microbial roles in an ecosystem context as critical to unleashing the power of microbes toward making sustainable bioproducts and protecting the planet. The scientific community is prepared to do the work, but the complexity of microbial lives, and the interdisciplinarity needed to solve those mysteries, challenges traditional disciplinary funding and academic structures. This broad scientific communication seeks to bring awareness to the opportunities.” 

The lead authors of the article are Laura van Galen and Thomas Crowther of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Rino Rappuoli of the Fondazione Biotecnopolo di Siena in Italy.

The study, published in the journal Insects, found that hemp leaf extract – which contains the active ingredient cannabidiol, or CBD – kills mosquito larvae from two different strains of the yellow fever mosquito within 48 hours, one that was resistant to typical insecticides and another that was not.

“Mosquitoes are one of the deadliest animals in the world, mainly because as adults they serve as vectors of disease,” said Erick Martinez Rodriguez, lead author of the study and a graduate student in entomology at The Ohio State University. “It’s very important to be able to control these pests at an early stage, when they are at the most vulnerable.”

Unlike adult mosquitoes that can fly across great distances and transmit disease by biting, mosquito larvae are aquatic organisms often found in standing water. Conventional synthetic insecticides are critical chemical tools for killing mosquito larvae populations, but their rampant overuse has led to both insecticide resistance and other detrimental effects on the environment. 

Inspired by previous Ohio State research that discovered that the bark properties of a plant native to Madagascar worked as a natural mosquito insecticide and repellent, Martinez Rodriguez sought to determine if hemp could act as a viable and safe alternative to current biopesticides.

The hemp plant is related to marijuana, but does not contain its levels of the ingredient that  makes people feel “high.” CBD from hemp is used in a variety of products from gummies and oils to treat anxiety, pain, insomnia and other conditions.

To test hemp’s toxic effects against mosquito larvae, the team took air-dried hemp leaves, pulverized them into a fine powder and soaked the material in methanol for a few weeks to reach the desired CBD concentrations. 

The methanol was later removed from the solution to make it easier to chemically analyze, resulting in an extract that was eventually given to the larvae with their food. 

Depending on the concentration of hemp extract used, the team discovered that the hemp leaf was potent enough to be equally toxic to both strains of mosquito larvae. What was surprising, though, said Martinez Rodriguez, was the small amount needed to be so deadly. 

“If you compare the amount of hemp extract needed to kill 50% of the population to other synthetic conventional insecticides, it is on the high side, but when you compare it side-by-side to other natural extracts we have tested in our lab, only a relatively low amount is required to produce high mortality values in larvae,” said Martinez Rodriguez. While CBD eventually led to 100% mortality for the larvae, different concentrations of the hemp extract caused different mortality rates in the hours leading up to that time. 

The mosquito larvae were considered dead if no movement was recorded after scientists gently touched their abdomen with a needle or pipette tip. Although it’s still unclear how the extract affects them biologically, the team’s findings showed that CBD was the primary active ingredient in the extract and that it can successfully bypass the larvae’s metabolic resistance to other insecticides, which aligns with past work that found CBD has notable growth-inhibiting properties against other insects. 

Since hemp is also a more sustainable crop than many other plant alternatives, insecticide products that use it could potentially be produced relatively cheaply, said Martinez Rodriguez. 

While this discovery bodes well for developing future natural-based mosquito control products, said Peter Piermarini, co-author of the study and a professor of entomology at Ohio State, further research would have to be done to investigate how safe hemp and CBD would be for non-target organisms, like honey bees or other pollinating insects that scientists don’t want to kill or disrupt by introducing potentially harmful additives to the environment. 

“CBD is a compound that appears to be safe for people and our companion animals to ingest,” said Piermarini. “It’ll be interesting to learn more about how CBD interacts with various proteins in mammals and insects to understand why it’s safe for people but not insects.”

This work was supported by the Infectious Diseases Institute and the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at Ohio State. Other Ohio State co-authors include Larry Phelan, Luis Canas, Nuris Acosta and Harinantenaina L. Rakotondraibe. 

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced funding today (Aug. 21, 2024) for the creation of the “Transformation of American Rubber through Domestic Innovation for Supply Security” (TARDISS) Engineering Research Center (ERC). The first round of funding will last for five years, with the ability to renew for another $26 million for five additional years.

“Our ongoing priority is to support the people, communities and businesses in Ohio by leveraging the expertise and research of our outstanding faculty and students through these partnerships,” Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. said. “Ohio State is proud to lead this work advancing domestic natural rubber production in our state and region.”

TARDISS, composed of academic partners and supported by industry stakeholders, will lead fundamental research supporting the creation of a “Silicon Valley of Domestic Natural Rubber Production,” said Judit Puskas, professor of food, agricultural and biological engineering (FABE) and a Distinguished University Professor at Ohio State. As principal investigator on the grant, Puskas will lead the center along with its director, Ajay Shah, also a professor in FABE. Katrina Cornish, Ohio State professor emeritus and current director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and Arid Land Agricultural Research Center, will serve as an external adviser to TARDISS.

The ERC will harness the power of nature, creating bridges between engineering, biology and agriculture, to revolutionize alternative natural rubber production from domestic crops: guayule, the TK “rubber” dandelion and mountain gum. The initiative will also help create jobs, train a new and diverse engineering and agricultural workforce, and ease supply chain issues by building a domestic rubber supply.

“Ohio State is prepared to make the most of this opportunity to get domestic natural rubber production up and running,” said Puskas, a longtime scholar in rubber technology who joined the Ohio State faculty in 2019. “This significant federal support coupled with the large network of expertise under the ERC umbrella positions us well to meet the critical need for a biotechnology-driven solution that boosts domestic manufacturing and reduces reliance on imports.”

Disease and high demand threaten the tropical rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis, the world’s primary natural rubber source. In 2019, 10% of the natural rubber supply was lost to disease – and the risk for transmission of South American leaf blight to Southeast Asia has increased with the expansion of direct airline travel between Brazil and China. Collapse of the global supply would disrupt entire economies around the world, researchers predict.

As lead of the multi-institutional engineering research center, Ohio State will partner with the California Institute of Technology; North Carolina State University; Texas Tech University; the University of California, Merced; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and Case Western Reserve University as well as industry, educational and technical organizations including The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society and the Waters Corp.

TARDISS will be headquartered at the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) Wooster campus.

“Ohio State is prepared and eager to lead this critical initiative. This center will integrate engineering with biology and other science disciplines to understand how plants naturally produce rubber, leading to breakthrough discoveries,” said Dean of the College of Engineering Ayanna Howard. “Our innovation ecosystem brings together over 30 industry partners, researchers, students, national labs and the community it serves, and features novel programs to encourage innovation.”

“As a land-grant university, we are dedicated to integrating research, education and extension to improve industry, the environment and the quality of people’s lives – and we work to ensure that groundbreaking scientific discoveries are brought out of the laboratory and into the hands of those who can put them to work,” said Cathann A. Kress, Ohio State vice president for agricultural administration and dean of CFAES. “This investment from NSF celebrates the university’s commitment to research that makes an impact.”

Industry partners are critical to the success of TARDISS ERC both in terms of supporting technology translation and workforce development efforts.

“There is a tremendous amount of economic potential in U.S. bioengineering that will be unlocked by the TARDISS Engineering Research Center,” said Fraser McLeod, vice president, QA/QC Waters Division and Wyatt Technology general manager. “As a leading manufacturer of analytical instruments used in macromolecular characterization, Waters is pleased to support this critical research and the light scattering technologies that will enable the cultivation and extraction of domestically produced natural rubber for the benefit of American industry.” 

“The Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society represents hundreds of companies that depend on a stable supply of natural rubber to make critical products for the U.S. economy.  This new Engineering Research Center will help shift the production of natural rubber from overseas to domestic sources, thereby improving supply chains for our members and creating many American jobs and startups in our industry,” said Lakisha Barclay, executive director and CEO, Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society.

Since its founding in 1985, NSF’s ERC program has funded 79 centers (not including those announced today) that receive support for up to 10 years. The centers build partnerships with educational institutions, government agencies and industry stakeholders to support innovation and inclusion in established and emerging engineering research.

“NSF’s Engineering Research Centers ask big questions in order to catalyze solutions with far-reaching impacts,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “NSF Engineering Research Centers are powerhouses of discovery and innovation, bringing America’s great engineering minds to bear on our toughest challenges. By collaborating with industry and training the workforce of the future, ERCs create an innovation ecosystem that can accelerate engineering innovations, producing tremendous economic and societal benefits for the nation.”

This is the second NSF-funded ERC to be established at Ohio State in the last two years. The Hybrid Autonomous Manufacturing, Moving from Evolution to Revolution (HAMMER) ERC was awarded funding in 2022. With today’s announcement, Ohio State joins only a small number of universities to have led simultaneous awards.

Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. led the university’s state tour this week to stops in Cleveland, Oberlin and Medina, among others. The state tour is an opportunity for university representatives to meet with business leaders, community members and alumni outside of Columbus and highlight the shared connections in Ohio.

Carter, who was joined by Ohio State First Lady Lynda Carter, spoke at Green Circle Growers, the first stop on the tour, which is an expansive greenhouse operation that has workforce and research partnerships with the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

“Lynda and I just couldn’t be more excited to be here along with some of our faculty and, most importantly, these phenomenal students that came up to be with us here on a two-day tour visit of northeast Ohio,” Carter said. “The agricultural mission of Ohio is so important. One in eight people in the state of Ohio work in the ag and food industry. It’s an industry that has over $124 billion in economic impact. So it’s important for us to be here.”

Partnerships and impact are themes Carter mentioned often during the tour. He also visited Patterson Fruit Farm and Sandridge Crafted Foods. Both are family-owned and operated companies led by Ohio State alumni, with university research partnerships embedded in their culture.

The state tour also highlighted the university’s efforts to give back to the community. The Office of Student Life joined staff from the Cavaliers, representatives from Coca-Cola and members of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to aid the Children’s Hunger Alliance.

Working on the court at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, they teamed up to pack 2,300 weekend meal boxes (or the equivalent of 13,800 meals) to distribute to more than 50 partners across the state. The students who participated in the project said it was among the highlights of the trip.

“Honestly, it was amazing, just being a part of a cause that was bigger than all of us,” said Anthony Koulianos, a fourth-year neuroscience major.

On day two of the tour, the university helped open the Lake County Fair. The 169th year of the county fair celebrated the agricultural roots of the region – aided by Ohio State University Extension in Lake County and university-supported 4-H programs.

Carter, students and university staff toured livestock areas, visited the poultry show and helped lead the national anthem.

The state tour also helped the university connect with the future. The Office of Strategic Enrollment Management hosted a pep rally at Mentor High School in one of the largest school districts in Lake County.

About 200 people attended the pep rally, including current Mentor students and staff as well as prospective students from area high schools. Members of the Ohio State Marching Band celebrated students from the region who will be joining Ohio State in the fall. Carter spoke to the crowd about the value of a college degree and the university’s commitment to affordability, noting that 58% of Ohio State graduates leave school without debt.

“We not only want our students to come, learn, grow, become critical thinkers. We also want them to be successful,” he said. “We also want them to know that there are great opportunities within the state of Ohio.”

Kimmara Yarbrough, a fifth-year nursing major, said the state tour helped her understand the passion people in Ohio have for the university.

“I think Ohio State has the craziest school spirit I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said. “Seeing alumni that excited to come back, and even people who didn’t come to Ohio State, they just saw us there and they wanted to say, ‘Hi.’ Their children were like, ‘I want to go there. I want to see Brutus. I want to see the drum major.’ So it just goes to show that the community we build at Ohio State and the spirit that we have here really drives what we do.”

Lal, a Distinguished University Professor at Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) and the founding director of the CFAES Rattan Lal Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration, was also recently named the No. 1 scientist in the world and the United States in the field of plant sciences and agronomy by Research.com.

Lal was chosen for his pioneering work in promoting a soil-centric approach to agriculture that has been recognized as a model for secure food systems that can be adapted worldwide. His innovative approaches have proven successful across various climates and geographies, demonstrating the benefits of sustainable agriculture to communities, economies and the planet, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation said in announcing the award.

“The entire Buckeye community congratulates Dr. Lal on receiving this incredible honor and thanks him for his passionate work on global food security and solutions for our agricultural ecosystems,” said Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. “As a scientist, mentor and educator, Dr. Lal is an inspiring example that one person with vision and determination can change the world.”

Much of Lal’s work has focused on carbon sequestration in agriculture and removing atmospheric carbon for the long term, mitigating the effects of global warming and pollution. In 2000, he established the Ohio State carbon center, the longest-running U.S. institution with a focus on carbon sequestration in both natural and managed terrestrial ecosystems, particularly soils.

He pioneered a soil-centric approach that harmonizes food production with ecological preservation and climate change mitigation. His methodologies have highlighted, on a global stage, the interconnectedness of soil health and broader environmental and human well-being, and the importance of enhancing food security while conserving natural resources.

“Dr. Lal’s accomplishments in influencing sustainable agricultural practices around the world have brought about a paradigm shift in sustainable soil management and acclaim to our university,” said Cathann A. Kress, Ohio State vice president for agricultural administration and dean of CFAES. “We are honored that he is a part of our college and enormously proud of his incredible achievements.

“Dr. Lal is the land-grant mission of Ohio State personified,” said Peter J. Mohler, executive vice president for research, innovation and knowledge. “While rooted in soil health, his groundbreaking work translates into solutions for some of the most important global challenges we face in food security.”    

Lal’s journey, from his humble early days on a small subsistence farm in northern India watching his family use oxen to plow hard soils to becoming one of the most cited scientists in plant science and agronomy, exemplifies the power of his resilience and intellectual pursuit. His work has led to more sustainable farming and greater access to nutritious food for 2 billion people across five continents.

His dedication has earned him numerous global awards, such as the Japan Prize (2019), World Food Prize (2020), Padma Shri award (2021), and Plant Science and Agronomy Leader Award (2024), among others.

Upon receiving news of winning the Gulbenkian Prize, Lal expressed his astonishment and gratitude: “It came as a surprise. I thought it was a prank call – so I ignored it. Then they said, ‘Can we talk to you on Zoom?’ and I realized that it was real,” he said.

Reflecting on the significance of this recognition, he added: “It’s a tremendous award for humanity. It’s an incredible honor that an organization would recognize my service to humanity at large – something beyond my imagination.”

Lal has decided to donate his share of the prize money – $350,000 – to Ohio State, noting Ohio State’s role in his career successes.

“When I first arrived at Ohio State in 1965, my adviser inquired if I had considered any other universities worldwide,” he said. “However, my professors at Punjab University, who had obtained their PhDs from Ohio State, influenced my decision.

“I expressed to them that my aspiration was to attend Ohio State. Being associated with one of the largest land-grant universities has brought me great prestige and honor. I offer my sincere thanks to all the staff, students, scholars and researchers of the Lal Carbon Center for their dedication and hard work, and to the CFAES School of Environment and Natural Resources, CFAES and Ohio State for their cooperation and support.”

Lal’s donation aims to foster scholarly exchange between Ohio State and international institutions in India initially before expanding globally.

Lal shares the 2024 prize with Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (India) and the SEKEM initiative (Egypt).

Adam Berinsky, the Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT, opened the meeting Monday night with a lecture about misinformation – and ways to combat it. He has studied the problem in the context of politics, but the work is easily adapted to virology in an age of heightened anti-science sentiment and lack of trust in experts of all kinds. 

ASV President Anne Moscona, who selected the keynote speaker, urged audience members to consider working alongside Berinsky to address misinformation that casts doubt on scientific evidence, which she called “a problem so worrisome to our community.” 

Ohio State expertise 

Shan-Lu Liu, a virology professor at Ohio State and co-director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program of the Infectious Diseases Institute, chaired the meeting’s organizing committee. Liu, a longtime HIV researcher who more recently has led numerous studies of SARS-CoV-2 variants’ immune evasion, transmissibility and infectivity, has been named president-elect of ASV at this year’s meeting and will become president of the society in 2025. 

The conference blends symposium presentations by leaders in a range of virology disciplines with poster sessions and dozens of trainee workshops on science, career development and communication. 

Linda Saif, Distinguished University Professor in Ohio State’s Center for Food Animal Health with faculty appointments in animal sciences and veterinary preventive medicine, opened Wednesday morning’s symposium with detailed documentation of coronaviruses’ ability to spill over from animals to humans – which has been happening for centuries. An international expert on coronaviruses, Saif described the wily strains as diverse infectious agents that are skilled at accommodating change thanks their large RNA genome. 

Like the coronavirus that leapt from wild animals to cattle and from cattle to poultry that Saif’s lab was the first to document in 1995, the virus that causes COVID-19 is known to infect mink, hamsters, cats and white-tailed deer. She’s among a team of researchers who found that white-tailed deer were infected by humans with SARS-CoV-2 across Ohio and that the animals function as reservoirs promoting ongoing viral mutation. 

“If we end up with a wildlife reservoir, will it persist, adapt and mutate in wildlife with new variants going back to humans, livestock or other animals?” Saif said. “The concern is, will we end up with a scenario with SARS-CoV-2 where we have two-way transmission to wildlife species and back into humans?” 

The World Health Organization has predicted the next pandemic will be caused by what it calls “Disease X” – and some coronaviruses currently circulating in animals are potential candidates, she said. 

The studies detecting SARS-CoV-2 in Ohio deer were co-led by Andrew Bowman, professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State, who presented an update on that research program at the meeting. Bowman has also led influenza surveillance at the swine-human interface in commercial settings and agricultural fairs for years, and recently made news by finding H5N1 (bird flu) viral RNA in over a third of commercial milk products he and a graduate student bought in the Midwest based on a hunch that viruses detected in dairy cows were making their way to grocery stores. 

The annual conference presents “an important opportunity to educate the public about virology research,” said Liu, also associate director of the Center for Retrovirus Research and professor of veterinary biosciences. “And we expect that attendees will also benefit from Adam Berinsky’s insights about the general phenomenon of misinformation.” 

Fighting misinformation 

Misinformation that circulated during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown – conspiracy theories that the illness’ severity was exaggerated or that the virus was deliberately released for sinister reasons – persists to this day. Berinsky, who has extensively studied Americans’ beliefs in false political rumors (such as claims Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States), has found that rumors are “sticky” – countering them is not just about sharing the facts, but requires a messenger that people will be willing to trust. 

His research has found that about 70% of people will endorse at least one false rumor when given a list to choose from and only 30% of people reject them all, and that misinformation correction should focus primarily on reaching the undecideds – people who aren’t sure about what’s true. His work has also shown that correcting misinformation is not a “one-and-done” endeavor – it requires repeated messaging as well as a series of strategies targeting people who share fake information online. 

Working with Facebook and Google, Berinsky and colleagues advanced interventions encouraging people through “accuracy nudges” to think before they share information – advising users to evaluate information before sharing it and investigate its sources – or even asking them how important it is to them to share only accurate information. 

“Most people don’t want to share bad information,” he said. “We want to remind them of this.” 

They found in experiments that at the individual level, these nudges turned the knob toward more sharing of true information. Though the prompts won’t stop people who are posting lies maliciously, the added “friction” makes it a little more difficult for casual users to do an easy thing that has negative effects. 

A megastudy of nine interventions designed to reduce online sharing of misinformation revealed that all of them work – but each one’s effect is relatively small, on the order of 2 to 3 percentage points. Hence, the frame of mind in combating misinformation should not be a search for a single solution, but deployment of the best bundle of solutions depending on the context. 

“There’s been this long search for a magic bullet. It doesn’t exist,” Berinsky said. “But don’t give up on the enterprise.”

This year’s bloom is expected to measure 5, with a potential range of 4.5-6 on the severity index — similar to last year’s bloom, which had a severity index of 5.3. Moderate blooms have an index of 3-5, while an index above 5 indicates more severe HABs. Blooms over 7.5 are particularly severe, with extensive scum formation and coverage affecting the lake. The largest HABs occurred in 2011, with a severity index of 10, and 2015, with a severity index of 10.5.

The HAB severity index is based on the bloom’s biomass (the amount of algae) during the peak 30 days of the bloom.

“Understanding hazards such as harmful algal blooms helps us ensure the Great Lakes are a power in the Blue Economy,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. “As the science behind our forecasts improves, we can give communities better information to plan for varying blooms.”

The forecast was announced today during a briefing hosted by Ohio Sea Grant and The Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory.

What to know about HABs

Lake Erie HABs consisting of cyanobacteria (i.e. blue-green algae) are capable of producing microcystin, a known liver toxin which poses a risk to human and wildlife health. Such blooms can force cities and local governments to treat drinking water and close beaches. HABs also harm vital local economies by preventing people from fishing, swimming, boating and visiting the shoreline. 

The size of a HAB is not necessarily an indication of how toxic it is. For example, the toxins in a large bloom may not be as concentrated as in a smaller bloom. Each algal bloom is unique in terms of size, toxicity and ultimately its impact on local communities. NOAA is actively developing tools to detect and predict how toxic blooms will be. 

NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science’s (NCCOS) Lake Erie HAB Forecast website provides predictions and visualizations of the bloom’s location and movement on the lake’s surface, as well as where the bloom is located within the water column. This information is especially helpful to water treatment plant operators because intake structures are usually located below the surface, so the risk of toxins in their source water may be greater when these cells sink.

“NOAA’s Lake Erie HAB forecast continues to be an important tool to help inform decisions made by drinking water treatment plants, local governments, and individuals visiting Lake Erie’s shoreline and recreating on its waters,” said Christopher Winslow, director of Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory. “Additionally, data collected before and during each bloom season continues to inform management decisions related to nutrient management and bloom response.”

NOAA’s Lake Erie HAB forecast in detail  

NOAA expects the start of a visible bloom by early July. The duration of the bloom depends on the frequency of high winds in September, which can’t be predicted this far in advance. Most of the bloom will remain in areas of the lake’s western basin. The central and eastern basins of the lake are usually unaffected until later in the season, although localized blooms may occur around some of the rivers after summer rainstorms. 

The range in forecasted severity reflects the uncertainty in forecasting precipitation, particularly for July. There is a small risk of a significant rainfall event over the next few weeks; if that occurs the increased river flow and nutrient load may lead to bloom severity near the top of the forecasted range. NOAA will issue a seasonal forecast update in late July based on observed nutrient loads in the western basin watershed. 

“The blooms in Lake Erie are changing. They are developing earlier over the past 10 years than previously, for reasons we do not yet understand,” said Richard Stumpf, NCCOS lead scientist for the seasonal Lake Erie bloom forecast. “An early start does not necessarily lead to a larger bloom, but it does mean the bloom lasts longer.”

To account for these changes, NOAA has updated the forecast model algorithms. For the last 10 years, the models used data from 2003-12 to inform Lake Erie HAB forecasts. This summer, those models are using data from 2013 to present, thereby improving the prediction of overall bloom severity.  

In addition to the early season projections, much like a five-day weather forecast, NOAA also issues HAB forecasts during the bloom season. These forecasts provide the current extent and five-day outlooks of where the bloom will travel and what blue-green algae concentrations are likely to be seen, allowing local authorities to make informed management decisions. NCCOS also routinely delivers a hypoxia forecast for Lake Erie’s central basin.

Nutrient load data for the forecasts came from Heidelberg University in Ohio, and the various forecast models are run by NCCOS, the University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. Field observations used for monitoring and modeling are done in partnership with a number of NOAA services, including its Ohio River Forecast Center, NCCOS, Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory and Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, as well as Ohio Sea Grant, The Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory, The University of Toledo and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Hepatitis E (HEV) is the leading cause of the acute viral liver infection in humans worldwide, mostly in developing regions where sanitation is poor. The virus is also endemic in pigs in the United States – though it is present mostly in organs rather than muscle, and is killed when the meat is cooked. 

Because HEV has been linked to fatal pregnancy complications and reports of male infertility in the developing world, researchers at The Ohio State University explored its infectivity in pigs, whose reproductive anatomy closely resembles that of humans. 

After inoculating pigs with HEV, the team found the virus circulated in blood and was shed in feces, meaning that the pigs were infected, but they had no clinical symptoms –asymptomatic cases are common in humans, as well. Results also showed HEV was present on the head of sperm cells, and that these same viral particles could infect human liver cells in culture and begin replicating. 

“Our study is the first one demonstrating this association of hepatitis E virus with the sperm cell,” said first author Kush Yadav, who completed the work as a PhD student in Ohio State’s Center for Food Animal Health. “Our future studies will be directed toward understanding the association between hepatitis E virus and the sperm head more mechanistically, and using animal models to see whether sexual transmission of the virus is happening – because in the human setting, we still don’t know.” 

The study was published recently in the journal PLOS Pathogens. 

Sexually transmitted organisms are those able to find safe haven in testicles, where they are protected by a blood-testis barrier that immune cells cannot cross. In addition to pregnancy and reproductive disorders linked to HEV, there are signs it can also lead to pancreatic and neurological disorders in humans. Historically, clinical infections – even in pregnant people – have been assumed to be traced to fecal-oral transmission. 

Yadav works in the lab of senior study author Scott Kenney, an associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State based in the Center for Food Animal Health at the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences’ Wooster campus. 

Kenney studies HEV and other viruses in animals – especially those capable of infecting humans. This work is an offshoot of a larger study in pigs examining HEV strains that are resistant to antivirals. 

Using fluorescence microscopy in this new study to examine pig semen 84 days after inoculation with HEV, Yadav detected viral particles associated with at least 19% of sperm cells collected from the infected swine. 

“We can’t say they’re sitting on the outside or inside the sperm cells,” he said. “We don’t know if the hepatitis E virus can actually complete a replication cycle in the sperm head, so we’re thinking sperm is more of a carrier than a susceptible cell.” 

The study also showed that HEV’s presence correlated with damaged sperm – potentially altering their structure and decreasing their ability to move through seminal fluid. That said, the researchers can’t yet say that these changes directly translate into fertility problems, though the link between HEV infection and human infertility suggests this could be the case. 

“In between 20 and 50% of documented male infertility cases, they don’t really know what’s causing it,” Kenney said. “So we’re pushing for more screening for hepatitis E virus as a potential cause for those cases.” 

The current findings also form the basis for screening the sexual partners of pregnant women who test positive for HEV, Yadav said, even though scientists haven’t yet established sexual transmission is possible. 

There are implications for the swine industry, as well. Most commercial pig litters are produced by artificial insemination, with donor sperm distributed broadly from large breeder facilities. 

“That could be part of the problem with HEV being endemic across the country, and raises a question about whether it causes a reduction in the reproductivity of the pigs,” Kenney said. “Because HEV doesn’t cause enough damage to pigs to limit production profitability, I don’t see the swine industry broadly vaccinating for hepatitis E virus, but if we could implement some kind of cost-effective screening or vaccination at these upstream boar facilities, maybe we could reduce introduction of the virus into new herds.” 

This work was supported by state and federal funds appropriated to the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 

Additional co-authors include Patricia Boley, Thamonpan Laocharoensuk, Saroj Khatiwada, Carolyn Lee, Menuka Bhandari and Juliette Hanson of Ohio State and Lindsey Moore of the College of Wooster.

Scientists from The Ohio State University and the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium are taking advantage of the rare celestial event to find out. 

“It’s a unique opportunity to understand how so many different animals respond to a weird thing,” said Courtney Anderson, a PhD student in the School of Environment and Natural Resources (SENR) who is spearheading the effort for Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Her counterpart at the zoo is Adam Felts, director of animal well-being. 

“The likelihood that you’re going to find a wild animal during an event like this and have it in view to record its behavior is really low,” she said. “And then to be able to do that for so many different species at the same time, under the same conditions, is not going to happen literally anywhere else.” 

The zoo is making a day of it, inviting visitor volunteers to fan out and document what they see animals doing as the day gets dark and the air briefly cools. These recordings will add anecdotal data to the longer-term project – because there is more to the story than what happens on eclipse day. 

Researchers and members of the zoo’s animal care team will periodically track behaviors for the two weeks before and after April 8 and more frequently on the day of the eclipse. During each 10-minute tracking period over that time, behaviors will be recorded every 15 seconds. 

By necessity, the labor-intensive study is limited to a specific group of mammal and bird species: tufted deer, red-crowned crane, brown bear, polar bear, sloth bear, red panda, ostrich, kangaroo and manatee. 

The sample will enable the consideration of evolutionary effects on different species’ response to changes in natural light, Anderson said. 

Sloth bears live near the equator, brown bears originate in mid- and northern latitudes, and polar bears are native to the Arctic north. 

“We wanted to look at how species from within a family or group – say, bears – respond differently when they are evolutionarily from different latitudes,” she said. “So one of our questions is, do those species respond differently to a sudden change in the lighting cycle or a disruption of their normal day?”

Similarly, the species selection allows for a comparison between red-crowned cranes from China and equatorial ostriches, which are known for being reactive to anything new. 

But will the ostriches perceive a solar eclipse as reaction-worthy? And how will that reaction look, if so? The plan is to describe eclipse-related behavior and compare it to the baseline data from before and after the event. Animals may pace, forage, groom, eat, rest, move, prepare to bed down – and, maybe, exhibit anxiety behaviors. 

Not knowing what to expect is part of the intrigue of the work. 

“Will we see any change in behavior at all? That’s the most basic question,” said Stan Gehrt, Anderson’s adviser and a wildlife ecologist at Ohio State. “There have been very few attempts to actually measure behavior for this kind of event. And if there’s a difference, if they do respond, what will they do? 

“That’s a huge mystery for the most part, so we’ll see.” 

Gehrt, a professor in SENR who has co-instructed an Ohio State course in zoo science and management for a decade with Danielle Ross, vice president of education at the Columbus Zoo, said this study is a natural extension of the long-term partnership between the institutions. 

“It’s a nice illustration of the close working relationship that SENR has with the Columbus Zoo,” he said, “and being able to share in the work to answer some interesting questions is a great thing to be able to do.”

The College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) will build the state-of-the-art facility at Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory on the Columbus campus. 

Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr., who spoke at the groundbreaking on his 30th day on the job, said, “Agriculture is critically important, not only for states like Ohio, but for our nation and our world. 

“This Multispecies Animal Learning Center is going to benefit our students by providing hands-on training that leads to careers in animal agriculture,” Carter said. “It’s going to benefit the industry by being a hub for research and workforce development. It’s going to benefit our state broadly, as agriculture is Ohio’s No. 1 industry. This university exists to serve, and this new facility is going to help us better serve the state of Ohio.” 

The MALC will facilitate education in essential STEM fields and will foster workforce development for diverse careers such as animal sciences, engineering, food science, human nutrition and health. Inside the facility, students will have opportunities to gain hands-on experience with swine, equine, poultry, cattle, sheep and goats. The public will have a chance to learn about modern livestock production with tours; a viewing area into the animal barns; and interactive, educational displays. 

“This is a game-changer for us. It is integral to our vision for Waterman and will be a world-class facility that brings people and animals together for hands-on learning, engagement and programming,” said Cathann A. Kress, Ohio State vice president for agricultural administration and dean of CFAES. “It’s going to bring schoolchildren, in grades K through 12, here to learn about career pathways. It’s going to engage people from all across our industry. And it’s going to be a place where all of us can learn more about the work of the university and our industry.” 

As an expansion of the original MALC project, a new, modern dairy will also be constructed at Waterman to replace the aging dairy facility. It will feature robotic milking technology and the latest in precision dairy technologies, feed systems and waste management. The new dairy will meet educational and research needs, with a projected completion date of winter 2025. 

CFAES is actively fundraising while moving forward with MALC construction, with opening expected in fall 2025. At present, $16.4 million in philanthropic funding has been secured, which includes $11.5 million from Nationwide Foundation. In addition, a $10 million investment from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the General Assembly was allocated in the state budget toward the project. 

“We’re just so proud of what’s happening right now with this new project,” said Devin Fuhrman, Nationwide’s chief agriculture and sponsor relations officer. “Nationwide is a company founded by farmers. Being able to invest in the future of agriculture is so important to us. We hope we can provide pathways to create opportunities for students of all ages to find their way to a career in agriculture.” 

The new multispecies center will bolster Ohio State’s ability to offer interdisciplinary teaching and research opportunities. Additionally, it will provide space for Ohio State University Extension – CFAES’ statewide outreach arm – and youth development programs, such as 4-H and FFA, and their events. 

“The construction of this facility presents an opportunity for even greater engagement with the broader university – our students, our faculty and our staff. It will be an opportunity to showcase all the tremendous work that takes place here at Waterman and how food really reaches from farm to plate and everything that goes into that,” said Elizabeth Harsh, executive director of the Ohio Cattlemen’s Association and Ohio Beef Council and an Ohio State trustee.

Researchers reported their methods to improve efficiency and increase latex yield in two recent publications, building upon decades of research led by Katrina Cornish, professor of horticulture and crop science and food, agricultural and biological engineering at The Ohio State University.  

Cornish and colleagues have added specialized agents during processing of the Taraxacum kok-saghyz (TK) dandelion and the guayule shrub to coax a higher amount of latex from both plants. Neither source can simply be tapped – the method used on tropical trees that produce the only commercially available natural rubber in the world. 

“We need to have efficient extraction methods for any and all alternative natural rubber-producing species, especially at a large scale,” Cornish said. “And they have to be low-cost if you’re going to be able to compete in the tire market in the long term.” 

The TK dandelion work was published recently in Industrial Crops and Products, and the guayule research in Environmental Technology & Innovation. 

Beyond tires, rubber has applications in an estimated 50,000 products. The need is urgent for a domestic natural rubber industry: While the United States produces synthetic rubber, it is entirely dependent on imports for natural rubber. In 2019, 10% of the natural rubber supply was lost to disease – and the risk for transmission of South American leaf blight to Southeast Asia has increased with the expansion of direct airline travel between Brazil and China. 

It is not an overstatement, Cornish said, to suggest that if leaf blight were to make it from South America to Asia, the disease could wipe out most of the world’s natural rubber supply in short order. 

“And then we could see the collapse of the world’s supply chains and, subsequently, entire economies,” she said. “We’ve concentrated an entire global industry around a tropical plant. But TK dandelion and guayule are sustainable and can grow in temperate conditions.” 

Guayule latex comes from generalized cells in the shrub’s bark. Extracting the latex involves grinding up the bark to break open its cells and release latex particles into what Cornish calls a “milkshake.” A series of washing and spinning cycles follows to separate the latex from other solid material – and with each centrifugation step, some latex is lost. 

The research team found that adding chemical substances called flocculants to the milkshake helped bind other solid materials together and separate them from the latex, effectively cutting the washing cycles in half and improving the overall latex yield. The addition of one substance doubled the available latex and that yield was increased by 12-fold when a creaming agent was added for purification. 

“By adding flocculants, latex extraction is more efficient and clean,” said first study author Beenish Saba, a postdoctoral researcher in food, agricultural and biological engineering at Ohio State. “We found specific flocculants that work best at improving the quality of latex extraction and reducing the time it takes.” 

The study also showed that feeding the remaining solids back through the processing system enabled extraction of even more latex and also reduced the environmental footprint of the entire operation, Saba said. 

Guayule contains a particularly attractive high-performance latex that is stronger and softer than any other known polymer, Cornish said, meaning more filler can be added in production without any loss of its valuable properties. She used guayule latex to develop the first hypoallergenic medical glove to block both radiation and pathogens. 

Though TK dandelion latex is produced in the plant’s roots, the extraction process is similar – the roots are trimmed, blended into a slurry and filtered to remove solid chunks of plant material and dirt. Latex floating on the top of the remaining liquid is slurped up with a pipette and rinsed up to three times for purification, and then dried. 

A bit of serendipity led to the improvement to this extraction method. First author Nathaniel King-Smith, a graduate student in Cornish’s lab, found that processed samples sitting in the lab for three months had significantly more latex floating on their surfaces. An analysis showed that heavy divalent cations, like magnesium, bound to the latex particle membranes weighed down the particles – until the connection eventually collapsed. 

The team found that adding EDTA, a chelator that binds to divalent cations, to processing the dandelion roots allowed for extraction of more than twice as much latex than was extracted without the addition of EDTA. 

“Our question was, how can we free up the heavy fraction without waiting three months for rubber particles to suddenly become lighter and float?” King-Smith said. “We found that the extra latex yield after months of storage could be achieved immediately in a standard extraction just by adding EDTA before spinning.” 

The use of EDTA also increased the gel content of the extracted latex once it was dried – useful information for potential production by industries that are looking for higher-gel rubber, he said. 

EDTA may turn out to be applicable to latex extraction from guayule, though Cornish said her lab hopes to partner with flocculant chemists who could help further refine that process. She has been planting, harvesting and extracting latex from TK dandelion for over a decade in Ohio and has a greenhouse full of guayule on Ohio State’s Wooster campus, where she hopes to one day build a full-scale latex processing plant. 

“We are working on a small scale and focusing on premium latex markets where you can make something of great value with minimal materials so that we can fund expansion,” she said. “And in the meantime, we’re making extraction more efficient so we can make the material clean and pure.” 

This work was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. 

Co-authors of the guayule paper included Cindy Barrera and David Barker of Ohio State. Co-authors of the TK dandelion paper included Kristof Molnar, Joshua Blakeslee, Aswathy Pillai and Judit Puskas of Ohio State, Colleen McMahan of the USDA-Agricultural Research Service and Meirambek Mutalkhanov of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.

The scientists from The Ohio State University have reported in the Journal of Medical Entomology on the state’s first known established population of Asian longhorned ticks, and are now conducting research focused on monitoring and managing these pests.

So far, these ticks are not deemed to be a threat to human health. They tend to favor large livestock and wildlife, such as cattle and deer. Just a handful of the hundred ticks from the farm screened for infectious agents tested positive for pathogens, including one, Anaplasma phagocytophilium, that can cause disease in animals and humans. Elsewhere this tick carries another pathogen, Theileria orientalis, that affects cattle, and cases of bovine theileriosis have been reported in Ohio. 

Researchers say the tiny brown ticks – the size of a sesame seed in some life stages and pea-sized when engorged – are persistent, however: Surveillance showed they returned the following summer to the farm despite the application of pesticides in 2021. 

“They are going to spread to pretty much every part of Ohio and they are going to be a long-term management problem. There is no getting rid of them,” said Risa Pesapane, senior author of the paper and an assistant professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State. 

“The good news about the ticks, though, is that most tick control agents that we currently have seem to kill them. Still, managing them is not easy because of how numerous they are and how easily they can come back.” 

Asian longhorned ticks originate from East Asia and were first detected in the United States in New Jersey in 2017. When Pesapane joined Ohio State in 2019 as a tick-borne disease ecologist, the ticks were reported in West Virginia – meaning it was only a matter of time before they crossed the river into Ohio, she said. 

She found the first of these ticks in Ohio, on a stray dog in Gallia County in 2020, and another was collected from a cow in Jackson County in June 2021. And then a farmer from Monroe County called Ohio State later that summer to report three of his 18 cattle, heavily infested with ticks, had died.

“One of those was a healthy male bull, about 5 years old. Enormous. To have been taken down by exsanguination by ticks, you can imagine that was tens of thousands of ticks on one animal,” said Pesapane, who also has a faculty appointment in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources. 

Pesapane and colleagues collected almost 10,000 ticks within about 90 minutes on the farm, leading her to speculate that there were more than 1 million of them in the roughly 25-acre pasture. 

Asian longhorned ticks’ secret colonization weapon is the ability to reproduce asexually, with each female laying up to 2,000 eggs at a time – and all 2,000 of those female offspring able to do the same. 

“There are no other ticks in North America that do that. So they can just march on, with exponential growth, without any limitation of having to find a mate,” Pesapane said. “Where the habitat is ideal, and anecdotally it seems that unmowed pastures are an ideal location, there’s little stopping them from generating these huge numbers.”

Because of their ability to hide in vegetation, Asian longhorned ticks also can escape pesticides that kill only when coming into direct contact with a pest. 

“It would be wisest to target them early in the season when adults become active, before they lay eggs, because then you would limit how many will hatch and reproduce in subsequent years. But for a variety of reasons, I tell people you cannot spray your way out of an Asian longhorned tick infestation – it will require an integrated approach,” Pesapane said. 

She and colleagues are working as rapidly as they can at filling in knowledge gaps about these invaders and developing training materials and policy recommendations for affected industries. As one example, Pesapane said, tick inspections of livestock could provide a window for application of an antiparasitic agent to eliminate the risk of transporting the exotic arachnids across multiple state lines. 

Ohioans are encouraged to help with research efforts: People who think they’ve spotted an Asian longhorned tick can email ticks@osu.edu for instructions on how to collect the specimen and send it to Ohio State scientists as part of ongoing surveillance. To date, the lab has received Asian longhorned ticks from residents of 11 Ohio counties. 

More information about spotting Asian longhorned ticks and preventing tick exposure is available on Ohio State’s Bite Site hosted by the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences Knowledge Exchange. 

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Co-authors on the study were Andreas Eleftheriou, Julia Beckett and Ningzhu Bai, all of Ohio State.

The annual show, presented by the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES), attracts over 100,000 visitors from across the United States and Canada. This year, total attendance was 116,786 with 7,733 students attending from over 210 schools.

Guests can learn about agriculture production from more than 4,000 products displayed by 600 commercial exhibitors. The educational programs feature Ohio State specialists at what is considered among the best in the agricultural exhibition world.

The Farm Science Review is also an opportunity to celebrate the success of the college and the university in the communities they serve. Peter Mohler, acting president and executive vice president for research, innovation and knowledge at Ohio State, spoke to a crowd of farmers, government officials, university leaders, industry partners and community stakeholders about Ohio State’s cutting-edge research and innovation partnerships.

One of the recent successes impacting the agriculture community includes Ohio State’s selection as the U.S. ground location for Starlab, the first commercial, free-flying space station in low-earth orbit.

The CFAES Stone Lab on Lake Erie also conducts research for solutions to critical water quality issues facing the region in collaboration with the University of Toledo, Bowling Green, Heidelberg University, Central State and others. 

And in partnership with Nationwide and the Ohio Farm Bureau, the AgTech Innovation Hub is an incubator for groundbreaking ideas to help the agricultural ecosystem understand, manage and mitigate climate risk with the recently announced funding of five projects.

“Thanks to projects like these, CFAES is undertaking $59 million in research across more than 1,000 active awards from federal, state, industry and university partners, many of whom are in this room today,” Mohler said.

Cathann A. Kress, vice president of agricultural administration and dean of CFAES, hosted the opening of the Farm Science Review and called attention to the mission of the college and its focus on the next generation of Ohio farmers.

“We award over $3 million in scholarships annually to our students, in large part because so many of you pay it forward and help us to do that. Our first-year retention rates are almost 95%. About 95% of our graduates are enrolled in graduate education or are employed within six months of me handing them their diploma,” she said. “The best news: Now almost 80% of CFAES graduates stay right here in the state of Ohio and continue to support our industry here in our state.”

The combination of agriculture and high-tech manufacturing is a powerful reminder of a time when the state was at its best, said Gov. Mike DeWine.

“If you go back to the history of this state, even before the Civil War, what you will find is when Ohio was at its greatest, when things were really rolling, we had two big things going for us: one was agriculture and the other was manufacturing,” he said. “This, once again, is Ohio’s time. Those two are coming together. We’re on a roll with both of them and I’m very confident about where we are going as a state.”

A new study conducted in a lab – with follow-up human breath tests being planned – showed that whole milk plain yogurt prevented almost all of the volatile compounds responsible for garlic’s pungent scent from escaping into the air. 

Researchers tested the garlic deodorizing capacity of yogurt and its individual components of water, fat and protein to see how each stood up to the stink. Both fat and protein were effective at trapping garlic odors, leading the scientists to suggest high-protein foods may one day be formulated specifically to fight garlic breath. 

“High protein is a very hot thing right now – generally, people want to eat more protein,” said senior study author Sheryl Barringer, professor of food science and technology at The Ohio State University. 

“An unintended side benefit may be a high-protein formulation that could be advertised as a breath deodorizer in addition to its nutritional claims,” she said. “I was more excited about the protein’s effectiveness because consumer advice to eat a high-fat food is not going to go over well.” 

The study was published recently in the journal Molecules.

Barringer has a history of identifying foods that can combat garlic breath, among them apples, mint and lettuce and milk, thanks to their enzymes and fat, respectively, that snuff out the sulfur-based compounds that cause garlic’s persistent smell. 

After encountering speculation that yogurt might have a deodorizing effect, Barringer and first author Manpreet Kaur, a PhD student in her lab, decided to check it out. 

For each treatment experiment, the researchers placed equal amounts of raw garlic in glass bottles and confirmed the cluster of offending sulfur-based volatiles were released in concentrations that would be detected by the human nose. They used mass spectrometry to measure levels of the volatile molecules in gaseous form present before and after each treatment. 

Results showed that yogurt alone reduced 99% of the major odor-producing raw garlic volatiles. When introduced separately, the fat, water and protein components of yogurt also had a deodorizing effect on raw garlic, but fat and protein performed better than water. 

In the case of fat, a higher quantity of butter fat was more effective at deodorization. The proteins studied included different forms of whey, casein and milk proteins, all of which were effective at deodorizing garlic – likely because of their ability to trap the volatile molecules before they were emitted into the air. A casein micelle-whey protein complex performed the best. 

“We know proteins bind flavor – a lot of times that’s considered a negative, especially if a food with high protein has less flavor. In this case, it could be a positive,” Barringer said. 

Additional experiments involving changing the pH of the yogurt to make it less acidic – from 4.4 pH to 7 pH – reduced the yogurt’s deodorization effect on the garlic. Changing the pH of water, on the other hand, did not make any difference in water’s deodorization effect. 

“That’s telling me it goes back to those proteins, because as you change pH you change the configuration of proteins and their ability to bind. That said we definitely should be looking at these proteins,” Barringer said. “It probably depends on the protein, as well, because different proteins react differently to pH. So that may be an important thing as we look at other proteins for their garlic deodorization effect.” 

Barringer and Kaur tested the deodorizing effect of yogurt and its separate components on fried garlic as well, and in the process, they discovered that frying garlic alone significantly reduces most of garlic’s odor-causing volatile compounds. Yogurt and its individual ingredients neutralized a lower percentage of volatile compounds of fried garlic compared to raw garlic, presumably because there were fewer volatiles to trap than were present in the raw cloves, the researchers theorized. 

The findings are a good foundation for future studies analyzing a variety of proteins that might be formulated into the perfect garlic-breath-reducing product and seeking to verify yogurt’s ability to curb actual garlic breath in people. 

In the meantime, Barringer predicts that Greek yogurt, with a higher-protein profile than the whole milk plain yogurt used in the study, may be particularly effective at getting rid of garlic breath. Fruit-flavored yogurts will probably work, too, she said – and whatever is used, it must quickly follow ingestion of raw garlic.

“With apples, we have always said to eat them immediately,” she said. “The same with yogurt is presumed to be the case – have your garlic and eat the yogurt right away.”

• Agencies continue to know more about the environmental factors that drive bloom toxin production, giving water treatment plant operators and recreational water managers better predictive capabilities.
• Researchers are working directly with state agencies and water treatment plant operators to optimize low-cost assessment and removal of cyanotoxins.
• Researchers working with the Ohio Department of Agriculture and producers have improved on-field management practices to help slow nutrient loss. New information about drainage systems/agricultural tiles and manure applications will help farmers make decisions about water management and soil health. 
• New information related to how water and nutrients move across the landscape has strengthened models that will help the Ohio Lake Erie Commission take further steps to evaluate H2Ohio and overall progress on nutrient reduction in the Maumee River watershed. 
• Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has modified its permit procedure to better safeguard Ohioans when HABRI projects showed that drinking water treatment residuals from treatment plants that took in contaminated source water may leach microcystins into produce and groundwater. 
• Research will assist the Ohio Department of Natural Resources H2Ohio Wetland Restoration Program to make informed decisions about optimizing and maintaining restored wetlands with enhanced capacity for nutrient reduction and resilience to extreme events (e.g., floods, droughts, etc.). 
• Researchers are collaborating with the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to test a new soil and water assessment tool (SWAT model) to quantify what effect rivers and streams have on phosphorus as it moves through the Maumee River watershed.
• Local and state health and environmental protection experts are benefiting from discoveries about the skin and inhalation algal toxin exposure risks for individuals with various pre-existing health conditions. Now the researchers are exploring preventive and treatment options.
• Researchers have developed new satellite-based tools that monitor algal blooms in inland waters. 
• Researchers obtained a patent for a needle sensor device that can quickly detect algal toxins in fish in the Great Lakes.
• HABRI continues to drive information sharing and priority setting between universities and agencies, positioning Ohio to better prevent and manage future crises.

“HABRI-funded research provides information to our agencies to make informed decisions about policy and keep Ohio residents safe,” said Ohio Lake Erie Commission Executive Director Joy Mulinex on behalf of Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Agriculture.

HABRI is funded by the Ohio Department of Higher Education, with $18.5 million made available since 2015. Matching funding from participating Ohio universities increases the total investment to more than $37 million, demonstrating the state’s overall commitment to addressing the harmful algal bloom issue. The state agencies that identify initiative priorities include the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Ohio Department of Agriculture, Ohio Department of Health, the Ohio Lake Erie Commission and Ohio Department of Natural Resources. 

Final results from 12 projects funded from 2019-2021 make up this year’s report, in addition to one-year results of 19 projects funded in 2021. A new round of 12 projects were funded in 2022.

“Governor DeWine’s leadership through the H2Ohio program provides real promise in our efforts to address water quality issues. I’m pleased that Ohio’s colleges and universities continue to play a vital role in finding solutions to these problems,” said ODHE Chancellor Randy Gardner. “The Harmful Algal Bloom Research Initiative has been a collaborative problem-solving effort that uses our higher education assets to improve the quality of life for all Ohioans.”

HABRI comprises 97 expert research teams from Bowling Green State University, Central State University, Defiance College, Heidelberg University, Kent State University, Oberlin College, Sinclair Community College, The University of Akron, the University of Cincinnati, Miami University, Wright State University, and consortium leaders The University of Toledo and Ohio State. 

Information about HABRI projects, as well as partner organizations and background on the initiative, is also available on the Ohio Sea Grant website at go.osu.edu/habri. The report can be downloaded directly at http://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/p/nyhe8.

The Ohio Sea Grant Program is part of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences and NOAA Sea Grant, a network of 34 Sea Grant programs dedicated to the protection and sustainable use of marine and Great Lakes resources. For more information, visit ohioseagrant.osu.edu.

Researchers from The Ohio State University examined the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol in the hair of almost 100 coyotes living in the Chicago Metropolitan Area. Results showed that coyotes that lived in the most-developed areas had higher cortisol levels – a proxy for chronic stress – than animals living in suburban or natural areas. 

Two other factors stood out for their association to higher stress: poor body condition, mostly related to sickness with the skin disease mange, and being either a loner or an alpha in a pack – the males and females that constitute breeding pairs. Whether the stress linked to these factors can be traced directly to urban living or is just part of coyote life remains a bit of a mystery. 

“This is the first mammalian carnivore that has been evaluated for stress in an urban environment,” said lead author Stan Gehrt, a wildlife ecologist at Ohio State. “The city does present challenges for them, even though they’re really good at doing what they’re doing. This is helping us understand how well animals are adjusting to urban systems – or not adjusting to them. 

“And we found that with coyotes, it’s complicated.” 

The study was published online recently in the journal Science of the Total Environment. 

Gehrt, a professor in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, leads the Urban Coyote Research Project that has monitored coyotes living in Chicago since 2000. He and his colleagues spend a lot of time with the animals, collecting biological samples, microchipping them and tracking their movement, and documenting their reproductive success, dietary habits and other behaviors in the urban wild. 

For this study, first author Katie Robertson, who completed the work as a PhD student at Ohio State, shaved a bit of hair from the rump just above the tail of 97 coyotes – most alive, but some captured after death from illness or being hit by a car. The animals were also outfitted with radiotracking devices that enabled researchers to monitor their space use and determine their social status. Data collection occurred between 2014 and 2018. 

The hair samples were analyzed for their concentration of cortisol, a hormone produced as part of the body’s response to stress. Analyzing hair, as opposed to blood, was intended to provide an estimate of long-term stress over the previous weeks or months before collection rather than a reaction to an immediate stressor. Statistical modeling revealed the factors that were associated with higher stress. 

The researchers predicted that coyotes living in the more developed areas of Chicago would have higher concentrations of cortisol – and stress – than coyotes whose packs had more flexibility of movement and less exposure to people in the less dense areas in which they lived. 

The results bore out that hypothesis, but the findings also showed there is more to the story of modern coyote life: Poor physical condition is linked to higher stress – which poses a chicken-and-egg question of which problem came first. Sarcoptic mange infection itself doesn’t kill coyotes, but the loss of hair makes them susceptible to succumbing to cold Chicago winters. 

In addition, the analysis suggested the responsibility of running a pack, or living outside a pack, is stressful. 

“The alphas are the dominant animals in their pack, so they’re the ones that are responsible for all of the territorial defense and they’re the only ones that are breeding,” he said. “So there’s a lot going on with the alphas, whereas the subordinates and the pups, they have a pretty easy life. Their parents are doing all the hard work and they’re just coasting a little bit. And that was actually reflected in the cortisol levels.” 

Transients, on the other hand – adult coyotes that have left their parents but not yet established or joined a pack – have a different set of worries. 

“Transients were right up there with the alphas in terms of stress. They don’t have to defend a territory, but they have to avoid getting attacked by resident coyotes – they’re going through territories on a constant basis – and are trying to avoid people and trying not to get hit by cars,” Gehrt said. 

In 2014, Gehrt reported that some coyotes in Chicago had learned to look both ways before crossing a street – a finding that speaks to both their frequent exposure to risks that threaten their survival and their ability to deftly adapt to hostilities in their environment. 

This new study showed plenty of individual variations in stress levels of animals even in the highest-stress groups, which Gehrt said makes sense based on their track record of thriving in the face of growing urbanization. 

“We see them on a regular basis living in some pretty challenging areas, and it seems to me they’re adjusting quite well – their survival rates are high, and the food supply is great,” he said. “And that’s what we found, that there are trends related to higher stress, but there are also coyotes that are doing quite well in the city with fairly low stress levels – even alphas in some pretty intense environments. 

“Even without the urban system, this is the first free-ranging coyote population to be evaluated for stress. And we see there’s stress associated with their very complicated social system and a lot of rules they’re following – intrinsic sources of stress that other species don’t have to deal with. It’s an interesting look into another window of their lives.” 

E. Hance Ellington and Christopher Tonra of Ohio State also co-authored the study. 

This work was funded by Cook County Animal and Rabies Control, the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Support was also provided by Ohio State, the National Science Foundation and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

A new study analyzing toxins produced by Microcystis, the main type of cyanobacteria that compose the annual harmful algal bloom (HAB) in Lake Erie, suggests that the toxicity of the bloom may be overestimated in earlier warm months and underestimated later in the summer. 

The research is part of a large project, led by The Ohio State University, designed to develop a more accurate harmful algal bloom toxicity forecast for Lake Erie. 

The toxicity relates to the bloom’s concentration of the liver toxin microcystin, of which there are hundreds of varieties called congeners defined by very small molecular differences. The analysis showed that the toxicity level of the most common congeners found in Lake Erie relates strongly to nitrogen – when there is more nitrogen present in early warm months, dominant congeners tend to be of the less toxic variety. Later in the season, when nitrogen is nearly gone, the balance of dominant congeners changes to a more toxic type.

“The different levels of toxins will ultimately affect the toxicity and the human health impacts. We know that different populations are more sensitive to the toxins, especially those who have non-alcohol fatty liver disease,” said Justin Chaffin, senior researcher and research coordinator at Ohio State’s Stone Laboratory and lead author of the study. “Knowing which congeners are around can better inform beach management, better inform water treatment, and better inform those who need to avoid the water when they should avoid it.”

The research was published recently in the journal Harmful Algae. 

Lake Erie supplies drinking water to an estimated 11 million people in the United States and Canada, and the project led by Chaffin is geared toward developing toxicity forecasts that best prepare water treatment plant operators for the removal of microcystin. A high concentration of the toxin overwhelmed a Lake Erie water treatment plant in 2014, leading to the three-day Toledo drinking water crisis. 

But not all microcystin congeners are alike in terms of toxicity. The most abundant and most studied congener in Lake Erie, known as MC-LR, has been shown in recent research to be somewhere in the middle, in terms of toxicity, compared to other congeners in the lake’s bloom. In this study, Chaffin and colleagues set out to determine the location and abundance of these different congeners to get a better handle on toxicity trends over the busy summer season. 

The team collected samples at 15 sites stretching from Maumee Bay to the Central Basin from June through September in 2018 and 2019, focusing on identifying the concentration of specific microcystin congeners present over time and the changing nutrient levels in the water.

Along with the common MC-LR congener, two other congeners were found to dominate the microcystin populations: MC-RR, whose toxicity is about one-fifth of MC-LR, and MC-LA, estimated to be about 2 1/2 times more toxic than MC-LR. MC-RR, which is 17.5% nitrogen, was more dominant early in the season, when the water was rich in nitrogen, and MC-LA, which is 10.8% nitrogen, dominated later in the season, when nitrogen levels had substantially dipped – however, the total microcystin concentration was lower at that time as well, meaning overall toxicity may not have dramatically increased.

Detecting congeners doesn’t come easily – it requires highly sophisticated equipment and is more expensive than the analysis tool ELISA that’s routinely used to measure microcystins in the bloom – which is why current toxicity estimates are probably off, Chaffin said.

“Because ELISA measures overall concentration, basically you’re overestimating the toxicity in early summer when the majority of microcystins are a low-toxicity form, and then as summer progresses, the bloom is making more toxic forms, so you may be underestimating the toxicity,” he said. 

An investment in routinely gathering congener data could improve modeling efforts to predict how the toxicity of the HAB in Lake Erie changes each year. Chaffin co-authored another recent study that showed using data on toxin concentrations (from existing ELISA measurements that don’t take congeners into account), water currents and a bloom’s increase in toxin production in a one-week weather map-like simulation improved the accuracy of microcystin forecasting by 79%. 

“We took all the data we could find and put it in a hydrodynamic model and ran it under simulations,” Chaffin said. “So if you know where the toxins are today and make a map of the bloom like a weather map, you can watch where it’s going to go in the next seven days. And if you add biology data to the simulation, you can get a better prediction of where the highest toxin concentrations will be. 

“The next step would be to merge the bloom location and toxin concentration forecast with different congeners so we could really forecast the toxicity of the bloom. But lab capabilities would need to be improved to make that possible.”

Stone Lab is housed in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences School of Environment and Natural Resources.

This project is funded by the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, with additional support provided by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. 

Pengfei Xue, professor of civil, environmental and geospatial engineering at Michigan Technological University, was senior author of the modeling study published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. Co-authors of the Harmful Algae study include Judy Westrick of Wayne State University, Laura Reitz of Bowling Green State University (now at the University of Michigan) and Thomas Bridgeman of the University of Toledo.

Researchers using eye-tracking technology found that 50% of study participants declared their intent to throw away milk based on the date stamped on the container – without ever even looking at the label phrasing in front of the date. 

Each participant saw one of three phrasing options: “Sell by,” “Best if used by” or “Use by” a given date, as well as containers with no label at all. 

“We asked them if they intended to discard it, and if they said yes, it didn’t matter which phrase was there,” said senior study author Brian Roe, professor of agricultural, environment and development economics at The Ohio State University. 

“As soon as we changed the printed date, that was a huge mover of whether or not they would discard or not. So we documented both where their eyes were and what they said was going to happen. And in both cases, it’s all about the date, and the phrase is second fiddle.” 

Policymakers and industry leaders are working toward settling on a universal two-phrase system – one when quality, but not safety, is the concern, and a second phrase for items where safety may be a concern, Roe said. To date, they haven’t landed on what those phrases would be. 

“If you’re going to have an education campaign, it helps to have a set of phrases out there that people can cling to – but in the end, so few actually look at the phrase. They look at the date,” he said. “The date signifies a point after which you can expect quality to degrade. If you can get firms to push that date further out, then people are going to be willing to use the milk, or whatever it is, for a few more days, and waste a lot less food.” 

The study was published recently in the journal Waste Management. 

Food is wasted throughout the production process, but most of it happens at the consumer level: In the United States, consumer waste accounts for more than 48% of surplus food, according to the nonprofit ReFED. 

Researchers chose milk for the study because it is widely consumed and represents about 12% of all food wasted by U.S. consumers. 

Each of the 68 study participants viewed two flights of milk samples. The first featured images of eight half-empty milk containers with the same phrasing preceding a variety of dates that ranged from six days after to a week before the study day, presented alongside two physical samples each of fresh milk or poor-quality milk that the research team had allowed to go slightly sour. The second featured unlabeled milk containers alongside physical samples of good- or poor-quality milk. 

In each presentation, numbering labels implied that the physical samples had been poured from corresponding containers that appeared in the images. 

Data from eye-tracking technology showed that overall, participants spent more time fixing their eyes on the date compared to the phrase, looked at the date more frequently and laid their eyes on the date 44% faster than on the phrase. 

When participants did glance at the phrase, the type of phrase had no significant effect on how long they fixed their eyes on the words. 

Though the quality of the milk affected participants’ intent to throw it away – with souring milk having about a third higher discard probability than fresher milk – the quality factor did not influence what participants spent the most time looking at on the label. 

“The milk was intentionally made to smell a bit sour, and it didn’t really fundamentally change the fact that people really focus on the date,” Roe said. 

The finding aligned with previous studies led by Roe in which the intention to throw away food was driven by the label date and not the phrase. 

“But we were a bit surprised that over half of the viewing sessions featured no attention on the phrase whatsoever,” he said. “The date is more salient – you have to reference it against the calendar. It’s more actionable than the phrase is. 

“For policy reasons, it’s still important to narrow the phrases down to two choices. But that’s only the beginning – there needs to be a broader conversation about pushing those date horizons back to help minimize food waste.” 

This work was supported by the Van Buren Program, the Robert E. Jacobson Research and Service Fund in Agricultural Economics, the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Ohio State Department of Food Science and Technology FoodSURE program. 

Co-authors, all from Ohio State, were Aishwarya Badiger, Talia Katz and Christopher Simons.

Ohio Sea Grant and The Ohio State University Stone Laboratory hosted a live web event today featuring NOAA’s official annual seasonal HABs forecast for the lake and highlights of recent related research efforts.

This year’s bloom is expected to measure 3, with a potential range of 2-4.5 on the severity index – whereas last year’s bloom was measured at a 6.8.

The index is based on the bloom’s biomass – the amount of algae – during the peak 30 days of the bloom. An index above 5 indicates more severe blooms. Blooms over 7 are particularly severe, with extensive scum formation and coverage affecting the lake. The largest blooms occurred in 2011, with a severity index of 10, and 2015, with a severity index of 10.5.

“The harmful algal bloom forecast translates the latest science into actionable information for our partners and the public,” said NOAA Chief Scientist Sarah Kapnick. “As we move into the summer season, having accurate, reliable information about this year’s expected bloom will help protect public health and economic activity for communities along Lake Erie.”

Lake Erie HABs consisting of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, are capable of producing microcystin, a known liver toxin that poses a risk to human and wildlife health. Such blooms may force cities and local governments to treat drinking water or close beaches, and can harm vital local economies by preventing people from fishing, swimming, boating and visiting the shoreline.

The size of a bloom isn’t necessarily an indication of how toxic it is. For example, the toxins in a large bloom may not be as concentrated as in a smaller bloom. Each algal bloom is unique in terms of size, toxicity and, ultimately, its impact on local communities.

“By consistently improving the science behind our forecasts, we’re giving Great Lakes communities the information they need to plan for blooms of varying severity,” said NOAA’s National Ocean Service Director Nicole LeBoeuf. “Understanding and addressing hazards such as harmful algal blooms can help us ensure that the Great Lakes are an engine of the blue economy.”

The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science’s (NCCOS) Lake Erie HAB Forecast website provides predictions and visualizations of the bloom’s location and movement on the lake’s surface, as well as where the bloom is located within the water column. This information is especially helpful to water treatment plant operators, because intake structures are usually located below the surface, so the risk of toxins in their source water may be greater when these cells sink.

“NCCOS’s Lake Erie HAB forecast continues to be a valuable resource for Lake Erie residents, visitors and the state,” said Christopher Winslow, director of Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory. “This NOAA forecast and the research being conducted by academic institutions and both state and federal agencies to understand blooms and nutrient runoff will continue to guide efforts to address these summer bloom events.”

Forecast details 

NOAA expects a start of the visible bloom in mid- to late July. The duration of the bloom depends on the frequency of wind events in September, which cannot be predicted this far in advance. The bloom will remain mostly in areas of the lake’s western basin. The central and eastern basins of the lake are usually unaffected, although localized blooms may occur around some of the rivers after summer rainstorms.

The range in forecasted severity reflects the uncertainty in forecasting precipitation, particularly for July. Larger rain events during the summer could result in increased river flow and a higher severity index. NOAA will issue a seasonal forecast update in early August based on observed rainfall in the western basin watershed.

"While this spring has been quite dry, the lake received a large nutrient load in March, which will produce at least a mild bloom this summer,” said Richard Stumpf, NCCOS’s lead scientist for the seasonal Lake Erie bloom forecast. “However, like recent years, we have a potential of additional nutrient load in July, which could lead to a moderate bloom."

The Lake Erie forecast is part of a NOAA Ecological Forecasting initiative that aims to deliver accurate, relevant, timely and reliable ecological forecasts directly to coastal resource managers, public health officials and the public. In addition to the early season projections from NOAA and its partners, NOAA also issues HAB forecasts during the bloom season. These forecasts provide the current extent and five-day outlooks of where the bloom will travel and what concentrations are likely to be seen, allowing local decision makers to make informed management decisions. NOAA is actively developing tools to detect and predict how toxic blooms will be.

Nutrient load data for the forecasts came from Heidelberg University in Ohio, and the various forecast models are run by NCCOS, the University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, LimnoTech, Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. Field observations used for monitoring and modeling are done in partnership with a number of NOAA services, including its Ohio River Forecast Center, NCCOS, Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory and Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, as well as Ohio Sea Grant, The Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory, The University of Toledo and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

“This farmer was looking for therapy, but farmers want to go to someone who is also a farmer, or who at least knows farming,” Britton said. “I called area agencies and would ask if they had counselors that farm on their staff. Everyone said no. I didn’t know what to do.”

This challenge led to the creation of the Farm Stress Certification program. The program educates mental health care providers about farming topics, ranging from basics, like how large an acre is, what crops are grown in Ohio and how weather can impact farming, to more complex issues like why telling a farmer to quit a stressful job will just turn them away.

“They don’t want to quit their jobs,” Britton said. “They want to be able to manage their stress. They want counseling so they don’t have to quit their jobs.”

The certification, which is part of a collaboration with the College of Social Work, counts as continuing education credits for the practitioners. In addition to farming, the three-module course covers stressors unique to rural communities.

“There is a stigma,” Britton said. “Everyone knows your name. Everyone knows where you are going if you go to therapy. So, we have expanded the program to cover not just agricultural issues but rural ones, too.”

The farming community struggles with mental health issues. According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, agriculture is one of the most dangerous fields for work. Additionally, white men have some of the highest suicide rates in the United States. Ensuring that farmers have the support they need is key, Britton said.

“Many of these farms are multigenerational. They’re not going to be ones to give up the farm,” she said. 
“We talk about suicide warning signs, which can look different in the agricultural community.”

More than 1,000 providers have been trained since the program’s launch in 2022. The popularity of the initial certification has led Britton and her team to create a second, which focuses on topics like urban agriculture, new and beginning farmers, and stressors faced by farmers in the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. All the topics come from provider requests, Britton said.

“I think providers didn’t realize this was an underserved population,” she said. “They didn’t realize the lack of understanding they had for the rural and agricultural communities. They didn’t realize there’s almost a language barrier.”

Even providers in urban areas like Columbus and Toledo have taken part in the certification.

“They do telehealth appointments,” Britton said. “They say, ‘We want people to know we offer telehealth. We can serve you. We can be relevant.’”

Britton’s office keeps a running list of providers who are licensed by the state of Ohio and have completed the training and want to be added to the database. Each extension office has a copy of the list.

“People trust their extension office,” Britton said. “Our farmers may go into the office for one thing but now they have access to that list.”

When one farmer goes to counseling, that means another may follow, she said.

“They’re telling their friends, ‘It’s okay to go. Even though we live in a small town, I’m going. It’s okay for you to go.’”

Do you need immediate help? Please call the Ohio CareLine at 1-800-720-9616 The Ohio CareLine, staffed by behavioral health professionals, is a toll-free emotional support call service created by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and administered in community settings.

For the National Suicide & Crisis Prevention Lifeline – call or text 988. The Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.

By Shoshanah Inwood and Florence Becot, The Ohio State University

Kerissa and Charlie Payne are beginning farmers living their dream of raising two daughters on a farm in Central Ohio. By conventional measures, their livestock farm, Covey Rise, is a success. Yet, below the surface, the challenge of finding quality affordable child care has kept their business from growing and reaching its full potential.

“It feels like we’re always split between keeping the kids safe on the farm, being a good parent, and the needs of the farm,” Kerissa Payne said.

The United States has a child care crisis, yet the issue remains largely invisible in the farm sector. For too long, the nation has ignored the fact that farm parents are working parents who must juggle child care while working what can be one of the most dangerous and stressful jobs in America.

But as Bob Dylan might say, “The times they are a-changin’.”

For the first time in history, the two largest farm organizations, the American Farm Bureau and the National Farmers Union, have included child care in their policy priorities for the 2023 federal farm bill, a massive spending bill that passes every five years. As rural researchers, our conversations with policymakers suggest that there may be bipartisan support to help increase access to affordable quality rural child care as lawmakers hear from families.

Over the past 10 years, we have interviewed and surveyed thousands of farmers across the country to understand how child care affects farm business economic viability, farm safety, farm families’ quality of life and the future of the nation’s food supply. What we found debunks the three most common myths that have kept child care in the shadows of farm policy debates and points to solutions that can support farm parents.

Myth #1: Child care is a not a problem in the farm sector

Despite hearing from countless parents about their challenges with child care, the issue has been largely invisible among farm business advisers, farm organizations, and federal and state agricultural agencies. When we were interviewing advisers and decision-makers about this topic early in the COVID-19 pandemic, common first reactions we heard were: “child care is not an issue for farmers,” “we have never thought to ask about it” and “does it affect the farm business?”

Nationally, three-quarters (77%) of farm families with children under 18 report difficulties securing child care because of lack of affordability, availability or quality. Almost half (48%) report that having access to affordable child care is important for maintaining and growing their farm business.

Our research has consistently found child care is an issue that affects all of agriculture regardless of farm size, production system or location.

Access to child care is especially acute in rural areas, where even before COVID-19, 3 in 5 rural communities were categorized as child care deserts. The high cost of child care left the Paynes in a position familiar to many Americans – they make too much to qualify for child care support, but they don’t make enough to afford the type of quality child care they want.

The Paynes’ experience reflects what we consistently hear from farmers: Child care affects the trajectory of the farm business and the ability of a farm family to stay on the land.

Myth #2: Farmers don’t want or need help with child care because they have family help

Perhaps one of the biggest myths we have heard is that farm parents want to do it all on their own, and when they need help, they have family members who can watch the children.

This might work if relatives are nearby, but almost half of farmers we surveyed said their own parents were too busy to help with child care, had died or were in declining health.

Often, farm parents have had to move away from family and friends to find affordable land. These parents consistently said the lack of community made it harder to take care of their children.

Farmers have repeatedly said that it is a myth that they don’t want help taking care of children. The problem is that they cannot find or afford help.

Myth #3: Children can just come along when doing farm work

While wonderful places to grow up, farms can be dangerous, with large equipment, electric fencing, large animals, ponds and other potential hazards. Every day, 33 children are seriously injured in agricultural-related incidents, and every three days a child dies on a farm.

Farm parents we spoke with recounted stories of children who died after falling out of a tractor, drowned when they fell into a pond, or were maimed by a cow. Almost all farm parents – 97% – have worried that their children could get hurt on the farm.

In our research, parents talked about constantly weighing the risks and benefits of having children on the farm. One farmer had hoped his young son would “be my little sidekick and do everything I did.” However, the reality was different. He admitted he “didn’t think about a baby not being able to be out in the sun all day,” and he was struggling to balance care work and farm work. The government has spent millions of dollars on farm stress programs, yet child care’s role in creating and exacerbating farm stress is rarely talked about.

The Paynes asked a question we heard from many other parents: “Why is farming the only occupation where you are expected to take your kids to work?”

Farm safety programs have traditionally focused on education. However, our research shows that farm parents are highly aware of the risks. Instead of education, parents explain that they need resources to help with child care – 86% said they sometimes bring children to the farm worksite because they lack other options.

Finding solutions to support child care

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to America’s child care problems, particularly for farm parents, who are juggling raising their own families while working to feed and clothe the nation.

In our research, farmers spoke about a wide range of solutions: free or affordable quality child care, before- and after-school programs, better parental leave policies for wage and self-employed workers, financial support for safe play areas on the farm, college debt relief, free college tuition and more affordable health insurance.

Seeing his farm community struggling with child care, Adam Alson, a corn and soybean farmer in Jasper County, Indiana, co-founded Appleseed Childhood Education, a nonprofit dedicated to creating care and education opportunities for children from birth through high school. It opened its first early learning center in 2023 with a mix of public and private support.

Alson sees investing in child care as a path to attracting and retaining young farmers and families, and a strategy for growing and retaining the rural workforce.

“Throughout our country’s history, we have valued the importance of our rural communities and have invested in them and in sectors where the market does not go,” he said. “In 2023, quality child care is one of those sectors.”

As one Ohio farmer put it: “If America wants farmers, farm families need help with child care.”

Shoshanah Inwood, Associate Professor of Rural Sociology, The Ohio State University and Florence Becot, Associate Research Scientist in Rural Sociology, Adjunct Faculty - National Farm Medicine Center, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Made by pyrolysis, a process that involves heating organic material in a low-oxygen environment, biochar – a charcoal-like, porous substance – has long been utilized for crop production as a soil amendment or carbon sequestration agent. In recent years,  researchers have seen a resurgence of heightened interest in the technology due to its unique physical structure and its various agricultural and environmental benefits.

It’s for these reasons that biochar’s potential to remove large amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere deserves to be re-evaluated, said Raj Shrestha, lead author of the study and a research associate in horticulture and crop science at The Ohio State University.  

“When farmers grow their crops, they apply fertilizer and/or manure and use different kinds of machinery to till the soil,” said Shrestha. “In the process, greenhouse gases are produced and released into the atmosphere.”

But farmers could lessen this impact by applying biochar to their fields, according to the paper, recently published in the Journal of Environmental Quality.

“If we can convince farmers that converting biomass to biochar is good for the long-term sustainability of soils, the economy, and good for the environment, then we’ll be able to see wide adoption of this technology,” said Shrestha.

The researchers reviewed more than 200 field studies conducted across the globe that examined the impact of biochar application in agriculture on emissions of nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide – heat-trapping gases that cause Earth’s atmosphere to warm.

The team found that the amount of biochar in the soil does have variable effects on local greenhouse gas emissions, which range from a decrease to an increase, and, in some cases, no change. But in general, the team discovered that the use of biochar in field settings lowered the amount of nitrous oxide in the air by about 18% and methane by 3%.

Biochar alone was also not effective at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but did help when combined with commercial nitrogen fertilizer or other organic materials, like manure or compost. 

“We can achieve negative emission in our agroecosystems by reducing the carbon source and enhancing carbon sink,” said Shrestha. Reducing Earth’s carbon source can be achieved by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from our activities, and enhancing carbon sink – increasing the technology’s ability to absorb more carbon than it releases into the atmosphere – can be done by increasing the long-term soil carbon pool through conversion of organic waste into biochar, he said. 

“What’s good about biochar is that it contributes to both these aspects to create net negative agriculture,” said Shrestha.

Right now, when farmers leave crop residue on the field, only about 10% to 20% of the residue carbon is recycled into soil during the decomposition process, but by converting the same amount of residue to biochar and then applying it to the field, we can store about 50% of that carbon into stable carbon forms.”

As biochar-carbon placed in the soil can also last anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of years, it’s currently one of the proposed best management practices for achieving negative emissions and preventing Earth’s average temperature from increasing to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 

According to the study, between 2011 and 2020, global greenhouse gas emissions rose: carbon dioxide by about 5.6%, methane by 4.2%, and nitrous oxide by 2.7% – and agriculture accounts for about 16% of these emissions. While such levels have already led to irreversible changes to the global climate system, Shrestha said that future damages could be slowed by helping to curb the extent of emissions from the farming and forestry sectors. 

Yet despite biochar’s potential as a negative emission technology and the recent increase in biochar-related research, it’s difficult to get farmers to apply it, partly because it hasn’t been commercialized for widespread use or promoted well, said Shrestha. 

To better deliver more science-based, practical information about the technology and its benefits to farmers and agriculture-related businesses, many lawmakers have enacted policies meant to investigate its effectiveness across many different soil types and environmental conditions. It’s an objective that Shrestha shares, as the main goal of his team’s review paper is to improve farmers’ confidence in biochar so that more of them choose to adopt it sooner. 

This study was supported by The Arthur P. Sloan Foundation. Other Ohio State co-authors were Laura E. Lindsey, Rattan Lal, Klaus Lorenz and Scott M. Demyan, as well as Pierre-Andre Jacinthe from Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, Maninder P. Singh from Michigan State University and Wei Ren from the University of Kentucky. 

The good news is that the disease-carrying pests may not survive the winter if their plans to fatten up are foiled. The bad news is their dormancy period, known as diapause, may simply be delayed – meaning they’re biting humans and animals longer into the fall. 

“We see the highest levels of West Nile virus transmission in the late summer and early fall in Ohio. If you have mosquitoes postponing or delaying diapause and continuing to be active longer in the year, that’s at a time when the mosquitoes are most likely to be infected with West Nile virus and people could be at greatest risk of contracting it,” said Megan Meuti, senior author of the study and an assistant professor of entomology at The Ohio State University. 

This study and earlier findings by Meuti and her colleagues are among the first to show that artificial light at night could have a significant impact on mosquito behavior – including effects that aren’t necessarily predictable. 

“We’re finding that the same urban light at night can have very different effects under different seasonal contexts,” she said. 

Meuti conducted the study with first author Matthew Wolkoff and Lydia Fyie, both PhD candidates in entomology at Ohio State. The research was published recently in the journal Insects. 

Diapause for female Northern house mosquitoes (Culex pipiens) is not quite a winter slumber, but rather a period of dormancy when the insects live in caves, culverts, sheds and other semi-protected locations. Prior to winter’s arrival, mosquitoes convert sugary sources, such as plant nectar, into fat. As days get longer, females begin foraging for blood meals to enable egg production. Some get infected with West Nile virus by feeding on infected birds, and later transmit the virus when they feed on people, horses and other mammals. 

This study builds upon two previous findings from Meuti’s lab: For her dissertation, Meuti found that circadian clock genes differ between diapausing and non-diapausing mosquitoes, strongly suggesting that day length dictates when diapause should start. And more recent work led by Fyie found that female mosquitoes exposed to dim light at night averted diapause and became reproductively active – even when short days indicated they should be dormant. 

In the current study authored by Wolkoff, the researchers pursued both lines of inquiry, comparing daily activity and nutrient accumulation by mosquitoes reared in two lab conditions – long days mimicking the insects’ active season and short days that induced dormancy – with and without exposure to artificial light at night. 

The study provided more evidence associated with a circadian pattern to mosquito behavior, showing that insects’ activity decreases during diapause, but the circadian rhythmicity of that activity is sustained even during this dormant period. 

The introduction of artificial light at night was found to affect those activity patterns and to influence mosquitoes’ acquisition of nutrient reserves needed for fattening up and weathering winter temperatures. 

Exposure to light pollution suppressed the amount of water-soluble carbohydrates – sugars that are an essential food source during winter – that were accumulated by mosquitoes in both long- and short-day conditions. Patterns of accumulation of the sugar glycogen were reversed by exposure to artificial light at night: Under normal conditions, non-dormant mosquitoes had lots of glycogen in their bodies but diapausing bugs did not – but in mosquitoes subjected to light pollution, the long-day mosquitoes didn’t accumulate much glycogen and short-day mosquitoes showed an increase in glycogen accumulation. 

The researchers observed consistent trends in activity-related effects of light at night, with slight increased activity among the dormant mosquitoes and slightly suppressed activity among long-day mosquitoes expected to be busy looking for food. Though the findings weren’t statistically significant, Wolkoff said the combined observations suggest light pollution causes mosquitoes to ward off diapause – perhaps by scrambling signals from their circadian clock.

“This could be bad for mammals in the short term because mosquitoes are potentially biting us later in the season, but it could also be bad for mosquitoes in the long term because they might be failing to fully engage in preparatory activities they need to survive the winter during diapause, and that might reduce their survival rate,” Wolkoff said. 

The researchers plan to carry out field studies to see if these lab findings hold true in the wild.

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation, state and federal funds appropriated to Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

This article belongs to A Commemorative Issue in Appreciation of Professor David L. Denlinger: Great Advances in Insect Physiology. Denlinger is professor emeritus of entomology at Ohio State.

By Sheryl Barringer

Professor of Food Science and Technology, The Ohio State University

A human fungal zombie from the TV show ‘The Last of Us.’ Liane Hentscher/HBO

In the HBO series “The Last of Us,” named after the popular video game of the same name, the flour supplies of the world are contaminated with a fungus called Cordyceps. When people eat pancakes or other foods made with that flour, the fungi grow inside their bodies and turn them into zombies.

As a food scientist, I study the effect of processing on the quality and safety of fruits and vegetables, including the flour used to make pancakes. While no one is going to turn into a zombie from eating pancakes in real life, flour is often contaminated with fungi that can produce mycotoxins that make people sick. Proper processing and cooking, however, can generally keep you safe.

How common is fungi in flour?

People have been eating bread made from wheat for approximately 14,000 years and cultivating wheat for at least 10,000 years. In 1882, “drunken bread disease” was first documented in Russia, where people reported dizziness, headache, trembling hands, confusion and vomiting after eating bread. Long before that, Chinese peasants were reporting that eating pinkish wheat – a key sign of infection with a mold called Fusarium – caused them to feel ill. Clearly, fungi have been making people sick for a long time.

Wheat, corn, rice and even fruits and vegetables can be infected with fungi as they grow in the field. In “The Last of Us,” an epidemiologist theorizes that climate change is causing the fungus to mutate so it can infect humans. The unfortunate reality is that fungi have become more of a problem in recent years as warmer temperatures encourage their growth.

A 2017 study found that over 90% of wheat and corn flour samples in Washington, D.C., contained live fungi, with Aspergillus and Fusarium the predominant types of mold in wheat flour. Fusarium grows on wheat in the field and can cause a common agricultural plant disease called fusarium head blight, or scab.

Farmers use multiple techniques to reduce this devastating plant disease, including implementing crop rotation, using resistant varieties and fungicides and minimizing irrigation during flowering. After harvesting, they sort the grains to remove contaminated wheat before grinding them into flour. While sorting removes most of the contaminated wheat, small amounts of fungi can still make it into the flour.

Wheat infected with fusarium head blight have a characteristic pink hue. Tomasz Klejdysz/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Killing microorganisms in flour

The good news is that most fungi and other microorganisms die at 160-170 degrees Fahrenheit (71-77 degrees Celsius). Pancakes are typically cooked to an internal temperature of 190-200 F (88-93 C). Other cakes and breads are cooked to internal temperatures anywhere from 180 to 210 degrees Fahrenheit (82-99 C). So, unlike in “The Last of Us,” as long as you bake or fry your dough, you’ll have killed the fungi.

The problem comes when people eat the flour without cooking it first, such as by consuming raw cookie dough or “licking the bowl clean.” Both raw egg and raw flour can contain microorganisms that make people sick. The microorganisms that public health officials are most worried about are E. coli and Salmonella, dangerous pathogens that can cause severe illness.

Most people don’t realize that the flour they buy at the store is raw flour that still contains live microorganisms. Flour is rarely commercially treated to be safe to eat raw because consumers almost always cook flour-based foods. While consumers can also attempt to heat-treat raw flour at home, this isn’t recommended because the flour may not be spread thinly enough to kill all of the microorganisms.

Aspergillus is one of the predominant molds found in wheat flour. tonaquatic/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Some fungi and microorganisms can create spores, which are like seeds that help them survive adverse conditions. These spores can survive cooking, drying and freezing. There are even 4,500-year-old yeast spores that have been reawakened and made into bread. These fungal spores rarely cause serious illness in people, except in those with weakened immune systems.

Chemicals can be added to food to stop fungal growth. These additives include sorbates, benzoates and propionates. However, you almost never see these additives in flour or pancake mix because fungi can’t grow in a dry powder. The fungi either grew on the wheat in the field or on the bread after it is baked. For that reason, you may see these additives in bread but not in a powdered mix.

Mycotoxins

The biggest risk from fungi is not that it will grow inside our bodies, but that it will grow on wheat or other foods and produce chemicals called mycotoxins that can cause severe health problems. When wheat is harvested and ground into flour, mycotoxins can get mixed in.

Unfortunately, while normal cooking can kill the microorganisms, it doesn’t destroy the mycotoxins. Eating mycotoxins can cause problems ranging from hallucinations to vomiting and diarrhea to cancer or death. Some of the common mycotoxins found in grain include aflatoxins, deoxynivalenol, ochratoxin A and fumonisin B.

It might be best to leave that moldy bread alone. Yulia Naumenko/Moment via Getty Images

The oldest known case of mycotoxin poisoning is recorded as a disease called ergotism. Ergotism was mentioned in the Old Testament and has been reported in Western Europe since A.D. 800. It has even been suggested that the Salem witch trials were caused by an outbreak of ergotism that led its victims to hallucinate, though many have disputed this idea. Wheat is less likely than other grains to have dangerous mycotoxins, which is why some have proposed that declining mortality in 18th-century Europe, especially in England, was due to the switch from a rye-based diet to a wheat-based diet.

Ultimately, you don’t need to worry about eating those pancakes. Farmers use many techniques to minimize fungal growth and remove moldy grain, and the government keeps a close eye on mycotoxin levels during crop production and storage. Just make sure you cook your bakery products before eating, and don’t eat anything that has started to mold.

Sheryl Barringer, Professor of Food Science and Technology, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Alan Luo, Judit E. Puskas and Longya Xu are among 124 new NAE members, bringing the total U.S. membership to 2,420 and the number of international members to 319.

“One newly elected NAE member is a big deal for any institution, but three in one year is exceptional,” said College of Engineering Dean Ayanna Howard. “I am delighted for Judit, Alan and Longya, but I’m even happier for our students, faculty and staff that have had the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with these exemplary engineers. They certainly won’t be the last.”

Since the establishment of NAE in 1964, 16 Ohio State engineering professors have been elected, 11 of whom are active faculty. Election to the academy is one of the highest professional distinctions an engineer can receive, and honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education,” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

A professor of materials science and engineering and integrated systems engineering, Alan Luo was elected “for implementation of lightweight aluminum, magnesium, and titanium materials and advanced manufacturing processes for automotive applications.”

He leads the Lightweight Materials and Manufacturing Research Laboratory and is director of the Advanced Casting Research Center at Ohio State. An internationally recognized leader in lightweight materials and manufacturing, he has made significant contributions throughout his career in the automotive industry and as a professor. An elected Fellow of the American Society of Metals and the Society for Automotive Engineers, he has 21 patents and more than 300 technical publications. Prior to joining Ohio State in 2013, Luo was a GM Technical Fellow at General Motors Global Research and Development Center with 20 years of industrial experience.

A distinguished professor of food, agricultural and biological engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering, Judit E. Puskas was elected “for coinventing an FDA-approved, life-saving coronary stent coating, and fundamental research and scale-up of polymerization processes.”

Puskas joined Ohio State in 2019, continuing a prolific industry and academic career in rubber technology, developing polymers with multiple applications. She is perhaps known best as co-inventor of the polymer used to coat the Taxus coronary stent licensed by Boston Scientific, which has been implanted in more than 10 million patients. She was the first woman to win the Charles Goodyear Medal, the highest honor conferred by the American Chemical Society's Rubber Division, and was elected to the National Academy of Inventors in 2020. A Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, she has over 400 technical publications and 35 issued patents.

A recently retired professor of electrical and computer engineering, Longya Xu was elected “for contributions to high-performance electric machines and variable-speed drives for aerospace and wind turbines.”

An IEEE Fellow and recipient of IEEE’s Nikola Tesla Award in 2018, Xu was the founding director of Ohio State’s Center for High Performance Power Electronics. His research and teaching interests include the dynamics and optimized design of special electrical machines and power converters for variable-speed systems, the application of advanced control theory and digital signal processors for motion control, and distributed power systems in super-high-speed operations. He has served as a consultant to industry leaders including Raytheon, Boeing, Honeywell, GE Aviation, U.S. Wind Power, General Motors and Ford, among others.

The U.S. National Academy of Engineering is a private, independent, nonprofit institution that provides engineering leadership in service to the nation. Its mission is to advance the welfare and prosperity of the nation by providing independent advice on matters involving engineering and technology, and by promoting a vibrant engineering profession and public appreciation of engineering.

Individuals in the newly elected class will be formally inducted during the NAE's annual meeting on Oct. 1, 2023.

In three experiments, researchers found that exposure to a pro-sustainability opinion in a conversation or written exchange helped coax people who held anti-sustainability views toward support for an environmentally friendly initiative. 

Results also showed that people with a pro-sustainability viewpoint were not persuaded to change their commitment by talking to someone with an opposing point of view. 

The researchers noted that many sustainable behaviors – lowering the thermostat, recycling or buying fewer disposable products – are household or community endeavors that follow discussion and consideration. And so it follows, they say, that persuading others to adopt sustainable practices could be achieved through a common social activity: talking about it. 

“There has been research showing that when it comes to divisive issues, people can get entrenched in their views, but we find that this is not always the case, at least in the context of sustainability,” said senior author Nicole Sintov, associate professor of behavior, decision making and sustainability at The Ohio State University. “If I am anti-sustainability and I’m talking to another anti-sustainability person, then I’m not going to take more action to protect the environment. But if I talk to somebody who is pro-sustainability, I’m going to move to match what their values are, essentially. 

“I think that is a particularly juicy finding, especially in today’s political climate.” 

Sintov completed the study with first author Kristin Hurst, a former Ohio State postdoctoral researcher now at Southern Illinois University, and Grant Donnelly, assistant professor of marketing at Ohio State. The research was published online recently in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

In the first study, the team set out to determine whether having a conversation about a sustainability topic could influence actual sustainability behavior – on top of making a commitment to engage in the behavior.

A total of 568 college student participants read a statement about a university policy to expand plant-based food options in campus dining halls. Pairs of participants were randomized to either share their stances, thoughts and feelings about the plant-based foods policy or, as a control, to try to guess the name of a famous person described in a biography they were given to read. 

For the last 30 seconds of the interaction, researchers gauging participants’ commitment to the planet-friendly cause told students in two of three groups – one discussing the policy and one the famous person – to decide how much effort they would put into performing a task that would generate financial support for the plant-based foods policy. The task involved clicking a computer mouse; reaching a specific number of clicks in a set amount of time would trigger a donation toward the university’s investment in the plant-based food policy. 

Results showed that having a sustainability conversation before committing to take action in support of the issue increased sustainable behavior – the clicking – above and beyond the conversation or commitment alone. The conversation’s effect on behavior could be traced in part to inducing a sense of psychological safety by having the students show vulnerability when disclosing how they felt about the plant-based foods policy. 

“Having this conversation where you self-disclose and take more interpersonal risks elevates your sense of psychological safety, which increases the strength of your commitment to click with your partner,” said Sintov, a faculty member in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources. “Among the people who had the sustainability policy conversation versus the actor conversation, the commitment was stronger – the students were more engaged and came up with more ideas about how to maximize the clicks.” 

In the second study, 302 students were told about the policy and rated on a 7-part scale how supportive they were of providing more plant-based foods in campus dining halls. They were then paired with trained research assistants – acting as student participants – who verbally expressed a scripted opinion either in support of or opposing the policy. A third study involving 545 students had an identical structure, except that the interactions were in writing. 

In both studies, individuals initially unsupportive of the policy who interacted with someone supportive of the initiative were more likely to engage in behavior supporting the policy – again, by clicking a mouse to generate a financial donation.

“If you were paired with a pro-sustainability person, you’re going to click no matter what, compared to if you were paired with a con person. What is most interesting, I think, is that this held for people who were initially unsupportive,” Sintov said. 

Pro-sustainability participants, on the other hand, could not be swayed to lower their commitment by a conversation or written exchange with someone expressing the counterpoint. 

Organized efforts to talk about behaving sustainably could have real-world applications in college roommate selections, the workplace and other sectors, Sintov said, and ideally would spark stronger commitments than those that people tend to make to ambitions set by a third party – think taking 10,000 steps a day or saving 5% on an energy bill. 

“Some goals come out of the ether and we’ll say, yeah, OK, I guess I’ll do that,” she said. “Rarely do we think to ourselves or, even rarer, start a conversation by asking: ‘What are our energy goals?’ Just by having a few prompts, we might see some movement.”

Nearly 4,000 votes were cast in this year’s contest.

Co-senior authors Amal Amer, professor, and Jacob Yount, associate professor, both in the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity, will receive a trophy from Ohio State News and a $500 award from the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge.

Amer, Yount and a large team of Ohio State colleagues found in mice that blocking the molecule, an enzyme known as caspase 11, holds promise in preventing or treating severe COVID-19 symptoms by reducing inflammation, tissue injury and blood clots in the lungs. Versions of this enzyme exist and have similar functions in both mice and humans, making it an attractive therapeutic target. The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Here were the other contest finalists:

Future wearable health tech could measure gases released from skin: Scientists have taken the first step to creating the next generation of wearable health monitors. New research suggests that a wearable sensor may be able to monitor the body’s health by detecting the gases released from a person’s skin. The method would allow the technology to sense biomarkers related to metabolic disorders, like heart disease or diabetes. Senior author: Pelagia-Irene Gouma, professor of materials science and engineering, published in PLOS One.

Climate change is turning the trees into gluttons: Forests appear to be bulking up on the excess carbon they pull from the atmosphere. This study showed that elevated carbon levels consistently led to an increase of wood volume in 10 different temperate forest groups across the country, suggesting that trees are helping to shield Earth’s ecosystem from the impacts of global warming through their rapid growth. Co-author: Brent Sohngen, professor of environmental and resource economics, published in Nature Communications.

Ohio State News extends thanks to readers and voters, to the faculty finalists for their enthusiastic participation in our sixth annual contest, and to all the researchers who let our staff help tell their stories.

We can’t wait till next year to do it all again!

Scientists have taken the first step at estimating the best large-scale uses for food processing waste, first analyzing its contents and, based on those findings, proposing production opportunities ranging from sustainable fuels, biogas and electricity to useful chemicals and organic fertilizer.

This work is known as valorization, or determining the potential value of something “that is otherwise valueless or even a drain on resources for a company – when you have to spend money to get rid of it,” said Katrina Cornish, senior author of the study and professor of horticulture and crop science and food, agricultural and biological engineering at The Ohio State University. 

“The bioeconomy is becoming much more prevalent as a topic of conversation. In this case, don’t get rid of food waste – make some money from it,” said Cornish, also an Ohio Research Scholar of Bio-Emergent Materials. “Here, we’re putting the base model in place for food manufacturers who are wondering, ‘What can I do with this stuff?’ Our flow chart guides them in a specific direction and prevents them from wasting time trying something we know won’t work.” 

The study was published online recently in the journal Science of the Total Environment. 

About 2% of the 80 billion pounds of food discarded annually in the United States is attributable to food manufacturing and processing – with food waste solids sent to landfills or composted, and liquids poured into sewers. 

For the study, researchers collected a total of 46 waste samples, including 14 from large Ohio food processing companies, and divided them into four broad categories: vegetable, fat-rich, industrial sludge and starchy. They then characterized the sample contents’ physical and chemical properties and tested some starchy wastes they determined were good candidates for fermentation into the platform chemical acetone. 

In the big picture, a waste type’s energy density – based on calorific value – and carbon-to-nitrogen ratio were major determinants for its repurposing potential. For example, fatty waste and mineral-based waste can be digested anaerobically to generate biogas, and soybean waste has enough energy density to be used for biodiesel production. 

Low-calorific vegetable wastes aren’t great for energy production, but they are plentiful organic sources of flavonoids, antioxidants and pigments that could be extracted and used in health-promoting compounds. 

Based on the analysis of fibrous and mineral-rich wastes, Cornish has practiced what she’s preaching: Her lab developed a method for turning eggshells and tomato peels sourced from Ohio food producers into fillers in rubber products, partially replacing petroleum-based carbon black in tires, for example. 

“We aligned this work with the Environmental Protection Agency goal to reduce 50% of food loss and waste by 2030,” said first author Beenish Saba, a postdoctoral researcher in food, agricultural and biological engineering at Ohio State. “So, how can you reduce this waste? Valorization is one method.

“In Ohio, corn is being grown to convert into biofuel, acetone and butanol, and here we’ve identified other sources already available as wastes that you can also convert into those products.” 

The proposed conversion technologies require energy to operate and also yield some secondary waste, but the valorization modeling lays groundwork for further “cradle to grave” analyses that would help quantify the environmental benefits of large-scale food – and other industry – waste reduction, Saba said. 

While this study is a starting point, it ideally will offer incentive for food producers to consider the possibilities of making something out of waste products that are currently treated as trash, the researchers say. 

“What we hope will happen is that food producers will actually look at their costs and their footprint, and see which of these approaches for their particular wastes will work best – which will be the least financially negative, and preferably profitable, and also minimize any carbon footprint,” Cornish said. “In terms of global warming, any waste that can be valorized has a direct impact on global warming because it has a direct impact on emissions and on the ecosystem. 

“This is all about improving energy security and lowering the financial and environmental impacts of food waste management,” she said. “If your waste has enough value for you to do something with it that prevents it from going into the landfill, that’s a really good thing.” 

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Additional Ohio State co-authors include Ashok Bharathidasan and Thaddeus Ezeji.

And that strengthened sense of being a timely user of new gadgetry was linked to a higher likelihood that the test-driver would show interest in buying the car, the study suggested.

Though the test drive also increased study participants’ impression that an electric vehicle could function as a status symbol, that expectation did not translate into interest in making a purchase.

The findings help increase understanding of what fuels consumer behavior behind purchases related to sustainability and offers insights that could guide electric vehicle (EV) marketing efforts, said senior author Nicole Sintov, associate professor of behavior, decision making and sustainability at The Ohio State University. 

“An electric vehicle can symbolize different things to different people – it’s not going to be the same across the board. That’s why it’s important to consider the variety of different qualities an EV can reflect,” she said. “What we found is that EV test drives have a lot of potential to change how people think of themselves – and that was linked to increased intention to buy.” 

Sintov completed the study with first author Atar Herziger, a former postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State who is now on the faculty of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. 

The research was published recently in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

Sintov and Herziger set out to determine whether and how a test drive of an electric vehicle affects two kinds of symbolic meaning: private meaning, which supports an individual’s self-perception, or public meaning – influencing how others would view the EV owner. And if those meanings change, does that affect the prospective buyer’s plan to make a purchase? 

Two studies were conducted, one a randomized experiment using a virtual test drive and the other a partnership with Smart Columbus to survey people who opted to participate in an EV test-driving experience. 

A total of 729 participants over the two studies were asked before and after the test drive to rate how owning an EV would influence their self-perception and how having the car would affect the way others view them. After the test drive, they were asked how likely they were to buy or lease the car or recommend it to a friend.  

The research focused on three types of private symbolic meaning linked to owning an electric car: being pro-environment, an early adopter of new technologies or a car authority. To gauge public meaning, the survey asked participants to report the extent to which they perceived that driving the EV says something about the kind of person they are. 

In the case of the virtual test drive, the researchers used an identical video – eliminating all visible branding and sound – of an EV model that wasn’t yet available in the United States. The virtual test drive included examples of how interior features worked and took participants on a short ride from the driver’s point of view – the only difference was that some were told the car was a conventional gas-powered vehicle, and others were told it was an EV. 

Statistical analysis showed that from pre- to post-test drive, the virtual experience in the EV strengthened participants’ perception of the EV as an expressive object and increased their self-identity as early adopters of technology.

“We didn’t see that for those who were told they were test-driving a conventional vehicle,” said Sintov, a faculty member in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources. “They had the same stimuli, but telling them it was one thing or another obviously changed the perceptions not only of the vehicle, but of themselves.” 

But only the reinforced personal identity – the private symbolic meaning – was associated with intention to make a purchase. 

The real-life test drive results had similar effects on enhancing public and private symbolic meanings of an EV, this time increasing both early-technology-adopter and car-authority identities – and again, only the reinforced personal identities led to stronger intentions to lease or buy the car. 

From a theoretical and practical point of view, the distinctions between public and private meanings and their influence on purchasing intentions is important, Sintov said. And considering the test drive’s influence on those meanings also takes into account the fact that lots of thought usually goes into buying a car – it’s not a decision made at a single point in time, she said 

“We really wanted to parse these things out more concretely than previous studies on EV symbolic meanings have – all in the context of whether a test drive moves things,” she said. 

And because the results showed test drives can move consumers toward a purchase, the marketing around such experiences could be particularly important. 

“If EV marketing efforts focus on saying, ‘Look at you – you have cool person status,’ that is not the route we identified,” Sintov said. “‘How do I think about myself differently after this test drive, and in particular, how do I see myself differently in terms of being an early adopter of technology?’ That is what makes people want to buy the car.”

This is our sixth annual contest, and the winner receives a very cool trophy from Ohio State News and a $500 award from Ohio State’s Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge. 

We’ve done the hard part, selecting three finalists for consideration from the over 160 stories we’ve written so far this year about cool research – and let’s just be honest, all Ohio State science is inherently cool. From here, we are asking readers to vote early and often – really! – to pick the winner.

Be sure to watch the videos above of our finalist faculty talking about their work and the excitement of being a scientist. And scroll down to VOTE!

Here are the finalists:

Climate change is turning the trees into gluttons: Forests appear to be bulking up on the excess carbon they pull from the atmosphere. This study showed that elevated carbon levels consistently led to an increase of wood volume in 10 different temperate forest groups across the country, suggesting that trees are helping to shield Earth’s ecosystem from the impacts of global warming through their rapid growth.

Future wearable health tech could measure gases released from skin: Scientists have taken the first step to creating the next generation of wearable health monitors. New research suggests that a wearable sensor may be able to monitor the body’s health by detecting the gases released from a person’s skin. The method would allow the technology to sense biomarkers related to metabolic disorders, like heart disease or diabetes. 

Blocking enzyme could hold the key to preventing, treating severe COVID-19: Blocking a single immune response-related molecule holds promise in preventing or treating severe COVID-19 symptoms by reducing inflammation, tissue injury and blood clots in the lungs, research in mice suggests. Versions of this enzyme exist and have similar functions in both mice and humans, making it an attractive therapeutic target.

Voting starts today – see the poll below – and is open until 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13, 2023. The process is decidedly unscientific: Participants may cast one vote per day until the poll closes.

Thank you in advance for helping us name the Coolest Ohio State Science Story of 2022!

Editor's note: Voting has closed. Stay tuned for news about the winner!

By analyzing coyote diets and their movement in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, where the attack occurred on a popular trail, the researchers concluded that the coyotes were forced to rely on moose instead of smaller mammals for the bulk of their diet – and as a result of adapting to that unusually large food source, perceived a lone hiker as potential prey. 

The findings essentially ruled out the possibility that overexposure to people or attraction to human food could have been a factor in the attack – instead, heavy snowfall, high winds and extreme temperatures created conditions inhospitable to the small mammals that would normally make up most of their diet. 

“The lines of evidence suggest that this was a resource-poor area with really extreme environments that forced these very adaptable animals to expand their behavior,” said lead author Stan Gehrt, a wildlife ecologist at The Ohio State University. 

“We’re describing these animals expanding their niche to basically rely on moose. And we’re also taking a step forward and saying it’s not just scavenging that they were doing, but they were actually killing moose when they could. It’s hard for them to do that, but because they had very little if anything else to eat, that was their prey,” he said. “And that leads to conflicts with people that you wouldn’t normally see.” 

The research is published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. 

The death of 19-year-old folk singer Taylor Mitchell is the only fatality resulting from a coyote attack on a human adult ever documented in North America. 

Gehrt, who leads the Urban Coyote Research Project that has monitored coyotes living in Chicago since 2000, was consulted by media for his expertise after the attack. In urban areas like Chicago, where thousands of coyotes live among millions of people, injuries from coyote-human encounters are very rare.

“We had been telling communities and cities that the relative risk that coyotes pose is pretty low, and even when you do have a conflict where a person is bitten, it’s pretty minor,” said Gehrt, a professor in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources. “The fatality was tragic, and completely off the charts. I was shocked by it – just absolutely shocked. 

“A lot of people began wondering if we were at the front edge of a new trend, and if coyotes were changing their behavior. And we didn’t have good answers.” 

Gehrt expanded an initial investigation of the fatal attack – and a few dozen less severe human-coyote incidents in the park before and after Mitchell’s death – into a detailed field study. Between 2011 and 2013, he and colleagues captured 23 adult and juvenile coyotes living in the Cape Breton park and fitted them with devices to document their movement and use of space. 

To obtain dietary information, the team also snipped whiskers from the live-captured coyotes and from the bodies of coyotes implicated in the fatal attack and in other human-coyote incidents. For comparison, the researchers collected fur from potential prey – southern red-backed voles, shrews, snowshoe hare, white-tailed deer and moose – and hair from local barbershops that served as a proxy for human food. 

Seth Newsome, professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and corresponding author of the study, analyzed stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in these whisker and hair samples to determine what the coyotes had been eating in the months before they were captured or lethally removed from the population. 

The analysis showed that, on average, moose constituted between half and two-thirds of the animals’ diets, followed by snowshoe hare, small mammals and deer. 

“This dietary evidence was the critical piece to it,” Gehrt said. “Their diets changed because they’re taking advantage of whatever different food items are available at the time. We’re used to seeing big oscillations across the segments of whiskers depending on the season. But in this system, for these coyotes, we don’t see that – they flat line at the moose end, so there’s very little variation in their diet.” 

Samples from the coyotes that were confirmed to have been involved in the fatal attack showed they had been eating only moose, “and their diet wasn’t changing,” he said. An analysis of coyote droppings confirmed the isotope findings. The researchers found only a few examples of individual animals having eaten human food. 

Beyond the dietary analysis, Gehrt and colleagues did test for the possibility that coyotes were familiar with humans, and therefore not fearful around people. The movement patterns showed that while the coyotes’ space use was extensive – likely related to the need to search far and wide for prey – the animals largely avoided areas of the park frequented by people and were more active at night during periods when daytime human use was at its highest. Prohibition on hunting and trapping in the park also removed a human threat. 

“It’s a big area for these coyotes to live in and never have a negative experience with a human – if they have any experience at all,” Gehrt said. “That also leads to the logical assumption that we’re making, which is that it’s not hard for these animals to test to see whether or not people are a potential prey item.” 

In cities and most other wilderness areas where coyotes live, food of all types is plentiful – suggesting only areas low on natural prey, like islands and remote northern climates, would pose a similar risk for coyote-human interactions, Gehrt said. Their survival in Cape Breton, he said, is attributable to their remarkable ability to adjust to their environment.

“These coyotes are doing what coyotes do, which is, when their first or second choice of prey isn’t available, they’re going to explore and experiment, and change their search range,” he said. “They’re adaptable, and that is the key to their success.” 

This work was supported by Parks Canada, the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry, and the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation.

Additional co-authors include Erich Muntz of Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Evan Wilson of Ohio State and Jason Power of the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry.

From tips on how to pickle vegetables to info on foods that can help you sleep, in 60 seconds, Ohio State alum Brittany Towers Lewis is working to bring food science to the masses through a booming social media message.

Towers Lewis, known as the @theblackfoodscientist on her Instagram and TikTok accounts, delivers energetic and informative lessons about food, diet and cooking techniques. A graduate of the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in food science, Towers Lewis was back on the Columbus campus Monday to discuss science communication in social media.

“I wanted to find something that I really loved and had a passion for. My mom actually told me about food science when I came to [Ohio State], but I kind of dismissed it,” she said. “But I revisited it and changed my major in the middle of my junior year, which is probably the best thing that I’ve ever done. Because I absolutely love food science.”

Her love of the science of food has led to a career in industry as a project manager with PepsiCo and now Vital Proteins. But it also inspired her to turn to social media to share her knowledge.

Towers Lewis said she first started making videos in 2021 and was motivated to help correct the misinformation about science that she saw come to prominence during the pandemic.

“A lot of people don't know how to communicate science very well, which makes people that don’t have a science background kind of scared of science,” she said. “I was like, ‘OK, how can I help people understand science and make it more relatable to people?’ I think food is an absolutely great way to do that.”

She answers popular questions like what’s the difference between baking powder and baking soda, and why does slicing onions make people cry. Ideas come from family, co-workers and some of her 37,000 Instagram or her nearly 68,000 followers on TikTok.

While most of her posts are popular topics, the subject of food doesn’t come without controversy. For example, Towers Lewis has debunked myths surrounding monosodium glutamate and plans to do a video discussing genetically modified foods.

“I’m talking about things that people might not be completely knowledgeable on. So I think it’s really important to come at it from a scientific and objective point of view,” she said. “I’m giving people the facts. I’m not telling people how to feel or what to eat. You can choose to eat whatever you want, but I just want to make sure that people aren’t choosing it based on misinformation or based on something that isn’t true.”

Wading into controversial topics comes with drawbacks online. Towers Lewis said she’s not immune to trolls, but she takes it in stride.

“[The response has] been overwhelmingly positive. Which is really great,” she said. “Obviously, there are trolls out there, very few. But when you have trolls, that means you’ve made it in the world of social media.”

Growing her audience and ignoring trolls is made easier by an approach that comes from experience and passion for her subject.

“I think it’s just my personality kind of fit with what I was doing, which is also really important because I want to do something that was authentic to myself.”

After observing these results with a short-term intervention, the research team plans to progress to similar studies in people, looking for health-related links between tomatoes in the diet and changes to the human gut microbiome – the community of microorganisms living in the gastrointestinal tract.

“It’s possible that tomatoes impart benefits through their modulation of the gut microbiome,” said senior author Jessica Cooperstone, assistant professor of horticulture and crop science and food science and technology at The Ohio State University. 

“Overall dietary patterns have been associated with differences in microbiome composition, but food-specific effects haven’t been studied very much,” Cooperstone said. “Ultimately we’d like to identify in humans what the role is of these particular microorganisms and how they might be contributing to potential health outcomes.” 

The research is published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum.

The tomatoes used in the study were developed by Ohio State plant breeder, tomato geneticist and co-author David Francis, and are the type typically found in canned tomato products.

Ten recently weaned control pigs were fed a standard diet and 10 pigs were fed the standard diet fine-tuned so that 10% of the food consisted of a freeze-dried powder made from the tomatoes.

Fiber, sugar, protein, fat and calories were identical for both diets. The control and study pig populations lived separately, and researchers running the study minimized their time spent with the pigs – a series of precautions designed to ensure that any microbiome changes seen with the study diet could be attributed to chemical compounds in the tomatoes. 

Microbial communities in the pigs’ guts were detected in fecal samples taken before the study began and then seven and 14 days after the diet was introduced. 

The team used a technique called shotgun metagenomics to sequence all microbial DNA present in the samples. Results showed two main changes in the microbiomes of pigs fed the tomato-heavy diet – the diversity of microbe species in their guts increased, and the concentrations of two types of bacteria common in the mammal microbiome shifted to a more favorable profile. 

This higher ratio of the phyla Bacteroidota (formerly known as Bacteriodetes) compared to Bacillota (formerly known as Firmicutes) present in the microbiome has been found to be linked with positive health outcomes, while other studies have linked this ratio in reverse, of higher Bacillota compared to Bacteroidota, to obesity.

Tomatoes account for about 22% of vegetable intake in Western diets, and previous research has associated consumption of tomatoes with reduced risk for the development of various conditions that include cardiovascular disease and some cancers. 

But tomatoes’ impact on the gut microbiome is still a mystery, and Cooperstone said these findings in pigs – whose gastrointestinal tract is more similar than rodents’ to the human GI system – suggest it’s an avenue worth exploring. 

“This was our first investigation as to how tomato consumption might affect the microbiome, and we’ve characterized which microbes are present, and how their relative abundance has changed with this tomato intervention,” she said. 

“To really understand the mechanisms, we need to do more of this kind of work in the long term in humans. We also want to understand the complex interplay – how does consuming these foods change the composition of what microbes are present, and functionally, what does that do? 

“A better understanding could lead to more evidence-based dietary recommendations for long-term health.” 

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center and the Foods for Health initiative at Ohio State.

The study was led by Mallory Goggans, who received her master’s degree in food science and technology from Ohio State in 2020. Additional co-authors include Emma Bilbrey, Cristian Quiroz-Moreno and Sheila Jacobi of Ohio State, and Jasna Kovac of Penn State University.

In a perspective article published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the 14 experts cite virus pandemics dating from 1918 to the COVID-19 crisis as examples of how “the world has largely failed to meet the challenge to be better prepared to prevent or respond to the next outbreak.” 

Future outbreaks are inevitable. The team says the best way to lower chances for widespread disease outbreaks and pandemics and improve prospects for mounting a rapid response is to adopt a One Health approach to diminish these threats – working across disciplines and administrative barriers at all levels to understand and address links between animal and human health and the environment. 

Ohio State University virologist and immunologist Linda Saif, co-lead author of the paper, has been sounding the alarm about viruses that affect food animals, wildlife and humans for decades – and provided expertise very early in the pandemic about the dangers of SARS-CoV-2. In 1995, her lab was the first to document a coronavirus’s leap from wild animals to cattle and from cattle to poultry. The recognition of interspecies transmission of coronaviruses from deer to cattle was prescient: In 2021, Saif was part of an Ohio State research team that showed that SARS-CoV-2 could spill over to deer. All these years later, the scientific community is still learning about how the wily pathogens work.

“SARS-CoV-2 taught us that viruses do not respect borders, walls, demographics or politics – nor do they respect species barriers,” said Saif, a Distinguished University Professor in Ohio State’s Center for Food Animal Health with faculty appointments in the departments of animal sciences and veterinary preventive medicine.

“Emerging and re-emerging RNA viruses – including coronaviruses – are a major cause of the transmission of disease from animals to humans and back again to animals, and that spillover between species enables viruses to establish new hosts in which they can mutate and persist. The  most effective way to fight back is to work as a global community and apply One Health practices for prevention and preparedness.” 

The researchers from the United States, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe convened in 2021 as the Independent Task Force on COVID-19 and Other Pandemics: Origins, Prevention and Response. The task force was chaired by Gerald Keusch of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory and Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research at Boston University, who is co-lead author of the PNAS article. 

Recommendations are based on their findings from an expansive review of major RNA virus outbreaks over the last 50 years and research results before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They paid particular attention to identifying places and times when targeted interventions in the past could have blocked cross-species transmission to inform their proposed solutions for the future. 

Evidence strongly suggests that the two SARS coronavirus outbreaks, in 2003 and 2019, can be traced to coronaviruses in bats that most likely spilled over to intermediate animal hosts in wildlife farms or markets before infecting people – in the case of COVID-19, at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. The task force found the risk for a pandemic increases when people and animals interact closely in altered settings driven by land use and climate change, environmental degradation, the wildlife trade, population growth and economic pressure.

Addressing the  risk factors of these types of conditions is one focus of the group’s recommendations, which include:

• Conducting early-warning surveillance in locations where people, wildlife and domestic animals intermingle to detect high-threat potential zoonotic pathogens and inform development of potential broad spectrum vaccines and therapeutics.
• Investing in research and development of diagnostics, antivirals and vaccines for priority pathogens, and streamlining avenues to enable rapid clinical testing and manufacturing of medical countermeasures.
• Reducing drivers for spillover risk and spread, in part by minimizing high-risk human-wildlife contact, on the front lines of disease emergence from the community to country level.
• Countering misinformation and disinformation about the prevention and control of emerging diseases based on research focused on fostering public trust in and understanding of science and expert advice, and providing trusted resources and outlets for accurate information.
• Establishing an inclusive, transparent One Health governance framework at all levels for pandemic preparedness and response, and providing stable funding for all related global efforts.

“It’s not an overstatement to say that this requires worldwide collaboration and coordination to come up with measures enabling us to predict, prevent, mitigate and control future pandemics,” Saif said. “We know where opportunities have been missed in the past. We know what research questions need to be answered most urgently. We just have to seize the opportunity and have the resolve to act on what we know to improve human, animal and our ecosystem health.”

This look toward a better future comes at a time when SARS-CoV-2 is still causing infections worldwide and still has potential to circulate as viral variants that would pose new threats to human health and, as spillovers continue, potentially to animal health, the researchers noted. 

“The time to energize these processes is now,” the task force concludes, “when the tragedy of COVID-19 continues to confront the public and politicians.”

Additional task force co-authors include John Amuasi of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana; Danielle Anderson of the The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, University of Melbourne, Australia; Peter Daszak, and Su Yadana of EcoHealth Alliance, New York City; Isabella Eckerle of University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland; Marion Koopmans of  Erasmus University, Netherlands; Hume Field of the University of Queensland, Australia; Sai Kit Lam of the University of Malaya, Malaysia; Carlos Das Neves of the Norwegian Veterinary Institute, Norway; Malik Peiris of the University of Hong Kong, China; Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa; and Supaporn Wacharapluesadee of King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital and Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.

The AgTech Innovation Hub will be facilitated by the offices of innovation for both organizations as well as the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES). Nationwide and Ohio State will work together to encourage the development of new solutions that will help the agricultural ecosystem while better understanding, managing and mitigating climate risk.

“Ohio farmers need new science, new strategies, new skills, new tools, new funding and new collaborations. I’m so happy today to have the honor to announce a new partnership between [CFAES] and Nationwide,” said Ohio State President Kristina M. Johnson. “[The Innovation Hub] will offer fertile ground for programs and ideas that contribute to agricultural resiliency, food security and the economic security of farmers and food producers.”

Nationwide is pledging up to $2 million in initial funding to identify and execute initiatives for the Innovation Hub and plans to provide additional funding and resources in the future. The partnership was announced at the 2022 Farm Science Review.

“The partnership also creates opportunities for collaborations across institutions and industries, developing new solutions to help the supply chain for other challenges,” said Mark Bervin, president and chief operating officer of Nationwide Property and Casualty. “We are so excited to partner with The Ohio State University and we are excited to see the impact that we will make on the agricultural community, not just here in Ohio, but everywhere.”

The AgTech Innovation Hub will provide a variety of tools, resources, skillsets and funding platforms to address the dynamic and changing needs of agriculture innovation to minimize climate risk and accurately insure those risks.

“This partnership will build on the collaborative that Nationwide and the Nationwide Foundation already have with the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences and The Ohio State University,” said Cathann A. Kress, Ohio State’s vice president for agricultural administration and dean of CFAES. “It will challenge our students and faculty to bring innovative solutions to the table to tackle the grand challenges we face regarding the nexus of ecosystem sustainability, food security, and viable production agriculture.”

The Innovation Hub will promote applied research, technology transfer, the exchange of knowledge and experience, and transdisciplinary innovation in support of agricultural technology. Programs may include early-stage entrepreneurs, mature companies or producers developing new or value-added products or manufacturing processes.

Funding for the project comes from a $5 million grant from the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and about $10 million in matching contributions from Ohio State, commodity groups, industry and other donors. The project will measure how much organic and inorganic carbon gets sequestered in the soil under different farming practices in key regions across the western hempishere.

What science knows about carbon sequestration, says Rattan Lal, Ohio State Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science, has mostly come from simulation modeling carried out on computers, along with a limited number of experiments in the field. 

Lal, who is a faculty member in Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES), will help to change that.

As principal investigator of the project titled “Enhanced Soil Carbon Farming as a Climate Solution,” he and other researchers will take measurements directly on hundreds of farms in Ohio, other states and even other countries under real-world farming practices and conditions.

“Biologic carbon sequestration through farming is a potent tool in the battle against climate change, and this generous grant from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and matching donors will fund critical work to demonstrate how to deploy this practice to its full effect,” said Ohio State President Kristina M. Johnson. “The Ohio State University greatly appreciates this significant show of commitment to our land-grant tradition of service to our state and nation by identifying solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems – including preserving the food supply.” 

The project will generate valuable information on how carbon farming can mitigate climate change, improve soil health and make crops more productive, said Cathann A. Kress, Ohio State vice president for agricultural administration and CFAES dean. In turn, she said, it will provide that information to farmers, land managers, OSU Extension personnel, policymakers, stakeholders, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations and the public. 

“Through this work, we will impact policy and agricultural practices on a national and worldwide level,” Kress said. “Under the guidance of Dr. Lal, working with other highly regarded faculty members and researchers, we’re proud to lead this vitally important initiative.” 

Lal and his team will measure carbon sequestration on croplands, rangelands and grasslands, including soils used to produce a wide and representative range of crops and animals, and soils being managed through both traditional and enhanced carbon-farming methods.

“We want to generate actual primary data on productivity, on the efficiency of inputs, on the benefits of conservation agriculture and sequestering carbon, and on savings of nitrogen, water, pesticides and energy,” Lal said. He founded and directs the CFAES Rattan Lal Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration. 

“We’re also going to focus on evaluating and developing technology for farming carbon, where carbon stock can be used as a farm commodity that will enable farmers to be rewarded for strengthening critical ecosystem services,” he said. 

Lal said the project, among other things, will find out how much carbon dioxide produced by farming can be offset by sequestering carbon in the soil. It will determine which practices and technologies do that best for farmers. And it will provide science-based input to policymakers on matters such as standardizing carbon-credit pricing. 

“The goal is to make agriculture a solution” in fighting climate change and other environment crises, Lal said. 

The project will also make agriculture more resilient in the face of these crises, he noted. Soil contains more carbon than plants and the atmosphere combined. And more carbon in the soil means stronger crops and a healthier environment.

“The idea is that even as the climate is changing, agriculture will have a buffer – better soil health,” said Lal, who has received the World Food Prize, World Agriculture Prize, Glinka World Soil Prize and Japan Prize for his decades of research on how soil health impacts crop productivity.

Research for the project will take place on farms in Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Kansas, Utah, Arizona and South America. Study sites will be chosen to represent a range of crops, climates, soil types, input levels of water and fertilizer, farming systems and ecological regions.

In addition to Ohio State, three other universities, three federal agencies and international collaborators are involved in the project. Within Ohio State, collaborators include Cinnamon Piñon Carlarne, associate dean of the Moritz College of Law; Marilia Chiavegato, assistant professor of agroecosystems management; M. Scott Demyan, assistant professor of soil and environmental mineralogy; Klaus Lorenz, assistant director of the Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration; Virginia Rich, associate professor of microbial ecology; Jackie Kirby Wilkins, director of OSU Extension; and Roger Williams, associate professor of forest management.

Additional project co-sponsors and collaborators include the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, FONTAGRO, Bayer U.S. – Crop Science, Microsoft, Cotton Incorporated, Corteva, Ohio Corn and Wheat Growers Association, Ohio Soybean Association, Kansas Corn, United Sorghum Checkoff Program, National Sorghum Producers, Utah Department of Agriculture & Food, Kansas State University, Michigan State University and Utah State University. The project will also be supported through scientific collaborations with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Agricultural Research Institute of Uruguay. Further project support is provided by Ohio State’s Office of Research, Graduate School, and the CFAES Office for Research and Graduate Education.

The study is the first to simultaneously examine metabolic gene expression in both host trees and the pathogens attacking them under normal and climate-change conditions. The findings help explain the mechanisms behind what has become a well-known fact: The warming world makes trees more susceptible to disease.

The study was conducted on Austrian pines, which are native to southern Europe and used ornamentally in the United States. Researchers tested climate change conditions’ effects on the trees after infection by two related fungi that have killed large swaths of these pines over time.

“We decided to study the effects of the combined stresses of higher temperatures and lower water availability because that’s what trees will experience in the future,” said senior author Enrico Bonello, professor of molecular and chemical ecology of trees in The Ohio State University Department of Plant Pathology.

“Within three days of infection under climate-change conditions, the tree was pulled in two different directions: It was deprived of carbon by both reduced photosynthesis and enhanced acquisition of the carbon by the fungi. When we’re talking about carbon, we’re talking about sugars, food and reserves for all other metabolic processes in the trees, including growth and defense.”

The research was published recently in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

Carbon sequestration by the world’s forests is a major mitigator of climate change’s effects, and could be accelerated if improvements are made to their protection, management and restoration, experts say. In a 2021 study of U.S. forest plots, scientists estimated recent disease and insect disturbances had lowered carbon sequestration rates by 28% and 69%, respectively, from 2001-2019 compared to undisturbed forests.

“This is another reason to combat global warming induced by human activities – another piece of evidence that what we are doing to the planet has so many implications,” Bonello said.

He and colleagues exposed 3-year-old Austrian pines to two sets of conditions: daily temperatures ranging from 59 to 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit for the control or, to mimic climate change conditions, daily temperatures of 68 to 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit, which reduced the amount of water in the atmosphere compared to available water in the cooler temperatures. After trees got accustomed to their conditions, they were inoculated with one of two strains of the pathogenic fungus. 

Diplodia sapinea, an aggressive fungus, and its less-aggressive relative Diplodia scrobiculata are found in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. They remain dormant much of the time, waiting for the best opportunity to kill host cells and feed on the dead plant material – usually when their host is weakened. In addition to killing Austrian pines, the fungi have also begun damaging Scots pines in Scandinavia.

“The hypothesis is that the warming and lower water availability in those areas is making trees more susceptible to a pathogen that would normally sit in the background,” Bonello said. 

Three days after infection, the team collected plant and pathogen tissue that was used for an RNA sequencing analysis to identify gene activation, or expression, pattern changes in the trees and both strains of the fungi. 

The analysis showed a fundamental change in the trees exposed to the climate-change conditions: Their capacity to carry out photosynthesis decreased, meaning they had fewer resources to invest in their own food supply, growth and defense against disease. At the same time, both strains of the fungus ramped up their carbon utilization machinery, and the usual difference between their aggressiveness disappeared – they became significantly more pathogenic, and to the same extent, than under normal conditions.

“Essentially, climate change conditions led the host to starvation, which is compounded by the fact that the fungi became more aggressive, grew faster and killed more host tissue faster,” Bonello said. “These were early responses, but it gives us an idea of what’s happening in the system.”

While these results are one example of one tree species and one type of pathogen, the research offers insights into how much damage global warming may do to one of the planet’s main carbon sinks. 

“Pathogen and pest invasions are already having an effect on carbon sequestration,” Bonello said. “If you make it even worse with climate change, carbon sequestration will be affected negatively because trees will die in ever larger numbers. Trees that might otherwise survive adverse environmental conditions for a while, and recover if conditions become better or intermittent, may be killed by pathogens in the meantime.”

This work was supported by the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the National Science Foundation.

Bonello and Ohio State co-authors Soumya Ghosh, Jason Slot, Michael Sovic, Anna Conrad, Bethany Kyre and Vinod Vijayakumar collaborated on the study with Erik Visser and Sanushka Naidoo of the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

This year’s bloom is expected to measure 3.5, with a potential range of 2-4 on the severity index — whereas last year’s bloom was measured at a 6.

The index is based on the bloom’s biomass — the amount of algae — during the peak 30 days of the bloom. An index above 5 indicates more severe blooms. Blooms over 7 are particularly severe, with extensive scum formation and coverage affecting the lake. The largest blooms occurred in 2011, with a severity index of 10, and 2015, with a severity index of 10.5.

“Toxic algae affect not only the health of people and marine ecosystems, but also the health and vibrancy of local and regional economies,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, assistant administrator for NOAA’s National Ocean Service. “Like with the weather, environmental forecasts are an important tool that can empower communities to more effectively prepare for these events, and are a huge part of NOAA’s service to the nation.”

Lake Erie blooms consisting of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, are capable of producing microcystin, a known liver toxin which poses a risk to human and wildlife health. Such blooms may force cities and local governments to treat drinking water and close beaches, and can harm vital local economies by preventing people from fishing, swimming, boating and visiting the shoreline.

The size of a bloom isn’t necessarily an indication of how toxic it is. For example, the toxins in a large bloom may not be as concentrated as in a smaller bloom. Each algal bloom is unique in terms of size, toxicity and ultimately its impact on local communities.

“With 10 years of experience with forecasts we understand more about the blooms, including evidence that big river discharge events in mid-summer may matter more than we thought,” said Richard Stumpf, NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science’s (NCCOS’s) lead scientist for the seasonal Lake Erie bloom forecast. “They create more uncertainty, but our models are improving as a result. We will also have to watch to see if these events become more common in the future.”

NCCOS’s Lake Erie Harmful Algal Bloom Forecast website provides predictions and visualizations of the bloom’s location and movement on the lake’s surface as well as where the bloom is located within the water column. This information is especially helpful to water treatment plant operators, because intake structures are usually located below the surface, so the risk of toxins in their source water may be greater when these cells sink.

“The NOAA HABs forecast is a great example of how our partners, like Heidelberg University, Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State’s Stone Laboratory, can work together with NOAA to bring critical research and expertise to our local coastal communities,” said Christopher Winslow, director of Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory.

Forecast details

NOAA expects a start of the visible bloom in mid- to late July. The duration of the bloom depends on the frequency of wind events in September, which cannot be predicted this far in advance. The bloom will remain mostly in areas of the Western basin. The Central and Eastern basins of the lake are usually unaffected, although localized blooms may occur around some of the rivers after summer rainstorms. July is expected to have average rainfall, but there is still large uncertainty. Larger rain events could result in increased river flow, and a higher severity index.

NOAA will issue a seasonal forecast update in late July based on observed rainfall in the basin. Recent research has found that a long-term increase in the frequency of heavy rainfall events due to climate change may be causing more runoff during spring and summer months because the soil has less time to absorb the rain. Combined with the increase in bioavailable phosphorus concentration in the early 2000s (as a result of changes in agricultural practices), this rainfall trend may explain the higher-than-average phosphorus loads each spring over the last 14 years.

The Lake Erie forecast is part of a NOAA Ecological Forecasting initiative that aims to deliver accurate, relevant, timely and reliable ecological forecasts directly to coastal resource managers, public health officials and the public. In addition to the early season projections from NOAA and its partners, NOAA also issues HAB forecasts during the bloom season. These forecasts provide the current extent and five-day outlooks of where the bloom will travel and what concentrations are likely to be seen, allowing local decision-makers to make informed management decisions. NOAA is actively developing tools to detect and predict how toxic blooms will be.

Nutrient load data for the forecasts came from Heidelberg University in Ohio, and the various forecast models are run by NCCOS, the University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, LimnoTech, Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. Field observations used for monitoring and modeling are done in partnership with a number of NOAA services, including its Ohio River Forecast Center, NCCOS, Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, and Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, as well as Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory at The Ohio State University, The University of Toledo and Ohio EPA.

The Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education (CPDRE) was approved by the Ohio State College of Social Work faculty in January, and its director, Assistant Professor of Social Work Alan Davis, officially took the helm in March.

The new center is designed to formalize a network of experts across the university based in a range of academic departments as well as existing centers focused on drug policy and substance misuse prevention and recovery. Center designation also enables the hiring of research and administrative staff, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students who will help propel the work. 

“Creating this infrastructure helps establish a system of values that shapes our goals and focuses our mission in strategic ways – all important steps given that the topic is so new,” Davis said. 

“All of this allows us to demonstrate the ways we are capable as a group of investigators and instructors to best utilize resources for future work, which sets us up to be competitive for future funding.” 

Davis came to Ohio State in 2019 with a research background in psychedelics after completing a postdoctoral research fellowship in Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research. He is still affiliated with the Hopkins center, and holds an additional Ohio State faculty appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health. 

Jason Slot, an associate professor of fungal evolutionary genomics in the Department of Plant Pathology, is the director of educational initiatives for the CPDRE. Slot studies the evolution and ecology of the roughly 300 species of mushrooms that contain the hallucinogenic compound psilocybin.

“Although more mental health services are provided by social workers than all other disciplines combined, no other social work program in the country is engaged in this type of work that Dr. Davis and his colleagues are undertaking,” said College of Social Work Dean Tom Gregoire. “This line of inquiry has great promise in helping individuals and families with what can be intractable challenges. 

“Our purpose as scholars and educators is to advance innovation in practice and widely disseminate it so that it touches many lives. Our capacity to reach so many makes this commitment essential.” 

In the United States, there are two leading drug-assisted therapies in phase 3 clinical trials testing MDMA (ecstasy) as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and psilocybin for depression. Davis and Slot predicted that as things stand, these therapies could be federally approved in three to five years.

“If psychedelics are made available at the national level for medical purposes, then there will be a rapid shift in our cultural perspective, one that will need to integrate psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapy into our communities, families and mental health system,” Davis said. 

“Making sure we can educate people and help them understand what psychedelic experiences are, how people talk about these experiences, the history of psychedelics and their cultural context, how they act in the brain – are all critical endeavors which the CPDRE will undertake.”

Initial goals of the center are focused on research and educational initiatives. On the research side, several new clinical studies are under development at the center, subject to regulatory approval at the federal, state and university levels. Educational initiatives include hosting the “Psychedemia” conference on Interdisciplinary Psychedelic Scholarship in August 2022 and development of psychedelic studies curricula for an online continuing education certificate program and an interdisciplinary undergraduate minor. An existing course in the Department of Plant Pathology titled Psychedelic Studies: Neurochemistry, Plants, Fungi and Society will be a core component of the new programs. 

“The interdisciplinary minor would be aimed at really bringing pieces together from drug discovery to historical and ethical aspects through the clinical realm,” Slot said. “One big outcome will be that we can give a holistic education and perspective to our students both at the graduate and undergraduate level to be able to understand the history of what they’re working on, the pitfalls and the ethics. 

“This being an explosive time in psychedelic science, it’s important to bring together different perspectives in an emerging field and create a place where people can focus together on psychedelics.”

The center’s initial $1.5 million in financial support comes from the Fund for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education financed by two anonymous donors, one of which dedicated their donation in the name of Peter and Barbara.

Additional Ohio State CPDRE fellows, graduate students and staff include Stacey Armstrong, Diana Quinn, Nate Sepeda, Yitong Xin, Rafael Lancelotta and Grace Adams of the College of Social Work; Adam Levin of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health; Paul Nagib of the College of Medicine; and Nese Devenot and Brian Pace of the Department of Plant Pathology.

The small Ohio State University study also found that some people with the earliest COVID-19 infections were continuing to experience loss of these senses months later and didn’t even realize it.

In participants with active infections during the delta surge, a majority (22 of 25) had been vaccinated. Objective screenings found that 100% were experiencing a diminished or lost sense of smell – but only 54.5% self-reported any problem with odor detection.

“We’re getting this quick communication out as an early warning. We need to continue to take a closer look at COVID infection’s impact on smell and taste,” said Dr. Kai Zhao, associate professor of otolaryngology in Ohio State’s College of Medicine and senior author of the study. “Even if COVID doesn’t cause death or hospitalization, it can have long-lasting effects on some of our sensory functions.

“A lot of people are potentially suffering, which is probably not appreciated by society.”

The study is published in the journal Med.

Data for this study emerged from a project the researchers began in early 2021 to test the effectiveness of using hard candy as a screening tool for the loss of taste and smell in populations at risk for exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

As part of that work, the team used an existing objective screening tool to collect sensory function data from 123 never-infected control participants and 65 people who had previous or active COVID-19 infections. During the delta surge, the researchers became alarmed by what they found.

“At that time, there were a lot of speculations about whether smell loss is associated with the delta variant and whether the vaccine could protect against these symptoms. So we decided to do this interim data analysis,” Zhao said.

In addition, about three-fourths of participants whose mostly mild COVID infections had occurred before delta’s dominance reported no ongoing smell and taste losses – however, over half of those participants were found by the objective screening, conducted between 102 and 785 days after their infection diagnosis, to have a loss of smell. 

“Many people who had COVID in the past, probably with the original variants of the virus,  underwent some degree of smell loss, even if they didn’t think they did,” said co-author Susan Travers, professor of biosciences in Ohio State’s College of Dentistry. “This suggests the long-term impact on sensory function isn’t captured by self-reporting.”

Beyond these silent smell and taste losses, there were also people who reported that they hadn’t regained taste or smell function for longer than six months, said first author Kym Man, a graduate student in food science and technology. 

“We’re still collecting data on these long haulers, some of whom have been experiencing smell and taste loss for over a year,” she said. 

Effects on the senses include diminished or complete loss of smell and/or taste, disordered smell and/or taste and, least common, smelling odors that are not present at all. 

The sensory function screenings were conducted with a National Institutes of Health tool consisting of a 9-item scratch-and-sniff odor identifier and an intensity rating of bitterness in a sip of quinine. The odor-detection results were adjusted for age – in general, we lose some sensitivity to smell as we get older, Zhao said. 

Beyond affecting the quality of life, the loss of smell and taste has health ramifications that include negative effects on nutrition intake and a reduced ability to detect danger – such as a fire or spoiled food.

“The disease’s impact on smell and taste is underreported. This is a public health concern that there may potentially be some broader impacts of COVID-19 that we don’t realize are there,” Zhao said. 

Since submitting this article for publication in January 2022, the team has been consistently collecting data related to sensory loss and is paying particular attention to long haulers.

“There’s a substantial number of these people, and we want to characterize how long smell and/or taste loss lasts,” said co-author Christopher Simons, associate professor of food science and technology. “We’d also like to enroll them in the surveillance component of the candy screening study to see if we can track their recovery over time as well.” 

People interested in more information on the team’s ongoing study of hard candy’s effectiveness as a screening and surveillance tool can contact the researchers by emailing COVIDCandyTest@osu.edu. 

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Aayah Mohamed-Osman was also a co-author on the paper.

The study in young maize plants reveals that these bacteria not only generate food for themselves in crops they inhabit, but also coax life-sustaining water from the plants.

Though the lab conditions don’t represent exactly what happens in the field, the research provides insights into fundamental processes central to the ability of a pathogen to cause a corn disease prevalent in the central and northeastern U.S. called Stewart’s wilt. These bacteria are also creating problems for rice and jackfruit crops in parts of the Eastern hemisphere.

By confirming that a bacterial virulence factor, a protein called WtsE, initiates the mobilization of food and water into spaces where the bacteria reside, the study lays groundwork for future breeding of plants that can put the brakes on these bacterial survivalist tactics. Current breeding practices in corn are based on previous research that focused on boosting the plants’ immune response to these infectious bacteria, a species known as Pantoea stewartii.

“No one has shown before that a dynamic flow of nutrients from plant to bacteria supports proliferation of the bacteria during the initial stages of infection. Our findings reveal a bacterial feeding frenzy,” said lead study author David Mackey, professor of horticulture and crop science at The Ohio State University.

“There have been no targeted efforts to control nutrient availability as a means to control Pantoea stewartii, or other plant pathogenic bacteria that rely on proteins similar to WtsE for their virulence. This opens up an opportunity for us to look at the mechanism of how WtsE accomplishes this. How is it manipulating the plant cells?”

The research is published today (April 13, 2022) in Cell Host & Microbe.

The research focuses on a phase called biotrophy: After infecting a plant, the bacteria initially parasitize living host cells and multiply dramatically. Only later do the bacteria start killing plant cells to release further nutrients and cause disease.

In the field, corn flea beetles carry Pantoea stewartii and deposit the bacteria in wound sites the beetles create when feeding on crop stems and leaves. Infections then spread unevenly from these sites.

For this study, Mackey and colleagues infiltrated maize seedlings with a powerful dose of the infectious bacteria, creating a series of uniformly infected leaves. This model system made it possible for the researchers to determine that the release of nutrients and water preceded the death of plant cells.

The team zeroed in on observing the actions of WtsE, one of a class of proteins in pathogenic bacteria known as type III effectors. These proteins are transported from the bacteria into infected plant cells to both suppress plant immunity and, as discovered in the case of Pantoea stewartii, promote availability of water and food. 

All of this activity takes place in the apoplast, a relatively dry compartment on the interior of a plant tissue but outside of the plant cells. That dryness is relevant, because one of WtsE’s tricks is promoting the availability of water in this space. A leading hypothesis has been that this condition, called “water soaking,” results from dying plant cells spilling their contents into the apoplast when bacteria begin their lethal attack.

“This is one of the main points we showed: Infection causes water to accumulate in the apoplast well in advance of killing the plant cells. It’s an active process and it’s dependent on the WtsE effector,” said Mackey, also a professor of molecular genetics.

And then, once hydrated, the apoplast begins to fill with nutrients that function as sources of nitrogen and carbon for the bacteria – sugars, amino acids and organic acids that are generated and consumed in much higher quantities than exist in the apoplast of a healthy plant.

The researchers confirmed the massive size of the feast by removing the bacteria from the plants and measuring how much carbon and nitrogen they had taken up in a specific period of time – which was 6 and 30 times higher, respectively, than that present in the apoplast of an uninfected plant.

“It’s not like the bacteria arrived and ate what was already available,” Mackey said. “Plants are relinquishing sources of carbon and nitrogen into the apoplast, where they are assimilated by the bacteria. Additionally, the plant metabolic networks respond to the depletion by making more of those compounds. It’s a really dynamic process and the WtsE effector drives that process.” 

The role of the effector was confirmed genetically – mutant bacteria lacking WtsE were unable to accomplish these same tasks.

With these findings, Mackey’s lab is now positioned to pinpoint how WtsE is able to coerce maize into doing its bidding – and specifically, which plant proteins the effector hijacks for help – which could inform future resistant breeding practices.

This work was supported by Ohio State’s Translational Plant Sciences Graduate Program, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Science Foundation and the Korean Rural Development Administration.

Co-authors include Irene Gentzel, Laura Giese, Gayani Ekanayake, Kelly Mikhail and Wanying Zhao, all of Ohio State, and Jean-Christophe Cocuron and Ana Paula Alonso of the University of North Texas.

The latest report by the U.N Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released earlier this week, summarizes new findings on climate change and outlines possible solutions. Brent Sohngen, professor of environmental and resource economics at The Ohio State University, was lead author of the report’s section on agriculture, which spanned about 130 pages of the 3,000 page document.

Sohngen’s portion covers how agriculture, forests and related land use can contribute to both climate change and climate mitigation, or the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. 

“The key message is that there are a lot of actions in the agricultural land-use sectors that people around the world can undertake to mitigate climate change,” said Sohngen, who has worked with the IPCC since the late 1990s.

Although most greenhouse gas emissions come from energy production, agriculture and changes in land use account for about 22% of all carbon dioxide emissions. If these numbers could be reduced, either by curbing deforestation or turning to alternative biofuels, between 9 and 11 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year could be mitigated, said Sohngen.

The report also warns that if both governments and individuals don’t begin to take climate warnings seriously, global warming could soon become twice as catastrophic as it is now. While many nations have previously promised to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, it’ll take real change, not political promises, to ensure humanity doesn’t waste its last chance, the report said. 

In order to produce the report, researchers from more than 165 countries reviewed over 18,000 scientific papers on topics ranging from restructuring fossil fuel use to policy recommendations on promoting international cooperation.  

The report also delivered some good news.

Greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest between 2010 to 2019, but since then, that rate has slowed considerably. Due to the pandemic, CO₂ emissions also dropped temporarily in 2020, before creeping back up in the second half of the year. 

Even better, according to the report, the key technologies and policies needed to keep global warming from reaching new heights already exist. For example, solar and wind power are some of the best ways we have to combat climate change. 

“Now there are more options and more ways for people to get involved in mitigating climate change that are within the realm of being cost effective,” Sohngen said. “Part of the reason why people are more optimistic about this report is because we’ve actually made progress on reducing emissions through mitigation actions.”

The only problem is figuring out how to better implement them, Sohngen said. One of the biggest hurdles humanity will have to overcome boils down to funding. 

“The scientific literature suggests that if we do want to stay under the 1.5 degree target, we have to really scale up financing,” Sohngen said. “We’ve estimated that about $50 to $250 billion per year over the next decade is needed to achieve some of the goals in the land-use sector for mitigation.”

It’s at this intersection, between land use and people, that the report indicates a “strong link between sustainable development, vulnerability and climate risks.” 

That means that ramping up efforts to create sustainable development, and erasing extreme poverty, could be a huge factor in controlling and monitoring Earth’s overall health. 

Sohngen said that he’s optimistic about how the public will respond to the report.  

“There’s undoubtedly some approaches to climate change that we’re not thinking about now that hopefully, the next generation of scientists will think about in the future,” Sohngen said. “I think that this report is an opportunity for people to study and to develop new methods, and better solutions to the climate crisis.” 

The study showed that while sales and market share of new-generation plant-based meat alternatives have grown in recent years, those gains haven’t translated into reduced consumer spending on animal meat products.  

Overall, the analysis of national meat purchases suggested that plant-based meats sold in patty, link and ground form are mostly an add-on to beef and pork and tend to serve as a substitute for chicken, turkey and fish.

“We thought plant-based meat alternatives would be a potential replacement for red meat, but they’re not. It’s more of a complement,” said study co-author Wuyang Hu, professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at The Ohio State University. “People buy pork and beef, and at the same time they also buy plant-based meats.”

Researchers noted the study is not intended to take any industry’s side or give consideration to the comparative healthfulness of products. 

“This new generation of plant-based meat, by mimicking the taste and sensory experience of eating real meat, appeals to consumers who are not only vegetarian but also people who are curious about plant-based meat and even meat eaters,” said lead author Shuoli Zhao, assistant professor of agricultural economics at the University of Kentucky.

“We wanted to look at the most up-to-date market response to a new product and see how the demand for such a product is interacting with the rest of the meat categories, especially within the fresh meat sector.”

The research team also included co-authors Lingxiao Wang of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Yuqing Zheng of the University of Kentucky. The study was published recently in the journal Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.

Imitation meat products and plant-based proteins such as tofu and tempeh have been available for years, but differ from the texture, taste and smell of new products like those sold by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat – two brands that make up about 75% of all plant-based meat alternative (PBMA) sales. Studies have shown that increases in demand and supply led to more than $10 billion in global PBMA sales in 2018, and sales are predicted to increase to almost $31 billion by 2026.

For this study, the researchers obtained weekly Nielsen scanner data from the first week of January 2017 to the second week of July 2020 on fresh meat expenditures at grocery, drug, big-box, dollar and military stores across 40 U.S states. Study categories included plant-based meat alternatives, beef, chicken, turkey, pork, other meats (such as lamb and duck) and fresh fish.

Results showed that plant-based meat alternatives constituted only 0.1% of average total expenditures on fresh meat during the study period – but during that same time frame the market share increased four-fold, to 0.4%. Beef topped fresh meat sales at 46%, followed by chicken at 23%, pork and fish at about 12% each, and turkey and other meats accounting for less than 5% of fresh meat sales.

Beef and meat alternatives were the highest-priced options, with beef costing an average of $5.44 per unit and PBMAs averaging $4.84 per unit. Of all the choices studied, expenditures of the plant-based goods tended to increase the most when those products were on sale. Reduced prices on beef and chicken lowered demand for plant-based meats, but lower prices on imitation meat didn’t have much of an effect on demand for animal protein sources.

Those findings as well as the way plant-based meat sales grew during product promotions suggested plant-based meat alternatives were “more of an impulse buy and not a weekly purchase,” Hu said. “We concluded it’s novelty-seeking. Consumers are pack followers. When they see a trend they say, ‘I should try this’ and form similar preferences.”

Results also suggested that most of the plant-based products’ growth in market share occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, when fresh meat prices rose dramatically as shutdowns sent shocks through the supply chain – however, the data could not confirm a causal effect. The uptick in PBMAs’ market share was still happening at the endpoint of the study period in July 2020. Meanwhile, sales of all fresh animals protein sources spiked at the start of the pandemic, and meats and fish generally retained their market share positions over the next few months.

The rapid pace of the growth in plant-based meat alternatives’ share of the market made them the fastest-growing category in the study, but these products still weren’t putting much of a dent in the other categories: U.S. meat consumption in 2018 was among the highest in history, at 222 pounds per capita.

“We hypothesized that from a plant-based meat alternative company perspective, what they are trying to do is replace people’s diet of beef and pork,” Zhao said. “We actually found the opposite is the case. Consumers are buying plant-based meat alternatives on top of planned expenditures on fresh meat, or are triggered by a promotion or the layout of the retail environment – which is an indication this is not currently a real threat to the fresh meat industry.

“Our findings suggest that besides marketing, plant-based protein companies should focus their R&D on providing products that meet consumers’ expectations – and then people will make their own choices about whether meat alternatives will become a staple in their diet.”

This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

The case of the fence and closed gate surfaced during public meetings researchers held at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge during the early 2010s to understand barriers that affected residents’ access to national wildlife refuges in urban settings nationwide. During focus groups discussing such issues as transportation and signage, a deeper theme emerged: The history of systemic racism in the United States casts a pall over marginalized people’s attempts to enjoy nature-based leisure activities.

A new analysis of the data from the focus groups, led by Ohio State University researchers, shows that historical trauma – and the transgressions people engaged in to overcome barriers to outdoor recreation – shape many Black and Indigenous Americans’ views about using public lands for leisure, as well as their proposed solutions to address inequalities experienced in those nature-based spaces.

For example, focus group participants noted that other Black and Hispanic residents living near the Arsenal believed the closed gate represented a governmental effort to keep them out. But those residents, who had also spent time in that space as kids before it became a refuge, also made a suggestion: Use refuge tour buses to shuttle community residents to the protected land.

“People are not just visitors to these lands that are protected by management agencies – people are deeply invested in the outcomes of these federal lands that we all share,” said Alia Dietsch, assistant professor of parks, protected areas and natural resources management at The Ohio State University and lead author of the new study.

“The goal of sharing this information is to recognize these uncomfortable truths that happened and continue to exist, and make sure we don’t perpetuate them,” Dietsch said. “We should listen to people outside of our circles and actually act in accordance with their suggestions – even when those suggestions stretch our own imaginations.”

The research is published online in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

The original data came from a series of workshops in communities surrounding seven urban national wildlife refuges to understand the beliefs about and experiences with nature-based leisure of diverse peoples living in those areas. Participants included residents and representatives of faith-based groups and organizations associated with parks and education in communities of color and urban development in underserved areas, among others. 

For this new analysis, the researchers focused on how historical trauma experienced by racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States, particularly African Americans and Native Americans, has influenced present-day perceptions of outdoor recreation. For example, one workshop participant noted that a video produced by staff at one recreation area did not include a single person of color. The “video says you’re not welcome,” the participant said.

Dietsch and colleagues also emphasized acts of transgression – marginalized peoples’ embracing of nature despite feeling unwelcome or even unsafe. One Black focus group participant, for example, noted that white kids were skeptical of his interest in hunting. “They don’t expect Black people to be doing these things,” he said.

“The idea of ‘transgression’ can be perceived as negative, but in this context, it’s incredibly important to underscore that these are groups of people who are showing such a strong commitment to nature that they’ll continue to engage with it and with public lands management even when they feel left out of the conversation or the physical space,” Dietsch said. 

For example, attending the focus groups felt like an act of transgression for some participants who said they had been ignored by authorities in public settings in the past – but their interest in public lands and in voicing their connections to nature-based leisure opportunities led them to continue to show up. Other participants described soaking up the serenity of the outdoors to escape from social pressures of everyday urban life or spending time in campgrounds and parks despite being labeled as outsiders based on what they wore, how they looked and what kind of recreational equipment they used.

“For decades, land managers at the federal level have been posing this question of, ‘How do we make our parks more inclusive or wildlife refuges more welcoming, and honor various populations’ history?’ We wanted to research barriers that are often overlooked in management conversations at the federal level,” said Everly Jazi, who co-authored the study as a graduate student in Ohio State’s School of Environment and Natural Resources and is now pursuing a PhD in forestry at the University of British Columbia. 

“By diversifying the approach taken in addressing barriers, through increased input and leadership from voices who have historically been excluded from discussions, innovation can flourish without the current blind spots of privilege,” Jazi said. “Increased conversations around social and racial justice in 2020 prompted park management agencies to recognize the need to be innovative in changing their approaches to serve our nation’s diverse population.”

The research was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which developed an Urban Wildlife Conservation Program in 2015 to connect urban audiences to urban lands and engage diverse constituencies in community-led conservation efforts. Federal land-management agencies have also made strides in diversifying their own workforces in the past few decades, the researchers noted.

The findings are particularly salient in light of how the outdoors was perceived as one of the safest places to be, by infectious disease standards, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, sparking a renewed appreciation for nature-based public spaces like refuges and local metroparks. Studies conducted before and during the pandemic have shown that spending time in nature is beneficial to human health and promotes resilience.

“If we truly value resilience,” Dietsch said, “we should look to people who have been resilient against all odds and continue to engage in the American experiment to say, ‘We can do this better, but we have to do it together.’”

Additional co-authors are Myron Floyd of North Carolina State University, and Danielle Ross-Winslow and Natalie Sexton of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Researchers labeled identical saltine crackers and chocolate chip cookies as either “new and improved,” “factory typical” or “consumer complaint” for the study, and then asked participants to taste the food samples and judge each on likability, freshness and a range of other qualities.

The crackers and cookies labeled “consumer complaint” received significantly lower overall liking ratings than the samples labeled “new and improved.” This held true for both saltines – a neutral example – and the cookies, which the researchers considered an inherently positive food.

“We had both negative and positive bias – but the negative bias was much bigger. That negative context had more impact than saying ‘new and improved’ had on generating better ratings,” said Christopher Simons, associate professor of food science and technology at The Ohio State University and senior author of the study.

“On one hand, it’s not surprising. On the other hand, the degree of the impact was really surprising.”

The research is published in the journal Food Quality and Preference.

An estimated 70 to 80% of new food products fail, even when consumer testing has suggested they should be successful, Simons said – which is a sign that the methods used to gauge potential customer support might need an upgrade.

“One thing my lab’s really interested in is trying to better understand and be able to predict consumer behavior,” he said. “Currently, companies use humans as an instrument to better understand the sensory properties of foods and how they drive liking. We’re trying to understand our instrument so we can build a better one that may help reduce product failures and help companies deliver products that people actually want.”

The study tested the impact of food labeling on the human predisposition to find negative experiences more significant and memorable, but also underscored the tendency for people to be skeptical of claims that a product is better just because it’s labeled “new and improved.”

The researchers recruited 120 participants aged 18 to 70 from a database of panelists from Ohio State’s Sensory Evaluation Center. Samples of two crackers or cookies – from the same packaging sleeve – were placed on three plates. Researchers told participants they would be evaluating a major supplier’s current typical factory sample, a new and improved prototype and a sample that had received customer complaints.

After each bite, participants indicated their overall liking of the sample on a 9-point scale from “dislike extremely” to “like extremely.” They also completed additional ratings of positive and negative attributes that assessed, for example, how crisp and fresh the crackers were and the intensity of the cookies’ flavor.

The results showed a clear influence of the labeling on consumer perception. With both foods, the overall liking scores were significantly lower for samples labeled “consumer complaint” compared to “new and improved.” With the saltines, the complaint scores were also significantly lower than ratings for the crackers labeled “factory typical.”

In addition, participants generally gave the “consumer complaint” crackers and cookies fewer marks for positive qualities and more hits for negative attributes.

“With the negative contextualized messaging, there were more negative attributes selected – people didn’t like it as much, it wasn’t as fresh. People had a more negative opinion of it,” Simons said. “The positive messaging slanted toward being more positive, but not nearly as much.”

There could be a lesson here for product developers, Simons said. Rather than optimizing positive attributes for a new product idea, perhaps there would be value in teasing out what customers perceive as negative and adjusting accordingly.

“If people are more sensitive to those taints, we can use it to our advantage as it relates to food,” he said. “You get a bigger bang for your buck by removing things people find negative than you do by optimizing those positive attributes. Take care of the negatives first and you’re probably going to have a more successful product.”

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Co-authors, all from Ohio State, include Maria Cotter, Morgan Whitecotton and Devin Peterson.

Combining data on bank holdings and interviews with growers and bankers, the research paints an initial picture of how the marijuana and financial industries co-exist in California now, and suggests regulatory changes could create new opportunities for both. 

The data analysis did make one thing clear: Legalization of the estimated $16 billion marijuana industry in California has been a boon to financial institutions. But restricted access to banking, from checking accounts to loans, perpetuates inequities for those participating in the legal production of cannabis – while unlicensed, illegal growing and exporting continues as an enormous cash-based sector of the industry.

“We need a better understanding of the economics of this industry and all of the questions and implications related to it so the impacts of policy choices are intentional,” said lead study author Zoë Plakias, assistant professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at The Ohio State University.

“If we want to have a more equitable society and allow communities to keep more of the value of this crop, how do we do that? We first need to characterize what happens in communities when you legalize cannabis.”

Plakias and Margaret Jodlowski, assistant professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at Ohio State, conducted the study with researchers Parisa Kavousi, Taylor Giamo and Keith Taylor at the University of California, Davis.

“Licensed cannabis businesses need to bank their cash and take out loans to build their businesses, but many banks worry that by doing business with the cannabis industry, they’ll be flouting federal laws,” said Taylor, University of California Cooperative Extension community development specialist. “Banks that won’t accept legal cannabis cash deposits and don’t provide loans aren’t monetizing their deposits. Marginalized cannabis communities are missing out on capital.” 

The research is published online in the journal Agricultural Finance Review.

Marijuana is listed as a Schedule 1 drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Even in states that have legalized recreational and medicinal use of cannabis, it is still a federal crime to possess, buy or sell marijuana. California legalized recreational cannabis for adults in 2016, and the industry is overseen by the Department of Cannabis Control.

Data used by the researchers for this study included bank and credit union call data for the years 2015-2020. The analysis showed that assets held by financial institutions in counties that legalized marijuana had increased in that period by almost $750 million, and loan activity rose by about $500 million.

These benefits are presumed to be spillover effects of better overall economic health that followed cannabis legalization in specific counties, Jodlowski said, because the interviews with financial institutions indicated there has been little appetite among banks to associate with the marijuana industry.

“It’s important to remember when talking about loans that it’s not possible to identify whether they were for cannabis operations, and they’re probably not based on what we heard from stakeholders,” she said. “It’s more of a general relationship. The bank is doing better, and they’re able to lend out more in general and earn more interest from loans.”

When they narrowed the analysis to banks that operate only in California, the researchers found that for each single new manufacturing or retail license, bank assets and loan capacity grew by tens of thousands of dollars. Cannabis cultivation licenses, on the other hand, had no impact on California banks’ holdings.

“This suggests that a lot of the economic benefits of legalization come from other stages of the supply chain – and it’s not a foregone conclusion that farmers benefit from legalization,” Plakias said. “There’s a need to think about how farmers who are producing cannabis in the legal market, often operating in rural environments with a weaker economic base to start with, can be supported in the context of economic development.”

The team also interviewed marijuana farmers and representatives from banks and credit unions in Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties – the “Emerald Triangle” region known historically in California and nationally for the quantity and quality of marijuana produced there.

Of the banks and credit unions contacted by the researchers, most were not knowingly involved in the cannabis industry. Bankers reported being hamstrung by ambiguous federal guidelines that pose a real risk to financing cannabis, largely because banks are required to report suspicious transactions to the federal government. They might be seen as players in a criminal enterprise even by providing banking services to employees who work for licensed members of the cannabis industry, or they could lose big on lending if cannabis-related assets backing a loan were seized by federal agents.

“What’s consistent across all financial institutions is that it’s very costly, and does involve taking on some risk, to be in compliance with all of the guidelines – the risk being that even if you follow all guidelines to the letter, there’s no assurance that you can’t still get in trouble,” Plakias said.

Cannabis growers they interviewed reported paying fees ranging from $200 to $3,000 per month for bank accounts, which they found to be cost prohibitive. These limitations leave most licensed marijuana producers and retailers in the lurch, forcing them to rely on nontraditional financing arrangements – maybe investing in friends’ endeavors – or risk running cash operations.

“There is a lot of evidence that cash can be better for a local economy because cash tends to stay local – but we are now a credit-based economy,” Jodlowski said. “In this day and age it’s incredibly harmful for local economic development to have an entire sector that’s denied access to credit, because so much of developing as a household, or individual, or industry requires credit and requires demonstration of credit-worthiness.

“That’s a fundamental harm of these sorts of restrictions.”

This research is part of a larger project on cannabis and community economic development in California supported by a grant from the UC Davis Cannabis and Hemp Research Center. As part of this project, the California authors on this paper recently published a review of the opportunities and challenges marijuana legalization poses for localities in which the crop is cultivated and sold.

“It’s clear we need policies making cannabis banking and finance more equitable,” Taylor said. “It’s also clear that ‘Ma and Pa’ enterprises need to associate together in formal organizations so they can achieve economies of scale and harness their political power to endure the transition to legal.”

Despite the stigma attached to marijuana, even when legal, its status as California’s most valuable crop – estimated to be worth more than almonds and dairy combined – attracts outsiders who are better-equipped to come up with funding to get their operations started and compete with legacy growers who have lived and worked in California for generations.

This trend necessitates development of evidence-based policies that take all participants into consideration, the Ohio State researchers say.

“Our findings speak to confusion around existing policies and the need for streamlining, clarifying and having a more unified approach to regulating this industry,” Jodlowski said.