research and science

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics mission area will highlight those who are making significant contributions to American agriculture.

Swimming and visiting beaches are what most of us think of as summer activities.  Although the name Bod Pod sounds like something you might find at the beach, and a swim suit and cap are the usual attire, Dr. Alicia Gonzalez-Quiroz, faculty member of Loredo Community College, never imagined this would be on her summer to-do list.  The Bod Pod is actually a research tool used to measure lean body mass at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Body Composition Laboratory of the Children’s Nutrition Research Center in Houston, TX.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

We count on food and agricultural research to solve a wide variety of problems. USDA’s research programs contribute to improvements to crop and livestock production, natural resource conservation, human nutrition, food safety, and many other topics. Our science agencies carry out USDA’s research mission across different geographical regions, covering a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines and topics important to American agriculture and consumers in general.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics mission area will highlight those who are making significant contributions to American agriculture.

I am fortunate to have a job that I love where I interact with a wide and diverse audience -- from Kindergarten students through adolescents to undergraduates and to adults.  My role as Director of the USDA’s Hispanic Serving Institutions National Program (HSINP) allows me to educate students and communities about all of the opportunities agriculture has to offer.  It’s important that we keep attracting the best and brightest minds to the field to meet the agricultural challenges ahead.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics mission area will highlight those who are making significant contributions to American agriculture.

Have you ever dreamed of having a beautiful, picturesque landscape as your “office” environment?  Ever thought of learning the full spectrum of a potential career in public service?  Students working with USDA’s Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) National Internship Program have that chance.

From every corner of the United States, HACU interns are experiencing the full range of opportunities USDA has to offer.  The HACU National Internship provides students with paid internship opportunities at federal agencies, corporations, and non-profit organizations.  These internships, 15 weeks in the Fall or Spring, and 10 weeks in the Summer, provide students with unique work experience and the host agencies with a valuable recruitment resource.

With the annual hurricane season brewing and potential winter storms on the horizon – not to mention the ever-present tornadoes, earthquakes, drought and fire – federal agencies are joining forces this month to help Americans prepare for and survive disasters.

 September is National Preparedness Month and America’s PrepareAthon! is a national awareness campaign to get families and communities thinking about how to respond in the event of a disaster or other emergency.  Saluting the “Be Disaster Aware, Take Action to Prepare” theme, the month’s events conclude on September 30 with National PrepareAthon! Day.  Are you getting involved?

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

Sometimes greenhouse gases can be traced to greenhouses—or at least to their lighting systems.

That’s why the Albany City Council recently recognized USDA with a proclamation for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by installing energy-efficient lighting in the USDA greenhouses at the Western Regional Research Center (WRRC) in Albany, California.  The greenhouses are used by scientists with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), and the retrofit advances the goals of the city’s 2010 Climate Change Action Plan because it reduces citywide electrical use and carbon emissions.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

Back to school has a three-fold meaning for me these days. In addition to watching my daughter and son head back to complete yet another year of college and high school, respectively, I get to meet my new students at an area community college. These math students arrive in my classes with varying levels of academic preparedness, goals and aspirations and I have the chance to encourage and inspire them to consider a future career in mathematics or statistics.

As their evening instructor, I teach the core curriculum with the knowledge that what they learn can far outweigh the credit hours each student will receive for completing these courses. My adult learners will benefit from real world practical answers to the age-old rhetorical question, “When am I ever going to need this?” That’s where my experience with USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) comes in. I have seen just the kind of impact numbers can have on rural communities, and whole sectors of U.S. agriculture. Just as I have learned in my job, my students get to see the importance of accuracy when it comes to numbers and data. Of course I am not alone in this approach. Like me, many adjunct professors of mathematics bridge the gap for math learners from what is being taught to its practical applications.

Agriculture in South Carolina is a long and proud tradition. As the 2012 Census of Agriculture showed us, even today, nearly 5 million acres of our state’s land is dedicated to farming, that’s almost a quarter of all land in South Carolina.

The latest agriculture census also showed that the number of farms in South Carolina has remained steady for the past 15 years at roughly 25,000. The Palmetto State farmers sold more than $3 billion worth of agricultural products. That’s a whopping 29.2 percent increase in sales in just five years. Of these sales, $1.5 billion – nearly half of the total agricultural product sales in South Carolina – came from poultry and egg sales.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

Researchers at North Carolina A&T University (NC A&T) are on the verge of leveling the playing field for millions who suffer allergies from peanuts and wheat.  Now, in addition to being able to nosh on some of America’s favorite foods, allergy sufferers may also take advantage of the valuable nutrients these staples provide.

Peanut allergy is one of the most common causes of food-related anaphylaxis and affects about 2.8 million Americans, including 400,000 school-aged children.  Wheat is one of the top eight food allergens in the United States.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

There’s nothing like a little “hands-on” activity to help students learn. And what better way to encourage math and science education than to give students an opportunity for the ultimate “hands-on” experience: working with honey bees.

That’s what Native American high school students are doing at the USDA Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona. At the lab, operated by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS), researchers study honey bee nutrition and health to ensure that these insects can effectively pollinate billions of dollars’ worth of fruits and vegetables each year.