Birthday surprise!!

Another lab tradition is birthday party. We usually try to keep it as a secret to the birthday person.

Amanda's birthday is on Thursday 21 but since she was not going to be in the lab so we threw in an early surprise party for her after her work at the phytotron on Monday.

Sarah got the bagels and coffee for us before she left to the field

Peyton, Natalie and I (JiJY), the decor crew.

 

Introducing our new lab icon, Mr. Unicorn!

Here comes the birthday girl!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMANDA!!!

Cheers to the master

Congratulations to Arun Jani, our most recent M.S. of Soil Science graduate!

Ice cream treat!!

It's our tradition to host high school students from NC School of Science and Math (NCSSM) in CAALS 3D program. Among of other hands-on lab experience, this is one of the important activities that they need to learn.

Spring break!

I couldn't help being a tree hugger at Doka Estate in Sabanilla, Costa Rica. It's a coffee farm that gives tours and has these rainbow eucalyptuses. I went with a group on a week-long trip to become more educated about food security issues in the country so we could present those challenges in ag classrooms here (here are last year's examples)

Costa Rica depends heavily on exporting its produce, including pineapple, coffee, bananas, and ... cotton? This was one of the only farms in the country, and they produce GE seed for a US company to sell to take advantage of the year round warm weather. Dairy is huge there, with about 90,000 ha of pasture compared to only 45,000 ha of pineapple.  We had lots of great cheese and met lots of very photogenic cows!

Jacob's Days in Namibia

Greetings from Namibia! It has been a hot, speedy and intriguing past month and a half for me in Southern Africa. My studies, under the theme of Nation Building, Globalization and Decolonizing the Mind (interpret that one for yourself), have taken me to Johannesburg and Pretoria South Africa and Windhoek and Swakopmund Namibia. Here we have learned about the apartheid legacy from those who lived it, from the sister of Hector Peterson to the man who named Namibia.

Now to the soil stuff. I am interning with a small NGO named "The Namibian Horticulture Trust" who serve disadvantaged communities throughout Namibia to grow food for themselves in the immediate with long-term plans for sustainable business and ecological models. I work at an orphanage called Hope Village (the panoramic below) where I help tend the veggie tunnels (small tunnels that provide shade and relief from grasshoppers) and implement new projects. We are conducting a somewhat informal test on an organic pesticide called "Agritrap" on aphids and red spider mites. I helped set this up and got compliments from some FAO folks thanks to my write-up skills and experimental design; thanks Grossman Lab! We just put together a small vermicompost site that will help with seedling mixes and hopefully be scaled up for some sales and local training in the subject. We will soon implement a dripline irrigation system and I continue to help write grants for them, mostly to the Finnish Embassy. I have had a lot of fun working with the other gardener, Emmanuel, who has some good hands on knowledge of gardening/farming but no institutional education whereas I am a bit of the inverse of him, making us a good team that can share quite a bit of knowledge between us. I recently gave him the entirety of my lecture material from SSC 427....I hope I don't get sued, but he was very appreciative and has already read halfway through "Building Soils for Better Crops" so hooray for knowledge!

I have found this land to be full of wisdom and intrigue; there are no vivid colors or revolutionary happenings, just rolling desert hills and endless nitrogen fixing acacia trees feeding the landscape. I am impressed with the peace of this country, being the second least dense in the world and having peaceful transitions in government.

Best wishes for NC and the pursuit of all good things,
Jacob

Pretend Science?

We do a lot of real science.  But once in a while we have to do some "pretend science" for a photo shoot.  Our students are so popular that they are featured in magazines and articles all the time. I got a chance to photograph one recent lab photo shoot.  Our lab is very photogenic!

Suzi O'Connell (on the left) - a PhD student in Horticulture and Soil Science - was recently featured in the CALS Student Perspectives for her participation in a study abroad partnership with the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Agriculture in Croatia.  For some amazing photos of her trip to Croatia see:  NCSU Ag goes to Croatia

In the picture above:  Suzi O'Connell, her paparazzi, some actual Congo Red dye used in our petri dishes, and some real-life dirty lab dishes (not pretend)!

Halloween spirit

ASA CSSA SSSA 2012 - here we come

Nearly 4,000 people attended the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA Annual Meetings, Oct. 21-24, Cincinnati, OH and we are proud to be part of them.

 

First dinner at a cute local restaurant, Melt.

Jacob's parents offered the place for us to stay for the entire time.
We were so grateful to stay in such a warm and friendly home. Thank you for the hospitality :)

Lots of people were interested in Matt's oral presentation.
Great talk, Matt!!

Mary presented her work in Malawi.

Erika and her popular poster.

Jacob with his first prize award winning poster.
Congratulations Jacob!!

Suzanne and her poster.

 

The best way to get the day started.
Coffee for the world!

Lunch time. Guess who got yelled at.

Taking a break.

Time to dress up

One of our lab members, Mary, got married on August 11 in Asheville, NC. Congratulations Mary and Bon!

We went there to celebrate but just seeing a tractor there we felt like we need to represent the lab somehow.

(A part of) Research experience

Four NC School of Science and Math rising juniors (Gibra-El, Brittany, Jacobo and Malik) participated in our lab experience. And this is the most important research activity.

Too warm to work

The weather has been really warm the past few days, so Julie took this opportunity to treat us to some ice cream after the lab meeting at DH Hill library. Mmmmm Yummmm. Thanks Julie!!

Silly putty in the brickyard

Not too far from our building, students from Department of Material Science and Engineering had a fun activity in the afternoon. 

A 60 lb. of silly putty was dropped from the top of the library. Yes, from the 11^th floor.

Do you think we should do the same but with 60 lb. of silly soil? Wouldn't that be fun?

CEFS Field Day Fun

May 3rd was the CEFS field day and many of our lab members came out for the fun in the (very hot) sun, with Matt, Erika, Arun, Sean, Sarah – even JiJY! – in attendance. Three busloads of participants visited our field site, where I gave a brief snapshot intro to the cover crop termination experiment, and the field staff then demoed the roller crimper on the blocks that will not be used for data collection this summer. The group really enjoyed seeing the roller-crimper in action!

Doesn't get cooler than a new cooler

When a post-doc misbehaves....