The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Category: Science

  • HSU Seaweed Farm sets sail

    HSU Seaweed Farm sets sail

    The first commercially-approved seaweed farm in California will be on the map.

    Humboldt State University is known for its cutting-edge science projects. One of these projects is an upcoming commercial seaweed farm in Humboldt Bay. A trailblazer in its own right, this project was spearheaded by HSU natural resource grad student Erika Thalman.

    “I went into grad school originally wanting to do fish pathology, so this was something different for me, but I also really love algae,” Thalman said. “I was like ‘I also really kind of want a farm of my own someday.’ And I was like ‘Oh! Algae! Farm!’ so I was excited to be able to say ‘I’m a seaweed farmer.’”

    Thalman has been growing seaweed at the HSU Marine Lab in Trinidad for the past year. This seaweed incubation process begins with sablefish, at the top of the food chain. The sablefish eat food from lower on the food chain and then produce feces that act as nutrients for the seaweed, which absorb them in turn.

    “The seaweeds act as part of a bio-filter, which then sends less nutrient-dense water back to the fish,” Thalman said.

    This bio-filter acts as kind of a recycling system with different levels of the food chain helping each other out.

    Bren Smith is the executive director of Greenwave, a nonprofit that assists with training environmentally-focused farmers, and is a big proponent of the seaweed farm. Smith is excited about the future of regenerative agriculture among the oceans in a world already seeing the effects of climate change.

    “There needs to be a transition in the oceans,” Smith said. “But what’s exciting about that is we get these opportunities to learn from the mistakes of land-based farming and the mistakes of industrial agriculture and really do it the right away. It’s all hands on deck.”

    Thalman would like to put her seaweed to good use, whether that be food for consumption or fertilizer for gardens. The grade of seaweed dictates what it will be used for. If the seaweed is a lower grade, it can only be used for fertilizer and fodder, but if it has a high enough grade where it is deemed edible for humans, then it can be commercially sold.

    Unfortunately, due to permitting issues, the seaweed is currently unable to be sold in any capacity, but when the time comes to sell the seaweed, Thalman plans to donate all the profits.

    Smith is mindful of the extent to which the farm is financially sustainable.

    “And the key from a farming perspective is how much grows — what volume do you get per meter,” Smith. “Because if you don’t get enough volume, then it is not a profitable farm.”

    Before anyone could even worry about making money from the project, they had to worry about finding the money to fund it first.

    Dr. Rafael Cuevas Uribe, an assistant professor in the fisheries biology department at Humboldt State, is another driving force behind the seaweed farm as he was the one that wrote the grant that helped fund the project. As Uribe explained, within the California State University system, there are a number of campuses that do agricultural research and subsequently get grants called the Agricultural Research Institute Grants to fund agricultural-related projects. Because HSU is one of the CSU campuses that is in that boat, it receives said grants, which are managed by Sponsored Programs.

    Uribe tried to get one of these grants but ran into a major roadblock along the way. As it turns out, he had to monetarily match 50 percent of the requested amount of funding.

    “And that was kind of an issue in our project and we thought that we had everything figured out and at the last day when the project was due, we found out that we did not have the match to do this project,” Uribe said. “And we were almost dropping the ball right there.”

    Also stepping in are a growing number of people and agencies interested in getting into the seaweed farming industry. However, as Thalman noted, there are a lot of heads being scratched.

    “People don’t know what to do,” Thalman said. “They don’t know how to get permit regulations, so we’re kind of the guinea pigs. They’re watching what we do and then they’re going to use what we learned to set up their farms in the future.”

  • The Complex Interface of Humans and Wildfires

    The Complex Interface of Humans and Wildfires

    How fire suppression is a mixed bag in Humboldt County

    Every fire season, blankets of smoke roll over Humboldt County. Here on the coast, that’s as close to wildfires as some of us get. But our practice of fire suppression is a relatively new state for our woodlands and the lack of fire is taking its toll on the county.

    “Humboldt county’s interesting. Most of the county really hasn’t experienced much fire over the last few decades,” said Jeffery Kane, associate professor of fire ecology and fuels management at Humboldt State University.

    High levels of rainfall and a more temperate climate contribute to a lower risk of fire, but that doesn’t mean fire isn’t a natural part of Humboldt’s environment.

    “When there are ignitions, and there are ignitions here from lightning and humans from time to time, they are usually fairly easy to put out,” Kane said. “That nice fog layer, that’s going to moderate fire behavior.”

    Inland Humboldt county is not as protected by our temperate, coastal environment. But Kane said that quick fire suppression may not be the safest or most environmentally friendly way to manage wildfire in the long term.

    “The thing that we know is most effective is to treat areas with a combination of thinning and burning,” Kane said.

    The suppression of small wildfires can make future fires more difficult to control. Dense canopies and the buildup of dry fuel makes fire more dangerous. By thinning the forest, the trees become less tightly packed. When the canopy has more gaps, fires spread slower. Then after the canopy is thinned, a prescribed burn can take care of the natural dry fuels and remaining debris created from thinning. Thinning and burning can make an area less vulnerable to uncontrolled wildfires.

    Although Humboldt is relatively protected, this area still would see wildfire activity every few years if not for the relatively recent introduction of American colonizers. Due to the danger of wildfire to settlers and property, wildfire is almost completely suppressed.

    Disturbance Ecology Professor Rosemary Sherriff studies the impact fire suppression has on local woodlands. She thinks there can be a balance between protecting settled areas and letting wildfires run their course.

    Lightning strikes and Indigenous burning would have introduced fire to local oak woodlands. These woodland areas suffer without the fire that shaped the ecosystem.

    “In the past few years we’ve had fires that have gone into more urban areas, a lot of it stemming from more wildland areas,” Sherriff said. “There’s been a substantial amount of urban-woodland interface and these are really extremely hazardous places to live.”

    In addition to providing more fuel to fires, the removal of wildfire has come at the cost of native biodiversity. Removing a natural phenomenon that was encouraged by local Indigenous tribes has consequently impacted our landscape. Local ecosystems are adapted to wildfire and removing fire allows fire sensitive species to grow without natural inhibitors.

    “Inland we have oak woodlands, for example, that historically would have had a lot of fire,” said Sherriff.

    Lightning strikes and Indigenous burning would have introduced fire to local oak woodlands. These woodland areas suffer without the fire that shaped the ecosystem.

    “What we’ve seen is a lot of encroachment of native douglas fir into these oak woodlands,” Sherriff said. “So there’s been a loss of the oak woodland open areas.”

    This loss of oak woodlands can be seen throughout Humboldt County. This destroys native biodiversity. But fire suppression is not the only consideration.

    “Fire suppression has certainly shaped the landscape,” Sherriff said. “We can’t disregard the fact that settlements and communities and ranches and homeownership and the cannabis that’s happening also shapes and reshapes the landscape and can contribute significantly to shifts in fire behavior.”

    The balance between human settlement and fire suppression is a difficult medium to reach.

    “It becomes extremely tricky when it’s someone’s livelihood,” Sherriff said. “It’s very easy to sit at the university and say ‘yeah, more fire on the landscape’ but it’s extremely hard to make it happen with all the structures and policies in place.”

    Lenya Quinn-Davidson is an advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension. One of her projects is the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association. It’s a loose cooperative of land owners and community members that implement prescribed burns. While structures and policy is slow to change, they’ve proactively decided to put fire back into their land themselves.

    “A lot of people want to use prescribed fire,” Quinn-Davidson said. “By the time we’re actually there lighting the fire, there’s already been a ton of work making sure that it’s safe, effective and that it won’t get out of control. It’s not like we’re just going out and lighting things off.”

    Prescribed burning is a tool that landowners can use for fuels management, invasive species control and habitat restoration. The encroaching firs that Sherriff studies are a main target of controlled burn.

    “We’re losing our oaks at a pretty astonishing rate,” Quinn-Davidson said. “So a lot of the landowners that have oak woodlands really want to use prescribed fire to get in there while those firs are small and kill the firs. The oaks survive just fine because they’re very fire adapted.”

    Though douglas firs are native, there are some invasive species that landowners can keep back with prescribed burns. There are invasive species of grass like the medusa head that smother local grasslands. Ranchers want to make sure their cattle grazing lands are free of medusa head.

    “It creates this thick thatch that prevents other plants from growing, so it turns into this homogeneous field of grass that nothing can eat.” Quinn-Davidson said. 

    Fire is necessary for keeping our natural landscape healthy and biodiverse. Where forest and human settlements meet, controlled burning can help maintain a healthy habitat with less danger to human life. With those buffer zones established, wildfire can be allowed to burn in a controlled manner, establishing a careful balance between fire and safety. 

    Quinn-Davidson thinks getting to a meaningful scale of fire management will take a combination of state intervention and owners taking control of their land.

    “It’s a real community thing.” Quinn-Davidson said. “People just love it.”

  • How Non-Lethal are Less Lethal Weapons

    How Non-Lethal are Less Lethal Weapons

    Protestors injured by non-lethal weapons in Eureka following protests against police brutality.

    On May 31 in Eureka a protest against police injustice ended late into the night with officers using pepper-spray projectiles to assist in the arrest of an individual suspected of vandalism. An additional protestor was arrested for attempting to prevent the first arrest.

    Several protestors attempted to pull the individual out of police custody. This resulted in police firing on the rest of the crowd. Capt Brian Stevens of Eureka PD addressed the incident to the public in a video posted to Lost Coast Outpost.

    “Given the escalating circumstances and the safety risks to the officers … They began firing [pepperball projectiles] into the ground in and around the crowd trying to back the crowd off,” Stevens said.

    Sam Papavasilliou, a 22-year-old Humboldt State University student and former Lumberjack writer, was in attendance that night and was among 30 or so protestors fired on by police. Papavasiliou described how the crowd was cut off in the front and back by several police vehicles while passing by Dutch Bros on the north side of Eureka.

    Officers first addressed the crowd to tell them they would be attempting to arrest an individual suspected of vandalism. At 10:33 p.m. this attempted arrest was met with resistance from several protestors.

    “One protestor got shot in the ear with [a pepperball]. They were bleeding and they were really yelling at the officer that they didn’t do shit and they said ‘I can’t hear right now,’” Papavasiliou said.

    Pepperball rounds are amongst a large host of “non-lethal” weapons used to disperse crowds deemed riotous. Pepperball rounds are designed to explode on impact leaving a cloud of OC (oleoresin capsicum), the same ingredient used in pepper spray. It is advised that they are not aimed at the eyes, face, throat, or spine as death has occured when these inappropriate areas have been fired on.

    Rubber bullets are another method of crowd control that fall under a classification of “non-lethal” weapons known as KIPs (Kinetic Impact Projectiles) along with bean bag rounds, pellet rounds, and sponge rounds. In their assessment of “non-lethal” weapons and their safety The Physicians for Human Rights organization argues that “At close ranges, levels of lethality and patterns of injury of some KIPS become similar to those of live ammunition. At longer ranges, KIPs are inaccurate and indiscriminate. Some KIPs are lethal in close range and ineffective at longer distances which make safe use difficult.”

    The problem really comes down to KIPs being too inaccurate at longer ranges to correctly target individuals and areas of the body they are aiming for, and that the injuries sustained at close range can penetrate the skin, break bones, fracture the skull and explode the eyeball.

    Police also rely on chemical irritants (CIs) for crowd dispersal, namely tear gas and pepper spray. Pepper spray is made of a chemical derived from peppers that inflames the afflicted area on contact causing the burning sensation.

    “Officers and deputies were on scene with more or less paintball guns that shoot a paintball projectile that is filled with a powdered OC,” Stevens said.

    Symptoms after exposure to these agents include temporary blindness, respiratory inflammation, increase in heart rate and blood pressure. People with respiratory or heart conditions are at an increased risk of more serious injury or death.

    Other “non-lethal” weapons include pepper spray, bean bag rounds, tear gas and flash bangs just to name a few. When used correctly, these weapons are a less dangerous alternative to shooting people with actual guns, but mistakes in their applications can leave victims with wide ranges of injury.

  • Humboldt State Geologists Research Faults

    Humboldt State Geologists Research Faults

    Faults give clues to the history of the earth’s crust and how it impacts our future

    Earthquakes are more than just shaking. Turns out the rumbling is sound vibrations from the massive snap caused by slipping, bending and breaking rock.

    Deep below Earth’s crust, a mantle of plastic-behaving rock bends and twists under immense pressure. Its mass is 67% of the Earth’s mass. Its temperature ranges from 392 degrees Fahrenheit at the upper boundary of the crust to an incendiary 7,230 degrees Fahrenheit at the core-mantle boundary. Sometimes the overlying, thin 50 to 20 kilometer thick crust cracks.

    “The earthquake is the sound waves moving through the rock, elastic waves propagating through it,” said Dr. Mark Hemphill-Haley, a Humboldt State University neotectonics professor and the co-chair of the geology department. “People who have seen the ground moving are seeing the surface waves of rock bending back and forth.”

    According to Hemphill-Haley, imagining the scale of the mantle is challenging both in size and as a metric of time. Some people have compared the movement in the mantle to lava lamps or boiling water, a force called convection, where hot liquid bubbles up through cooler liquid, but Hemphill-Haley said that can be misleading.

    “We’ve had these old models of the mantle convecting but it’s probably less like that- we’re talking about solid rocks,” Hemphill-Haley said. “They’re solid but they are plastic too. Tectonic plates, which consist of the crust and the upper mantle are in motion and can move faster than four to five centimeters per year. Mantle convection is likely a more slow process than that.”

    Like the snap one hears when a pencil breaks, the sound vibrations from the snapping rock shake the ground all around the breaking point, quaking the earth.

    Giragos Derderian, a fourth year geology student, explained the nuance between elastic, plastic and brittle rock. Generally, a rock seems solid but if enough force is applied, the rock can change shape. Derderian said the change in a rock is called deformation.

    “Plastic deformation is when structures change shape due to a force and the rock stays deformed when the force dissipates,” Derderian said. “After elastic deformation, the rock returns to its original shape when the force is removed.”

    Brittle deformation, Hemphill-Haley said, is when forces are so great, the stress exceeds the rock’s elastic limit and snaps it, like a pencil bent too far. An earthquake is when massive bodies of rock experience so much force that they become brittle and break. Like the snap one hears when a pencil breaks, the sound vibrations from the snapping rock shake the ground all around the breaking point, quaking the earth.

    The earth’s crust is made up of massive plates that fit together like an ill-constructed puzzle with some plates pushed too hard into each other and some plates pulling away from each other. Force builds up where these plates meet and can deform each other in elastic, plastic and brittle ways.

    Hemphill-Haley said the big thing that causes plate motion is the weight of oceanic plates. In this example, oceanic plates have converged with continental plates. he denser oceanic plates are diving below the less dense oceanic or continental plate.

    These convergent plates cause a few things to happen on the surface. The leading edge of the less dense plate can crumple into massive mountain ranges like the Klamath Mountains. The oceanic plate descends deep into the mantle at submarine trenches referred to as subduction zones like off our coast—the Cascadia subduction zone. Geologists research the effects of plate tectonics here on the northern California coast in a variety of ways.

    Hemphill-Haley’s colleague Dr. Melanie Michalak researches the Klamath Mountains in northern California and Oregon, and the Coast Range closer to HSU. In one research effort, she and her team trench the ground and look at rock layers that have been changed by faults. They seek material that can be used to estimate the age of the rock. Some of her research is also on recently active faults.

    “As a geologist I care about all faults, the ancient ones, the active ones, I don’t discriminate,” Michalak said. “But people though, from a risk perspective, they’re more concerned about which ones will cause an earthquake and damage their house.”

  • Before You Forage: Nasturtiums

    Before You Forage: Nasturtiums

    Pretty flowers offer a punch packed with nutrition

    Foraging for your own sustenance is both rewarding and enjoyable. With grocery store shelves low on most necessities like fruits and vegetables, you can still find satisfying snacks out in nature.

    According to Encyclopedia Britannica, nasturtiums are a type of flowering herbaceous plant in the tropaeolaceae family. These green, circular-leaved and orange, red or yellow-petaled plants are edible flowers and foliage.

    While nasturtiums may be hard to find in the wild as they’re native to Central and South America, they can easily grow in home gardens just about anywhere.

    Early spring is the perfect time to start cultivating your own nasturtiums, and you can simply order seeds online to get started. Nasturtium seeds, when dry, look like tiny, brown walnut shells with wrinkled surfaces. When fresh, they are pale green and have a slightly smoother texture. Fresh seeds are edible as well and often pickled and used as caper substitutes.

    A great way to prepare nasturtium for your first taste is in a salad with cucumbers, mandarin oranges and spinach with a light vinaigrette dressing.

    Once fully grown and blossomed, the sprawling, vine-like nasturtium plant offers a bounty of vitamin C if consumed. Not only are these plants aesthetically pleasing, the amount of nutritional value packed into the entire nasturtium is astounding, as they contain vitamins B1, B2, B3, and magnesium, iron and calcium.

    This plant has a peppery, mustard-like taste and can be used as an alternative to potent arugula leaves or mustard greens in salads. You can eat the whole plant, which is said to be similar to the taste of watercress.

    A great way to prepare nasturtium for your first taste is in a salad with cucumbers, mandarin oranges and spinach with a light vinaigrette dressing. Or if you’re bold enough, try the leaves and petals on their own after a thorough rinse.

    Beyond the beauty and nutrition of nasturtiums, this plant also offers antibiotic and antibacterial properties. These plants are by no means a way to cure colds, the flu or COVID-19, but can offer slight relief. Nevertheless, according to a study published in the Open Microbiology Journal, these plants were found to contain antimicrobial effects and can be safely used in the food industry as an antibacterial oil on foodborne bacteria.

    So get your hands on some nasturtium seeds and get to planting. Soon you’ll have a garden full of the edible and nutritional plant.

  • Inside the Immune System

    Inside the Immune System

    How the body uses multiple levels of defense against foreign intruders

    With the coronavirus craze going on right now, it may be nice to know our bodies are working hard to protect us.

    When a foreign bacteria or a virus enters the body, it goes into full defensive mode. A complex relationship of cells evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, the human immune system is our reliable defense from sickness and death. The body has developed a battalion of guards, soldiers, intelligence, weapons factories and communication stations to defend us from attackers.

    The Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell YouTube channel published an easy-to-watch video on the immune system. They broke down the immune system’s jobs into 12 jobs including to communicate, kill enemies, cause inflammation, remember enemies and make strategic decisions.

    There’s more to the process too. Russel Wheatley is a family practitioner at the HSU Student Health Center. Wheatley said that, even though he doesn’t study immunology, he has a working knowledge of the immune system. He referenced an immunologist colleague named Huang Bo for his explanation.

    Wheatley said there are five levels of immunity, and all of these levels work together as a multi-faceted defense.

    The first level is a physical barrier, the skin. He said the skin is bacteria and virus-proof. Between the skin and the mucous in your nose and mouth, combined with coughing and sneezing, the body is pretty good at fending off invaders.

    If the skin is broken, then the immune system really starts working. When the skin is cut, nearby bacteria take advantage of the break and enter the blood stream, risking infection. First to the plate is the macrophage, a large, abundant cell.

    “Most of the time, they alone can suffocate an attack because they can devour up to 100 intruders each,” Kurzegsagt says. “They swallow the intruder whole and trap it inside a membrane. Then the enemy gets broken down by enzymes and is killed.”

    If the macrophage is overwhelmed, it begins to call for help from the garrison. Neutrophils are hype- aggressive, destructive cells that appear at the site of the battle to destroy any cell near the cut, including healthy ones. If this isn’t enough, the macrophage calls the dendritic cell to the battlefield.

    “You have to rest the body when the immune system is trying to work.”

    Russel Wheatley

    The dendritic cell is the brains of the operation. When hailed by the macrophage, the dendritic cell starts to collect samples of the intruders and presents them on the outer membrane.

    “Now, the dendritic cell makes a crucial decision,” Kurzgesagt says. “Should they call for anti-virus forces that eradicate infected body cells or an army of bacteria killers?”

    If a virus has entered the body, Wheatley says a protein in the blood stream called a complement protein identifies the virus and destroys them. Eventually, after the body has torn apart the virus, white blood cells produce antibodies.

    In the case of the coronavirus, it’s a little more sinister. The virus tries to hide itself from the immune system by burying itself in lung cells. In a video about the virus, Kurzegesagt says the virus attaches itself to a specific receptor on lung cells and inserts a new DNA command: copy and reassemble. It fills up with more and more cells until it’s full, and then the cell receives a final order: self-destruct.

    “At this point, the virus hasn’t done too much damage,” Kurzgesagt says. “After millions of body cells have been infected and billions of viruses swarm the lungs, the virus releases a real beast on you, your own immune system.”

    While the immune system pours into the lungs, the virus infects them and confuses the system. The coronavirus causes immune cells to overreact and yell, “Bloody murder.” The immune system wastes a lot more resources than it should to fight the reaction, exhausting the body’s energy.

    Wheatley encouraged anybody who is feeling sick to rest. He explained when a person wakes up, the body has a limited bowl of energy. Thinking, exercising and immune-responding all need that energy to do their thing, and expending energy can make the body less effective at fighting invaders.

    “You have to rest the body when the immune system is trying to work,” Wheatley says. “Some people have different immune systems and some aren’t nearly as strong as others, especially to these viral type invaders. You have to rest. You have to give it the right kind of energy.”

  • A Brief Breakdown of COVID-19 Misconceptions

    A Brief Breakdown of COVID-19 Misconceptions

    Four things you or your relatives might misunderstand about COVID-19

    Misconception: The fatality rate of COVID-19 is only 2-3%. That sounds low, so it isn’t worth worrying about.

    Reality: Any fatality rate estimate can be misleading. It’s possible that many more people contract COVID-19 than receive a test. Numbers from the World Health Organization put the fatality rate of confirmed cases globally at around 6%, but those numbers are only based on people who have been tested or had severe symptoms. That number can also be misleading because the fatality rate varies by region, age group and other risk factors.

    Though the actual fatality rate is unknown, it is much higher than past pandemics such as H1N1 (swine flu). Even if it was low, a small percentage of the total global population is still a staggering amount of people.

    Misconception: I don’t have symptoms like fever, cough or difficulty breathing, so I must not have it and I can’t spread it.

    Reality: In South Korea, COVID-19 testing was widespread and early testing results showed that many people in their 20s and 30s had the virus, but were completely unaware that they could be spreading it. Since it’s possible that many more people have COVID-19 than get a test, people who feel healthy and demonstrate no symptoms could spread it.

    Misconception: If I wear a mask, I don’t have to practice social distancing.

    Reality: Simple masks for people without symptoms and people not in high-risk groups are recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more to protect others from you while in public. Since many cases are asymptomatic, it may help prevent people unaware of their own infection from spreading it. Masks are an additional measure, not a replacement measure. The CDC recommend social distancing along with a mask.

    Misconception: There is a cure for COVID-19.

    Reality: As of April 2020, there is no specific medicine or cure for COVID-19. Antibiotics are not effective against the viral illness, and there is no evidence of any effective home remedy. There are ongoing trials and possible vaccines being considered, so that may change soon.

  • Telehealth Looks to Fill Gaps Left by Pandemic

    Telehealth Looks to Fill Gaps Left by Pandemic

    Telehealth has a chance to make a name for itself in the US

    Many physicians and patients aren’t likely to want to or be able to do face-to-face appointments for now and into the foreseeable future. In the midst of this, a potential solution lies in telehealth.

    Telehealth—also known as telemedicine—involves the interaction of medical practitioners and patients through virtual means. Doctors and other physicians can attend to more serious matters in-person while remotely prescribing and treating other, less critical patients.

    “I think people are gonna be more and more open to going to the doctor full-time via telehealth if not doing a follow-up visit. I think that we’ve made more progress in the last six months than we have in the last six years and I think it’s only gonna go this way forward.”

    Jacob Horn

    Jacob Horn is the managing director at Vivo HealthStaff in Dublin, California. A Humboldt State University graduate, Horn now contracts with various medical clinics and offers immediate telehealth solutions for more rural communities. He projected a lot of growth for telehealth.

    “Before this COVID-19, it was very meager, to say the least—it was underutilized,” Horn said in a phone interview. “I think people are gonna be more and more open to going to the doctor full-time via telehealth if not doing a follow-up visit. I think that we’ve made more progress in the last six months than we have in the last six years and I think it’s only gonna go this way forward.”

    Horn detailed what he sees to be the benefits of telehealth.

    “I think it will address provider burnout,” he said. “I think it will increase patient satisfaction because now they have a wider access of care. I think it will also make the insurance companies happy because follow-up visits might not cost them as much. But also, the patients will see, hopefully, a savings by seeing their doctors at home for low-acuity visits.”

    Kate Schiff, a physician assistant in the HSU Student Health Center, is trying to incorporate telehealth into her practice in a multitude of ways.

    “For the most part, we are utilizing the phone for triage, evaluation of new problems, and management of existing problems and conditions,” Schiff wrote via email. “We are also managing most of our medication refill requests this way.”

    Schiff also uses Zoom video calls to conduct business.

    “We do have the capability to have Zoom visits which we are primarily using for mental health visits at this time,” she wrote. “Counseling and Psychological Services is using the phone and Zoom to provide individual and group therapy for students.”

    Dr. Caroline Connor, a local physician, wasn’t sure how regular telehealth would become in the future.

    “I think it’s gonna bring more accessibility to healthcare, especially for seniors, in Humboldt County but also to the HSU students.”

    Jacob Horn

    “The question is—how regular it’s going to be—is gonna be a very interesting story that has not yet been written,” Dr. Connor said. “If I was still in practice, how many of my patients would still be coming in? Now, most patients, if they had the choice, would rather see you in person, I think. But you wonder—busy millennials, if they want to get an appointment, will they just start making telemedicine appointments? And how is that gonna be incorporated into the daily life of a physician? I have no idea.”

    Speaking of busy millennials, HSU students are no stranger to the lack of healthcare in Humboldt County. Horn said telehealth could help fight that shortage.

    “I think it’s gonna bring more accessibility to healthcare, especially for seniors, in Humboldt County but also to the HSU students,” he said. “We have a massive shortage, we have long waitlists and a lot of people are leaving the county for certain specialty care. I think in the next year, that will switch up—you’ll be able to have more resources at your disposal in Humboldt County due to telehealth.”

    Connor said nursing students in HSU’s revitalized program could take advantage of telehealth to connect with remote specialists.

    “Let’s say somebody is going through nursing school and they have to learn a little about the intensive care unit—there might not be enough educators in Humboldt County about nursing intensive care units,” Connor said. “So, maybe they’ll have telemedicine education.”

  • Happy Thoughts and Hot Liquids Won’t Save Us

    Happy Thoughts and Hot Liquids Won’t Save Us

    A reminder of the few things we know that help prevent the spread of COVID-19

    I received a text from a housemate recently recommending we all drink hot liquids and think happy thoughts to get us through the COVID-19 pandemic. Sadly, happy thoughts and hot liquids won’t save us.

    In the midst of a pandemic, it makes sense that people will seek home remedies—they can give you actionable measures to take to try to inoculate yourself against COVID-19. But peddling bunk medicine like a medieval plague doctor only makes things worse.

    Random herbs, hot liquids and happy thoughts do nothing against COVID-19 (neither does weed). What can help stop the spread of COVID-19 are these much less sexy things you’ve probably already heard, adapted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

    • Social distancing. Hang out with yourself for a while. The crushing introspection may seem scary, but who knows, maybe you could learn something about yourself. The CDC gives suggestions on how to cope in this stressful time.
    • Frequent hygiene. Wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Sanitize doorknobs in your home. Sanitize your debit or credit card if you’re grocery shopping. You might even go so far as to ask to scan your own groceries at the checkout stand.
    • Don’t touch your face. According to disease expert Michael Osterholm, the virus behind COVID-19 chills out in the throat and lungs, and it likes to get in your body through your eyes, nose and mouth. Your hands provide an Uber ride for the virus straight into your system.
    • Also, cover your face. The CDC have shifted course and now recommend people cover their face with a cloth mask in public, especially in high-risk areas like grocery stores or pharmacies. If you have a sewing machine, here’s how to make your own mask. If you don’t have a sewing machine, the CDC provides a video on its site on how to make a mask out of any old cloth and a couple rubber bands.
    • Keep your body healthy. Eating a well-balanced diet, getting enough sleep and exercising all maintain a healthy immune system.
    • Find a new hobby. Don’t allow depression to set in from all the time spent indoors. Netflix is nice, but it’s not a hobby. Try reading, painting, knot-tying or bread-making. Blogger Matt Gilligan compiled a list of 19 inexpensive hobbies for self-quarantining.
    • Connect with your friends and family. Don’t gather with people in person. (No group hugs.) Instead, take advantage of your phone and call up your friends and family. For a more socially stimulating experience, use FaceTime or Zoom to have a video chat. Invite all your pals and make it a virtual party. If you happen to be posted up in a house with a friend, try to hang out with them rather than hiding away in your room.

    We have no cure for COVID-19. A vaccine, by all accounts, remains a long way off. If you end up with the coronavirus, we only have treatments that can relieve symptoms as suggested by the Mayo Clinic, like Tylenol, cough syrups, rest and fluid intake.

    I’m no stranger to distrusting authority or being suspicious of science—I grew up in Southern Humboldt and wasn’t vaccinated until I was a teenager. But for the sake of yourself and the rest of the world, put your suspicions aside and have a little faith in the only proven measures we know against COVID-19.

  • Rain Returns to Humboldt This Weekend

    Rain Returns to Humboldt This Weekend

    A moderate rainstorm will make its way through Humboldt County

    A storm is hitting Humboldt this weekend will bring a considerable amount of rain.

    Jonathan Garner, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Eureka, gave us a preview of what to expect.

    “All in all, maybe up to two inches of rain over the weekend,” Garner said. “I’m also expecting accumulated snow across the mountains for elevations mainly above 3500 feet. We could get a little bit of small hail and stronger showers and perhaps a thunderstorm as well.”

    The rain is mainly forecasted to fall on Saturday but will linger in showers on Sunday. Expect high temperatures to be in the low to mid 50s with lows in the lower 40s.

    “It will put a very small dent into our deficit. We’re about 10 or 11 inches below normal right now.”

    Jonathan Garner, meteorologist for National Weather Service in Eureka

    Garner said the storm won’t resolve our rain deficit for the year.

    “It will put a very small dent into our deficit,” he said. “We’re about 10 or 11 inches below normal right now.”

    Emily Read, a junior environmental studies major, is still around in Humboldt amidst the coronavirus outbreak. With the rain looming, she planned on not doing much this weekend beyond trying to learn a new program for an engineering class.

    “I typically am fine with rain,” Read said. “I like it most of the time—but right now, since we’re stuck at home anyway, I kind of just am tired of it and I just want it to stop raining so it can be nice and warm.”

    Jared English, a junior film major, also planned to remain indoors this weekend even though he was initially looking forward to getting outside and doing the one thing he can do in Manila—frisbee golf.

    “It does kind of make me a little sad,” English said. “Because that means even more time inside and even more time isolated in this quarantine, and the rainstorm kind of takes that one thing away.”

  • Humboldt Mold Manifests in Moisture

    Humboldt Mold Manifests in Moisture

    HSU students are under-informed and unprepared for the beast that is mold

    It accumulates like there’s no tomorrow, unleashing its inner animal at every turn. No damp area is safe from the monster of mold. What can students do to fight it?

    The rainy season is still around in Humboldt. Lurking amidst the hundreds of buildings students live in—and may be stuck in—is a hidden and nasty phenomenon—mold.

    Mary Gaviglio, a freshman business administration major, has had first-hand experiences with mold, from seeing it grow on a bowl of cereal she left out overnight to meeting someone who was severely affected by it.

    “He’s actually allergic to the mold spores here, so he gets really excited because they’re in the air,” Gaviglio said.

    Gaviglio also remarked on how it’s easier to breathe in Humboldt than where she is from in Southern California.

    “I usually get sinus infections when the Santa Ana winds come in because of all the pollutants, and now that I’ve moved here, I actually breathe a lot better,” Gaviglio said.

    Dr. Miriam Peachy, an accredited practicing naturopath in McKinleyville and a mold expert, gave a breakdown of the ins and outs of mold and mold illnesses.

    There are five different kinds of mold and the mold that humans can see is called active mold. Mold reproduces through spores, which get in the air, fly around, settle on surfaces and eventually begin to grow as moisture emerges.

    Mold toxins, the waste products of mold, are what can get people sick. Most people aren’t affected by most kinds of mold, but for those with weakened immune systems or allergies, extended exposure to some mold can cause nausea, headaches and cold sweats.

    “I’ve had people literally sleep outside because they didn’t have anywhere else to live.”

    Dr. Miriam Peachy

    Colton Trent, an environmental science senior, talked about how he’s dealt with mold in his apartment. His bathroom is in the middle of his apartment and has no window and an old ventilation fan, which makes for a messy situation in the winter when humidity is high.

    “Whenever me or my roommates take showers or if we leave the door closed for too long, the condensation collects on the ceiling and the walls,” Trent said. “And we have to clean the walls and the ceiling pretty frequently because mold spots will start to grow.”

    No matter where you stand in the mold illness spectrum, there are steps that can be taken to treat it.

    The first step is distancing yourself from the mold, which means permanently leaving the environment in which the mold is taking over.

    Unfortunately, in Humboldt, the lack of housing is a known factor that is doing the mold illness treatment process no favors.

    “Too many people are afraid to rock the boat or lose their rental and they don’t have anywhere to go and they don’t know if the next place they go will be moldy,” Peachy said. “It’s almost impossible to find a place that’s not moldy here.”

    The next step in treating mold and mold illness is remediation. That is to say, removing and replacing anything and everything that might’ve contracted mold from kitchen wooden cabinets all the way to furniture.

    “I’ve had people literally sleep outside because they didn’t have anywhere else to live,” Peachy said.

    The final step in the process is washing and cleaning everything that can be wiped down or otherwise cleaned like clothes and metal surfaces.

    Above all, Peachy stressed the importance of getting a dehumidifier, as it can work wonders and is the most basic way of combating the spread of mold.

  • Sprinkles Expected for Spring Break

    Sprinkles Expected for Spring Break

    Rains look to rush in this upcoming weekend

    Cold clouds creep on the horizon, waiting for students to flee Arcata before dumping rain on the city. The days of sunny skies and warm weather may come to a damp halt at the beginning of spring break.

    Spring is here, and it’s wet. This coming weekend, rain is forecasted to fall on Humboldt State. Break is just around the corner and inclement weather may be a downer for partying students, so be sure to check the weather before the rager starts.

    This helpful graph, built by weatherspark.com, shows the average daily chance of rain in Arcata throughout the year. | Graph by Weatherspark

    To prepare for the break, The Lumberjack science section reached out to the National Oceanic and Aeronautic Administration office and asked a meteorologist what we can expect. It may get cold.

    According to Brad Charboneau, one of those NOAA meteorologists, we’ve still got a couple more cold months ahead of us. We’re not out of the chill yet, even though the spring season is when temperatures start warming up.

    “I check the weather often either with the NOAA weather app or by looking at the sky. If it looks questionable or if the sky is darker than usual, check it.”

    Mattea Roberts

    For curious weather geeks, the NOAA station uses a number of sensors and measuring devices to record weather events. For example, they use a tipping bucket rain gauge that measures hundredths of an inch. Each time the bucket fills, the bucket tips over and records a tic. The more tics, the more water. Easy as that.

    Mattea Roberts probably appreciates meteorological instruments like the tipping bucket. A freshman studio artist at HSU, Roberts takes advantage of NOAA science by using their weather app. She said it was a good idea to check the weather if the sky looked questionable.

    “I check the weather often either with the NOAA weather app or by looking at the sky,” Roberts said. “If it looks questionable or if the sky is darker than usual, check it.”

    Roberts also said she brings a rain jacket or an umbrella to school every day, just in case it does rain. She’s probably going to be prepared for whatever the climate has to throw at her this weekend.

    “I can tell you right now, it’s gonna be nice and warm up until Friday,” Charboneau said. “On Saturday, believe it or not, we’re gonna have a shift to cooler, more showery weather that will last through the weekend.”

    Charboneau said the rain isn’t going to be very intense from the perspective of the rivers, but the conditions may make the weekend less than ideal if students have outdoor plans.

    One of Charboneau’s colleagues, Meteorologist Ryan Alyward, explained how NOAA forecasts weather. He said as a meteorologist, his job is to pay attention to what’s going on in the sky and diagnose the conditions. Understanding what’s happening now allows him to make a prognosis of what weather conditions will be.

    Using a program he called Ensemble, meteorologists input real-time data and get a large number of weather predictions. The predictions are future weather patterns that may or may not happen, and it is his job to use these to make a forecast of the weather. The trick is to look at the similarities in each model, because together, those similarities make the most likely prediction.

    The current models, beyond the wet weather forecasted in Arcata, include snow in the mountains east of the city. Charboneau said although snow is more common in January and February, it’s not unheard-of in March.

    “We’re looking for the potential of snow—low-level snow—which will impact the passes going east,” Charboneau said. “It is likely to see some snow over the weekend. Those are the main threats over the weekend.”

  • Chemistry Professor Picks Up $100,000 Award

    Chemistry Professor Picks Up $100,000 Award

    Claire Till of HSU receives lucrative award to aid her research and academics

    Humboldt State University’s top-ranked chemistry program is home to a professor researching how plankton in the ocean interacts with heavy metals in the water.

    “There are lots of people who are doing fantastic research and have awesome awards and grants on campus. So I’m glad for the opportunity to highlight some of the work that we’re doing at HSU and lots of people are doing lots of great work at HSU.”

    Claire Till

    Assistant Professor of Chemistry Claire Till recently won the Cottrell Scholar Award, a $100,000 award honoring trailblazing science professors or researchers who have made large strides in their respective fields.

    “There are lots of people who are doing fantastic research and have awesome awards and grants on campus,” Till said. “So I’m glad for the opportunity to highlight some of the work that we’re doing at HSU and lots of people are doing lots of great work at HSU.”

    Till looks forward to allocating the funds toward her personal research and her classroom. She’s using the funds to support field trips to gather more data and to hire student researchers.

    “We’re going to go sample some rivers this summer,” Till said. “And then we’re going to do a couple of day trips on the research vessel, the Coral Sea, next summer, and some students will be hired throughout that.”

    Till’s research is about iron, a vital nutrient for humans and phytoplankton in the ocean. Unfortunately, in the ocean, there are extremely low concentrations of iron, and as a result, phytoplankton are not growing as much.

    “It’s really interesting—I think at least—to study how the iron gets there and how the phytoplankton uses it,” Till said. “What I proposed, and the work that we’re going to be working on, is to study iron using a new tool, which is another element called scandium.”

    Till elaborated on the relationship between scandium and iron and what she hopes will come out of her research in relation to that.

    “Scandium and iron have some parallels in chemical reactivity,” Till said. “There’s no real reason to expect them to behave similarly based on their chemical properties, and so I’m really interested in figuring out exactly in what ways are they similar and in what ways are they different.”

    The second area Till will be putting funding toward is academics, specifically in her own classroom.

    Ben Freiberger, a senior research student for Claire Till, has worked under her for a considerable amount of time.

    “The money is now helping us to be able to get more accurate numbers and be able to determine more about scandium.”

    Yasmin Zambrano

    “We collect seawater samples, pre-concentrate them, and then measure them,” Freiberger said. “We just finished measuring all these samples from a cruise that went from Alaska to Tahiti. I started measuring those samples at the beginning of summer and I’m just getting finished with a couple hundred of those.”

    He also went on a cruise last summer and is measuring samples he collected on the trip. His research may benefit from Till’s award.

    “It’s good for the research group and it’s great that Claire can get money to keep doing this,” he said.

    Yasmin Zambrano, a junior undergraduate research student for Till, was recently hired to work with her on her iron research.

    “Right now, we’re just reading a lot of articles and trying to find how the treatments change within the different temperatures to see when it’s the best time to do the experiments and stuff,” Zambrano said.

    Zambrano, too, is hopeful for the outlook of the chemistry program with the arrival of the award and subsequent funding.

    “The money is now helping us to be able to get more accurate numbers and be able to determine more about scandium,” Zambrano said. “And again it’s going to be for at least three more years, so that’s three more years that she can do stuff, especially during the summer when students want to work in this field —and it looks good.”

  • Stoners Bake Snacks with Scientific Hacks

    Stoners Bake Snacks with Scientific Hacks

    Finding more creative ways to use cannabis

    Edibles or cannabis-infused foods are a common way to consume marijuana. The process of making edibles, just like baking brownies, is a science. The primary psychoactive compound in marijuana is called cannabinoids. When making edibles, you infuse a fat with cannabinoids to activate the chemical.

    Mark Wilson, a Humboldt State University professor with a Ph.D. in microbiology, genetics and toxicology explained that cannabinoids are fat soluble and don’t break down in water.

    “Some substances are water soluble and some substances are fat soluble,” Wilson said. “THC is primarily composed of carbon-carbon bonds and carbon-hydrogen bonds, so it can’t interact well with water, but it can interact well with fats and oils.”

    This characteristic of THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, limits what can be turned into an edible. THC can’t steep in hot water for weed tea. Marijuana would need to be steeped in hot milk instead, where the THC would break down and bond with the milk fats.

    “Things that dissolve into our fat tend to remain in our system much longer. That is, they slowly diffuse into fat, and slowly diffuse out. The fat acts as a sort of absorption compartment. That makes it detectable in drug tests for weeks.”

    Joseph Szewczak

    Many people use butter as the main fatty ingredient in edibles. Dairy-based fats are a good option for infusing cannabinoids, but lactose-free alternatives are also solid options, including coconut and olive oil. Bacon fat can absorb cannabinoid infusions too, if you’re looking for a savory option.

    Joseph Szewczak, an HSU professor who studies and teaches comparative physiology and physiological ecology explained the physical changes to the body when people eat cannabis-infused fats rather than smoking cannabis plants.

    “Things that dissolve into our fat tend to remain in our system much longer,” Szewcxak said. “That is, they slowly diffuse into fat, and slowly diffuse out. The fat acts as a sort of absorption compartment. That makes it detectable in drug tests for weeks.”

    Whether inhaled or eaten, the THC enters the blood stream and messes with brain-cell functions in a unique way. Since THC is shaped like a chemical in the brain, the brain recognizes the chemical and allows to alter normal brain function. That chemical usually tells brain neurons to rest, but THC forces the brain to keep firing, which leads to deep thoughts, increased creativity and anxiety.

    In light of these effects, it’s important to understand what’s going to happen after eating an edible. First, since the body takes some time to digest edibles and since their THC is stored in fat, the high lasts longer. Second, the nature of THC and marijuana may lead to discomfort or anxiety, or may lead to creativity and fun, but that’s dependent on many factors.

    Co-Director of the Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research Josh Meisel is researching the significance of set and setting, or who you’re with and where you are, and how those things impact a high.

    “People’s negative experiences may be influenced by edible use,” Meisel said. “But set and setting may be as influential or more influential than the psychoactive properties of the substance itself.”

  • Pigs Compost on Campus

    Pigs Compost on Campus

    A few weeks ago, two little piggies went wee-wee-wee all the way home to the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. On-campus dining services like The J are working with CCAT by delivering their compost to feed the pig project. Instead of the food waste going to the bin, it can fill the bellies of the pigs.

    CCAT acquired the two baby kunekune pigs from Tule Fog Farm in an attempt to reduce Humboldt State’s organic carbon footprint.

    Ben Nguyen, the primary animal caretaker, farmer, project manager and a co-director of CCAT, explained that, depending on their nutrient demand, the pigs will eat as much or as little as they need in order to maintain healthy growth.

    “Usually what we pick up from The J is around 10 pounds of food a day,” Nguyen said.

    The kunekune pig is a small grazing pig that can survive on a low-calorie diet and can weigh anywhere from 150 to 400 pounds. Although different breeders may breed for a smaller size, the pigs from Tule Fog Farm average around 200 to 300 pounds, making them the ideal size for an on-campus composter.

    The pigs will probably be on campus at CCAT eating food waste for the next semester unless someone wishes to keep the project going through the summer and so-on, since Nguyen will be graduating in May.

    Some students are against keeping the pigs and are seeking to purchase the pigs and send them to a sanctuary. But for now, after the completion of the project, the pigs are arranged to be returned back to Tule Fog Farm.

    Before they were adopted by CCAT, Shail Pec-Crouse, Tule Fog Farm owner and farmer, introduced the pigs to a diverse diet. Tule Fog Farm pigs ate compost as a nutritious supplement to their natural grazing diet of fresh grass.

    “We take kitchen waste from a couple of local restaurants like Slice of Humboldt Pie and Los Bagels,” Pec-Crouse said.

    Pigs are omnivores and need a diverse diet consisting of grains, fats, protein and greens. This diverse diet makes them an excellent option for getting rid of food waste or any organic waste in general.

    According to Oxymem, a DuPont brand, when food waste is thrown in the trash and decays unnaturally among plastic and other non-biodegradable things in landfills, a toxic liquid called leachate is produced, which has a high ammonia concentration that isn’t easily biodegraded. Compost solves this problem by keeping biodegradable materials out of landfills so that it can continue its life cycle and be returned to the ground naturally.

    Robert Just, a local livestock veterinarian, described the relationship between human trash and pig diets as an evolutionary interaction. He explained that since humans and pigs have lived symbiotically for so long, their gut biomes may have adjusted to eating our over-ripe food waste.

    Pigs have digestive tracts that are unique to livestock animals, but are similar to the human gut. They have one simple stomach, just like people. Pigs are omnivores and need a diverse diet consisting of grains, fats, protein and greens. This diverse diet makes them an excellent option for getting rid of food waste or any organic waste in general.

    “Pigs aren’t indestructible though,” Just said. “And they are still susceptible to illness from molds and some fungus, but this can be easily avoided by cooking the food into a slop.”

    This project is one more step towards increasing sustainability on campus and problem-solving to reduce food waste.

  • Filling in the Fossil Record with Fungi

    Filling in the Fossil Record with Fungi

    Madison Lalica cracks open 400-million-year-old fossils

    Madison Lalica is a junior botany major researching ancient fungi in fossilized plants over 400 million years old. She is filling in the blanks of the fungi fossil record with her unique research.

    “Given their importance in current ecosystems, I support [that fungi] must have had such a fundamental role in ancient ecosystems,” Lalica said. “And that is what I’m trying to prove with fossil research.”

    Lalica said she had the privilege to work with a huge box of rocks on loan from the Smithsonian Museum filled with fossilized plants. The fossils came to Humboldt State University by way of the Smithsonian, but they were collected in the 1960s by a paleo botanist named Francis Huber at a rock formation called Battery Point in Canada.

    “We look at a bunch of plant fossils that are 400 million years old,” Lalica said. “They are preserved very beautifully and you can see all of their anatomical features.”

    Graduate botanist Megan Nibbellink works alongside Lalica. She is focusing on the anatomy and relationships of the host plants, called zosterophylls. The Battery Point fossils are preserved in a unique geologic formation that serves to make really good fossils.

    “It is a fluvial deposit,” Nibbellink said. “It was a bunch of pieces of fragments caught up in fine sediment at the end of a river. The reason why I like these fossils is because you can see the individual cells. And that’s also why Maddy is able to do what she does.”

    When the host plants were buried by fine river sediments all those millennia ago, their form was preserved as the sediment solidified over millions of years. The fine particles, though, essentially printed the fossils in high resolution with so much detail that Lalica found what she was looking for: ancient fungi.

    Lalica is scanning and investigating these plant fossils for any evidence of fungal material. Spores, fungal tendrils called hyphae and scars from fungal infection are some indicators she has found. Specifically, Lalica is working on identifying the fungi glomeromycota, a fungal group intimately symbiotic with plants today. She wants to learn how similar the ancient fungi are to modern fungi.

    “Why do you want to know about extinct life, then, one might ask. And to be honest, it is a pretty philosophical pursuit I guess. In the most direct sense, learning about extinct lifeforms helps us understand how the living lifeforms that we see around today evolved.”

    Alexandru “Mihai” Tomescu

    “The plant and animal fossil record is really well understood,” Lalica said. “Like they have a pretty clear timeline of ‘This happened and then this happened,’ but for fungi it is so sparse and incomplete that they have no idea what goes before what.”

    Lalica’s faculty advisor Alexandru “Mihai” Tomescu has made it his life’s work to figure out what goes before what. Tomescu explained that exploring the fossil record is important because fossils offer us the only way to look directly into life in the past.

    Tomescu was Lalica’s botany professor before she had switched majors, but she said she fell in love with the world of paleobotany after his instruction. Showing interest in the subject, Lalica took the opportunity to begin her own research as soon as Tomescu offered her the chance.

    “Why do you want to know about extinct life, then, one might ask,” Tomescu said. “And to be honest, it is a pretty philosophical pursuit I guess. In the most direct sense, learning about extinct lifeforms helps us understand how the living lifeforms that we see around today evolved.”

    The 400 million year old specimens are interesting to Tomescu and his team of researchers because the plants themselves represent the first wave of vascular plants, or plants that move water through special tissues, that evolved on Earth. Vascular plants constitute nearly every modern land plant, so these ancestors are significant. Fungi, too, are significant to life on Earth and may have been part of its foundation.

    “Fungi are probably, almost certainly I think, older than actual plants,” Tomescu said. “Fungi are a lot older. But because they’re just hyphae, since they’re flimsy, their fossil record is not that great.”

    Tomescu has been recruiting undergraduate students to research these fossils in his lab. Tomescu explained that HSU hosts a botany program that attracts a lot of students, but also that the students are enthusiastic to participate in research. He said HSU has students who are interested in the grey areas. Lalica was one of those students.

    Moving forward, Tomescu and Lalica are preparing to publish a paper about her year-long investigation into the fossils. This summer, she is presenting her research at the Botanical Society of America’s annual conference.

    “It seems like in Humboldt opportunities are like, if you talk to the right person or if you become friends with the right person, it just kinda happens,” Lalica said, “And it just so happened that I fell into the world of paleobotany.”

  • Third Athletic Director Candidate at HSU

    Third Athletic Director Candidate at HSU

    On Feb. 11 HSU welcomed its third potential candidate for its next athletic director

    Jane Teixeira intends on bringing her 25 years of experience working with higher education as an administrator, coach, student-athlete and leader to Humboldt State University. Upon her arrival, Teixeira personally greeted everyone in attendance and made them feel comfortable. In return, staff took it upon themselves to show her the view of the College Creek Field from the Great Hall balcony.

    Once everyone got to their seats, Teixeira introduced herself and began speaking on the importance of establishing a connection with student athletes.

    “Cultivation is important. I’m a relationship builder and I have constructed my career on that,” Teixeira said. “I want to know about people I interact with. I want to know what you bring to the table and how I can help.”

    Athleticism is not the only concern Teixeira spoke about. She also reached out to student athletes at HSU with concerns of life outside of their sports. Whether the concern is athletics or socializing, Teixeira has shown that she can incorporate her goal of unification between students and the community.

    “I also want to see us build championships, not only from wins and losses, but being a champion in the community. And by that I mean leadership.”

    Jane Teixeira

    “I spoke with student athletes yesterday about job interviews,” Teixeira said. “I told them, remember the skillset you bring. Time management and organization as athletes are beneficial in the workforce.”

    Her next talking point was about being competitive––whether it’s on the field or in the classroom. Student athletes at HSU experience obstacles such as going on the road for games, which hinders their focus on academic work. Teixeira also talked about championships, but not in the tone of filling trophy cabinets.

    “I also want to see us build championships, not only from wins and losses, but being a champion in the community,” Teixeira said. “And by that I mean leadership.”

    After introducing herself and the ideas she has planned if she were to become athletic director, Teixeira began taking questions from the audience. The first question involved her unique experiences that she would bring to HSU.

    “Humboldt State Day would be great and you can have it at the plaza or the quad.”

    Jane Teixeira

    “I have worked with 14 institutes and their presidents, their athletics directors, SWAs, their coaches and student athletes on various levels,” Teixeira said. “My claim to fame was cleaning the Reggie Bush mess, not only by myself.”

    The Reggie Bush mess she mentioned involved University of Southern California football player and Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush and basketball player O.J. Mayo accepting gifts from agents. This act resulted in Bush relinquishing his trophy. Sanctions were also placed on USC athletics.

    The next question focused on the discontinuation of HSU’s football program and the effect it has had on homecoming. Other sports are capable of hosting the event, which would alleviate any concerns. Teixeira responded with alternatives to homecoming.

    “You can center it around any sport, or any big time of the year for the community,” she said. “Humboldt State Day would be great and you can have it at the plaza or the quad.”

    For the last question, Teixeira was asked if non-traditional sports like esports would have a place at HSU. She said she believes technological growth is important and she wouldn’t disregard esports.

    “Esports is a hot trend right now,” Teixeira said. “In fact the Peach Belt Conference is the first NCAA Division II conference as a whole to have esports. I believe there are six or seven institutions in that conference and we have to be on that innovative technology side. We don’t know if it’s good or bad unless we try it. I’m gonna have to learn it too so it’s exciting.”

  • Sweet Songs, Fancy Feathers, Birds Bang

    Sweet Songs, Fancy Feathers, Birds Bang

    The sex life of a bird is no simple thing

    Sex is a heck of a thing in the animal kingdom. Species of birds, insects, mammals and fish have developed a whole bunch of strategies to get laid. From mating dances to beautiful plumage to carefully engineered bachelor pads, the birds have come up with all sorts ways to strut their stuff.

    Wildlife junior Hannah LeWinter commented on how much effort birds put into reproducing. She remarked on the McGregor bowerbird’s tower—a three-foot-tall structure made of carefully placed twigs, attesting to the bird’s dedication.

    “When we think of animals, we assume they do the basic things like mate and get food and make shelter, but they really do have complex [behaviors] too,” LeWinter said. “They make these intricate structures to impress females to say that they are the best suitors but those structures serve no purpose besides attracting a mate.”

    “We think of animalistic sex of doing it only because you need to reproduce, but there are these animals that create these gestures like a pebble or a structure or a dance.”

    Hannah LeWinter

    Commitment to the craft is just the first step of courtship. The picky female bowerbird inspects her suitor’s structure, carefully judging sturdiness of the construction before joining the male on the forest floor. Then, the show really starts.

    The male bowerbird possesses the ability to imitate sounds and begins a showcase of what he’s learned. His voice can emulate everything from birds and animals in the forest to the sounds of human civilization.

    Once she’s satisfied with his performance, the male begins his dance. A chaotic shuffle from one side of his tower to the other, darting towards the female while flashing a bright orange haircut at her. Once he’s done with his groove, she submits and they do their thing.

    “We like to think we’re the only people or the only species who do that,” LeWinter said. “We think of animalistic sex of doing it only because you need to reproduce, but there are these animals that create these gestures like a pebble or a structure or a dance.”

    The McGregor bowerbird works every year to maintain his tower, but there is no expectation in the species to mate with the same female every year. Jeff Black, a wildlife professor at HSU who studies birds, published a collaborative book with 20 other ornithologists titled “Partnerships in Birds: A Study in Monogamy.”

    “We asked the question, ‘How special are bird partnerships or pair bond?’” Black said. “We asked, ‘How long do mates stay together?’ ‘Are they really faithful?’ ‘Do the faithful ones fare better than the ones that alternate and are less monogamous?’”

    The answer: it depends. Black and his fellow ornithologists quantified bird fidelity on a sliding scale ranging to very faithful to not at all faithful. They also investigated the behaviors between social pairs—pairs who spend their time together raising the young, foraging and nesting together—and genetic, or mating pairs.

    “Birds lay their eggs in a basket,” Black said. “When you look at all the 10,000 different types of birds, some birds even though they’re monogamous, when you look at their babies, the genes come from someone else.”

    “When you look at all the different studies, you can plot out how faithful they are. Swans are 100% faithful, the jays would be about in the middle and other species are just having sex everywhere.”

    Jeff Black

    Faithfulness or lack there of may have a couple of purposes, although the hypotheses are not totally fleshed out. One hypothesis is that, if a female searches for a new male mate, she may be looking for a more fit male than her social partner, and engage in what Black called extra-pair copulation.

    HSU River Ecologist Alison O’Dowd explained fitness is a measure of the ability for an individual to pass on their genes. Similar to natural selection, sexual selection is when a female looks for certain characteristics in their male partner, ranging from vibrant feathers to well constructed towers to perfectly executed dances.

    Black endorsed fidelity in birds. He said in geese and swans for example, more faithful pairs are more likely to successfully reproduce. Their offspring are also more fit for when they’re looking for a mate of their own. There may be a case for faith yet.

    “When you look at all the different studies, you can plot out how faithful they are,” Black said. “Swans are 100% faithful, the jays would be about in the middle and other species are just having sex everywhere.”

  • Syphilis Rates Spike in Humboldt

    Syphilis Rates Spike in Humboldt

    Though prevalent, there are many free treatment and prevention options

    Syphilis rates are spiking throughout California, and Humboldt County is no exception. If left untreated, syphilis can cause a brain condition that resembles dementia, heart problems, skin ulcers and blindness.

    Nurse Practitioner Andrea Shoup is taking an active role to better inform the community about risk factors, prevention and treatment of syphilis.

    “It’s totally treatable,” Shoup said. “People don’t really get tested. If they do, it’s not enough.”

    Syphilis can manifest, but then seem to disappear. If a person doesn’t get regularly tested, they may never know they have it and spread it without knowing. There are also risk factors that increase the likelihood of contracting syphilis. Men who have sex with other men are at a higher risk than men who only have sex with women.

    “It’s just the butthole,” Shoup said. “The anus tears more easily than the vagina.”

    Other risk factors include finding sexual partners using social media, which can create a false sense of trust between partners. Methamphetamine use is also linked to high rates of syphilis. People under the age of 26 are also more likely to contract syphilis than any other age group.

    “That just comes down to promiscuity,” Shoup said. “It’s true in my own life. I kind of doubled down at 20.”

    Dr. Teresa Frankovich, the health officer for Humboldt County, said she is not surprised about the local rate of syphilis.

    “I somewhat expect we would see the same trend as elsewhere,” Frankovich said. “There’s ultimately a large amount of people at-risk.”

    Though the actual number of cases are going up, Frankovich thinks there’s more to it.

    “Part of it is we’re doing a better job at screening individuals,” Frankovich said. “We’re catching more cases of it.”

    “Notifying your partner if you have a positive test is really important.”

    Dr. Teresa Frankovich

    There is a lot that can be done to limit the risk of exposure to syphilis. Frankovich suggested limiting partners. Abstinence and monogamous relationships are ideal for limiting exposure to STDs. Condoms are available at most medical treatment facilities, including the Student Health Center on campus. Condoms are also available by prescription.

    Shoup says condom prescriptions, though important for limiting STD rates, still cause controversy.

    “I had some Republican coworkers that were all, ‘I’m paying for people’s pleasure,’” Shoup said.

    Along with condom prescriptions, yearly screenings are recommended. Since syphilis and other STDs such as chlamydia can go unnoticed, there is no way of knowing the STD status of a partner without a test.

    “Notifying your partner if you have a positive test is really important,” Frankovich said.

    Frankovich acknowledged that communicating with past partners about syphilis can be a challenge for many, which is why the Public Health division of the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services provides a service called the Partner Services Program. Public health will assist in contacting partners and inform past partners in order to jump the hurdle of uncomfortable situations.

    The Student Health Center, the Open Door Clinics, Planned Parenthood and any general practitioner can help with preventative measures, testing and treatment.

    “Really it’s a lot of bad things that you don’t want,” Shoup said. “You don’t see the consequences until much later.”

  • Artificial Intelligence Generates Real Jokes on Twitter

    Artificial Intelligence Generates Real Jokes on Twitter

    Creators say we shouldn’t worry about being replaced yet

    There is a new breed of bot accounts coming to Twitter, but these aren’t put there by Russia or the CIA or whoever else is trying to influence an election. They’re novelty accounts, posting large quantities of tweets that mimic the style of existing users.

    Twitter user @kingdomakrillic runs one of these accounts. He asked to only be referenced by his Twitter account. His parody account, @dril_gpt2, sends out a new tweet in the style of @dril several times a day. @dril is a somewhat mysterious, absurdist comedy account that posts their jokes from behind the pseudo-anonymity of a profile image of an incredibly blurry Jack Nicholson. @kingdomakrillic explains their reasoning for choosing @dril to imitate.

    “I wanted to do a GPT-2 bot of someone who was both famous and whose voice on Twitter was near-exclusively comedic,” he says. “If I did, say, a Trump bot, the only humor would come from the novelty of a bot generating Trump-like tweets.”

    These imitation @dril tweets can be shockingly on-brand yet original at times. It’s not uncommon to see replies wondering if the tweets from the account are still created by a bot.

    @kingdomakrillic assures me the tweets are bot-written but hand-selected.

    “Curating the tweets is like DJing. I pace the content out, placing tweets I’m sure are funny next to ones I’m more uncertain about,” @kingdomakrillic says. “Sometimes I screw up. It’s a skill, not 1/10th of the skill that goes into actually writing tweets like dril’s, but it’s still something I need to improve on. There’s no excuse to post duds when you can output infinite text.”

    That infinite text doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from GPT-2, a language model created by OpenAI, a research group with a focus on machine learning.

    Sherrene Bogle is a computer science professor at HSU with experience using machine learning. Conceptually, teaching an algorithm how to do something is a lot like teaching a person. Bogle uses the example of teaching an algorithm to recognize whether a bird is in the foreground or the background of an image. First the algorithm is given a set of bird pictures that are already labeled as to whether the bird is in the foreground or background, allowing it to figure out the differences. Then it’s given unlabeled bird images, where it looks for those same differences. The difference between a human in a machine doing this task is that the machine doesn’t actually understand what it’s doing. The machine simply recognizes patterns.

    Instead of looking for where birds are in pictures, GPT-2 looks for patterns in text. It’s job is to predict not just the next word, but the next couple paragraphs. GPT-2 is so good at this task that it can make paragraphs of human-readable text after being given only a handful of words. The output text can be about anything, but in order to generate text that mimics the style of a Twitter user, programmers need to retrain the model.

    “The potential for harm is less than current human bad actors.”

    Max woolf

    @kingdomakrilic says he retrained GPT-2 on 9,500 tweets, totaling about 750 kilobytes. This focuses the original GPT-2 training data, consisting of almost 40 gigabytes of data, to accomplish a more simple task. The more simple a task, the better an AI can imitate it. Imitating tweets is simple, and with GPT-2’s vast capabilities, imitation yields good results.

    There is also @kingdomakrilic’s curation, which gives many of his followers the impression that the AI is better than it really is.

    Max Woolf is a data scientist at BuzzFeed, and the person responsible for making these twitter bots so easy to create. He built a tool, called GPT-2 Simple, to easily retrain GPT-2 with any new data—tweets—and wrote an accompanying tutorial. Some people think AI is a threat to humanity, but Woolf says otherwise.

    “The potential for harm is less than current human bad actors,” Woolf says.

    @kingdomakrilic agrees with this sentiment.

    “Some people get freaked out at the fact that GPT-2 can produce sentences that have humanlike coherence, but are made with no meaning or intent on the bot’s part besides to imitate how humans write,” he says. “Markov chains, Madlibs, autocompletors, esquisite corpses—they’re also capable of creating coherent text with the illusion of intent. They’re just not mysterious black box programs like GPT-2.”

  • Sudden Oak Death Plagues Humboldt’s Forests

    Sudden Oak Death Plagues Humboldt’s Forests

    Humboldt County is known for its beautiful forests, but sudden oak death threatens its trees

    Sudden oak death is the common name for a disease that started infecting trees 20 years ago and has since killed over a million trees—including trees in Humboldt County.

    The University of California Cooperative Extension explained that the disease is caused by a pathogen called Phytophthora ramorum.

    “It is caused by a microscopic fungus-like organism, Phytophthora ramorum, a lethal, canker-causing pathogen of certain oaks and tan oak trees,” UCCE wrote.

    Susan Marshall, a wildland soils professor at Humboldt State University, is involved in two grant programs that deal with pathogens like sudden oak death. Marshall is connected to Christopher Lee, an HSU alumni with a Ph.D in forestry from the University of Missouri, who now works as a forest pathologist at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

    “It gets into the vascular tissue that is just underneath the bark, and it kills that tissue,” Lee said. “If it does that in several different places around the circumference of the tree, then it will eventually kill a band of tissue all the way around.”

    If the Phytophthora ramorum does kill the tissue all around the tree, the tree is effectively girdled. Generally, live tissue transports water and nutrients up the tree, but if those pathways are blocked lower down, everywhere above the infection dies. The organism infects the tree’s circulatory system and can spread to the nutrient tissue and water-conducting tissue, xylem and phloem, essentially starving the tree and clogging it up. A full ring is a sure death sentence.

    “As far as these diseases go, it would probably be worse under a warmer and wetter sort of scenario.”

    Christopher Lee

    Marshall and Lee described Phytophthora ramorum as being like a fungi or brown algae, with characteristics similar to closely related plant pathogens. Specifically, they are in the class Oomycota, which are a distinct line of fungus-like eukaryotic microorganisms. They are fungus-like because they have a long, branching net-like structure like the hyphae of fungi. They are algae-like because they descend from the same phylum, Heterokontophyta, as many algae.

    Phytophthora ramorum is not the only pathogen that affects trees, but it is the most visible and the most deadly, devastating thousands of acres of forest. In California, sudden oak death has been most prominent in and around Sonoma County, according to reporting by the Times Standard.

    Humboldt County’s dense forests of tan oak, the main host for the disease, is at especially high risk of tree death. Humboldt’s weather and climate are an unfortunately-inviting environment for sudden oak death. The dense oak forests in the area means both greater humidity and a shorter distance for a pathogen to travel.

    “As far as these diseases go, it would probably be worse under a warmer and wetter sort of scenario,” Lee said.

    The recent fires around California also have an indirect connection to Phytophthoras. The loss of vegetation limits the way pathogens spread due to a wildly new arrangement. It is good to note heat from fire can sometimes help slow a pathogen’s spread by eradicating an area where the pathogen had a large presence. Lee noted that if the root system of a tree isn’t fully dead, however, Phytophthoras may have a chance of surviving in its host.

    The main goals of the programs Marshall is involved with are to identify the disease more rapidly and figure out how to slow its spread.

    There isn’t a specific way to control a disease like this, but Marshall said rapid testing of plants in nursery stock may catch Phytophthora ramorum before it can infect new hosts.

    “Every year that [we] can buy that [sudden oak death] doesn’t leapfrog into some other county and cause quarantines and regulations on those counties is a little bit of economic damage that they’ve staved off,” Lee said.

    Sudden oak death has only affected one percent of Humboldt’s trees, but its impacts in California and Oregon demand researchers like the ones Marshall and Lee are involved in will be continuing to study it and find newer and faster ways to help manage the remaining forests along the coast.

  • Chopping Genes and Growing Brains

    Chopping Genes and Growing Brains

    Innovative research and a discovery in HSU’s molecular biology lab

    Biology professor John Steele guided a cell biology lab his first year at HSU wherein he wanted to teach students that cells need nutrients to survive. After 48 hours, the lab discovered quite the opposite. James Gomez, a current student in the lab, had the opportunity to research more into the groundbreaking discovery.

    “In science, you’re kinda looking for that unexpected stuff,” Gomez said. “Right after I came in, I was really excited to be a part of that. There was this thing that was happening that we particularly can’t fully explain, and I’m actually in the lab doing that science.”

    Steele’s experiment for his class involved students starving the cells of nutrients to trigger a state of autophagy, which is when the cell starts to consume itself. Steele meant to emphasize that cells needed nutrients like amino acids and lipids to survive. It was assumed that starving cells of key nutrients eventually killed them.

    • John Steele in his lab with graduate students in the background working on their research on Jan. 31. The lab specializes in molecular biology. | Photo by Collin Slavey

    Steele said the experiment was common, and was usually shut down after six to eight hours. Steele decided to run it for 48 hours instead, since that was the time between lab sections. When his class returned returned to the lab, rather than seeing a bunch of dead cells, they were decidedly more alive. The lab had made a discovery.

    Despite the cells being in autophagy in Steele’s experiment, they had stopped dividing and took on a strange morphology. Their metabolic rate was high—they were very much not dead.

    Now the lab, including Gomez, are deep in research. The lab is introducing pathway inhibitors, or drugs, to block basic cell functions, narrowing down the essential and non-essential. The project is open-ended, as students methodically look at every cellular pathway to determine the needs of cells.

    “What I love about this project is that it was born here,” Steele said. “Nobody else that I know of is working on this, outside of HSU. That’s an awesome process to be a part of, where students get hands-on training in phenotypic genetic screening and drug screening, and we get to learn about the basic biology of cells in doing this.”

    Steele encourages the students in his lab to explore the boundaries of their knowledge. CRISPR, Cas9 and stem cell cultures are unique tools available to these students, and they offer an opportunity to think outside the box and do creative science.

    Steele’s lab combines bio-technologies using unique stem cell cultures and genome editing techniques. The lab cultures stem cells—cells which can grow into any cell type—and chops up DNA using CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-clipping tool, to learn how rare neurodegenerative diseases develop in the brain.

    “There have been some really cool applications of CRISPR out there. And they’re just because somebody said, ‘I wonder if we could do that?’ and they did.”

    John Steele

    Steele’s graduate student Kyle Anthoney, on the other hand, is working on making a model of a rare disease called progressive supernucleogical palsy, which looks like a combination of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. The disease is a tauopathic disease because a main characteristic of the disease is a buildup of the tau protein, which blocks some necessary cell functions. To understand the finer details of the disease, Anthoney developed a new method for growing neurosphere cell types into what is, effectively, a miniature brain.

    Scientifically named 3D neural sphere cultures, these miniature brains offer a platform for researchers to study three types of brain cells at the same time. Anthoney’s method allowed him to organically grow neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes, three dominant cell types in the brain, from human stem cells, so they would develop naturally like they would in a growing brain.

    Anthoney’s research is up for review in a number of scientific publications and his name is on some breakthrough scientific papers. He is contributing to research about progressive supernucleogical palsy and other tauopathic diseases. His research concentrates the tau protein in a miniature brain to simulate the symptoms of progressive supernucleogical palsy, and he is exploring how the protein and disease impact his lab-grown brain cells.

    “There have been some really cool applications of CRISPR out there,” Steele said. “And they’re just because somebody said, ‘I wonder if we could do that?’ and they did.”

  • Walking and Wildlife Tracking

    Walking and Wildlife Tracking

    A group of students and community members wandered around Redwood Creek to track the local wildlife

    On Saturday, Feb. 1, Phil Johnston, the mountain lion biologist for the Hoopa Valley Tribe, stopped the group of 20 mixed retirees and Humboldt State University wildlife majors to quiz them on the tracks he had noticed in the sand.

    The participants all went to the headwaters of Redwood Creek, just south of Orick, to learn about the tracks, scat and other markings of the animals in our area. Some were there to learn what they could and enjoy the hike, and others were looking for a leg up in their future careers.

    “If you’re good enough at interpreting signs and staying on the trail, it’s pretty close to watching them.”

    Phil Johnston

    Throughout the day, Johnston stopped and drew circles in the stand with his walking stick around particular markings, scat or tracks and asked the group to weigh in on the different features and aspects of it. He asked leading questions about what family the suspected animal may belong to as well as what it most certainly did not belong to.

    “If you’re good enough at interpreting signs and staying on the trail, it’s pretty close to watching them,” Johnston said.

    Johnston leads these wildlife tracking workshops at the Natural History Museum in Arcata. Evaluators certified by CyberTracker will be coming to Humboldt County to test 10 people on their tracking skills, according to CyberTracker standards. People who pay the $170 certification fee must pass the certification exam on April 25 and 26 to receive their certification.

    • Workshop attendees identifying foot tracks at the mouth of the Redwood Creek on Feb. 1 | Photo by
      Walker B. True

    Louis Salas is a 31-year-old wildlife major pursuing the CyberTracker certification. Salas hopes to work in predator conflict mitigation after he graduates, and figured that if he can earn this certification, he would have a leg up in the competitive field of wildlife biology.

    “I’m an older student and I’m competing with a bunch of 18 to 22-year-olds,” Salas said.

    The community impact of the workshop didn’t pass him by. Salas said the workshop was a welcoming environment and he enjoyed seeing older people getting out and learning. Salas said when people learn about wildlife, they care about it more.

    “If nobody cares about the landscape that we live on, no one’s gonna protect it,” Johnston said.

    He wants people to have a connection to the place that they live so that they will want to preserve it for future generations. Johnston said that tracking gives people the ability to feel like a participant in the ecosystem instead of a tourist.

    Dave Ramirez is a forestry major and Deanna Lopez is a zoology major. Neither were after the certification and just came out with a friend to learn more about tracking. Both of them said they would probably come back. The commentary and teaching turned what would normally be a quick walk on the beach into something better.

    “It’s more meaningful than just hiking,” Ramirez said.