The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: Science

  • Tree sitters defend forest near Strawberry Rock

    Tree sitters defend forest near Strawberry Rock

    The Redwood Forest Defenders demand Yurok tribal land be returned

    Green Diamond Resource Company, (GD), an Humboldt State University research partner and local logging company, made two clear cuts near Strawberry Rock in Trinidad this summer. Redwood Forest Defense partially blocked the logging by creating a tree sit village in the forest canopy.

    A Redwood Forest Defense tree sitter risking arrest asked to remain anonymous, but provided the alias Lupine. Lupine said the tree sits were erected April 1 immediately after Humboldt County imposed the COVID-19 isolation order.

    The company stopped about 20 acres, or 20 football fields, short of logging the whole area they originally intended. Roughly 100 acres between two timber harvest plans, Lupine said.

    Karen Pickett from the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters and an Earth First!er since the early 1980s believes protecting the forest is crucial.

    “I guess forest defense is an essential job too,” Pickett said. “I find it really inspiring that people are up there doing this.”

    Lupine and the tree sitters have defended a five acre area this year. In previous years the sitter protected the remaining untouched 20 acres of the timber harvest plan. Green Diamond and the Trinidad Coastal Land Trust are in active discussion over the 20 acres, wanting to preserve a strip of forest for trail access to Strawberry Rock.

    Sarah Lindgren-Akana, Yurok tribe member and secretary of the Tsurai Ancestral Society, an organization advocating for the Indigenous of the area whose land was stolen, said she supports the tree sitters.

    “I really admire their dedication and I hope people are listening to their message,” Lindgren-Akana said. “While some may argue that this is just a small area, or that it is not an old growth forest, we need to keep in mind that over the past 500 years America has lost about 95 percent of its forest due to development and logging.”

    Gary Rynearson, GD chief communications officer, claims the company stopped logging the clear cuts near Strawberry Rock more than three weeks ago.

    “We think it’s dubious for them to say that [since] they have refused to file the completion paperwork [for the timber harvest plan],” Lupine said. “We are staying here since they are still legally entitled, within the timber harvest plan, to come here and cut.”

    Lindgren-Akana disapproves of the management practices of GD advocating for the land to be returned to the tribe.

    “The Strawberry Rock property is within the Tsurai village and should be returned to the tribe for proper management and care,” Lindfgren-Akana said. “The Yurok tribe can bring the land back into balance and ensure the plants and forest, animals and people all have something to enjoy for generations to come.”

    Lupine supports Lindgren-Akana and the idea of the land being returned to its rightful protectors.

    “The goal for this land is not to be held by an entity like the land trust, but to be returned to the Indigenous people it belongs to, the people it was stolen from,” Lupine said. “Whether that be the tribal council or groups like the Tsurai Ancestral Society.”

    Lindgren-Akana stated that the GD was starting to move towards a streambed that directly impacts the surrounding ecosystem.

    GD declined to comment on stream encroachment and sustainable forestry practices.

    Lupine said very little is done to ensure the company complies with sustainable forestry practices.

    “I think there is very little oversight whether it is from those types of third party certifiers or whether it is from the state and federal agencies who are tasked with overseeing these things,” Lupine said. “I often wonder if [third party] certifiers are doing more harm than good.”

  • How the Redwoods are Battling Climate Change

    How the Redwoods are Battling Climate Change

    While the rest of the planet suffers, what will become of the Redwood Forests?

    While climate change continues to cause destruction around the globe, scientists are finding hope in a local tree: The Giant Redwood, or Sequoiadendron giganteum.

    The trees are currently in the midst of a growth spurt, producing more wood in the past century than any other time in their lives, according to Save The Redwoods League, a nonprofit organization who protect and restore the California redwood forests. Researchers from Humboldt State University, UC Berkeley, Natureserve, United States Geological Survey and Colorado State University are working alongside Save The Redwoods League to understand the growing trees and how they will continue to respond to climate change.

    The Save The Redwoods League and HSU published findings concerning the impact of climate change in the recent research paper Aboveground biomass dynamics and growth efficiency of Sequoia sempervirens forests. They found that within the redwood forests, there are massive amounts of carbon sequestration. “Sequoia forests may be the most effective to [sequester carbon], because they accumulate more above ground biomass than any other vegetation, sustain higher rates of productivity than any other forest, and protect biomass produced via superlative fire- and decay-resistance.”

    Carbon sequestration is “the capture and secure storage of carbon that would otherwise be emitted to, or remain, in the atmosphere,” according to Encyclopedia of Energy, 2004. This means carbon is trapped in forests, soil, or oceans for long periods of time instead of entering the atmosphere. It can be done naturally or artificially, and is becoming a researched effort to delay global warming which is caused by increase of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.

    This is why scientists are so interested in the natural carbon sequestration of the redwood forests. While this seems to be good news, there is still much research to be done.

    NASA scientists have started to create a global map of where carbon is being stored, and how much carbon is being released through deforestation. The redwood forest is only a tiny part of that map.

    Humboldt State University Professor Steve Sillett has worked on the research with Save the Redwoods League.

    “Redwoods can do little to fight climate change as they occupy a TINY proportion of the landscape,” Sillett said in an email. “Even though they are impressive in many respects, too little of the landscape is covered by them to make much difference at the global scale.”

    While the redwoods alone cannot create a global change, scientists are continuing to research the storage of carbon in forests and what this means for the future of the planet.

  • How the wildfires of California are impacting Arcata

    How the wildfires of California are impacting Arcata

    What life is like as climate change begins to worsen

    Waking up in Arcata, CA on Sept. 9, 2020 was similar to an apocalyptic movie. The sky was as orange as street lamps. Cars had their brights on and were dusted in ash. Air quality numbers began to rise.

    Air quality states how polluted the air is to the public, measured by the air quality index, or AQI.

    AQI levels range from good to hazardous, based on numbers from 0-500. As the number rises, the health risks worsen. Any number above 500 is considered beyond hazardous.

    As wildfires continue to rage across California, the air quality has been majorly impacted. California has seen AQI’s above 500 during this wildfire season. In Arcata, despite being 100+ miles away from the nearest wildfire, the skies that were once full of fog are now full of smoke.

    According to AirNow, a site that tracks AQI around the globe, by 12 a.m. on Sept. 11 Arcata had hit a peak AQI of 269.

    The AQI states that air quality above 201 is considered very unhealthy and above 301 is considered hazardous: “Health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected.”

    The HSU campus closed due to the condition of the air. Students were told outdoor activities could not be moved inside due to COVID-19. “Air quality has worsened to very unhealthy levels since Thursday,” said Humboldt State University in an email to its students. “Please note those levels may fluctuate throughout the day.”

    They also warned students to stay indoors with closed windows, use a portable air purifier if possible and wear a mask that filters air rather than just cloth if they must go outside.

    Despite being advised to wear a mask for filtration, most students are wearing cloth masks. HSU freshman, Dev Lebhar, wore a gas mask when they went outside. They had two other gas masks and two respiratory masks in their dorm.

    “The combination of the respiratory disease and the smoke outside means if your lungs get damaged by the smoke and you get COVID, you’re in big trouble,” Lebhar said.

    They claimed they haven’t felt any effects from the smoke, but do struggle to breathe while wearing the gas mask due to its layered filtration.

    According to the CDC, going out in such unsafe conditions can result in similar symptoms to COVID-19, like cough and difficulty breathing. It can be especially bad for those in high risk groups. Other side effects can result in stinging eyes and throat, increased heartbeat, chest pain, irritate respiratory systems and worsen existing heart and lung diseases. Wildfire smoke can even make you more prone to catching the virus COVID-19.

    According to Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit organization on environmental science, China experiences some of the worst air quality, claiming “on bad days the health effects of air pollution are comparable to the harm done smoking three packs per day (60 cigarettes) by every man, woman, and child.” A typical day in China is equivalent to 2.4 cigarettes. “1 cigarette is equivalent to an air pollution of 22 μg/m3 for one day.”

    On September 11 Arcata’s average AQI was 243, according to AirNow. That means the average air quality if you were breathing it all day was about equal to smoking 8.7 cigarettes. These hazardous conditions exist all across California, including areas like Arcata that aren’t necessarily close to a fire.

    The best way to protect yourself is to stay inside. Any exposure to the smoke can damage your health, especially if large amounts of time are spent outside or if you have other existing health conditions.

  • 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.”

  • More Layers, More Protection?

    More Layers, More Protection?

    Humboldt State demands double masking on campus, does more layers equal more protection?

    You’ve probably read the headlines: Wearing a Mask Prevents the Spread of COVID-19. But which mask you choose could affect how protected you and others really are.

    Masks were first mandated in Humboldt County on April 24 when Health Officer Dr. Teresa Frankovich introduced an order requiring all members of the public wear facial coverings while inside a facility other than their residence. Since Humboldt State University was required to close campus prior to that, the university announced safety precautions on Aug. 4, which included wearing face coverings with at least two layers of 100% cotton. This was done in conjunction with the reopening of campus for the fall semester.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urges people to wear masks with at least two or more layers of washable, breathable fabric. Masks need to be worn covering both your mouth and nose at all times.

    Director of News and Information Aileen Yoo stated, “HSU is following recommendations from the CDC. Its website is also a great resource for information on different types of protective gear.”

    Karen Wilkinson, Joint Information Center representative, said, “The county looks to the California Department of Public Health and the CDC for guidance.”

    According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), “studies have shown a double-layer cloth face covering was significantly better at reducing the droplet spread caused by coughing and sneezing, as compared to a single-layer one.”

    Mark Wilson, a microbiology professor at HSU believes that “the main goal of mask wearing is to reduce the emission of droplets and aerosols from a person infected with the coronavirus, by trapping emitted droplets in the fabric. Mask-wearing can reduce the transmission of airborne diseases like coronavirus.”

    Wilson added that when deciding on the type of masks, “the tighter the weave of the material, and the more layers it has, the more effective it will be at filtering out particles.”

    May Chu, an epidemiologist at the Colorado School of Public Health, as quoted by NPR said, “a good option is a mask made of two layers of a tight-weave fabric with a built-in pocket where you can place a filter.”

    A University of California, San Francisco article reported that based on a simulation, researchers predicted that 80 percent of a population who wear masks would reduce the spread of COVID-19 more than being on lockdown. Further, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that 33,000 deaths could be prevented by October 1 if 95 percent of the population wore masks in public.

    Many researchers have looked into N95 masks which are made out of many layers of fine polypropylene fibers. They are able to block at least 95% of small airborne particles but only when worn correctly. Though they are proven to be effective, the short supply should be reserved for medical professionals and first responders.

    A recent Duke study rated a fitted N95 and a three-layer surgical mask as the top two protectors, followed by two layer cotton masks.

    According to an article by Science Daily in July, a team of Australian researchers did a study comparing the effectiveness of single and double layer cloth face coverings. They used LED lighting to film the airborne droplets. Their results showed that double layer face coverings prevented more droplets from spreading.

    HSU students can be provided with double layer masks at the campus Police Department, the first floor of Student and Business Services building, Jolly Giant Commons, College Creek Market and the Parking Kiosk.

  • 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.

  • 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.”

  • 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.”

  • We Need the Wisdom of Wikipedia

    We Need the Wisdom of Wikipedia

    Wikipedia shows collaboration is crucial for accuracy

    We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a class. Your professor wants you to write a paper on the different types of asexual reproduction of the Sanderia malayensis jellyfish or some other arcane drivel. Your first reaction is to hit up Wikipedia. Then comes the kicker. You can’t cite Wikipedia. You scowl and snarl under your breath.

    Wikipedia deserves more credit than we give it. Turning a blind eye to Wikipedia as a reliable source is shortsighted and has implications beyond the realm of encyclopedias. Distrusting Wikipedia represents academia’s unwillingness to open the gates of collaborative truth-seeking.

    Scientific papers, meanwhile, are far from perfect.

    Contrary to what your professors may tell you, Wikipedia, as a source, is statistically just as accurate as published encyclopedias for most of its content. A 2005 study by the Nature research journal, “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head,” found errors in both encyclopedias, but among the entries tested, the difference in accuracy was small.

    Wikipedia, in their signature self-aware style, has reported on their own reliability as well. Wikipedia does not guarantee validity, but it is an invaluable research resource.

    Inaccurate information on Wikipedia is usually corrected quickly. Hyperlinked citations back up nearly every claim made on an entry. The Sanderia malayensis jellyfish’s page hosts six sources from international professionals, biologists and a handbook on poisonous jellies.

    Scientific papers, meanwhile, are far from perfect. Soft sciences have suggested cures to unhappiness or boosts to confidence through simple behavioral change, but as other researchers try to replicate the experiments, their conclusions are significantly different. This indicates a serious error in the scientific method. If science isn’t replicable, science is null.

    In the last few years, a plethora of papers have fallen under criticism after researchers have failed to reproduce their results—it’s been called the replication crisis. The crisis may have a few sources.

    Mistakes happen on Wikipedia too and it is always essential to be critical of anything read.

    First, it’s not hard to get published. The University of World News said in 2018 that too much scientific research is being published. It estimated nearly 30,000 scientific journals are in circulation, publishing approximately two million articles each year. They said the volume burdens the peer review system and makes it dysfunctional.

    Second, the media likes to be the first to report on news, including science news. Journalists can be wrong and often are when it comes to reporting on science, especially when they’re grasping to be the first to report on new findings. These bad practices report inaccurate, unconfirmed, flawed science to their audience before the study can be replicated.

    Mistakes happen on Wikipedia too and it is always essential to be critical of anything read. Search around, find supporting articles for any claim made and be aware that there may be flaws. But be able to recognize valid and sound knowledge.

    Critical review by the editors of Wikipedia—who can be any person—is what makes Wikipedia so powerful and so accurate. It’s the world’s largest encyclopedia—about 50 times larger than Britannica—with over six million entries and over 200,000 contributors. Wikipedia should serve as a banner for collaboration—especially between diverse groups.

    In “The wisdom of polarized crowds,” a 2019 study from Nature Human Behavior, researchers found politically-diverse teams created more accurate entries than teams with less political diversity.

    Wikipedia comes in clutch, often. Using it as a source may be frowned upon by professors, but a short chat with most of them and they’ll say Wikipedia is an excellent place to start. The website is a tool, not a cheat code. It would be ignorant to ignore it, but if it’s used appropriately, maybe, just maybe, we could learn something about jellyfish.

  • 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.”

  • 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.”

  • Explore Nature Through Your Tastebuds

    Explore Nature Through Your Tastebuds

    Forage for free food locally while learning about your environment

    If you’ve ever dreamed of living off the grid and growing your own food, foraging is the next best thing to fulfill that desire.

    Foraging is a fun and rewarding way to immerse yourself in your local environment. Here in Humboldt County, there are plenty of opportunities for outdoor food morsel scouring. You can find dozens of wild plants that are both useful and edible, from anise, dandelions and yarrow to cattails.

    If you know what you’re looking for, urban food foraging is quite simple. Some yards in Arcata have fruit trees that are tempting to take from, but be sure to ask for permission before picking.

    If you don’t know where to start looking, you can use the Falling Fruit website or app. This site features a global map with geotagged locations of edible and useful items within your area. When you identify something new, you can mark it on the map to help others locate your foraging find.

    If you want to look for wild herbs, fruits and vegetables beyond the cityscape, take a stroll to a park or the community forest and chances are you’ll find something forage-worthy, whether it’s morel mushrooms, blackberries or ginkgo.

    If you aren’t well-versed in fungi identification, there are options in the wild for food finding beyond the typical mushroom hunting. It’s best to steer clear of gathering mushrooms unless you are with an expert or have definitive knowledge of a particular type you are searching for.

    Foraging is a helpful way to inform yourself about natural food cycles. We often forget about the different produce seasons as grocery stores usually supply all types of seasonal produce year-round, but foraging for your own food helps you learn when produce is ready for harvesting.

    Explore beyond the city streets and forested land for scrumptious surprises from the sea.

    If you’re foraging for sea life, ensure you’re legally licensed to do so. You can forage for loads of coastal edibles like seaweed, snails and goose barnacles, but many items require a fishing license to take as well as prior knowledge of eligible sizes and harvesting limits.

    Make sure to have the proper equipment for specific foraging needs. When coastal foraging, it’s necessary to have have measuring equipment for the sea life you’re searching for to verify your finds are within size regulations. Bring a bucket for your finds and a knife or prying tools like a spudger to scrape off treats like limpets or sea snails. Gloves and knee pads are useful, but not necessary as long as you’re cautious on slippery terrain.

    Be aware of red tides and other contaminants that may affect coastal harvests. Humboldt and Mendocino County undergo an annual mussel quarantine form May 1 to Oct. 31 which prohibits mussel gathering to protect people from shellfish poisoning due to oceanic toxins. Avoid this concern by foraging for univalve organisms which don’t filter throughout their body and have singular shells, like periwinkles or black tegula snails.

    Foraging for insects can also be an exciting addition to your food gathering excursions. There are hundreds of species of edible insects including crickets, weaver ants and silkworms.

    Identifying edible insects can be tricky if you aren’t completely sure of what to search for. The most advisable way to consume insects would be through home cultivation of a species like mealworms or crickets.

    Don’t ever consume something that you aren’t 100% sure is safe to eat, whether it’s a fungus, plant or creature. Be sure to know how to properly identify items before your search.

    In addition, prepare foraged food properly. Make sure to wash findings thoroughly and cook it correctly so as to not have an upset stomach.

    Remember, do not forage on private land, or at state and national parks. It’s illegal to take items including rocks, wood, berries and nuts from these parks as they’re protected by state and federal conservation regulations.

  • Science Behind Brewing Beer

    Science Behind Brewing Beer

    Crowded in a warmly lit apartment, I sat huddled over a great big steaming silver pot with my friends, Seamus Begley and Sam Kirby, as we waited in anticipation to brew another batch of beer.

    Since the brewing process takes a few hours, we started early in the evening. Begley had gathered the four basic ingredients: malted barley, hops, yeast and water.

    According to the the Youtube channel It’s Okay to Be Smart, the basic beer is any alcoholic beverage made from fermented cereal grains, usually preserved and flavored with hops. It was a good guide to start, but Begley and Kirby recommend reading books to master the process.

    To begin, we mixed up a batch of wheat and barley, threw it into a giant tea-bag like grain pouch and set it to steep. This is mash. We were activating enzymes in the grain, which turn the grain starches into fermentable sugars. Within a piece of grain, enzymes are proteins which, when activated, accelerate the deconstruction of starch. A starch is a complex molecule which, when divided into its component bits, becomes a sugar called glucose. The glucose will turn into alcohol later.

    beerrrrr

    The product of the steeped (not boiled) mash is a tea-like liquid called wort. Wort is essentially sugar water which will be the home and food for yeast. It also tastes delicious. We rinsed the grain sack to collect any residual glucose, drained the thing into our cooking pot and set it aside. We were left with a pot full of wort.

    Wort, immediately after rinsing the grain pouch, was not as concentrated as we would like it. Ideally a wort is super saturated with sugar, meaning there is a really high ratio of sugar to water. Concentrating the sugars will make the wort tastier and nutritious for the yeast. To achieve this concentration, boil the wort between 15 to 90 minutes. Excess water evaporates and leaves behind concentrated sugar water. Boiling also provides an essential service to the beer making process, sanitation.

    Sanitation is an essential part of brewing. The grain itself is covered in different bacteria and other yeast that eat sugar, but their byproducts taint the flavor of beer. We sanitized everything from the pots to the bottles to the stirring sticks with a chemical called Starsun, but diluted bleach works as well. Beyond that, boiling the wort kills off these other organisms. Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize.

    During the boil, we add hops. If you drink beer, you’ve probably heard of hops, and if you drink IPA’s, you’ve definitely tasted hops. They’re the bitter, flowery, citrusy flavors in beer. Hops contribute to the flavor of beer, the shelf life of beer and the scent of beer. We had many options to choose from, but this particular batch of hops was grown by Begley’s grandmother.

    Next, the beer needs cooled as quickly as possible so we could add the yeast without killing them. Yeast is a critical ingredient because it is a fermenter. Fermentation is the process when yeast converts to glucose in the wort to ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide gas — giving the beer both its alcohol content and its carbonation. When the yeast are first added to the wort, Begley took a sample and measured its specific gravity using a hydrometer. The tool told Begley the density of sugar in the water, and how much alcohol would be created by yeast.

    The yeast and wort mixture is then poured into a sanitized fermenter or carboy. An airlock is attached to the top of the fermenter to allow CO2 to escape from the bottle. The fermenter is then stored in a dark spot where the temperature is desirable for the yeast to do its thing. We left it there for a couple of weeks before bottling.

    Once the fermentation was completely finished, we prepared to bottle. We poured the beer into a second sanitized jug, added a small amount of sugar and yeast for carbonation, and then siphoned the final beer mixture into bottles. The siphon is important because we didn’t want too much air in our beer. Finally, we crimped a sanitized cap on the bottles and let them sit for a couple more weeks.

    After that tediously long wait, we popped them open and enjoyed the sweet, sweet product of our labor. It was definitely worth it.

  • Blackouts Blow

    Blackouts Blow

    Dry vegetation and high winds were a major factor in PG&E shutoff

    The morning of Oct. 8, Humboldt County residents were notified that Pacific Gas & Electric may shut off power county-wide. HSU students and faculty began rapidly preparing for the possible outages, but some wondered what forced the utility giant to turn off the power.

    Leading up to the blackout, rumors spread as people speculated why PG&E decided shutting off power was the best option, and others wondered how long the outage could last. It seemed there was a lack of communication, as only some local professionals seemed to know the details.

    On the night of Oct. 9, HSU Facilities and Management employee Brian Wheeler was responsible for filling up HSU’s generator. The diesel generator was the only thing standing between powerless students and the cold, dark night.

    Wheeler said he had heard about an algorithm PG&E made to inform them when to shut off the power. This was confirmed by Megan McFarland, a spokesperson for the company. McFarland said no single factor drives a Public Safety Power Shutoff since each situation is unique.

    PG&E carefully reviews many criteria when determining if power should be turned off for safety. These factors generally include, but are not limited to:

      • A Red Flag Warning declared by the National Weather Service.
      • Low humidity levels, generally 20% and below.
      • Forecasted sustained winds above 25 mph and wind gusts in excess of approximately 45 mph, depending on location and site-specific conditions such as temperature, terrain and local climate.
      • Condition of dry fuel on the ground and live vegetation (moisture content).
      • On-the-ground, real-time observations from PG&E’s Wildfire Safety Operations Center and observations from PG&E field crews.

    To get a better grasp on the situation and its factors, The Lumberjack contacted the Woodley Island National Oceanic and Aeronautic Administration. Meteorologist Jeff Tonkin understood the specifics and why PG&E could be forced to make such a decision, but believed that Humboldt County wasn’t initially a part of the plan for a reason.

    “PG&E shuts down based on wind speed if it is projected to cause a disruption or a failure,” Tonkin said. “Locally in Eureka, the power wasn’t shut down because of local high winds. We’re just collateral damage.”

    Tonkin said NOAA had meetings with PG&E meteorologists in the past, but PG&E doesn’t consult NOAA for weather information. While getting in contact with one of PG&E’s scientists would likely be key to understanding why the power was shutoff officially, Deanna Contreras, another PG&E spokesperson, answered the call instead.

    Contreras said, for this particular shutoff, the weather patterns were somewhat unique and widespread. Many forecasters compared the conditions to the devastating conditions from October 2017.

    In response to the rapidly changing environmental conditions in our state, beginning with this year’s wildfire season, PG&E expanded its Public Safety Power Shutoff program to include all electric lines that pass through high fire-threat areas – both distribution and transmission.

    Cotreras said there weren’t any PG&E meteorologists available but had plenty of details about PG&E’s weather system.

    “Beyond PSPS information, weather geeks will find a lot to love about the new weather page,” Contreras said. “With PG&E’s weather map at your fingertips you’ll be able to check humidity, precipitation, temperatures, wind speeds and wind gusts across 70,000 square miles of Northern and Central California.”

    Contreras said the page offers a seven-day regional forecast. PG&E’s Wildfire Safety Operations Center team monitors all these conditions and evaluates whether to proactively turn off electric power lines, in the interest of public safety, if extreme fire danger conditions are forecasted.

    McFarland said a lot of PG&E employees live and work in regions that are affected by the shutoff and that she understands how frustrating it is to have the power turned off. She said the decision was not made lightly.

    “We want customers to know that although you may not live or work in a high fire-threat area,” McFarland said, “Your power may be shut off if the line serving your community relies upon a line that runs through an area experiencing extreme fire danger conditions.”

  • Sea Level Raises Risks in Humboldt Bay

    Sea Level Raises Risks in Humboldt Bay

    Humboldt is experiencing the fastest rate of water elevation on the West Coast

    Humboldt Bay is ground zero for sea level rise. In the last 100 years, the sea level rose 18 inches. This the most rapid rate of sea level rise on the West Coast.

    Humboldt County Environmental planner Aldaron Laird has 30 years of experience and spent ten years mapping and analyzing Humboldt Bay through a series of vulnerability assessments to help prepare our community for the inevitable impacts of sea level rise.

    “All the damage is going to occur with two and three feet of sea level rise,” Laird said. “It doesn’t really matter when that’s going to occur. We basically have to prepare for that now.”

    Laird reported that the rate of rise will continue to increase. A two or three foot increase in the average elevation of high water will breach the miles of diked shoreline as early as 2030.

    “All the damage is going to occur with two and three feet of sea level rise. It doesn’t really matter when that’s going to occur. We basically have to prepare for that now.”

    Aldaron Laird, Humboldt County Environmental Planner

    “When we go from two feet to three feet of water elevation change, it’s the tipping point in Humboldt Bay,” Laird said. “The 23 diked hydro logic units that we have on the Bay, all of them will be over topped when we go from 2 to 3 feet. So everything behind that will be impacted.”

    The land behind the dikes is privately owned agriculture, residential areas, business parks and industrial assets, not to mention municipal water lines, PG&E gas lines, waste-water treatment lines and electrical transmission towers. The threat is legitimate and significant.

    “The major urban areas that are most at risk are King Salmon and Fields Landing,” Laird said. “They are at risk straight from sea level rise. Half a meter to a meter, and those areas will be underwater. They aren’t behind dikes.”

    Linda Gill is the manager of Gill’s by the Bay, a restaurant located on the King Salmon waterfront. Gill said she hadn’t thought too much about the threat her restaurant faced as sea levels continue to rise.

    Projected Inundation Area (Stillwater) on Humboldt Bay for Mean Monthly Maximum Tide with 6.6 feet (2.0 meters) of Sea Level Rise. | Photo from Humboldt Bay Area Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment

    “Right now we are just going with the flow,” she said in a phone interview.

    Wave energy had been diverted by the north and south jetties to an area called Booner Point, the site of an old PG&E nuclear power plant. There are still nuclear fuel rods stored there.

    “They decommissioned it, and they stored all the nuclear fuel rods 115 feet back from the bluff on their property with all that wave energy focused on that bluff,” Laird said. “It’s experiencing the highest rate of erosion anywhere on Humboldt Bay, and those nuclear fuel rods are going to be there forever. It’s probably the stupidest place on Humboldt Bay to locate a nuclear fuel storage site.”

    Jennifer Kalt, the director of Humboldt Baykeeper, said the county needs to be prioritizing protection rather than considering potential hazards.

    “Instead of fighting, local governments and state agencies need to work together to make a plan,” Kalt said.

    “Instead of fighting, local governments and state agencies need to work together to make a plan.”

    Jennifer Kalt, Director of Humboldt Baykeeper

    Kalt said the planning process seems to have reached a stalemate as local and state jurisdictions fail to agree on a comprehensive plan. The unique issue about Humboldt Bay is that the California Coastal Commission has first and final say on improvements to the shoreline.

    “So we have this conundrum on Humboldt Bay that I think the Coastal Commission has really never faced anywhere else in California,” Laird said. “The entire shoreline of Humboldt Bay is in state jurisdiction. If the county said they wanted to rebuild all the dikes, they couldn’t. They would have to ask the Coastal Commission and the Coastal Commission could say no.”

    Laird has submitted the final sea level vulnerability assessments. Now the individual actors need to come together in unison to take action and move beyond the planning phase and into the action phase.

    “Anything that can be moved should be moved,” Laird said. “Anything that can be hardened, redone or redesigned so that it can accommodate being submerged in saltwater should happen.”

  • Get Ahead of the Humboldt Hack

    Get Ahead of the Humboldt Hack

    Vitamin D and zinc can help the immune system battle the common cold and the flu

    In addition to getting your annual flu shot, there are other things to do to protect yourself from the flu virus.

    The flu spreads most commonly through the air, which is why sneezing and coughing, in a hygienic way, help to prevent the sickness from spreading. A study published in the journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infection has concluded that the flu virus can stay on unwashed human hands for up to 30 minutes.

    “It was possible to recover infectious influenza A (H3N2) and A (H1N1) 2009 viruses for a period of time extending up to 30 min,” Yves Thomas, the lead researcher, wrote.

    The likelihood of contracting the flu virus rises significantly with hand-to-face contact, allowing the virus access to mucous membranes.

    As always, eating fruits and vegetables and moderate exercise will give you the best odds to beat sickness, but once you start feeling the symptoms, what can you do?

    Vitamin C, in conjunction with other vitamins and minerals such as zinc and vitamin D, can be used to strengthen the immune system for a small period of time, but over long stretches proved no more effective than placebo.

    Harri Hemilä, Ph.D. tested 1-2 grams/day of Vitamin C and found that the likelihood of catching a cold dropped.

    “The duration of colds was reduced by 8% (3% to 12%),” Hemilä wrote. “The severity of colds was also reduced by regular vitamin C administration.”

    Athletes can especially benefit from regular vitamin C supplementation. The vitamin C acts as an antioxidant for athletes as it works to potentially reverse oxidative damage that occurs with exercising. The article states that vitamin C may be useful for those exposed to brief periods of severe physical exercise.

    Mariangelea Rondanelli and other researchers investigated the effects three compounds have on colds. Vitamin C, zinc and vitamin D seem to be the holy trinity of risk reduction for cold and flu. Once symptoms occur, these have been shown to lessen the severity and length of sickness.

    “Considering zinc, the supplementation may shorten the duration of colds by approximately 33%,” Rondanelli wrote. “Common cold patients may be instructed to try zinc within 24 hours of onset of symptoms. As for vitamin D, the supplementation protected against the common cold overall, considering baseline levels and age.”

    Of course, not everyone has the same reaction to dosages, and it’s possible these might not help everyone fight sickness. A change in diet can increase zinc levels easily. Eating an extra serving of nuts or seeds at breakfast is more inviting and customizable compared to buying zinc lozenges, packets or pills.

    Vitamin D can be obtained through the sun, but here in Arcata that option leaves just as the worst of the flu season hits. A small supplement of vitamin D may help with more than just immune issues, and many Americans are vitamin D deficient without even realizing it.

    Beyond that, one would have to eat a lot of oranges to match the one to two grams of daily vitamin C that was tested in the study, but an increased intake of any amount wouldn’t be wasted. EmergenC, Airborne and other supplements will deliver a dense dose of the vitamin. Hemilä said patients should try out an increase in vitamin C.

    “Nevertheless, given the consistent effect of vitamin C on the duration and severity of colds in the regular supplementation studies, and the low cost and safety,” Hemilä wrote. “It may be worthwhile for common cold patients to test on an individual basis whether therapeutic vitamin C is beneficial for them.”