URI hosts series of events on environment

Celebrate Earth Day all month with lectures, films, festival

Todd McLeish

The University of Rhode Island will celebrate Earth Day throughout the month of April with a series of events and activities for students and the general public, sponsored by the URI Office of Sustainability and various student organizations on campus.

All of the following events are free and open to the public:

TONIGHT, April 5 at 5 p.m. – A screening of the documentary A Plastic Ocean, which explores the fragile state of the world’s oceans, followed by a panel discussion about plastics pollution. In the Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences, 140 Flagg Road, Room 100. Sponsored by the URI Coastal Society.

Call in the hawk

Protecting crops with predators instead of poisons

By Andy McGlashen for Environmental Health News

Hawks will take all kinds of small critters, including chipmunks.
(Photo by Will Collette)

Summer carloads of sweet-toothed tourists, flush with cash and seeking local pies and jams, are an economic godsend in northwest Michigan's cherry-growing region. 

Other hungry visitors are less welcome—voles, weevils, fruit flies, grasshoppers and pest birds do significant damage to local crops.

Cedar waxwings, American robins and other birds alone cost the state's tart and sweet cherry growers more than $4.3 million a year. To protect their bottom lines from nuisance birds, fruit farmers deploy a quirky arsenal.

Propane cannons frighten flocks (and neighbors) with epic blasts. Speakers blare recordings of bird distress calls. Balloons with menacing eyes loom overhead. But the clever birds soon learn these are empty threats. Their feast resumes.

Since the early 1990s, though, some local orchardists have had better success by enlisting natural helpers with real bite: American kestrels, small falcons that eagerly move in when farmers put up nest boxes and prey on a range of agricultural pests. 

For farmers, the predators provide an important service on the cheap. And for kestrels—North America's most widespread falcon, but a species whose numbers have plunged by nearly half in the past half-century—the setup provides a cozy home and ideal habitat.

#TurnOff10

Frank Coletta Cements His Legacy 
BY BETH COMERY IN THE PROVIDENCE DAILY DOSE

So this is how Frank Coletta wants to end his career? As a cynical collaborator in the attempted authoritarian take-down of American democracy? Why not just retire — and speak out.



By now we have all seen the reports about Sinclair Broadcasting forcing its local on-air newsreaders to recite verbatim the Sinclair/Trump “fake news” manifesto.


Coletta performed with Alison Bologna for the WJAR Channel segment. (Complete text here.)

***Please Note: Here is a partial list of Turnto10 advertisers to boycott! Cardi’s Furniture, Jordan’s Furniture, Tarbox Motors, Cumberland Farms, Subway, Acura Warwick, Grieco Honda. (I compiled this list myself within the last week.)***

Courts pull back on age discrimination

Eroding protection under the law

By Peter Gosselin for ProPublica

At the age of 50, the federal law that seeks to protect older American workers from age bias has been enfeebled by court decisions that have widened loopholes for employers and narrowed the ways employees can seek redress.

When Congress enacted the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in 1967, the law was treated as something of an addendum to the Civil Rights Act, which had been passed three years earlier and banned bias on the basis of race, gender, religion and, later on, sexual orientation, among other categories. 

The 1967 law effectively added age to the list. Courts and lawyers assumed that key provisions of each act applied to the other.

In years to come, lawmakers would strengthen some elements of the measure, for example largely banning mandatory retirement and requiring employers to provide more disclosures about the size of their layoffs and ages of those being let go.

For more cartoons by Mike Luckovich, CLICK HERE.

Yes

Helping farmers to survive and thrive

Land prices, labor issues make farming challenging in RI

Todd McLeish

At a meeting at the University of Rhode Island agronomy farm,
URI Extension Agent Andy Radin (on ladder) teaches local farmers
about a trellis system for growing tomatoes. (Photo by Heather Faubert)

Farming in Rhode Island is a challenging career choice, especially for those just entering the industry, but many farmers are still succeeding thanks to creative marketing and youthful energy.

That’s the message from Heather Faubert and Andy Radin, research associates at the University of Rhode Island’s Cooperative Extension, who serve as consultants to local farmers on a wide variety of issues. 

They were responding to recent reports that Cottrell Homestead Dairy Farm in South Kingstown was selling its cows, leaving just eight dairy farms left in the state – down from 400 in the 1950s.

Scientists develop tiny tooth-mounted sensors that can track what you eat

Wireless real-time monitoring could add precision to the linkage between diet and health

Tufts University

The 2x2 mm sensor monitors ingested fluids and transmits information wirelessly. Credit: Fio Omenetto, Ph.D., Tufts University

Monitoring in real time what happens in and around our bodies can be invaluable in the context of health care or clinical studies, but not so easy to do. 

That could soon change thanks to new, miniaturized sensors developed by researchers at the Tufts University School of Engineering that, when mounted directly on a tooth and communicating wirelessly with a mobile device, can transmit information on glucose, salt and alcohol intake. 

In research to be published soon in the journal Advanced Materials, researchers note that future adaptations of these sensors could enable the detection and recording of a wide range of nutrients, chemicals and physiological states.

Dr. Martin Luther King died 50 years ago today

How Trump now finds he can’t find a qualified lawyer to defend him from Mueller

Karma Reaches Out and Smacks Trump

By Samuel Warde

Trump’s legal team – if you can call it that – turns out to be no match for Robert Mueller and his team of crack lawyers and investigators.

Former criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney, Seth Abramson, weighed in on Trump’s problems regarding legal representation earlier this week, followed up by a detailed analysis of Trump’s defenselessness by Slate.

Abramson’s Analysis

As Abramson tweeted, “Trump effectively has no lawyers: (1) McGahn is a witness against him. (2) He no longer trusts Cobb and discusses firing him. (3) Dowd resigned. (4) DiGenova and Toensing chose not to join the team. (5) Sekulow is more activist than lawyer. (6) Cohen is mired in scandal.”

Central Falls used as Trump guinea pig

Trial run for plan to sabotage the 2020 Census

By Sam Adler-Bell for The Intercept

Mayor James Diossa meets with members of Fuerza Laboral

CENTRAL FALLS, IN Providence County, Rhode Island, is home to 19,000 people living shoulder to shoulder on 1.2 square miles of hard New England earth. The majority of its residents are Latino: 72 percent speak a language other than English — mostly Spanish, but also Portuguese and French Creole. 

More than a third are foreign born and slightly less than that live below the poverty line. Nine percent of the population are children under 5 — 43 percent higher than the national average. The median household income is $29,108.

These statistics identify Central Falls as one of the hardest-to-count areas in the country for the purposes of the census. Central Falls is a gateway community, filled with recent immigrants, many undocumented. Some residents live multiple families to a home. For work, they shuttle back and forth across the state line to Massachusetts, where the minimum wage is $0.90 higher. 

Residency is fluid and impermanent. Heiny Maldonado, the director of Fuerza Laboral, a local workers’ center, said her group’s membership is “constantly changing. So many workers come and go.”

Central Falls, along with the rest of Providence County, is the site of the Census Bureau’s one and only “dress rehearsal” for the 2020 census — the one chance the bureau has to test its systems and methodology ahead of the nationwide count two years from now. 

In one sense, Providence County is a good choice for a trial run: The obstacles in cities like Central Falls mirror those of the nation. But as civil rights leaders, census experts, and Democrats warn that the Trump administration is sabotaging the 2020 census, mayors and community leaders in Rhode Island fear the 2018 test has been set up to fail.

Central Falls Mayor James Diossa called an emergency meeting at City Hall with other Providence County mayors, Rhode Island’s attorney general and secretary of state, and community leaders from the ACLU, the NAACP, Common Cause, and the Latino Policy Institute. The agenda was simple: how to salvage the Census Bureau’s trial run.

EDITOR'S NOTE: On April 2nd, Central Falls Mayor Diossa led a news conference featuring a group of Rhode Island mayors, as wells as the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and local community organizations to denounce Trump administration plans to undercount immigrants. Under the Constitution and by law, ALL persons living in the United States, regardless of their status, must be counted. - Will Collette

Instead of Facebook, try this

For more cartoons by Jen Sorenson, CLICK HERE.

Kittens vs. guns

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

How To Prevent Nuisance Problems With Black Bears As Their Populations Increase

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) reminds residents to remove potential food sources from their properties as black bears emerge from hibernation. 

Increasing bear populations in the region have led to more frequent sightings – especially in rural areas of Providence, Kent, and Washington counties.

Given the scarcity of food in the spring, black bears may visit bird feeders, beehives, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, and compost piles in search of food. 

Black bears are generally shy and will avoid interactions with humans. 

However, they can become dependent on backyard food sources, if readily available, and quickly become a nuisance. 

Black bears have an excellent sense of smell and will investigate odors they identify as an easy meal – and will regularly frequent a site once a food source is identified.

DEM reminds the public to become "bear aware" by:

Kitty of the Week

Meet Allison

Animal Rescue RI

Meet Allison, a pretty panther who is in search of her forever home.

This girl loves to explore and can be both laid back and playful.

She loves chasing the laser, as well as snuggling up in her favorite bed.

She especially loves her perch by the window and would make the purrfect watch cat.