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Environment
Spray Safe- Program to prevent pesticide exposure
By Mayra Barrios
Stockton, CA – Local growers and farmworkers participated in the “Spray Safe” program to prevent pesticide exposure incidents on February 8, 2012, at the Robert J. Cabral Ag Center.
If you missed it: The State of the Union Address
Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address
United States Capitol Washington, D.C. 9:10 P.M. ET
SOUTH STOCKTON SIDEWALKS IMPROVEMENT PROJECT BEGINS
STOCKTON, CA — Monday, January 23, 2012, a public meeting will be held to learn about the South Stockton Sidewalks Improvement Project. The meeting, sponsored by the San Joaquin County Department of Public Works, will be held from 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. at the Kennedy Community Center, 2800 South D Street, Stockton.
Solar Energy Harvesting Breakthrough
MERCED, Calif. — A team of researchers at the University of California, Merced, have redesigned luminescent solar concentrators to be more efficient at sending sunlight to solar cells.
The advancement could be an important breakthrough for solar energy harvesting, said UC Merced physics Professor Sayantani Ghosh, who led the project.
“We tweaked the traditional flat design for luminescent solar concentrators and made them into cylinders,” Ghosh said. “The results of this architectural redesign surprised us, as it significantly improves their efficiency.”
The main problem preventing luminescent concentrators from being used commercially is that they have high rates of self-absorption, Ghosh said, meaning they absorb a significant amount of the light they produce instead of transporting it to the solar cells.
The research team showed the problem can be addressed by changing the shape of the concentrator. They discovered a hollow cylindrical solar concentrator is a better design compared with a flat concentrator or a solid cylinder concentrator. The hollow cylinders absorb more sunlight while having lower self-absorption losses.
Luminiscent solar concentrators are designed to absorb solar radiation over a broad range of colors and re-emit it over a narrower range (for example, only red), a process known as down-converting. This light is transported to solar cells for photocurrent generation. The quantum dots embedded in the concentrator are the materials that carry out this color conversion.
The biggest advantage they offer over traditional solar cells is that they can work even in diffuse sunlight, like on cloudy days. And because of this, they do not need to directly face the sun at all times, eliminating the need for tracking mechanisms.
Ghosh said the discovery could make commercially viable luminescent solar concentrators a reality, especially because the design enhances performance while using the same number of quantum dots, therefore without being more costly.
This saves on infrastructure costs and also opens up the possibility that the collectors can be integrated onto vertical surfaces like walls and windows. The next step is to develop a large array of hollow cylindrical luminescent solar concentrators and track the efficiency of the panel.
Richard Inman, Georgiy Shcherbatyuk, Dmitri Medvedko and Ajay Gopinathan are the other members of the team that conducted this research.
Inman served as the lead researcher while he was an undergraduate at UC Merced, an example of the hands-on learning opportunities available to students. He’s now a graduate student at UC San Diego. Medvedko is an undergraduate student, and Shcherbatyuk is a graduate student. Gopinathan is a physics professor.
The team published a paper on the work, “Cylindrical luminescent solar concentrators with near-infrared quantum dots,” in the journal Optics Express last fall.
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Information provided by UC Merced
Growing Bare Root Roses
Marcy Hardeman, Growing Bare Root Roses-UC Master Gardeners
Bare root roses are dormant plants that are sold with no soil around the roots; instead, roots are surrounded by moist wood shavings.
The 2011 Top 10 Stories Most Read
As we begin 2012, Bilingual Weekly’s newsroom extracted the top 10 most read stories during the last 352 days. Please note that the top 10 stories were not selected by the Bilingual Weekly’s staff, our team ran the www.bilingualweekly.com English website’s analytics’ report which evaluates the hits received daily and it ranked each story from the highest number of hits to the lowest ranking in local news coverage. The following stories are briefs of the top 10 stories you, our readers clicked on.
City of Tracy Shares Proper Holiday Trash Disposal
(TRACY, CA) – The City of Tracy in partnership with Tracy Delta Solid Waste Management, Inc.
Study Shows Sugarcane Ethanol Production Causes Air Pollution
UC Merced researchers show burning of sugarcane fields prior to harvest can create more pollution than previously thought, detracting from benefits of the alternative fuel source
MERCED, Calif. — The burning of sugarcane fields prior to harvest for ethanol production can create air pollution that detracts from the biofuel’s overall sustainability, according to research published recently by a team of researchers led by scientists at the University of California, Merced.
Scientists Propose Thinning Sierra Forests to Enhance Water Runoff
Less water used by trees would result in more runoff, which could benefit farmers and water managers statewide; Project will examine impacts on forest health and other ecosystem services
MERCED, Calif. — Runoff from the Sierra Nevada, a critical source of California’s water supply, could be enhanced by thinning forests to historical conditions, according to a report from a team of scientists with the University of California, Merced, UC Berkeley and the Environmental Defense Fund.
The Growing Trend in Low- Energy Home Building
By Mayra Barrios, Bilingual Weekly
If receiving $0.05 per an aluminum can when recycling does not encourage people to live a low-energy life style, the idea of saving up to 2,000 per year on utilities will probably do so. This is the promise of Visionary Home Builders (VHB) of Stockton on their second green project, “Tierra del Sol” a neighborhood of 22 affordable energy green homes. The develop is located at 4701 Farmington Road in Stockton.
A story of survival: few live to share
STOCKTON, CA — On November 14, 2011 Ian Woodall will present “Tao of Everest” a storytelling event at Stockton’s REI store on Pacific Avenue. After surviving the climb, Ian will share the story only a few have survived to tell about it at 7 PM.
Time to plant trees
UC Master Gardeners
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, CA – all is a good time to plant new trees, because the cooler weather gives them some time to become established before winter sets in. Trees are the backbone of the garden, and the type of tree and location you select should be chosen very carefully.
Last 2011 free fee day in National Parks
CALIFORNIA- The final U.S. National Park service Fee Free Day for 2011 is going to be Veterans Day Weekend November 11-13. The fee free days includes 100 National Parks that usually have entrance fees. In California these include Cabrillo National Monument, Death Valley National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Lava Beds National Monument, Muir Woods National Monument, Pinnacles National Monument, Sequoia National Park, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, Yosemite National Park.
The Fee waiver includes entrance fees, commercial tour fees, and transportation entrance fees. Other fees such as reservation, camping, tours, concession and fees collected by third parties are not included unless stated otherwise.
Public Trust Recommendations & the Delta: How much water is that?
The Sacramento River
www.bilingualweekly.com | By Deanna Lynn Wulff
California’s Chinook salmon came back this fall, due in part to good ocean conditions and abundant water, but the Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast, is still in critical condition. “Thirty-three species are endangered, and likely to go extinct within the next 25 to 50 years, if not sooner,” said Dr. Peter Moyle, associate director of UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “Many of these are salmon and trout species, and most of the species are found only in California, so they are part of our heritage. If they disappear, they are lost, not only to California, but to the world, forever.”California’s Bay-Delta covers 1300 square miles, is home to 750 species of plants and animals, and is where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers meet and flow into the San Francisco Bay. But its ecosystem is collapsing.
Sanitation in the Garden
www.bilingualweekly.com | By: Marcy Sousa, UC Master Gardener Program Coordinator
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, CA- Like people, plants need a healthy environment.
To reduce our chances of becoming ill, we get plenty of fresh air and clean our homes to remove bugs and bacteria. Yet we neglect our plants by leaving fruit, fallen leaves, weeds, dead branches, even dead plants in our gardens!
Fruit and fallen leaves are ideal locations for pests and diseases to harbor. Weeds and dense vegetation under trees and shrubs provide hiding places for pests and reduce airflow, increasing humidity and the likelihood of fungal diseases. Good sanitation is important for optimum plant health. Our summer fruit and vegetable crops are starting to dwindle. You may notice an abundance of fallen fruit and leaves under your trees. One question we often receive in our office is whether you should leave the fruit to compost or clean it up. Sanitation is necessary to prevent disease and pests and reduce the needs for sprays.
Often times fruit left on or around the tree will not rot completely. These fruit will shrivel up into a small ball and are called mummies. Although they may look dry and harmless these mummies will produce fungal spores during the spring and summer that can infect new fruit. Brown rot on peaches and summer rots on apples can quickly spread and may be uncontrollable, even with fungicide applications.
What you can do
Here are a few simple steps to help reduce both the severity of infections and continuing infestation by pests and diseases.
• Remove damaged and diseased branches.
• Prune plants for better air circulation. For dense plants or plants with persistent foliar fungal diseases, winter is a good time to do some thinning.
• Keep areas under trees clean. Keep the stem free of piled mulch, weeds or other competing plants. Keep weeds and grass cut short under the tree canopy.
• Remove dead plants as soon as possible. A dead plant provides a home for insects that may spread diseases to other plants.
• Rake leaves after they drop and before the first rains arrive. Because of the high rate of infection in leaves of fruit trees, ornamental cherries, ornamental plums and dogwoods, we do not recommend composting these leaves. Put them in yard waste bins for pickup. The leaves of most other plants make good additions to your compost.
Fruit trees Several additional steps are necessary to reduce disease and pest problems in fruit trees.
• Remove diseased flowers that remain on the tree after fruit set.
• Remove early fallen fruit and thin remaining fruit if necessary. Dispose of fruit.
• After harvest, remove and destroy overwintering fruit (mummies) in the tree and on the ground to eliminate sources of disease and insects next season.
If you have any questions about sanitation, fruit tree management or whether your leaves are suitable for compost, call the UC Master Gardeners at (209) 953-6112 or visit our web-site at http://sjmastergardeners.ucdavis.edu.
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THANK YOU
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