Whet your appetite for research into interesting new enterprises for smaller farms with a review of the program booklets from Small Farms Field Days in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and the 2011 Small Farms Field Day.

Once you've done that, mark your calendar for the 2013 Field Day: Thursday, June 20, when The Cooperative Extension Program at A&T is hosting the SAES’s 12th Annual Small Farms Field Day at the University Farm from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Extension demonstrations and topics for discussion this year include:
• Organic pesticides
• Cucumber grafting
• Personal protective equipment for noise and respiratory hazards
• Crops for biofuel
• Sheep and goat forages
• Pastured pork
• Growing plants in test tubes

Although there is no registration fee for Small Farms Field Day, those planning to attend should get their names on the registration list, which they can do by contacting Alexis Gaines at 336.285.4661.

For the current issue of the Alumni Times, the staff at University Relations selected Emilee Christopher of the Class of 2009 for one of the issue's "Aggies in the News." Christopher is a child development and family studies major who went on to become the director of operations at Girls Prep Lower East Side Middle School in New York.

According to the Alumni Times: "Throughout her life Christopher has been faced with a surplus of choices that have put her decision making skills to the test. It all began in 2006 with the help of an associate professor in the School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Dr. Thurman Guy [of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences]. Dr. Guy helped her make a major decision to leave the Lady Aggies basketball team and fully concentrate on her academics." When interviewed for the Alumni Times, Christopher also traced her route to success back to when,  "Dr. Guy and I embarked on creating a professional development plan for me."

The Agricultural Research Program staff is taking advantage of the flextime option on Fridays from June 7 until Aug. 2, and office hours at the C.H. Moore Agricultural Research Station's south wing will be 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Fridays. Purchase and travel requests, payroll authorizations and other business transactions received after 10 a.m. on Fridays will not be processed until the following Monday. Purchase requests and payroll authorizations received before 10 a.m. on Fridays will be processed that same day if there are no problems or questions regarding the request.

From Aug. 6 through 9, downtown Detroit will host the 2013 National Extension Tourism Conference. There are two tiers of early bird registration discounts. For those who get their registrations in by June 11, the rate is $350, and from June 12 to July 11, the registration fee is $375. After July 11, it's $425. For students, the registration rate is $235 until June 11, and then $260 from June 12 to July 11, when it escalates to $310.

The conference will utilize concurrent sessions, field trips and speakers who are nationally recognized authorities in their fields to provide Extension educators with overviews of recent developments in agritourism, outdoor recreation and cultural tourism. The conference is also organized with focal points for oral and poster presentations, and panel discussions. The central themes are rural tourism; community development; the economic, environmental and social impacts of tourism and recreation; local foods, farmers markets and culinary tourism; heritage and cultural tourism; ecotourism, adventure tourism and wildlife enterprises; marketing and promotions; research analyzing tourism impacts; and training and certification programs for professionals involved in tourism.

N.C. State is hosting a three-day workshop June 12-14 that will cover techniques for grant proposal writing for newcomers to the funding arena as well as scientific researchers who have substantial experience writing grants but feel a need to strengthen their skills. Among the major topics on the workshop agenda are current funding sources and approaches to matching funding agencies to fit with research objectives, understanding proposal guidelines and budget development.

Dr. Patricia Lynch, an assistant professor of food and nutrition in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, has received an appointment for a three-year term as a program reviewer for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' (A.N.D.) Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND). The 12-member ACEND board is the governing body of the A.N.D. (formerly the American Dietetic Association), which is the world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. Lynch and the other 29 program reviewers have been selected in recognition of careers that reflect commitments to quality dietetics education programs and demonstrated willingness to provide professional leadership. Primary responsibilities for the ACEND program reviewers are participation in two site visits and review of two program assessment reports annually.

The A.N.D. has approximately 75,000 members and registered dietitians comprise 72 percent of the membership. Educators, researchers and students are also well represented on the A.N.D. membership roster.

The Food Distribution Research Society (FDRS) has set a June 14 deadline for its 2013 William Applebaum Memorial Scholarship Awards, which includes cash stipends of $750 for the best master’s thesis submitted, and the top master’s level case study or research paper submitted.

The winners in both categories also will have their travel expenses paid for a trip to the FDRS annual meeting Oct. 4 to 8 in Chicago.

Computer-enhanced analytical processes for biological research are now delivering so much data that Duke University's Center for Human Genetics coordinates a four-day summer workshop devoted to recent developments in "bioinformatics" that can assist scientists in accessing data and speeding discoveries. This summer's workshop will be July 29 to Aug. 1, and it will provide graduate students and university researchers thorough training in using publicly available bioinformatics data. Web-based tools will be the backbone for ushering workshop participants through the human genome, comparative genomics and related areas.

For first-year grad students, the registration fee is $250; for graduate students in second-through-sixth years of study, the cost is $400; and for academic researchers the fee is $700.

The application deadline is July 16 and applicants accepted for the 45 slots in the workshop will be required to submit a 200-word description of their research experiences (to assist instructors in gauging students' scientific backgrounds) prior to the start of the workshop in late July.

Dr. Omon Isikhuemhen, an SAES researcher who specializes in mycology and fungal biotechnology, was part of a trio of researchers that has had its comparison of the biodegradation potential in 17 white rot fungi published in the April issue of the journal Advances in Biological Chemistry. Among the study's conclusions is that white rot fungi, "if appropriately screened and purified can be harnessed to potentially improve the bio-conversion of cellulose to glucose and also facilitate efficient plant biomass biodegradation and production of useful plant bio-products." Joining Isikhuemhen as authors of "Enzymatic activities and kinetic properties of β-glucosidase from selected white rot fungi" are Dr. Zachary Senwo, director of Biological & Environmental Sciences Research at Alabama A&M, and Priscilla Mfombep of the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has set July 1 as the early decision deadline for pre-proposals to a funding program for: "agricultural research with the potential to increase the sustainable productivity of smallholder farmers in developing countries ...  projects led by scientists at national agricultural research institutions and universities in sub-Saharan Africa, working in collaboration with other researchers internationally (either within Africa or beyond the continent)."

Scientists not currently residing in sub-Saharan Africa but willing to implement proposed projects are eligible, provided they will be able to devote at least 70 percent of their time to the project once in Africa. Funding proposals must also have a national agricultural research institute or university on board as a local host, and the PI must have a minimum of a master's degree. Proposals are also required to have an international collaboration, and also involve one or more of the following crop and livestock enterprises: maize, wheat, rice, millet, sorghum, cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, beans, cowpeas, chickpeas, groundnuts, banana, chickens, small ruminants or cattle.

Pre-proposals should include a brief (less than three pages) description of the proposed research project,  a basic budget (of less than $500,000); a letter of support from administration at the primary host institution and the international partner; and the applicant's CV (which cites at least two recent publications).

Pre-proposals received by July 1 will be considered for early decision. Early decision full proposals will be invited in September 2013, and training  in writing and developing proposals will be offered to finalists invited to submit full proposals. Final awards will be announced in mid-2014.

Each summer, the Department of Agribusiness, Applied Economics and Agriscience Education hosts the Institute for Future Agriculture Leaders (IFAL) — a five-day conference for high school students interested in programs of study offered by the SAES. The 2013 IFAL will begin on Sunday, June 9, and continue through Friday, June 14. All students selected for the program are rising seniors in the top third of their classes. The IFAL experience has a special emphasis on career opportunities, emerging technology, and the scientific and commercial aspects of agriculture. The North Carolina Farm Bureau, which provides funding support for IFAL, has an extensive collection of photos from last year's activities.

Registration under way for Elon's summer conference for university instructors

The topic listing for Elon University’s 10th Annual Summer Conference for university and college educators on Aug. 15 includes learning that occurs when in-class experiences are connected with out-of-class activities; learning that emerges from constructive group interaction; and learning that connects concrete experiences with abstract conceptualizations; for example, in solving authentic problems, engaging in guided inquiry, or creating a novel artifact. The authorities that will be speaking are from Duke, Wake Forest, Davidson, A&T and Elon.

Although there is no registration fee for conference attendees, online pre-registration is requested. The conference will run from 8:30 a.m. to 4:20 p.m. at the Koury Business Center on the Elon campus. The conference is jointly sponsored by Elon's Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) and Teaching and Learning Technologies (TLT) (learn more at elon.edu/teaching).

Distance learning discount deadline drawing near

The University of Wisconsin's Division of Continuing Studies is hosting the 29th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning in Madison Aug. 7 to 9. The gathering is traditionally one of the country's premiere events on distance education, usually bringing together more than 1,000 educators, designers and administrators from K-12 education and healthcare, as well as higher education. Workshop topics this year include creating and distributing educational content for mobile technologies, the role of social media in online classrooms, incorporating Internet video technologies into online courses and classroom instruction and creating eTextbooks.

The registration fee before July 22 is $465; it then increases to $505. For students, the pre-July 16 fee is $260, and then $300 after the cutoff.

Early bird registration discounts for the Society for Nutrition and Behavior’s (SNEB) 2013 annual conference will only be available until July 1. The conference is set for Aug. 9 through 12 in Portland, Ore., and the $355 rate for members jumps to $405 after the cutoff. For nonmembers, the registration fee is $490 before the cutoff and $540 afterwards. For student members, the early bird rate is $175 and the rate after the cutoff is $225. For students who aren’t SNEB members, the rates are $250 before the cutoff and $300 afterwards.

As an organization established to respond to nutrition education and health promotion issues taking priority among researchers and instructors at colleges and universities, and in Cooperative Extension and service organizations, the SNEB’s annual conference traditionally has many workshops and speakers addressing issues of current concern.  Topics that will be addressed in conference programs this year include best practices for survey validation and reliability, farm to school programs, nutrition education with low-income audiences at farmers markets and food banks, and standards for school meal nutrition.

A strong, informative paragraph has one central idea, expressed in a topic sentence that is usually the first sentence in the paragraph. The other sentences in the paragraph support the topic sentence by providing details, or with examples or other supportive information. Any sentence in any paragraph that doesn’t have an obvious connection to the topic sentence probably does not belong in the paragraph.

Although there are many rules of thumb about the length of paragraphs, one rule that always applies is: different lengths for different types of writing. For newspapers and other mass communications, one-sentence paragraphs are completely acceptable. One-sentence paragraphs are also welcome on Web pages. (Many Web developers have such a strong preference for paragraphs under 50 words, which fit well on computers screens, that they ask writers to divide paragraphs longer than that into two topics.)

For scholarly and technical papers, on the other hand, longer paragraphs are the convention. But even when a long paragraph is the convention, each sentence should support the topic sentence. And even in highly technical prose for informed readers, it’s not a good idea to have more than six supportive ideas in a sentence.

If you find your paragraph has a lot of transition words such as "but," "so," "and," or "because," that is a good sign that the sentences are all linked to the topic. When your transition words are “however” or “also,” that may be an indication that you’ve got an off-topic sentence.

If you find a sentence (or sentences) in a paragraph that list more than seven items, make it a bullet list, or one that’s enumerated, instead of separating the items with commas.

Although paragraphs don’t necessarily need a concluding sentence that summarizes what was said previously, a concluding sentence works well when you want readers to give an idea special attention, or when your paragraph topic is complex information that you have simplified. But if you use concluding sentences too frequently, then you are overusing them and the impact will be diminished.