If you're planning on spending time outdoors this summer, you'll find that the insect repellent aisle of your local pharmacy offers a dazzling array of options to protect you from hungry bugs. Hardcore DEET-based sprays like Off! Deep Woods ($6.79 for 6 oz.) promise to ward off ticks, mosquitoes, flies, chiggers, and gnats for an entire day.
Put on a long sleeve shirt and load up on some pest repellent, because tick season in Pennsylvania is expected to get progressively worse year after year. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of Lyme disease cases, and Penn State Urban Entomologist Steve Jacobs said that’s because of an increasing tick population.
Across Latin American, large beetles known as vinchucas spread Chagas disease. The disease can lie dormant for years, but when it emerges, it can damage the digestive system and heart, sometimes fatally. Chemist Pilar Mateo has come up with a paint that slowly releases insecticides, making homes inhospitable to these parasite-spreading bugs.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Health confirmed Friday that a mosquito has tested positive for carrying the West Nile virus in Dauphin County. The mosquito tested positive for West Nile virus in Lower Paxton Township on May 13. This is the first positive detection for 2014.
While orchards across much of the eastern U.S. survived a late blast of cold weather, new threats are on the horizon, said Kari Peter, Penn State tree fruit pathologist. Peter was at Brecknock Orchard in Mohnton, Pa., last week for a Lancaster/York Fruit Growers twilight meeting.
Ordinarily, mosquitoes are little more than a mild irritant during hot summer months. But because they can transmit West Nile Virus (WNV) to humans and pets, people should learn more about the virus, take steps to avoid being bitten, and eliminate mosquito-breeding areas.
Green cleaning refers to using cleaning methods and products with environmentally friendly ingredients designed to preserve human health and environmental quality. The Healthy Schools Campaign, a project that started in Illinois has done extensive research on the benefits of green cleaning for schools.
Delysha Jordan, a mother of four, discovered something wasn’t right when her 9 and 13-year-old woke up in the middle of the night gasping for air. “I could tell it was hard for them to breathe by looking at their chest and seeing how much work it took them to take their next breath,” she said. All of her children, ages ranging from 2 to 13 years old, have been diagnosed with asthma.
Now that spring has actually arrived, the flies are abundant as well as pollinators on our dandelions in our yard. I feel as though the dandelions are nature’s beauty adding a little color to our green grass that has now started to grow, not to mention the nutritional value of dandelions that we can add to our lovely salads this spring and summer.
In urban areas of Pennsylvania, asthma rates are rising, affecting one out of every ten people. Asthma is a chronic lung disease that, for some people, can be controlled by avoiding “triggers” such as cockroaches, mice, certain pesticides and other lung irritants and allergens.
Planting cover crops in rotation between cash crops -- widely agreed to be ecologically beneficial -- is even more valuable than previously thought, according to a team of agronomists, entomologists, agroecologists, horticulturists and biogeochemists from Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
The scent of Cilantro may go fine with dinner, but not if it’s from a stinkbug that fell into your enchiladas. The invasive pests are now in 41 states, the district of Columbia and Canada and several countries in Europe.
Researchers discovered several possibly threatened new species of ensign wasps from Sub-Saharan Africa -- the first known insects to exhibit transverse folding of the fore wing. The scientists made this discovery, in part, using a technique they developed that provides broadly accessible anatomy descriptions.
What can ants teach us about the transmission and spread of human disease? Perhaps a lot, according to a team of researchers who recently received a grant of more than $1.8 million from the National Science Foundation to explore this question.
Are you a grower dealing with stink bugs? We need your help! We're surveying growers to assess the impact of BMSB on crops and gathering information that will help us defeat this pest.
Children attending one summer camp this year will encounter a lot of bugs. But they won't have to pack insect repellent. Young bug enthusiasts can satisfy their curiosity about insects by attending Penn State's Bug Camp for Kids from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 23 to 26.
A surprising finding about East African honeybees lends new hope to the fight against colony collapses in the West. Scientists have discovered that bees in Kenya have strong resistance to the same pathogens responsible for the deaths of billions of bees elsewhere in the world.
Three organic field crop farmers presented a panel discussion at the 2014 PASA Conference to share their experiences using diverse cover crop mixtures. The three farmers, Wade Esbenshade, Bucky Ziegler and Dan DeTurk, have been collaborating with Penn State Extension to conduct on-farm research measuring the ecosystem functions provided by cover crops in organic systems.
Spiders are the dominant terrestrial predators on earth with fascinating biology. Explore the biology of spiders with Dr. Linda Rayor, an expert on spider behavior and star of Monster Bug Wars. What is the most poisonous spider in the world? What animals are the most important predators on spiders? How is conflict between the sexes worked out among cannibals? What happens when spiders live together in groups? Find out more in ‘A romance with spiders’.