Mariah Cox

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Let’s Talk About Fake News

April 24, 2019 By Mariah Cox in Events and speakers Tags: fake news

Fake News Panel — The Science, Health and Environmental Journalism club at MU hosted a fake news panel on April 3. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC

By Mariah Cox

What do CBD, climate change, flat earthers, and anti-vaxxers have in common? All are prevalent in the propagation of ‘fake news’ in science.

Truthful and accurate reporting is crucial in the field of journalism to create a well-informed society. You may have heard the term ‘fake news’ a time or two, but what does fake news really mean, what does it look like and how does it arise?

“It’s important for everybody, all journalists, and really all human beings to kind of have a better understanding of where some of this information went wrong to be able to identify stories that might sound real that are probably not,” said Sarah Shipley-Hiles, an MU journalism professor who chaired the fake news panel hosted by the Science Health and Environmental Journalism (SHEJ) club on Wed., April 3.

In short, fake news is pseudo-news that contains disinformation or falsities that deceive the public. This false information sparks distrust of the media and causes strong debate among members of opposing ideologies.

SHEJ president Madelyne Maag opened the discussion Wednesday with the flat earth conspiracy theory.

“Flat earth theory is one of the most popular and talked about conspiracy since the 1990s when it first surfaced and then it nearly died out,” Maag said.

The flat earth theory is the belief that instead of the earth being spherical, it is on a plane with a wall surrounding it. It nearly died out in the 1990s when its creator died. However, the theory resurfaced with the rise of the internet and social media.

Facebook provided a platform for those still believing in the theory to connect and spread their ideology. To put it into perspective, the group of 3,500 original believers has expanded to a Facebook following of roughly 200,000 people now.

“Social media has magnified the problem, but it is not the sole source of the problem,” Maag said.

Other platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and YouTube have brought the flat earth theory to light through videos and documentaries, and further spread its doctrine globally.

To get an understanding of why conspiracy believers thrive, two cognitive researchers from Texas Tech attended the first flat earth conference in Raleigh, NC in 2017. Landrum and Olshansky conducted interviews with 50 attendees to better understand their motivations for believing the theory. They found that people who believe one conspiracy theory are more susceptible to believing other conspiracy theories.

They also found of the people they interviewed, most of them became aware of the theory through YouTube. They reported watching 9/11 conspiracy videos and being led to flat earth conspiracy theory through YouTube’s autoplay function and recommended videos.

And there is no shortage of user-generated content with the rise of the internet. The problem lies in unchecked information and deceptive claims being perceived as fact.

“Because of that, it shows that journalists have an important duty to get the story right the first time,” Maag said. “Those who are in charge of social media have a responsibility to make sure fake news and fake information is not given the light of day.”

The same problem presents in many science news topics, including rapid acceptance of Cannabidiol (CBD) oil as a natural ‘cure all’ despite not being approved by the FDA, anti-vaccination claims and misconceptions of climate change.

Anti-vaccination claims arose after British doctor Andrew Wakefield published a study in the Lancet suggesting a connection between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination to behavioral and developmental disorders in children. The study was later retracted as the study was not replicable by other researchers, thus invalidating its claims. Additionally, the study was funded by private interest groups who were against vaccine-producing companies.

“Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah, the Today Show and the View and talked about her own anecdotal experience of her son having autism so she claims that the vaccine for MMR led to that,” said Ashton Day, a graduate student at MU.

Because of the reach of these television shows as well as McCarthy’s following, among other causes, this belief was able to spread into public thought and encourage support for this stance.

The panel concluded that current journalistic reporting is doing a disservice to public perceptions of these issues.

“Unfortunately, the media played a big part in spreading the problem,” Shipley-Hiles said. “Journalists, in an attempt to be fair, cover these issues like a football game or a political battle. They just say these people say climate change is happening or not happening, you figure it out.”

#IAmScience Haritha Dhanikonda

April 16, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience, Research Tags: Donald Burke

By Mariah Cox

There is no shortage of complexities to be solved on Earth, but for Haritha Dhanikonda our discoveries here can be used to further our knowledge of the celestial bodies in the universe.

That interest landed her in the lab of Donald Burke in Bond LSC where their RNA work is funded in part by NASA, but her interest beyond this planet started much earlier.

From a young age, Dhanikonda was fascinated by space and the possibility of life in other parts of the universe.

Visiting planetariums as a kid in India, reading encyclopedia books on astronomy, biology and geography in school and looking up at the stars in awe of the vastness of the universe, she was hooked from the beginning.

“I read the book “Deception Point” by Dan Brown in the eighth grade, and that’s what got me interested in space,” Dhanikonda said. “His book was based on life outside Earth and how life evolved on Earth, and from then on it just fascinated me.”

Dhanikonda obtained her bachelor’s degree at Anna University in Tamil Nadu, India. There she studied biotechnology and discovered the possibility of studying life outside earth at the molecular level. From there, she moved to Dallas to pursue a Masters in Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas.

“Initially when I was doing my bachelor’s, the academic focus was on how human beings and diseases came about,” Dhanikonda said. “That was more tangible to me and I could relate to it. As I did my master’s degree and now my Ph.D., I can actually see how life works at a molecular level.”

Only in the first year of her Ph.D. program, she hasn’t yet started the research for her doctoral dissertation but she’s looking to studying RNA and how it has enzymatic activity and can function biologically.

Specifically, Dhanikonda will be conducting research to look for enzymatic relics that could potentially support the RNA World Theory.

The RNA World Hypothesis was proposed by Carl Woese, Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel in the 1960s and is based on the discovery of ribosomes that suggest that before DNA, RNA stored genetic information and catalyzed chemical reactions.

“DNA is very similar to RNA. RNA is a more transient component, but there’s a theory that says that before DNA came about, it was RNA that was doing all the work,” Dhanikonda said. “There are very few examples of RNA functioning as enzymes, but we are trying to study the evolution of RNA.”

In the future, Dhanikonda hopes to work for a space agency. She wants to apply her research on the evolution of RNA to the possibility of finding that same phenomenon occurring outside of earth.

Dhanikonda came to Mizzou after a graduate school recruitment event drew her to the Ph.D. program because of everyone’s friendliness.

“It played a key role in my choosing to come to Mizzou,” Dhanikonda said. “I got to interact with a lot of faculty and they had questions for me as well. I got a sense that the department was very closely knit, students supported each other and the faculty cared a lot about students.”

While visiting other universities, Dhanikonda remembers other doctoral students warning her against pursuing a Ph.D., but when she came to MU, she got the sense that everyone was happy in their programs.

“It was something I never observed in a Ph.D. student, and I thought it was a good sign that this was the place to go for my Ph.D.,” Dhanikonda said.

When asked whether the program has met her expectations, Dhanikonda expressed her happiness with attending MU.

“I didn’t know it would play such a big role but it translates into your work. When you have a good mindset, it makes you happier working,” Dhanikonda said.

#IAmScience Lucas Woods

March 22, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience Tags: Sjögren’s Disease

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Ten years ago, Lucas Woods stepped into Gary Weisman’s lab with a fresh perspective on P2 cell receptors. Now, as an experienced lab manager, Woods dives deeper into the role of these receptors in a myriad of diseases.

Woods came to the Bond Life Sciences Center after graduating from Missouri State University in Springfield with a degree in cell and molecular biology. He studied P2 receptors as a part of his undergraduate research with Dr. Richard Garrad, who completed his post-doctoral research in Weisman’s lab. Garrad recognized Woods’s interest in the area of study and recommended he continue his research with Weisman at MU.

“The initial plan was to work in Dr. Weisman’s lab for a year or two then enroll in graduate school, but after I started here, one thing led to another and here I am, 10 years later, still doing the same research I have been doing for the past 12 years,” Woods said.

Although Weisman’s lab researches the function of P2 receptors in diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, autoimmune diseases and oral cancers, they are currently investigating the manipulation of P2 receptors in Sjögren’s syndrome.

Sjögren’s syndrome is an autoimmune disease primarily affecting women at later stages in life where the immune system attacks and damages the salivary and lacrimal glands, reducing the ability to produce saliva and tears. This can lead to dental caries, periodontitis, yeast and bacterial infections, digestive disorders, loss of taste and difficulty swallowing, all of which reduce the quality of life for patients. The progression of Sjögren’s syndrome can also lead to the development of lymphoma.

“Usually people don’t show up to the doctor until they notice they have dry mouth and dry eye,” Woods said. “There’s no real solution for them. There are current treatments that try to alleviate the symptoms, such as artificial saliva and tears, rather than treat the cause of the disease. The idea of this research is to make better treatments.”

Currently, Weisman’s lab is focusing on two drugs that target P2 receptors to systemically reduce the inflammation in the salivary gland and improve saliva flow. The lab uses mouse models of human Sjögren’s syndrome to test the effectiveness of these two drugs in blocking the response of P2 receptors to extracellular ATP, which can exacerbate inflammation if left unchecked.

Lucas Woods cultures human T cell line Jurkat cells. The lab uses the Jurkat cells to investigate the role of P2 receptors in T cell function. | photo by Mariah Cox, Bond LSC

“We were joking the other day that when people ask us what we do for a living and we say we collect mouse saliva, they don’t believe us,” Woods said.

Rather than trying to generate a specific drug for clinical use, the lab aims to establish the idea that if a safe drug is found that can block these receptors and improve the Sjögren’s-like symptoms in mice, then it may translate as a therapeutic strategy in humans.

After working with Weisman for 10 years, it’s safe to say Woods has learned a lot. But the main lesson that he has taken from his experience is that effective communication of science is key.

“Success in science is as much dependent on your ability to communicate science as your ability to do science,” Woods said. “That communication is often in the form of writing papers for publication or writing grants, but the ability to effectively communicate the work that you did and the work you are going to do is absolutely essential.”

In conjunction with his research, Woods is also taking classes toward completing a graduate degree.

“I’m in a unique position right now where I am both a research staff member in the biochemistry department and I’m a student in the department as well,” Woods said.

Woods’s interest in science sparked when he realized that it could lead to limitless discovery. The idea that he could be the first to discover something that the entire world doesn’t know about yet drives him in his research.

When not in the lab, Woods enjoys running and playing with his two kids, Audrey and Edison.

Eventually, Woods hopes to run his own lab. When asked whether he would continue his research with P2 receptors, Woods said it would be in his best interest because of his long history in the field of study.

“P2 receptors are so ubiquitous in the body, there’s no shortage of questions to ask that need answering,” Woods said.

Pumping Iron: Leaves play a larger role in controlling how plants absorb micronutrients

March 14, 2019 By Mariah Cox in Research Tags: David Mendoza

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

How do plants take up and use iron?

For David Mendoza, a scientist at Bond Life Sciences Center, it’s not an inconsequential question. He works to decipher the answer in an effort to better fortify the food we eat.

“We need to understand how plants accumulate iron,” Mendoza said. “Iron is really important for plants and for us because iron is a critical part of proteins that help produce energy, especially for plants in photosynthesis. Without iron, plants are sick. Without iron, we get sick.”

His most recent published work further pinpoints where and how a plant senses the amount of iron, focusing on the leaves. Initially, previous researchers believed the iron sensor was in the roots because plants absorb water and nutrients from the ground. Scientists now describe a circuit of sensors in plants where the leaves sense the iron status of the entire plant and tell the roots to continue or stop uptake.

“It’s counterintuitive that plants sense iron in the leaves, but when you think about it, it does make sense,” Mendoza said. “Although the roots are the first tissue in contact with the soil, their sensor is local and can’t control the entire plant. Leaf signals are systemic and can integrate signals from the entire plant to tell the roots the plant status.”

After studying and comparing iron availability in the model plant Arabidopsis using different growth conditions, Mendoza and his team found that the abundance of different proteins, called transporters, were vital. Transporters can move water, nutrients and other molecules within the plant. In the leaves, they found that a lack of one transporter — Oligopeptide Transporter 3 — causes an over-accumulation of iron throughout the plant. Additionally, they found that this transporter mediates a ‘shoot-to-root’ signaling that prevents excess, potentially fatal, iron uptake at the root level.

By moving plants from iron-available conditions to iron-absent conditions, the team tracked the abundance of OPT3 and other genes over time. They found that the responsive genes in the veins of the plants respond quickly to varying levels of iron. Because iron is an extremely reactive metal, and technically a micronutrient, too much can be as bad as too little.

“There has to be a right balance of having the right concentration inside the cells, and how exactly plants achieve this homeostasis is not known,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza predicts he and his team will find several more iron sensors in the roots, leaves and vascular tissues of their plants.

Standing on the shoulders of scientists before him

Mendoza credits the work of researchers before him for providing the toolbox necessary for his research.

“The reason we are where we are right now is because other researchers have found responsive markers for iron deficiency and, over the years, we have found that there are specific markers for roots and for leaves,” Mendoza said. “In the leaves, there are also different markers for different cell types.”

Knowing that there are iron sensing markers in different cell types, Mendoza and his team were able to ask a simple question — which cell responds faster to iron deficiency?

“The toolbox was already there, we just used it to answer this question and we discovered not only the leaves, but the veins are really sensitive to changes in iron deficiency and sufficiency.”

For Mendoza and his team, the challenge lies in the fact that plants don’t like to accumulate iron. They are working to better understand how to convince the plant to safely store more iron in a way that is available for humans.

“The trick in biofortification is to convince the plant to accumulate more iron in available tissues in a safe and bio-available way,” Mendoza said.

However, increasing the amount of iron in plants can have harmful effects if not careful. Mendoza proposes a double strategy to increase iron uptake in plants and express an iron storage mechanism to prevent iron toxicity.

We are what we eat

According to the World Health Organization, 80% of people globally do not have enough iron in their bodies and 30% of people are anemic. Iron is necessary for the body to generate hemoglobin so that red blood cells can carry oxygen to the rest of the body. This is why some people with low iron levels may experience dizziness, weakness and fatigue.

The main contributor to iron deficiency is our diets. Staples such as corn and rice supply a large portion of our calorie intake, however, they don’t have nearly as many nutrients as greens.

In the future, Mendoza also hopes to look into making plants more selective for nutrients even if they are grown in the presence of other toxic elements, such as cadmium or arsenic.

“Plants are one of the very few organisms that can do absolutely everything with raw elements,” Mendoza said. “They can synthesize everything. I want to understand how they are capable of doing that to fortify the food we eat.”

This research was published in the Journal “Plant, Cell & Environment” in March 2018 and was funded by the US National Science Foundation, CAREER, NSF EPSCoR, Department of Energy and the Vietnam Education Foundation Training Program.

#IAmScience Amith Reddy

March 8, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience Tags: Ron Mittler

Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Amith Reddy has been in academia for some time and doesn’t plan to leave anytime soon.

With two master’s degrees under his belt, Reddy is only a few months away from completing his Ph.D. in plant sciences.

Reddy began his secondary education career in India where he spent most of his life before moving to New Mexico for his second master’s. He cites the hands-on application of science that he first began to experience at the Directorate of Sorghum Research in India as the turning point of his interest in plant sciences.

“I think the first research experience I had that was hands-on was with handling DNA, and I was fascinated by that,” Reddy said. “During my undergraduate years, we just read about science but beginning with my master’s degree and on we handled science.”

Reddy started his doctorate program at the University of North Texas but transferred to the University of Missouri when his mentor, Ron Mittler, moved his lab to Bond Life Sciences Center just ten months shy of completing his degree. While some may be thrown off by a big move just months before graduating, Reddy embraced the change positively.

“I wanted to continue my work with Ron because he is an excellent mentor,” Reddy said.

Reddy firmly believes that having a passion for research and a good mentor will bring success to academic research.

“I think we all need to have a compatible mentor that pushes us to be focused and driven,” Reddy said. “Ron is very science focused, passionate and motivated. I hope to one day emulate those characteristics in my career as well.”

For his Ph.D. dissertation, Reddy researches the stomatal response in plants after being exposed to light stress. More simply, he wants to study how the leaves of plants communicate with each other and react to stress in order to survive.

When a plant experiences a high temperature, it loses water more quickly. Reddy has found that reactive oxygen species in plants can signal the stomata to close to help retain water. Before, researchers believed the stomatal responses in plants took up to one hour, but Reddy has found that the response can react in as little as one minute.

“The uniqueness of this study is that it focuses on light stress. In the past, people have studied bacteria, heat and cold stress, but there are still many missing aspects related to light stress,” Reddy said.

After completing his degree, Reddy hopes to use his research to find a way to alter the stomatal responses in plants so that the plants can balance water loss and carbon fixation.

“The long-term goal of this project is to build up stress-tolerant plants that enables better yield and better capabilities to withstand stress conditions in the field,” Reddy said.

Following graduation, Reddy hopes to conduct research and teach at an academic institution. Although he doesn’t know whether he will start a postdoctoral degree or begin teaching first, one thing is for sure — he will continue to research and identify what’s still unknown to widen the biochemical and genetic standpoint of knowledge of stomata responses in plants.

What makes us trust science?

February 13, 2019 By Mariah Cox in Events and speakers Tags: Evolution and Social Science Speaker Series

Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

When Simine Vazire began teaching undergraduate research methods she focused on its difference from pseudo-science or nonscience, the value of the scientific method and the notion that science is self-correcting. However, it became harder for her to teach that lesson with a clear conscience as she began to grapple with issues of credibility and replicability in the field of psychology with her own research.

“Credibility is arguably the eye of the storm of the in the replication crisis. I didn’t call this the replication crisis in psychological science because that’s pretty controversial,” Vazire said.

Vazire, a psychology professor from UC Davis, focused on these issues Monday, Feb. 4, in Bond LSC, as part of the Evolution and Social Science series. The talk, “The Credibility Revolution in Psychology,” centered on the idea that each scientific field should engage in critical self-examination to detect errors in theories and to improve them.

Upon beginning her research, Vazire found the false discovery rate to be high because many published findings were difficult to replicate and when studies were replicated, the pattern of results was inconsistent.

“I’m not embarrassed that we got things wrong, I’m happy that we’re figuring things out to make it better,” Vazire said. “But how do we make it better? I think we humans are the bug. We are not designed to be universalists who are communal, open and transparent, who like to question each other and challenge each other and so on. I think the key question for scientists to ask is ‘how would I know if I was wrong?’”

One way to help solve the credibility issue, Vazire suggests, is transparency.

“The more transparent we are, the more likely it is our errors will be caught,” Vazire said.

That means documenting every aspect of a study, verifying the claims, and letting the data and materials be viewable for other scientists to test, according to Vazire. Although transparency is necessary for credibility, it does not guarantee it. Studies need quality data and strong methods to back up claims.

In order for the science community to operate under a self-correcting system, Vazire recommends following four norms: universalism of status, communality of findings, disinterestedness and organized skepticism.

“I think this is good news,” Vazire said. “We didn’t know we were doing something wrong and now that we know we can fix it.”

The problem is bigger than individuals, and the science community as a whole needs to be dedicated to producing solid, verifiable claims, she said.

Now, Vazire challenges her students to be transparent in their research instead of advocating that science is self-correcting.

“We should teach students that when they’re going into science, they’re agreeing to have their stuff checked, challenged and criticized by other people,” Vazire said. “But, also, they’re allowed to challenge and criticize other people.”

The Evolution and Social Science Speaker Series hosts presentations by scholars exploring evolutionary perspectives from an interdisciplinary framework. Speakers span the full spectrum of the sciences and the humanities, including biology, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, economics, history, philosophy, and literature.

The series is held in 572 Bond LSC and its schedule can be found here.

#IAmScience Ashley Meyer

February 8, 2019 By Mariah Cox in #IAmScience Tags: animal science

Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Situated in the Bond Life Sciences Center is an almost empty research lab on the fourth floor, which to some may look like an end but is really just a new beginning.

Inside you may find a few boxes of gloves, a stack of brightly colored test tube racks and a sole thermocycler sitting on the lab bench. You’ll also find Ashley Meyer, the first researcher hired on by Wes Warren.

“This is a brand-new lab. Dr. Warren came from Washington University in Saint Louis, and he didn’t bring anything with him so all the stuff you see here I just bought in the past two weeks,” Meyer said. “I’m still ordering things and learning all sorts of new protocols and helping to optimize systems.”

Warren hired Meyer to study genes associated with sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism are differences between sexes that present themselves via behavior, physical traits and phenotypes.

“Single-cell RNA sequencing can be really beneficial for understanding diseases. Specifically, there are a lot of diseases that act differently for women and men,” Meyer said. “Women are more prone to get arthritis whereas men are more prone to get colon cancer. If we can understand what genes may be responsible and how they’re different between the sexes, it can be extremely beneficial.”

Meyer wasn’t always interested in genomic research, however. Much like her supervisor, Wes Warren, Meyer went to school in hopes of becoming a veterinarian but eventually found her passion for research.

“I originally wanted to be a vet, that’s a pretty popular answer,” Meyer said. “Once I got into animal science it was more livestock based and I realized that the vet school really wasn’t what I wanted to do and that I really enjoyed science.”

It wasn’t until after she spoke with one of her professors that she realized science and research was the path for her. Meyer completed her graduate degree in animal science focused on reproductive physiology and molecular biology at the University of Missouri.

“I studied reproduction in pigs and I loved it,” Meyer said.

For Meyer, being able to run her own lab will prepare her for her future.

“I like the idea of being able to run a lab. I think that having the opportunity to be the lab supervisor and help start this lab from scratch will benefit me to be able to run a lab pretty effectively in the future,” Meyer said. “The main reason why I took this job is because I really wanted to learn. When you’re a student, you’re narrowed into a specific field. This job is going to give me the chance to learn all sorts of things: bioinformatics, genomic research, cancer research. This job is going to give me the chance to broaden my career.”

As for the future, Meyer doesn’t foresee pursuing a Ph.D., but she has been told that there is nothing wrong with coming back. For right now, she wants a few years of experience under her belt before committing to another four to five years in school.

“I’m a big advocate for science in general and helping the general public understand science and be exposed to it,” Meyer said. “I think it’s easy for people to push it off to the side and say it’s not important when really it’s the basis for everything we have and do, especially in the medical field.”

10th annual Agroforestry Symposium focuses on entrepreneurship in research

January 28, 2019 By Mariah Cox in Events and speakers Tags: Agroforestry Symposium

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Farmers, scientists and tree experts, from field to forest, will bring their work inside this Wednesday and Thursday to hear how research can improve all of their livelihoods.

The 10^th annual University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry Symposium is set to take place Jan. 30-31 at the Bond Life Sciences Center on the University of Missouri’s campus.

The two-day event will focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in the field of agroforestry and will feature keynote speakers Rodolphe Barrangou and Kelly Sexton.

“The annual Agroforestry Symposium is an opportunity to bring together leading researchers and practitioners to explore in-depth and showcase a compelling agroforestry-related theme,” said Gregory Ormsby Mori, Center for Agroforestry outreach coordinator.

The Symposium kicks off Wednesday evening with an introduction from Mark McIntosh, vice president for research and economic development for the UM System and vice chancellor for research at MU. The introduction will be followed up by the keynote speaker Rodolphe Barrangou, who will give a presentation titled “The CRISPR Craze: Entrepreneurial Lessons from a Disruptive Technology.”

Barrangou, an associate professor of food science at North Carolina State University, specializes in researching the biology and genetics of CRISPR-Cas immune systems in bacteria which defend against viruses. Barrangou focuses on using CRISPR technologies in his lab to vaccinate the bacteria used to produce cultured dairy products in an effort to prevent viruses that could destroy starter cultures.

The following day will begin with an introduction from Michael Gold, interim director for the Center for Agroforestry, and Christopher Daubert, dean of the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, will introduce keynote speaker Kelly Sexton.

Sexton, an associate vice president for research—technology transfer and innovation partnerships at the University of Michigan, will talk about “The Transformative Power of Research and Technology Commercialization.” She promotes innovation and intellectual property development programs at her university as well as engagement with businesses and government organizations locally and globally.

Five presenters will follow the keynote speakers and will cover an array of topics pertaining to entrepreneurship in the fields of agriculture and natural resources. The second day of the Symposium will also have two panel discussions titled “Fostering Translation of Research and Entrepreneurship at MU” and “Building Economic Impact from University Research through Effective Industry Partnerships.”

The Symposium is free and open to the public, but all guests are requested to register in advance. There will be light refreshments and lunch on the second day. The Symposium will wrap up with a closing reception, poster session and demonstrations in McQuinn Atrium.

For more information about the speakers, topics and times, visit the Center for Agroforestry website.

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