Painted lady butterflies have found North County San Diego to their liking as they pass through from Mexico to Oregon. It’s the largest such pass-by since 2005, according to butterfly experts. You can easily identify a painted lady butterfly by looking at its orange, brown and white wings, they say. Wet winter fueled vegetation growth in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico, giving caterpillars a lot…
Over the next month, North County schools will be releasing classroom-raised trout into Lake Miramar to conclude the The Escondido Creek Conservancy’s Trout in the Classroom program. The latest school to dive in is Rincon Middle School in Escondido. The 8th grade science teacher at Rincon, Bruce Peterson, is very enthusiastic about Trout in the Classroom. “I’ve always wanted to do this program, so I’m…
Whether it’s Lil Debbie shilling out relationship advice or Sunny D igniting a conversation about depression, contemporary brand Twitter can be a depressing and dark place. Nothing feels more cynical than when a brand appropriates the standardized millennial voice — ironic, detached, dejected — and uses it to hock their emulsified meat products and drinkable corn syrups. There’s no commitment to justice here, there’s just…
As cities strive to improve the quality of life for their residents, many are working to promote walking and biking. Such policies make sense, since they can, in the long run, lead to less traffic, cleaner air and healthier people. But the results aren’t all positive, especially in the short to medium term. Local bicyclists face the most risk of injury crashes in Pacific Beach,…
Hike around the natural habitats of San Diego County and it becomes abundantly clear that honey bees, foreign to the area, are everywhere. A new study by Keng-Lou James Hung, Jennifer Kingston, Adrienne Lee, David Holway and Joshua Kohn of UC San Diego’s Division of Biological Sciences, published on Feb. 20 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that honey bees focus their foraging on…
Coaster and Amtrak riders this weekend found they could ride all they wanted, but it best had been by plane or automobile, not train. That is, if they wanted to get there. Rail service along the 351-mile Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo, or LOSSAN, rail corridor, was suspended in both directions on Saturday through 5 a.m. Monday from Oceanside to San Diego for track and…
Today, surrounded by freezing temperatures, thousands of heads of lettuce grow, nestled in a cozy greenhouse fed by nutrient-rich nitrates. Or you could call it what it is: fish poop. The process, called aquaponics, allows farmers to grow local, organic produce anywhere at any time of year. Aquaponics is a sustainable method of farming that combines aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (cultivating plants in water)….
If Tyler Burch had preconceived notions about life as a congressional staffer, they quickly dissipated last fall. Tyler, who will graduate from Cal State San Marcos with a bachelor’s in economics in May, spent the fall semester as a participant in the Panetta Institute Congressional Internship Program, giving him firsthand experience in the inner workings of Washington, D.C. “I don’t think people who don’t work…
Journalism needs an audience to survive, but isn’t sure how to earn its loyalty Journalism is in the midst of an existential crisis: the profession has undergone decades of declines in readership, revenue and public trust, with no obvious end in sight. Many in the industry believe that the best way for newsrooms to recover both revenue and public trust is to improve their relationship…
Heart of student life, University Student Union beats strong after five years… The 2018-19 academic year at CSUSM witnessed the largest influx of incoming students to date. With 17,000 students, the campus is home to a diverse array of student interests, backgrounds and values. Since its opening in 2014, the University Student Union (USU) has become an integral part in helping to reinforce and integrate…