Tooker has co-authored a study that has found a reason. An insecticide intended to kill seed-eating bugs is getting into the food chain and killing the predatory beetles that eat slugs.<\/p>\n
Thus uneaten and thus unchecked, slugs are tearing into soybean crops.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/02\/john-tooker-slug-900x600.jpg\")
A slug munches on a soybean seedling. (Nick Sloff\/Penn State)<\/p><\/div>\n
A Newsweek<\/em> story in January <\/a>focuses on Tooker’s research, which was published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. <\/a><\/p>\n The insecticides are neonicotinoids (they’ve also been linked to the die-offs of honeybees). Newsweek<\/em> says that so-called neonics are used on “about half of America\u2019s soybean seeds and 95 percent of corn seeds, the two biggest cash crops for commercial farms in the country.”<\/p>\n Turns out that slugs can consume neonics and survive. The poison remains in the slugs’ system, which kills or poisons the ground beetles that would eat them.<\/p>\n And here’s an irony: There’s evidence that neonics aren’t even needed. The EPA said last year that neonics provide “little or no overall benefits” and Tooker told Newsweek<\/em> that \u201cone of my main concerns with neonics is that they\u2019ve been used regardless of need.”<\/p>\n From the scholarly article:<\/p>\n [T]his indiscriminate use can have unintended consequences, with measurable costs for farmers. Using neonicotinoids only when and where they are needed, guided by a strong understanding of the underlying ecology, provides potential to harness their strengths and limit their weaknesses to achieve more sustainable pest control.<\/p>\n An associate professor of entomology at the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, Tooker was a biology major at Bates.<\/p>\n His adviser, Sharon Kinsman, “gave me a start in plant-based research,” he says. (Plant-based research also helped Tooker meet his future wife,\u00a0Megan Weaver ’92, as they did research together, looking at burrs and\u00a0cockleburs, at Bates-Morse Mountain. “We actually got together after the project was done,” John says, “but spending all that time together did not hurt!”)<\/p>\n Bates faculty member Rebecca Herzig is getting media attention for her new book exploring our complicated relationship with hair removal.<\/p>\n Herzig’s book is Plucked: A History of Hair Removal<\/em> (New York University Press, 2015). She is the college’s Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies.<\/span><\/p>\n The Times<\/em> of London, Times Higher Education<\/a>, The Economist <\/a>and The Globe and Mail<\/a> have published reviews, and she’s been interviewed by New Hampshire Public Radio<\/a>, Dallas Public Radio<\/a> and, on Feb. 10, by Southern California Public Radio.<\/a><\/p>\n During the SCPR radio interview, a listener posted a comment on the show’s Facebook page, saying that a local middle school science teacher told her students that Asians “are a more evolved race, as evidenced by their reduced amount of body hair.”<\/p>\n Host Larry Mantle asked Herzig to comment on that anecdote, and she noted that skewed ideas about race, evolution and hair may have begun as a reaction to Charles Darwin. She said:<\/p>\n Darwin changed the way people thought about the human relationship to animals. When they saw that there was a continuum, rather than a bright line separating humans and animals, it became more culturally important to maintain that boundary, and hair was a perfect way to do it: You can literally shave off your animalness to help maintain that boundary.<\/p>\n And if hair removal became a way to affirm our human identity, it’s not hard to imagine how hairlessness might become linked, in some minds, with ideas about human evolution or racial superiority.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n An art and visual culture major before she became a chef, Elise Kornack exhibited “Head to Toe,” wire and graphite on paper, during the 2009 Senior Exhibition.<\/p><\/div>\n New York City food writers are taking note of Take Root, the Brooklyn restaurant run by Elise Kornack ’09 and her wife, Anna Hieronimus.<\/p>\n The restaurant has received a great New York Times review<\/a>, and last fall got a “best new restaurant” nod from Esquire.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nRebecca Herzig<\/h3>\n
The race to remove hair<\/h5>\n
![\"Plucked](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/02\/Plucked-Cover-211x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nElise Kornack ’09<\/h3>\n
Take Root grabs hold of New York City diners<\/h5>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/02\/seniorshow09_kornack2-400x278.jpg\")