Losses to Texas’ $100 billion agriculture industry had not even begun to be tallied Tuesday, with farmers and ranchers still unable to get out to find stranded livestock or survey how many acres of grain, rice and cotton was destroyed by Harvey’s once-in-a-millennium downpours. Texas A&M University agricultural economist David Anderson said it was too soon to even ballpark the monetary extent of the damages.“I haven’t even tried,” he said. [node:read-more:link]

A review paper draws on scientific studies to recommend ways to reduce honeybee disease impacts, such as limiting the mixing of bees between colonies and supporting natural bee behaviors that provide disease resistance. The paper draws on scientific studies to recommend ways to reduce disease impacts, such as limiting the mixing of bees between colonies and supporting natural bee behaviors that provide disease resistance. The paper also highlights honeybee management practices in need of more research. [node:read-more:link]

Researchers unravel the negative effects of pesticide exposure on birth outcomes, such as weight, gestation and abnormalities.  A new study by researchers at UC Santa Barbara addresses the issue in a novel way — by analyzing birth outcomes in California’s San Joaquin Valley.With more than one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts produced there, the San Joaquin Valley, not surprisingly, is a heavy pesticide-use region. [node:read-more:link]

Since 2008, per acre property taxes in Illinois have increased substantially. These increases lower returns to farmland owners and magnify the losses associated with lowering cash rents. If per acre property taxes have reached a permanently higher level, equilibrium farmland values should be expected to adjust downward. Per acre property taxes in Illinois increased in recent years, as is illustrated in Figure 1 for high-productivity farmland in central Illinois. Between 2008 and 2016, property taxes increased at a rapid rate, increasing from $24 per acre in 2008 to $53 per acre in 2016. [node:read-more:link]

Eddyville, Fort Dodge, Clinton, Newton, Cedar Rapids. Communities like these have been mainstays of the Iowa bioeconomy for years, even decades — home to corn and soy processing on the largest world scale, and much much more — integrated complexes of advanced refining where companies share infrastructure and often where the residues of the one process become feedstocks for another. They’ve been to farm products what fossil fuel hot spots like the Baytown, Texas mega-complex have meant to oil refining. Now, they have company. [node:read-more:link]

A region-wide health study shows that the gap between Appalachia and the rest of the U.S. is widening for health indicators such as infant mortality, cancer deaths, and poverty. [node:read-more:link]

The small city of Hopkinsville had its day in the sun -- and dark -- on August 21, as an estimated 150,000 out-of-town guests swelled the city's population by a factor of five. Having company is always a good incentive to spruce things up. Will the town's careful planning for the eclipse pay off with longer-term benefits? [node:read-more:link]

Through telemedicine, healthcare providers can use intranet or internet networks to diagnose, administer, initiate, assist, monitor, intervene, or report a medical procedure. And the services can include mental and physical rehabilitation. Telemedicine touches every medical discipline, including psychiatry. Just about every person from newborns to seniors may have telemedicine influence their lives at some time.One thing hasn’t changed, however. [node:read-more:link]

An Austin television station shows flooding in La Grange, Texas, which is about 100 miles west of Houston. Residents there pitched in to help some businesses evacuate before the waters rose. [node:read-more:link]

When Hale and others learned in February that a white supremacist group known as the Traditionalist Worker Party planned to hold a rally with the National Socialist Movement and the League of the South in Pikeville, they were stunned. In response, Hale headed up a day of making art at the Boone Youth Drop-In Center, where she coordinates workshops. That day, she developed a print that read “No Hate in My Holler,” with the hashtag #GoHomeNaziScum at the bottom. The image stirred something in the community’s imagination, and requests for prints and t-shirts followed. [node:read-more:link]