Why Jessica

Climate change and global warming will affect our food supply. South Carolina is the No. 2 peach-producer in the nation and growers are concerned. Many fruit and nut trees need sufficient chilling hours to make fruit, and the trees also need to be hardy enough to withstand a late frost.

Douglas Bielenberg, a Clemson plant physiologist, examines dormancy and chilling. Focusing on peach trees, his research could help breeders and growers develop trees better attuned to the local winter environment. He is studying the genetic and cellular signals that begin dormancy and the developmental events involved in bud formation and non-growth seasonal phases.

“Looking at ways to alter the number of chilling hours a plant such as the peach tree needs can mean the difference between where we can grow fruit and nut crops,” says Bielenberg. In California warmer temperatures could mean fewer chilling hours and the change could have an impact on as many as 18 varieties of fruits and nuts. Agriculture

The cops seized the contraband in Vickie's lap, handcuffing the woman who already suffered a worse kind of confinement. Seven months before Jessica's death, a separate shooting disfigured Vickie's face and blew out all but one of her bottom teeth. Now, the same questions kept rising from Vickie's gut, trapping her in a living hell.

Why Jessica? Why not me? How much can one family withstand?

The journey led me to become what people call a systems thinker. That means I believe everything exists as part of a larger system and must be understood in relation to the other parts. It's not an uncommon framework: think about the last time you came down with a fever. You probably wondered if it was caused by a bacteria or a virus. A fever is a response to a strange element being introduced to the system that is your body. If you didn't believe that your body was a system, you might look for a heat source underneath your hot forehead or some switch that accidentally got flipped and raised your temperature. In biology we easily accept the idea of multiple systems (e.g., circulatory, digestive, nervous) made of parts (like cells or organs), as well as the fact that those systems interact with