Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (Bunyaviridae: Tospovirus)

As the new year gets underway, let’s look back at the climate conditions of 2024 and look forward to what last year's trends may indicate for 2025. Data shows that 2024 was the warmest year on record since official global tracking began in 1880. Three main factors controlled the climate last year: the warming trend across the world caused by greenhouse warming of the planet, the El Niño that dominated the eastern Pacific Ocean in the first half of the year, and the unusual warming of the Atlantic Ocean.

In Associate Professor Kari Turner’s “Companion Animal Care” class, Penelope stands in front of the lecture hall, her large, brown eyes taking in her audience. Penelope, a piebald pit bull terrier mix, and her caretaker, Katlyn Davis, a fourth-year animal biosciences major, are there to tell their rescue story. Three years ago, the months-old pup was found abandoned, malnourished and covered in mange under an abandoned house.

People love the taste of sugar beets’ primary byproduct: white sugar. Soilborne cyst nematodes — parasitic, microscopic worms — enjoy the root vegetable, too, but as their sole food source. It’s an obstinate, expensive problem for farmers that researchers at the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences are working to solve.