January 22: Stories That Caught Our Attention This Week

First things first: Check out today’s Google doodle. It’s Wilbur Scoville’s birthday! If you don’t know him, know that he created the scale by which heat sensation from peppers is measured. Pretty cool. Wait, no. Pretty hot. Tsssssss (sizzle noise). Happy birthday, Wilb!

Next, the US gov made moves Monday to team up against food waste with religious orgs, reported NPR. Various Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and non-Abrahamic religious groups have committed to the EPA’s Food Steward’s Pledge, which encourages religious orders to “commit to reduce wasted food and hunger” by way of knowledge and action.

The New York Times featured a piece on protecting migrant female farm workers from sexual assault. According to the piece, it’s not uncommon for women on the farm to believe that keeping a job in America means you have to let your boss have sex with you. Recent history has been kinder to female farmworkers reporting sexual assault (18 cases since 2009 that earned victims $4 million in restitution), but that’s just a small piece of the problem: 400,000 women work the farm fields, and one study put the sexual harassment rate at 60 percent.

Water issues continue to plague the West. First, too little, now, too much…Los Angeles Times explores the positives and negatives of flooding fields. Researchers are still figuring them out.

Lastly, a flower recently bloomed up in space, but despite original reports, it wasn’t the first one. The misinfo doesn’t take away from the newly-bloomed zinnia’s bright orange beauty, or this fact: Hey, guys. Flowers can bloom in space. With extreme care, unlikely things can happen. Like flowers in space! (Or potatoes on Mars!)