Florida 4-H Tailgate: Fire-Building

Conducting effective tailgate trainings.

The California Department of Health Services' Occupational Health Branch and others have identified the construction industry as being at high risk for injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. Effective tailgate trainings (brief job site safety meetings) can be a powerful tool to promote hazard awareness and safe work practices. The authors found that many contractors and supervisors conducted inef...

Fire Whirls and Building Aerodynamics

Numerical modeling of the behavior of fire and smoke within proposed building atria have revealed the possible presence of violent fire whirls or fire tornadoes induced by an inadvertent combination of ventilation and exhaust openings. Such fire vortexes can accelerate combustion up to ten times that seen during conventional fires, rapidly move fire and debris across available evacuation routes...

Steinernematid Nematode Drenches for Control of Fire Ants in Florida

The red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren, is considered an oil-loving feeder, however, carbohydrates are essential ingredients in the diet of the fire ant also. Comprehensive screening of mono-, di-, and tri-saccharides demonstrated that glucose, fructose, fucose, sucrose, maltose, turanose and raffinose were significant phagostimulants for fire ant workers. It was also found that wh...

Polygynous Colonies of the Red Imported Fire Ant in Florida

Seasonality of Fire Weather Strongly Influences Fire Regimes in South Florida Savanna-Grassland Landscapes

Fire seasonality, an important characteristic of fire regimes, commonly is delineated using seasons based on single weather variables (rainfall or temperature). We used nonparametric cluster analyses of a 17-year (1993-2009) data set of weather variables that influence likelihoods and spread of fires (relative humidity, air temperature, solar radiation, wind speed, soil moisture) to explore sea...