The News was unable to get any sense of what Sherman’s opponent, Cynthia Watson-Banks, would bring to the district. Watson-Banks did not fill out The News’ candidate questionnaire and did not respond to multiple emails and outreach via social media.According to a Facebook page under her name, Watson-Banks studied at West Texas State University.

Sherman is the son of Carl Sherman, who formerly served two terms as DeSoto’s mayor and won election to the Texas House of Representatives in District 109 last November. The trustee plans to launch a tech company with his dad.The father of two children in the district, Sherman Jr. recently participated in the leadership program offered by the Texas Association of School Boards and has logged more than 80 hours of continuing education classes, focusing again on governance.

Sherman presides over a board that has seen troubling racial divisions. Fixing the problems that remain in the district should be the board’s unifying goal, something Sherman is well positioned to address.

Most fruit and vegetable plants produce more inedible leaves and stems, known as biomass, than edible fruit or vegetables. Small plants with more edible parts than biomass could produce large quantities of food on small plots and indoor spaces such as vertical urban farms. However, vertical farming systems tend to grow leafy greens because they have trouble supporting larger fruiting plants like tomatoes.In addition to their small size, the UC Riverside tiny tomatoes minimize resource and energy consumption by producing fruit more quickly than conventional plants.

The traits that make the tomatoes suitable for growing in vertical urban farms on Earth, with a few small tweaks, could also make them suitable for growing on the International Space Station, where astronauts yearn for fresh fruit and vegetables.When I first saw those tiny tomatoes growing in Martha’s lab, I just knew we had to get them onto the space station, Jinkerson said.