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January 29, 2010
· Water vapor new global warming wild card
· Sunflower DNA map may spawn future fuel
· Clinton adviser: GM fears may harm needy
· Certain veggies may help prevent leukemia
· Agriculture left to die leaving India in peril
Water vapor new global warming wild card
(NOAA via PHYSORG.com) – Observations from satellites and balloons show that stratospheric water vapor has had its ups and downs lately, increasing in the 1980s and 1990s, and then dropping after 2000. The authors show that these changes occurred precisely in a narrow altitude region of the stratosphere where they would have the biggest effects on climate.
Water vapor is a highly variable gas and has long been recognized as an important player in the cocktail of greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, halocarbons, nitrous oxide, and others -- that affect climate.
“Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn’t expect,” says Susan Solomon, NOAA senior scientist and first author of the study.
Since 2000, water vapor in the stratosphere decreased by about 10 percent.
A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.
The reason for the recent decline in water vapor is unknown. The new study used calculations and models to show that the cooling from this change caused surface temperatures to increase about 25 percent more slowly than they would have otherwise, due only to the increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
An increase in stratospheric water vapor in the 1990s likely had the opposite effect of increasing the rate of warming observed during that time by about 30 percent, the authors found.
The stratosphere is a region of the atmosphere from about eight to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface. Water vapor enters the stratosphere mainly as air rises in the tropics. Previous studies suggested that stratospheric water vapor might contribute significantly to climate change. The new study is the first to relate water vapor in the stratosphere to the specific variations in warming of the past few decades.
Authors of the study are Susan Solomon, Karen Rosenlof, Robert Portmann, and
John Daniel, all of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in
Sunflower DNA map may spawn future fuel
(AP
via Yahoo! News)
Researchers envision crossbreeding a standard sunflower with
the Silverleaf species out of
The wild, drought-resistant Silverleaf is known for its woody stalks, which can grow up 15 feet tall and 4 inches in diameter.
"Since it's the closest relative of the cultivated
sunflower, it should be perhaps reasonably straightforward to move some of the
traits," said Loren Rieseberg, a
The Genomics of Sunflower project is funded by Genome
Its goal is to locate genes responsible for agriculturally important traits such as seed oil content, flowering, drought and pest tolerance. Participants plan to map the genome for the greater sunflower family, known in the science world as Compositae and including more than 24,000 species of sunflowers, lettuce, artichokes, daisies, ragweed, dandelions and other plants.
Scientists hope that within four years, they'll be able to develop a basis for a breeding program in which understanding of the plants' genes dramatically reduces the time it takes to develop hybrids.
Rieseberg's work with
co-investigator Steve Knapp from the
Their research helped identify a trait that imparts resistance to downy mildew, which destroys plant tissue, and its association with a gene that imparts resistance to rust, a fungus that affects yield and quality, Kleingartner said.
"That kind of information is so important so we don't have to go through eight years of grow outs to see if we've got this resistance in this hybrid," he said. "We can just do it on a very molecular basis."
The sunflower mapping venture is the latest of several plant genome projects.
In 2008, a group of researchers led by
Scientists also have mapped the genes of the black cottonwood tree, rice, the potato, the pinot noir grape and a weed called Arabidopsis thaliana.
Sunflowers are a nearly $14 billion a year industry, with
some 32 million metric tons produced worldwide each year, according to the
National Sunflower Association. In the
The family's genome is 3.5 billion letters long, which is slightly larger than the human genome.
Researchers say mapping the family's entire sequence could lead to crop improvement, weed control and the development of wood-producing varieties that could be used for flooring and other products. Increasing the complex sugars in Silverleaf's stalk would make it a viable feedstock for ethanol, Rieseberg said.
"It's extremely drought tolerant and grows very, very tall," he said. "And what's remarkable is that it's pretty much wood from bottom to top, and yet it's an annual."
The nation's 170 operating ethanol plants can produce 10.6 billion gallons of the fuel per year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, but the vast majority of that fuel comes from corn. Growing criticism from a diverse alliance of cattle ranchers, grocers and environmentalists about using corn for fuel has prompted the industry to look at nonfood feedstocks such as switchgrass, corn stover and wood waste.
Congress had hoped ethanol production from nonfood sources would reach 100 million gallons in 2010, but companies are expected to fall far short of that goal.
Clinton
(nzherald.co.nz) – Hillary Clinton's science adviser has ruffled the feathers of the anti-GM lobby, calling their arguments "tragically bad" and saying public fears risk blocking food from the needy when climate change hits.
Nina Fedoroff, science adviser to the United States Secretary of State, says people will starve if climate change cuts water supplies and raises temperatures while people remain too afraid to use genetically modified crops.
Echoing dire warnings by climate scientists, she said water shortages and rising heat could cut crop yields in the order of 10 per cent per 1C of warming this century but said countries were being blocked from using modern science to fight it.
Globally the population was predicted to swell 2-3 billion by mid-century, while the driest and most populous places got drier, potentially creating a surge of political instability and environmental refugees, she said.
"If there are more and more environmental refugees,
they are going to end up on your doorstep too," she told a public
gathering at
Her comments about the opposing lobby upset GE-free
Last year,
Dr Fedoroff said in 30 years of laboratory tests and 15 years' commercial production "nobody had documented so much as a headache".
"How many more decades of testing do you want?" she asked.
The US Government is among the biggest supporters of GM
technology and many crops are owned by a
Other high-profile scientists have also recently called for
greater use of GM. Earlier this month, Gordon Brown's science adviser, John Beddington, called for
Dr Fedoroff, a molecular biologist
here as part of a delegation of US scientists to build stronger ties with
She said if climate change unfolded as predicted, tweaking existing farming practices would not be enough.
She predicted public attitudes would change when rising prices turned people towards cheaper, GM food. "Stay tuned ... dug-in positions can change quite rapidly," she said.
Certain veggies may help prevent leukemia
(Reuters
via Yahoo! News)
Maikel Peppelenbosch
of the
The findings suggest apigenin could hold promise for preventing leukemia, Peppelenbosch said.
But he warned that his study had also found the compound has chemotherapy resistance properties, suggesting it might interfere with standard treatments for people already diagnosed with leukemia.
"Apigenin might be a useful preventative agent for leukemia, but it should not be taken at the same time as chemotherapy for established disease as it could interfere with the positive effects of treatment," Peppelenbosch wrote in a study in the Cell Death and Disease scientific journal.
Flavanoids are compounds with antioxidant properties that protect cells against damage by oxygen molecules.
Previous studies have shown that apigenin, which is found in celery, parsley, red wine, tomato sauce and other plant-based foods, may also be beneficial in protecting against ovarian cancer.
Agriculture left to die leaving India
(The New York
Times) By AKASH KAPUR:
Pongal is a joyful holiday, a time of thanksgiving. For three days, the countryside was in a festive mood. The monsoons have been abundant this year. Village tanks are overflowing. Fields are green with rice.
The celebrations masked a grimmer reality. Agriculture in
this area, and in much of
The scientist M.S. Swaminathan,
often referred to as the father of
According to a recent report in The Hindu newspaper, almost 200,000 farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2009 — a national tragedy (although it is rarely treated as such) brought on by rising debt and the resulting economic and existential despair.
Earlier this week, President Pratibha Patil called for “a second green revolution” to stem spiraling food prices and declining supplies. Such calls have emotional resonance in a country that still remembers the humiliation of American food aid in the 1960s. It’s not clear, however, how Ms. Patil’s goal can be achieved. The forces arrayed against Indian farming are formidable; they are part of the country’s great leap toward modernity.
A few months ago, before the monsoons, when the fields were
still barren, I met a man named A.P. Govindan in the
South Indian
In truth, Mr. Govindan wasn’t a farmer anymore. He quit the profession around 10 years ago, with his family in economic distress. Now he worked two jobs. In the mornings and evenings, he collected milk from surrounding villages for a milk processing company. He also worked during religious festivals at local temples, piercing the tongues and eyelids and stomachs of pilgrims eager to prove their devotion.
Change had crept up on Mr. Govindan gradually, almost imperceptibly. He could still remember a time when his land had been fertile enough not only to feed a family, but also to provide a healthy income. For a while, in the ’70s, when the green revolution introduced new fertilizers and pesticides, yields actually went up. Back then, farming seemed to have a bright future.
By the late ’80s, the chemicals had started taking a toll. Mr. Govindan’s land dried up. Yields declined. Mr. Govindan said the quality of his crops did, too. In the old days, he told me, if you cooked too much rice for dinner you could keep it overnight and eat it the next day for breakfast. Now, rice from the fields around Molasur turned rotten overnight.
Other things had changed: labor was more expensive, the price of fertilizers and seeds had increased, and the overall cost of living had outstripped the rise in crop prices. It was also harder to irrigate the land. Twenty years ago, the water table was high. Even a cow could pull water from the shallow wells that dotted the area. But as farmers started using diesel and electric pumps, the water table declined. Now only farmers with the most powerful (and expensive) pumps can reach deep enough to irrigate their fields.
All these difficulties conspired to push Mr. Govindan out of farming. He wasn’t alone. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of farmers have quit their profession in this area. Across the country, almost eight million people left agriculture between 1991 and 2001, when the last Indian census was conducted. The next census, due in 2011, is likely to reveal an even bigger exodus.
In many ways, these men and women are on the wrong side of history — relics in a country where the center of gravity is moving to the cities, anachronisms and even embarrassments to a population consumed with visions of a 21st century knowledge economy.
Since the late ’90s, when agriculture represented more than
a quarter of the nation’s G.D.P., its share has dipped to just over 16 percent.
Over the last five years, the Indian economy as a whole has grown more than
three times as fast as agriculture. The trend is clear: agriculture is being
squeezed out of the new
Still, over 70 percent of the nation lives in the countryside, and, for all its decline, agriculture accounts for more than half the nation’s jobs. It’s not clear that the Indian economy — new or old — is sustainable without a solution to the problems confronting agriculture. The farming crisis is really a national crisis.
In Molasur, Mr. Govindan said he had ended up all right. He made a decent
living, and his sons also had good jobs. They had never set foot on a farm. But
he told me he wondered about all the farmers that would quit their fields in
the coming years. Would there be enough jobs for them? Would they be able to
partake in the opportunities of the new
Mr. Govindan wondered about something else, too. Farming had always seemed a special profession to him, with a vital, even noble, role in feeding the nation. He wondered why the country didn’t see it that way anymore. Just the previous night, he had watched Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on television, assuring the nation that it wouldn’t face food shortages. Mr. Govindan felt something didn’t add up. He pointed to the barren fields; he said you couldn’t even grow peanuts on them anymore. “I don’t understand,” he said, “Where is all the food supposed to come from?”
End Transmission