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December 3, 2009
· Food safety checks may spoil your dinner
· Plant research leads to ‘cascade of advances’
· California growers vow to stay in the game
· Today’s trials yield tomorrow’s french fries
· Climategate: Slouching towards Copenhagen
Food safety checks may spoil your dinner
(USA Today) – Fruit, vegetable and seafood wholesalers are worried that their perishables will spoil at airports next year because of a new security law requiring crates of goods to be checked for bombs before going on passenger airplanes.
Boxes of fresh food could sit in airport warehouses for hours, losing freshness and potentially facing unsanitary conditions while cargo handlers stack them up and test for bombs, said Chris Connell of Commodity Forwarders, which transports perishables.
"You could have people putting their hands in strawberry cases looking for explosives," Connell said.
Harvey Waite of transporter Oceanair said he worries airport warehouses will become so backed up that "they'll have to shut their doors because they won't be able to keep up with screening."
The Transportation Security Administration is phasing in a
2007 law requiring freight to be screened before going in the belly of a
passenger plane with suitcases.
TSA Assistant Administrator John Sammon said "it's possible" that the screening requirement could lead to delays getting freight on passenger planes.
Some freight is now being screened, but a big test comes in
January. That's when goods being hauled out of
The law worries producers because the TSA will not be doing the screening. Although TSA workers have been scanning luggage since 2002, the agency is putting the responsibility for cargo on private companies, which it will certify and oversee.
Airlines and cargo handlers are buying screening equipment to perform bomb scans in their warehouses. But Sammon said those companies can't handle all the freight in a timely way.
The agency is urging manufacturers and distributors to join a new program that lets them satisfy the screening requirement if they impose strict security rules, such as employee background checks.
Plant research leads to ‘cascade of advances’
(ScienceDaily.com) – A researcher at Iowa State University has discovered how a group of proteins from plant pathogenic bacteria interact with DNA in the plant cell, opening up the possibility for what the scientist calls a "cascade of advances."
Adam Bogdanove, associate professor in plant pathology, was researching the molecular basis of bacterial diseases of rice when he and Matthew Moscou, a student in the bioinformatics and computation biology graduate program, discovered that the so-called TAL effector proteins injected into plant cells by strains of the bacterium Xanthomonas attach at specific locations to host DNA molecules.
They found that different proteins of this class bind to different DNA locations, and particular amino acids in each protein determine those locations, called binding sites, in a very straightforward way.
"When we hit on it, we thought, 'Wow, this is so simple, it's ridiculous,'" Bogdanove said. Bogdanove's research will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Science and is highlighted in last week's Science Express, an early online edition for research the Science editors feel is particularly timely and important. The paper is being published alongside a study from another research team that arrived at the same conclusions independently.
In his research, Bogdanove was examining how Xanthomonas uses TAL effectors to manipulate gene function in plants in ways that benefit the pathogen. Bogdanove was specifically interested in how different TAL effector proteins are able to activate different corresponding plant genes.
Over the past decade, understanding of this unique class of proteins has grown in leaps and bounds, according to Bogdanove.
Researchers in
Through computer analyses, Bogdanove and Moscou discovered that pairs of amino acids distributed throughout a TAL effector protein each specify a particular nucleotide, one of the bases in DNA abbreviated as the letters G, A, T, or C. The complete set of these pairs directs the protein to a matching string of Gs, As, Ts, and Cs in the DNA.
"This simple relationship allows us to predict where a TAL effector will bind, and what genes it will activate. It also makes it likely that we can custom engineer TAL effectors to bind to virtually any DNA sequence," says Bogdanove.
According to Bogdanove, being able to predict TAL effector binding sites will lead quickly to the identification of plant genes that are important in disease. Natural variants that lack these binding sites are a potential source of disease resistance.
Another potential application is adding TAL effector binding sites to defense-related genes so they are activated upon infection.
The possibilities for this new technology extend beyond plant disease control, according to Bogdanove.
"We might be able to use TAL effectors to activate genes in non-plant cells, possibly even in human stem cells for gene therapy. Or we might be able to use them to modify DNA at specific locations and help us study gene function. This could apply in many areas, including cancer research, for example," he said.
Bogdanove said the simplicity of the results surprised the research team.
"A predictable and potentially customizable kind of protein-DNA binding has been hard to find in nature. As Matt and I talked about the possibilities, we got excited and one of us said -- I don't remember who -- 'We've got to submit this to Science, dude,'" said Bogdanove.
Moscou investigated TAL effector DNA binding with Bogdanove through his participation in the Bioinformatics and Computation Biology (BCB) Lab, a student-run organization that provides assistance with computational analyses for life science researchers on campus. Moscou is a founding member of the BCB Lab, which is supported by a training grant to the BCB graduate program from the National Science Foundation. Moscou is doing his dissertation research on a plant pathogenic fungus under Roger Wise, professor in plant pathology.
Research in the Bogdanove laboratory is supported by funding from the NSF Plant Genome Research Program and from the United Stated Department of Agriculture -- Agricultural and Food Research Initiative program.
California
(hanfordSentinel.com)
–
The study of
Almost all of them said they expected to be in business in three to five years.
But the report made it clear that there’s a major strategy shakeup going on to deal with economic decline, regulatory restrictions and water supply issues.
Water issues loom large as the key constraint on
One of those changes is simply to let ground go unplanted. Nearly 25 percent of growers surveyed said they left ground fallow or abandoned crops.
Water scarcity is also pushing more farmers into permanent specialty crops like pistachios and tree fruit. Such crops are higher value, so growers get more bang for their water buck.
Growers continue moving toward drip technology to improve irrigation efficiency, the study found.
The process is trickier than it might sound, as farmers try to maintain the quality and quantity of their crops with drip systems, said Hylon Kaufmann, project vice president for dmrkynetec.
“It’s not as easy a nut to crack as most people make it sound,” Kaufmann said.
Only a small percentage of the growers surveyed said they intend to buy or sell their water allotments, the study found.
Growers needing to update their equipment will need to borrow money — likely relying on local banks and agricultural lenders, the report found.
In milk production, which is emerging from a severe downturn, many producers also intend to stay in business. In fact, a majority of producers surveyed plan to maintain or expand their dairy size by 2011.
Local dairy operators say it’s because expanding production is the only way they have of increasing profit, since the prices they receive are set by others.
“There isn’t a single [dairy producer] who believes being smaller is a good thing,” said Bill Van Dam, CEO of the Alliance of Western Milk Producers.
But there will likely be no return to the high-flying days of 2007, when domestic and foreign demand for dairy products was booming.
The expansions foreseen in the study are likely to be offset by other producers going out of business, according to Van Dam.
Domestic demand for milk products looks to be down for years. Producers must focus on expanding overseas markets — the only place where real growth is happening, Van Dam said.
Today’s trials yield tomorrow’s french fries
(EastOregonian.com) – Just as every child wants to grow up to be like his or her idol, every little potato wants to become french fries.
Those are the best potatoes, says Phil Hamm, superintendent
of the Hermiston Agricultural Research and
Every year, the scientists plant individual hills of spuds, hoping to find a variety superior to today's best.
"The good, old Russet-Burbank potato that has been
around for years has so many negative characteristics,"
Dan Hane, an agronomist and the center's potato specialist, has been involved with the variety trials for the past 30 years.
"It's the best program anywhere in the world working on processing varieties - french fry varieties," he said.
The program is important to
"Eighty percent of what we grow here in the Northwest is made into french fries," Hane said.
The potato processing industry has been built on Russet-Burbanks because they have the starch characteristics food service companies want, they yield well, are disease resistant, store well and make a light-colored french fry.
Finding another variety to push out Russet-Burbanks has been a long-term project. The Tri-State project has released several new varieties in recent years, but none has captivated the market.
Program participants released the Umatilla variety in 1998. Hane said McDonalds has accepted it for use in its
restaurants. It was named Umatilla because it was grown and selected in
"If they can stand up under the conditions here at Hermiston, they're going to do pretty good," he said.
The Tri-State program releases about one new variety to growers every year.
Other new processing potatoes coming out of the program have been Defender and Western Russet, 2004; Blazer Russet, 2005; and Highland Russet and Premier Russet in 2006.
The path from the potato patch to the fry basket is long and involved. Hane said it takes at least 15 years and multiple selections.
"None has become a primary processing variety, other than Umatilla and maybe Premier," he said. "It's not an easy market to get a variety accepted in."
Once cross-pollinated potatoes are identified as being a possibility for a new variety, they're grown in single hills alongside other candidates. Every fall, potato experts from the three states visit every station with potato trials and visually select the best ones.
Those winners then are tested further in different locations in the same state, then in different states.
"All these 15 years are spent on increasing the seed and increasing the locations where they are evaluated," Hane said.
Ultimately, the decision is made in the kitchen.
"If it doesn't process, it's out the door," he said, pitching his thumb over his shoulder. "We're pretty harsh on them."
Climategate: Slouching towards
Copenhagen
(Forbes) -- "Science and scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my administration on a wide range of issues, including … mitigation of climate change," President Barack Obama declared in a not-so-subtle dig at his predecessor soon after assuming office. "The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process. Public officials should not suppress or alter scientific technological findings."
Last week's Climategate scandal is putting Obama's promise to the test. If he wants to pass, there are two things he should do, pronto: (1) Start singing hosannas to whoever broke the scandal instead of acting like nothing has happened; and (2) Ask eco-warriors at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit next week to declare an immediate cease-fire in their war against global warming pending a complete review of the science.
Someone--a whistleblower or a hacker--got into the computers of University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit in England, also known as the Hadley Research Center, and revealed reams of e-mails showing that its leading climatologists had engaged in all kinds of scientific shenanigans including manipulating data, destroying evidence that didn't support their conclusions and keeping contrarian scientists from being published in peer-reviewed journals.
The revelations are significant because the
One e-mail as recent as last month acknowledged that global temperatures plateaued in 1998, something that skeptics have been pointing out for years and warming warriors have been pooh-poohing. "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment," the e-mail confessed. But instead of celebrating the good news that the planet may not ineluctably fry to a crisp, the e-mail continues with its gloom and doom, blaming an "inadequate observing system" for not picking up on the warming.
This wouldn't be such a big deal if other e-mails didn't show even worse malfeasance. "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith to hide the decline [of temperatures]," one said. To most people with normal IQs, the words "trick" and "hide" in the same sentence would suggest manipulation of data. But the brainiacs at Hadley claim that these are just standard colloquialism that scientists use to describe completely innocent operations.
Really? Then how do they explain
this 2005 e-mail by Phil Jones, the director of the center, to the
aforementioned Mike. "The two MMs have been
after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of
Information Act now in the
Why was Jones so afraid of the two MMs?
Because they had debunked Mike's--or Michael Mann of
One would have thought that the hockey-stick episode would have instilled some humility in the Hadley gang, prompting them to invite ever greater scrutiny and debate of their work. That is, after all, what real scientists would do. Think again. In fact, the e-mails show that they did the exact opposite. Around the time the "two MMs" went public with their analysis in 2003, Mann urged his colleagues to blacklist Climate Research, a journal that had published research by skeptics. "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," he wrote. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit or cite papers in this journal."
This is precisely the kind of perfidy that undermines public
trust in the scientific process that Obama pledged to restore. So if Obama had
his priorities straight, he would end his radio silence and thank the authors
of Climategate for performing a great public service. Indeed, if President Bush
had been so lucky, perhaps fate would have contrived a WMDgate
for him before he launched the
It is worth recalling that Bush too was relying on an
international consensus--especially reports by U.N. arms inspectors--that
Saddam Hussein was sitting atop stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as a
justification for war. "Intelligence gathered by this and other
governments leaves no doubt that the
However, Climategate is fast shattering the global warming
consensus, and so Obama won’t have even that to hide behind should he go ahead
and sign up the
But the issues go beyond the misconduct of just one outfit. One of the dirty little secrets of the field revealed by the scandal is that climate scientists, though they are publicly funded, don't as a matter of routine make their raw data publicly available. This makes it exceedingly difficult for their peers to replicate their findings, subverting the scientific method at its core. Judy Curry of Georgia Tech, a stalwart in the field who is convinced that global warming is real, is exhorting her colleagues to end this incestuous tribalism and open their work to scrutiny, even of skeptics." Make all your data, metadata and codes openly available," she urges. Meanwhile, George Monbiot--the British media's alarmist-in-chief who has called global warming the "moral question of the 21st century"--is demanding a reanalysis of the climate science data.
A complete airing of the science of global warming, which is looking less and less avoidable by the day, might eventually vindicate the claims of climate warriors. Or it might not. The only thing Obama can control in this matter is which side he will support: The truth, or--what he accused his predecessor of--ideology.
Shikha Dalmia is a
senior analyst at Reason Foundation and a biweekly columnist at Forbes.
End Transmission