#Decoding Genes to find Breast cancer Today, August 7, 2014, researchers at the University Medical center Utrecht announced that they have identified a gene that puts women at higher risk for breast cancer.
#Biodiesel production from Sugarcane A multi-institutional team led by plant biology professor Stephen P. Long from the University of Illinois reports that it can increase sugarcane's geographic range boost its photosynthetic rate by 30 percent
and turn it into an oil-producing crop for biodiesel production. These are the first steps in a bigger initiative that will turn sugarcane
and sorghum two of the most productive crop plants known into even more productive oil-generating plants.
The team presented its latest findings to the U s. Department of energy's ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington D c. in February this year.
But soybean isnt productive enough to meet the nations need for renewable diesel fuels Long said.
and mustard) and later with sugarcane the team introduced genes that boost natural oil production in the plant.
They increased oil production in sugarcane stems to about 1. 5 percent. The team hopes to increase the oil content of sugarcane stems to about 20 percent he said.
Using genetic engineering the researchers increased photosynthetic efficiency in sugarcane and sorghum by 30 percent Long said.
And to boost cold tolerance researchers are crossing sugarcane with Miscanthus a related perennial grass that can grow as far north as Canada.
The new hybrid is more cold-tolerant than sugarcane but further crosses are needed to restore the other attributes of sugarcane
while preserving its cold-tolerance Long said. Ultimately the team hopes to integrate all of these new attributes into sugarcane he said.
The research team led by the University of Illinois includes scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory the University of Florida and the University of Nebraska.
Long is an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois s
Oilseed crops commercialized by Agrisoma were used as a feedstock and transformed by Applied Research Associates into a complete replacement fuel for conventional jet fuel.
The White house released its National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey bees and Other Pollinators, calling for the restoration or enhancement of 7 million acres of land for pollinators over the next five years through federal actions and public/private partnerships.
Other goals of the strategy are to reduce honey bee colony losses during the winter months to no more than 15 percent within 10 years,
and impose new restrictions on what pesticides farmers can use when commercial honeybees are pollinating their crops.
BIO is a member of Croplife America (CLA), a crop protection association that represents the companies that develop,
manufacture, formulate and distribute crop protection chemicals and plant science solutions for agriculture and pest management in the United states. CLA welcomed today release of the White house National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey bees and Other Pollinators.
In their statement they commended the White house Pollinator Task force for issuing a strategy that has pronged a multi
and coordinated approach to bolstering pollinator health. Many of BIO Food & Agriculture Section members are doing their part to help improve pollinator health
and learn more about what is contributing to the decline of butterflies and bees. Bayer developed an entire website page dedicated to bee care.
You can find here information on how Monsanto is helping the honey bees keep on buzzinand the work the company is doing to restore habitats for the monarch butterfly.
How Innovation is Transforming Agriculture Data analysis and computational technologies are giving farmers the ability to monitor their land better,
to make decisions that can lower costs and increase crop yields, and allow them to access information quickly through their smartphones.
Nanette Byrnes, writer for the MIT Technology Review, calls this the ew food economy. y combining this information with data generated by soil sensors and weather reports,
farmers could find ways to use water, seed, and fertilizer more efficiently, lowering their costs enough to more than pay for the technology investment
Technology is not only helping farmers grow their crops but also aid in monitoring the health of their livestock.
which help farmers, like Keith Larrabee, make effective decisions. In her second article, Brynes tells Larrabee narrative,
and companies hope their technologies will positively influence a farmer experience: hen Larrabee began using such sensors,
But now, every 15 minutes, readings from the 25 sensors are fed into a network of solar-powered information-gathering stations scattered through the orchard.
It is nearly common knowledge that by 2050 farmers will struggle to feed the massive growing population;
Farmers now have the ability to make choices that are affordable, effective, and based on fact. arming is moving from being an act of intuitive decision making to an act of analytical decision making,
Modern farming is becoming dual purpose. Simultaneous farming and olar farmingresults in ecological and economic benefits.
Farmers can have a continual olar harvestwith a solar farm. olar Power & Farm Crops Created At The Same Timeprofiles Japanese farmer Makoto Takazawa farmland in Chiba Prefecture,
where he has both solar PV and crops. e has nearly 350 kw of solar panels mounted on poles 3 meters above ground
and has grown crops like cabbages, eggplants, cucumber, taro, peanuts and yams underneath them. Both the solar panels and the food-bearing plants receive enough sunlight to be productive.
It would be nice if such dual-purpose farms were as widespread in the future as Walmarts are today e
#Cow Manure to Ethanol Plant Switches On in California's San joaquin valley The San joaquin valley has become America breadbasket over the past few decades.
many of the crops grown in the valley are high-value products that are lucrative,
and the region conservative bent leads farmers and ranchers to stick to the crops, trees, and animals they know.
and then recycled so local farmers can use it to water their crops. The by-product that remains at the end of the process,
and agriculture--for controlled delivery and release but this is one of the first demonstrations of this approach for controlled capture says Jennifer A. Lewis the Hansj rg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard School of engineering
#Dutch Harvest Electricity From Living Plants To Power Streetlights, Wi-fi & Cell Phones Plant-e, a company based out of The netherlands,
others argue they are a threat to bird life and a noisy blight on the landscape.
But researchers discovered weak evidence that medical marijuana was associated with improvements in nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy
'Since medical marijuana is not a lifesaving intervention, it may be prudent to wait before widely adopting its use until high-quality evidence is available to guide the development of a rational approval process,
'he told Reuters. That could lead to agricultural production of drugs such as noscapine, a cough-suppressant that may also fight cancer,
#Nemo's Garden project is growing strawberries, beans, lettuce and herbs underwater They wouldn look out of place in a sci-fi film,
The farm, named Nemo Garden has been installed in the Bay of Noli, in Savona, Italy. he main target of this project is to create alternative sources of plant production in areas where environmental conditions make it extremely difficult to grow crops through conventional farming,
including lack of fresh water, fertile soils, and extreme temperature changes, said a spokesman for the project. e are trying to find an alternative and economically viable technology enabling efficient production.
A control centre on dry land allows the scientists to monitor the status of crops without having to dive down every day to tend to them. e have installed many webcams
efore when I was looking at a plant in the garden it was like a honeycomb in the centre of my eye.
I can now walk round the garden and see things. is system was turned on for the first time on July 1,
the Harvester, a machine that, in six to 24 hours, turns food matter into a high-nutrient liquid that can be converted to organic fertilizer.
The final product, WISERGANIC fertilizer, is sold both to farmers and to consumers at the stores that scrapped the leftover potato salad in the first place.
Acceleration Partners, a marketing agency with 45 team members, emphasizes individual goal-setting to track productivity. e also use tools like Harvest for time tracking,
#Flexible nanogenerator harvests muscle movement to power mobile devices The consumer world is becoming powered by mobile devices,
In order to coax the graphene-boron honeycomb into exposing its hidden behaviors, some additional outside influence needs to be imposed.
When the graphene-boron honeycombs are stacked out of alignment, they create something known as a oire pattern
by means of a roll-on coating consisting of a honeycomb of electrodes (see bottom right image).
Elastic buckling honeycomb structures. Known officially as negative-stiffness honeycombs, these hexagonal cell structures are named
so because they are able to provide continued support from repeat impact events. Current traditional honeycomb structures can support an individual only once before breaking down
and deforming permanently due to plastic buckling. Elastic buckling honeycomb structures provide the materials needed so that a given item could stretch
or bend and protect a victim or item when necessary, but return to its normal shape afterward without any inward breakdown of its parts.
who first dabbled into cloaking before he stumbled upon negative stiffness honeycombs last year. In fact, Leiden University Phd student Bastiaan Florijn created a sponge-like object as a prop for the concept at the American Physical Society March Meeting,
#Farmlogs Is Now Able To Alert Farmers About Crop Threats Farm management software company Farmlogs is used by over 20%of the farms in the U s. with over $15 billion in crops under management.
Now Farmlogs has launched the only crop health monitoring service in the industry that can pinpoint the exact location in the part of the field that needs attention.
Farmlogs monitors crop health by utilizing multi-spectral satellite imagery to build performance baselines from over five years of field-specific crop health data.
The crop health is tracked throughout the season against the performance baseline to detect subtle cues
The crop health monitoring imagery utilized by Farmlogs shows information that is actionable and eliminates guesswork
so that farmers can fix problems before yield is reduced. If Farmlogs detects crop health anomalies, then it will alert farmers by pinpointing the exact location of the threats.
Farmlogsmobile app will even guide farmers to the location that needs to be monitored. As a gift to its users, Farmlogs is offering the crop monitoring feature for free this year.
Based in Ann arbor, Michigan Farmlogs launched about three years ago and participated in the Y Combinator startup accelerator program.
Farmlogs raised $10 million in Series B about six months ago, bringing its total institutional funding to $15 million thus far.
Farmlogs is used by farmers in all 50 states and internationally in over 130 countries across six continents.
because the agriculture technology (gtech space is thriving. For example, Monsanto acquired Climate Corporation for nearly $1 billion in 2013.
And agriculture technology companies received $2. 36 billion of investments across 264 deals last year alone
ee seen how impactful data can be in helping farmers optimize their production. At the same time, we are always looking for ways to minimize the work our users have said to do
so it kills only those bugs that threaten crops and avoids collateral damage to beneficial insects.
whether an RNA-insecticide spray would be stable enough to use in agriculture. They matched double-stranded (ds) RNA to an actin gene in the Colorado potato beetle
a leading potato pest that costs North american farmers $100 million per year and also damages tomato and other plants.
Crop protection RNA, ribonucleic acid, is present in all living cells. Mainly, it acts as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA for controlling the synthesis of proteins.
The idea for crop protection was born out of this technology. As part of the study, Scott and Keri San miguel put a film of ds RNA on plate glass
#Crop attack discovery lets team bounce back When disease-causing bacteria invade disease-resistant rice, a small protein produced by the bacteria betrays the invader.
Identification of the tiny protein, called Raxx, holds promise for developing more disease-resistant crop varieties and therapeutic treatments for blocking microbial infections in both plants and animals, say the researchers,
researchers discovered that the Raxx protein was present in at least eight species of the disease-causing Xanthamonas bacteria that are known to attack ricehe staple food for half of the world populations well as maize, cassava, sugar cane, tomatoes, peppers
, wheat, alfalfa, onions, banana, and citrus. ur research team is delighted to announce the discovery of the Raxx protein,
a new class of microbial signaling molecules, says Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at University of California, Davis,
In the long term, the researchers hope to use this information to develop new strategies to prevent infection in various crops.
and disease resistance for more than two decades and in 1995 announced that a gene called Xa21 confers resistance to the bacterial blight pathogen.
Bacterial blight, one of the worst bacterial plant diseases in the world, has been found in virtually every crop species including rice.
including long haul transportation and trucking, agriculture (tractors), mining and off-road vehicles, motorcycles, diesel trains, generators, container ships and aircraft, among others.
#"Nemo's Garden"grows terrestrial crops underwater The stand for the region of Liguria at the Milan 2015 Expo features a project as bizarre-sounding as it is intriguing:
an attempt to grow crops underwater, inside air-filled biospheres. It's part of an effort that could prove a low-cost,
lack of fertile land and adverse climate conditions around the world means we've seen several projects involving growing crops creatively,
including underground, inside a skyscraper, in a tiny greenhouse and even in the cloud, to try and deal with the issue.
and the crops are well out of the reach of parasites. The evaporating sea water condenses on the inner walls of the biosphere,
creating a high-humidity environment (up to 85 percent) that favors crop growth. All in all according to its proponents, the system is sustainable
The Nemo's Garden project started in 2012 and continued through the next two summers. The three (now five) underwater biospheres were anchored to the seafloor
Live streaming for the underwater garden project is available via Ustream, 24/7. Four cameras will monitor the stretch of sea containing the garden and the inside of the biggest biosphere.
Each week will also see a live underwater broadcast to describe the latest progress. The video below further illustrates the project.
Nemo's Garden via New Scientis e
#ADAMAAS smart glasses to assist elderly and disabled in everyday tasks We've seen various head-mounted wearables,
it is not likely to cause the same kind of ethical and practical problems that blight work on other forms of gene therapy.
Light technology is now an active area of research in energy, health and agriculture. First lighting the way In the late 1800s
in agriculture, more effective harvesting of solar energy and its conversion into heat via greenhouses could enable year-round production as well as access to crops not currently available in certain climates.
and long-endurance surveillance for agriculture, mapping and other applications,"Bill Fredericks, an aerospace engineer at the Langley Research center, said in a statement."
#New Honeycomb-Inspired Design Protects Against Impacts Conventional honeycomb structures are insular panels of repeating, often hexagonal-shaped cells in a range of sizes and configurations.
The shortcoming of conventional honeycombs is that they lose their full protective properties after only one impact due to plastic buckling of the material.
NS honeycombs, on the other hand, bounce back. The researchers devised a cell geometry capable of elastic buckling, giving NS honeycomb structures the resilience to recover their energy-absorbing shape and properties after impact.
which is like a honeycomb or chicken-wire-shaped lattice of carbon atoms. When these honeycomb structures are stacked on top of each other,
if they are out of alignment, they create a so-called moire pattern, which varies with rotation of the layers with respect to each other."
"While this honeycomb structure exists in graphite, a familiar bulk form of carbon, its special properties only show
greener and safer nanotechnology and could lead to enhanced efficiency of antimicrobial products used in agriculture and personal care.
greener and safer nanotechnology and could lead to enhanced efficiency of antimicrobial products used in agriculture and personal care.
produce and commercialise specialist chemicals to be used, in particular, in agriculture and pharmaceutical industry. The Institute publishes approximately 200 original research papers annually.
"If you have a microwave and honey or molasses, you can pretty much make these particles at home,
honey bees can see and respond to ultraviolet signals, and fireflies use flash communication systems, Yu adds. rgans evolved for perceiving
2015visible Light-sensitive Photocatalysts Used for Purification of Contaminated water in Iran June 30th, 2015food/Agriculture/Supplements Bacteria Cellulose,
greener and safer nanotechnology and could lead to enhanced efficiency of antimicrobial products used in agriculture and personal care.
the technology also has potential in applications that harvest the sun's energy with high efficiency. In addition, Yu envisions simply letting the resonator emit that energy in the form of infrared light toward the sky,
The process is followed then by high temperature activation annealing (about 600 to 900 degrees Celsius) to form a honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms, a typical microscopic structure of graphene.
the processing of the woolen fabric samples by using optimum amount of honeycomb nanocomposite such as N-Ag/Zno improves the biological, mechanical and hydrophilicity of the fabrics.
#Hematite're-growth'smoothes rough edges for clean energy harvest (Nanowerk News) Finding an efficient solar water splitting method to mine electron-rich hydrogen for clean
Water splitting combines sunlight and water in a chemical reaction in order to harvest clean hydrogen energy. By smoothing the surface of hematite,
"Carbon atoms in graphene sheets are arranged in a regularly repeating honeycomb-like latticea two-dimensional crystal. Like other crystals,
Local farmers will use the system and provide feedback at a conference organized by Jain Irrigation,
such as the ranches in New mexico where she tested her system at full scale, poor access to water pipelines often leads to a heavy reliance on well water.
But some ranchers find that even their livestock wont tolerate the saltiness of this water.
Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology And circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it
hi-tech sentinels for crops (Nanowerk News) Sensors and drones can be among the farmers'best friends,
and to control the general condition of their crops. Nowadays Piedmont, in north western Italy, is an open air laboratory where companies
which helps agronomists to verify in real time if plants are enjoying good health. Infrared imagine of an experimental field of wheat in Cigliano, near Vercelli.
Agronomists need to verify if a poor state of health is caused by disease or a lack of water anyway,
and specialized in the use of drones for agriculture: They contribute to the early detection of diseases that affect grapevines,
which carry small cameras able to take near infrared images of crops. Healthy plants are rich in chlorophyll a pigment that reflects infrared quite well:
noninvasive and more affordable tool to check how crops are doing. Moreover, it improves sustainability
Connecting these results with those gathered by agronomists and sensors on the ground, the farmer can have a complete overview of
what is going on. Even the Piattella bean, cultivated in Cortereggio, a small town in the Canavese area, has benefited from this technology.
The legume is a presidium of Slow food, the global organisation that supports the principles of organic agriculture
The bean was lost almost a crop. About 25 years ago a farmer, named Mario Boggio, gave some kilos of Piattella to the University of Turins germplasm bank,
to preserve the seed. Twenty years later the cultivation restarted, but the soil was changed. CSP, together with the Association Piattella Canavesana di Cortereggio"and the municipality of San Giorgio Canavese, started monitoring via sensors that control temperature and humidity at 10 and 40 centimetres underground,
allowing agronomists and farmers to check the results in real time. Despite the strict parameters that define a Slow food presidium,
#Nanogenerator harvests power from rolling tires A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and a collaborator from China have developed a nanogenerator that harvests energy from a car's rolling tire friction.
which are organized in a honeycomb-like structure. The molecules have an incredibly thin 1d-channel,
greener and safer nanotechnology and could lead to enhanced efficiency of antimicrobial products used in agriculture and personal care.
the technology also has potential in applications that harvest the sun's energy with high efficiency. In addition, Yu envisions simply letting the resonator emit that energy in the form of infrared light toward the sky,
The process is followed then by high temperature activation annealing (about 600 to 900 degrees Celsius) to form a honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms, a typical microscopic structure of graphene.
Then, they wrapped the Ag/Tio2 nanoparticles in sheets of reduced graphene oxide (RGO), a thin layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern.
reportedly harvests the electromagnetic radiation transferring to and from mobile phones and converts it into direct current (DC) electrical energy,
But now, the rare palm tree specimens, the secret garden and the turret-shaped hedges are a liability rather than a selling point.
the almond orchards have shriveled into dust, the flood of noncitizen immigrants is draining the state's revenues
forces farmer to shoot all his own pigs/**CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE***var disqus shortname='naturalnews';/
and other conflicts and even more are harmed by activities such as development and agriculture. Some were destroyed before they were surveyed even
Farmers that are able to identify viruses affecting the health or yields of their herds might be able to halt the spread of those viruses,
It's harder to think about how this technology could be used in agriculture. Countless acres of genetically engineered crops would need to be fed this manmade ingredient, from a crop duster or by some other means.
Scientists would also need to show that the synthetic protein component is safe to eat."
When a case crops up, the team rushes to scene andgives the vaccine to people who are close to the sick person those who are at high risk of getting the virus."So this can be the neighbors, the family, the coworkers,
Within graphene, benzene rings are fused to form a honeycomb structure. Sections of this structure, referred to as nanographenes or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHS), play an integral role in organic electronics.
instead of the current crop that often just monitor the body's activity.""Wearables currently are centered mostly around monitoring
#Here's how to make carbon nanoparticles with honey and a microwave Carbon nanoparticles can be incredibly useful in the treatment of many types of disease,
using a process that involves plain old honey and a microwave. The resulting particles are less than 8 nanometres thick (a human hair is around 80,000-100,000 nanometres)
"If you have a microwave and honey or molasses, you can pretty much make these particles at home,
#World first underground urban farm opens for business in London The world first underground urban farm has started trading in London,
sustainable farming business. rowing Underground (love the name!)uses hydroponics systems and LED lighting to produce a range of vegetables
and preparation-has been designed to produce crops with the least amount of energy expenditure possible. The operators claim the hydroponics
and can produce crops all year round, but perhaps Growing Underground greatest asset when it comes to low-impact farming will be its location.
The depth of the facility now provides some much-needed insulation to help grow crops 52 weeks of the year
but it also provides the latest glimpse of how farming is moving into the 21st Century thanks to some pioneering high-tech agriculture ideas.
without the high Scientists have figured out how to separate the pain relieving qualities of medical marijuana from its psychological side-effects in an effort to offer people a new high-free option.
and thinks it could be the key to medical marijuana without the negative side effects.""For me, the ideal drug would be in one of two scenarios:
Hamilton Moses III M d. of the Alerion Institute and Alerion Advisors LLC North Garden Va. and Johns Hopkins School of medicine Baltimore and colleagues examined developments over the past two decades
The United nations Food and agriculture organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) revealed in December that the Ebola outbreak had left nearly half a million people in the three countries severely food insecure:
unless urgent measures are taken to significantly enhance access to food and safeguard crop and livestock production in these countries
FAO and WFP stated that the Ebola epidemic has caused a significant shock to the food
and agriculture sectors in the affected countries where two thirds of the population depend on agriculture for their livelihood.
Many farmers have abandoned their fields and harvests for fear of the disease. In Sierra leone for instance it is reported that up to 40%of farms were abandoned in the worst affected areas.
and Sierra leone at their request to revive their rice sectors under the umbrella of the World bank-funded West Africa Agricultural productivity Program (WAAPP).
and technologies available to farmers enhance rice quality and develop a critical mass of scientists technicians extension workers and seed producers.
According to FAO the 2014 rice production is expected to reduce by 12%in Liberia 8%in Sierra leone and 4%in Guinea.
In addition to addressing the immediate priority of Ebola control FAO and WFP have called for urgent action to reestablish the farming system in the three countries.
Measures should enable most vulnerable people to access agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilizers and adopt improved technology to address labor shortages.
and planning strategies to make improved rice seed available to farmers with strong support from donors such as the Government of Japan the African Development bank FAO the International Fund for Agricultural development the United states Agency for International Development
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011