The lion's share of that funding comes from financial donors that include government agencies in the United states and United kingdom,
they are talking about apples and oranges and Porsches and whales and moons, he says.
Nature Newsbon appã tit! A team of European researchers has decoded the genome of the delectable PÃ rigord black truffle.
People go out into the woods at night with dogs and pigs to locate them there's folklore behind it.
Other scents beckon the truffle fly, which visits the fungus in search of a mate
in which two haploid cells from a single fungus each with one copy of the genome fuse to form the diploid fruiting body (the truffle),
Nature Newsscientists in New zealand whose work with genetically modified (GM) animals had been threatened by A high Court ruling have been given a reprieve.
says Geoff Ridley, ERMA's acting general manager of its new organisms group. Agresearch currently holds two approvals to develop and test GM cattle in containment.
Many of the risks and controls associated with genetically modifying animals will be the same he says.
Nature Newstop elephant scientists are up in arms over the prospect of elephant-poaching hot spots in Africa being allowed to sell off their ivory stockpiles.
Despite the two nations'poor track records in elephant protection, conservationists are worried that the proposals could be accepted because of an ongoing CITES debate over how best to manage elephant populations.
and ignore the reality of the burgeoning demand from the middle classes in Asia for ivory products such as seals and ornamental tusks.
and more than 20 other elephant researchers argue for a bigger role for science in CITES decisions about elephant conservation.
Some countries'elephant-monitoring data is not publicly available until the CITES meetings are in session,
In their petitions, Zambia and Tanzania both state that their elephant populations are healthy and growing.
They say that downgrading the endangered status of their elephants to allow the sale of ivory,
as well as the trade in live animals, will actually help to protect elephant populations by providing authorities in the countries with cash to put appropriate measures in place.
You put a ban on anything but you don't protect it, the poachers will go on,
But scientists are wary about the elephant numbers being quoted by Tanzania and Zambia. Wasser says DNA analyses of major ivory seizures have shown that several tonnes of ivory intercepted in Asia during the past few years originated in the two countries2.
Several other scientists working in the region have misgivings about the accuracy of Tanzania's latest elephant census last year.
and peer review, says Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, a nonprofit organization that is headquartered in London but works mainly in Kenya.
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) shares three distinct populations of elephants with the Tanzania National parks,
In January, Kenya led the African elephant Coalition a group of more than 20 African nations opposed to the ivory trade in meetings in Brussels to lobby the European union against the Tanzanian and Zambian proposals.
Nature Newsa study of sexually scrambled chickens suggests that sex in birds is determined in a radically different way from that in mammals.
This cell-by-cell sex orientation contrasts sharply with the situation in mammals, in which organism-wide sex identity is established through hormones.
established for vertebrates, that all cells in an embryo start off sexually indifferent and remain so until a sex-determining gene directs the development of gonads into either ovaries or testes.
Researchers were alerted first to the chickens by an employee in the poultry industry who spotted the unusual birds while visiting farms.
A team of scientists eventually obtained three of the animals, which are known as gynandromorphs. The'cockerel'side of these birds has white feathers, large wattles and breast muscles,
whereas the smaller'hen'side has characteristic dark colouring. One gynandromorph was named Sam, for Samantha on the right and Samuel on the left.
Like the other gynandromorphs, Sam was infertile and a bit confused. It seemed to think it was male
because nothing like them has been seen in mammals. In almost all mammals, including humans, embryonic cells are initially sexually indistinguishable.
During development, genetic factors trigger the formation of male or female gonads according to an animal's combination of sex chromosomes (XY for males and XX for females.
The gonads then secrete hormones that direct other cells to develop as a certain sex.
We assumed that sex determination in birds would follow the mammal pattern, Clinton says. Accordingly, the researchers thought that one side of the gynandromorphs would be a normal female
The hen half was made, for the most part up of normal female cells with female chromosomes, whereas the cockerel side contained mostly normal male cells with male chromosomes.
Clinton says the work shows that chickens have a fundamentally different way of determining their sex from mammals:
but nowhere near the extent seen in mammals. He suspects that the same rules apply to other species of bird,
although gynandromorphs probably go unnoticed much of the time because the differences between the sexes aren't as pronounced.
Combined with work on songbirds, this study strongly suggests that birds follow a different developmental pattern from mammals,
agrees behavioural neuroscientist Juli Wade at Michigan State university in East Lansing who works on sexual differentiation in the songs of zebra finches2.
Birds aren't the only exception to the rule. The mammal model also fails with some marsupials and invertebrates like fruitflies.
The problem is once people develop a hard and fast rule, it becomes the only game in town,
Clinton says. Sam's tubes and plumbing would suggest there is no rule for all vertebrates.
Next, the researchers want to show by just how much these sex differences precede sex-hormone influences. We believe the cells know they are male or female at fertilization,
which is engineered to be resistant to the European corn-borer caterpillar, was licensed in 1998. The sluggish pace of approval for GM CROPS means that
but that has become a political nonstarter. Last year, the commission attempted to force France, Greece,
and on the approval of three other maize strains two insect-resistant varieties made by Syngenta and Pioneer,
and that bacteria resistant to the antibiotics were already present in soil, animals and humans.
In the 1000s, for example, the'Book of Settlements'a medieval manuscript containing details of Iceland's settlements reports a famine so severe men ate foxes
and ravens and the old and helpless were killed and thrown over cliffs, Patterson says. And according to his shells, it was indeed a difficult era,
is harboured in mammals, birds and even insects. It can trigger abortions in goats and sheep and causes flu-like symptoms and sometimes pneumonia in humans.
and less extreme measures such as vaccinating the animals may have been enough. I've never encountered anything like that before,
Cbnl01, that seems to be universally present in infected animals (see health/presentations/120110typingofcoxiellaburnetiiwhyisqfevercausingproblemsinthenetherlands. pdf>report.
if this bug is the one responsible for human infections. With the Dutch Institute for Public health and the Environment, Roest's team is carrying out genome sequencing and comparisons of different strains.
The french agricultural research institute, will start by looking at how the bacteria spreads in mice.
They then plan to analyze samples from infected humans and animals comparing all Dutch C. burnetii strains to see
In Canada, we've been dealing with small outbreaks of disease in animals, but we've never done a prevalence survey,
that's because animals don't always exhibit symptoms of disease and detecting infected animals using blood tests something Dutch researchers have improved radically is difficult.
She will take their methodology back to Canada, where testing will begin this summer on sheep and goats on both dairy and meat farms,
as well as on the people that work with the animals. The CVI said that starting this year they will also monitor the incidence of the disease in pets and horses.
Cats, for example, have been identified as a vector in Canada and Japan. We need to know a lot more about the disease to understand why it's so different in The netherlands than the rest of the world,
Menzies adds.
Volunteer army catches interstellar dust grains: Nature Newsscientists say they have caught the first pieces of interstellar dust the fundamental building blocks of the Sun, Earth and the rest of the Solar system.
Nature Newsa bacterial protein used in a common pesticide kills intestinal parasitic roundworms in mice and may become a treatment option for humans,
Intestinal roundworms, including hookworms and whipworms, infect well over one billion people, lowering immune systems for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis and debilitating both physically and cognitively.
Organic farmers have used Bt to kill insects for decades, and plants have been modified genetically with Bt genes
protecting themselves from insects without any pesticides. This bacterium is a natural soil predator of nematodes,
says author Raffi Aroian from the University of California, San diego. The bacterium can kill the worm,
he adds, and it has a great track record for safety around vertebrates. Hookworms and some other parasitic nematodes have shown signs of resistance to albendazole,
the current treatment approved by the World health organization. Compared to the best drugs people have developed to treat human parasitic worms
this natural protein is at least three times better, Aroian says. The parasitic worm Heligmosomoides bakeri naturally infects mice
and is a common laboratory model organism for studying human diseases caused by roundworms, such as river blindness and elephantiasis.
The researchers orally infected mice and waited for the parasites to mature and become reproductively active adults before treating the mice with the crystal protein.
A few days after treatment, the mice had 98%fewer parasite eggs in their faecal samples
and 70%fewer adult parasites in their intestines compared to untreated mice. Aroian's previous study2 using a type of human intestinal roundworm parasite to infect hamsters showed a 90%reduction in three doses of Bt.
Taken together the two in vivo studies have shown significant therapeutic activity of a crystal protein against two species of nematode,
says Andrew Kotze from the livestock industries division of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in St lucia, Queensland.
Aroian hopes that these mouse and hamster studies will pave the way to human trials within two to four years.
Nearly all of the current drugs to treat nematode diseases were invented for veterinary purposes, he says,
and then were approved for use in humans. Do you ever say to your doctor, give me the best vet drug you have for treating my condition?
he says. This is the only disease I can think of when that's what we do.
According to Aroian, this treatment can be grown cheaply in large quantities. Bt is grown in fermenters that hold thousands of litres for use as an agricultural spray
and to control mosquitoes and blackflies. The cost to treat one child with Bt would be 28 cents, Aroian estimates.
including walrus and beluga whales. The review, by scientists at the US Geological Survey, will be completed by 1 october 2010.
which are engineered to produce pest-killing toxins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, use less insecticide. Increased planting of herbicide-tolerant crops may also have reduced the use of many herbicides that linger in soil and waterways
including acantharians (pictured) protists with skeletons made of strontium sulphate crystals. The results just blow the wheels off all estimates of microbial diversity,
involving, for example, concepts such as crop rotation, complements of animals and plants, and the use of animal waste as fertilizer,
although one crop, a Chinese GMO cotton that is resistant to bollworm, has proved extremely useful to the population,
Pest resistance is a really promising and important application for genetic selection because there are a lot of health problems in developing countries that have been linked to the spraying of pesticides.
Ardi may be more ape than human: Nature Newsa fight has broken out over attempts to drag'Ardi'-the oldest hominid skeleton found-out of the woods where her discoverers say she lived.
whether the species found in the Rift valley of the Afar of Ethiopia is an ape or hominid.
plants and animals suggesting that the species'habitat was likely to have been a more open savannah with some trees rather than woods;
but not knuckle-walking like a chimpanzee. While the opposing points of view are being argued vigorously this week in Science,
the small-mammal fossils present; and the types of silica-rich plant remnants called phytoliths.
The Cerling group contends that the abundance of small-mammal fossils at the site which White's group says supports a woodland environment could be due to predators hiding in vegetation growing around water
and ambushing animals coming to Drink in an interview, White accused the critics of inaccurate presentations created by cherry picking data while overlooking key factors among more than 6, 000 vertebrate specimens he and his colleagues catalogued.
For instance, White notes that isotopic analysis of tooth enamel of Ardi herself shows a diet from a woodland habitat.
because the fossil probably predates the divergence between humans and apes, which he estimates as 3 to 5 million years ago2.
whether she is in the ape or human lineage, says Sarmiento, who conducts research from home in East Brunswick,
A fire at a research centre in S £o Paulo, Brazil, has destroyed a leading collection of dead snakes.
contained around 80,000 preserved snakes and thousands of spiders and scorpions that were used for biomedical research.
The curator Franciso Franco has told press agencies that its destruction on 15 may was a loss to humanity.
which incorporates eight genes conferring herbicide tolerance and insect protection. If farmers don't switch to Roundup Ready 2,
is flexing its muscles with the imminent release of its herbicide-tolerant, insect-resistant Viptera maize.
The week ahead 20-22 may Mouse models of autism are one of the items on the agenda at the international meeting for autism research
This will allow us to protect the most intact parts of the boreal forest that are critical habitat for the caribou and other species
This is good news for caribou, whose numbers in Canada have been in steep decline. But it may also slow down global warming
GM crop use makes minor pests major problem: Nature Newsgrowing cotton that has been modified genetically to poison its main pest can lead to a boom in the numbers of other insects,
a ten-year study in northern China has found. In 1997, the Chinese government approved the commercial cultivation of cotton plants genetically modified to produce a toxin from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that is deadly to the bollworm Helicoverpa armigera.
Outbreaks of larvae of the cotton bollworm moth in the early 1990s had hit crop yields and profits,
and the pesticides used to control the bollworm damaged the environment and caused thousands of deaths from poisoning each year.
More than 4 million hectares of Bt cotton are grown now in China. Since the crop was approved
an entomologist at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, has monitored pest populations at 38 locations in northern China,
Numbers of mirid bugs (insects of the Miridae family), previously only minor pests in northern China, have increased 12-fold since 1997,
Mirids are now a main pest in the region, says Wu. Their rise in abundance is associated with the scale of Bt cotton cultivation.
Wu and his colleagues suspect that mirid populations increased because less broad-spectrum pesticide was used following the introduction of Bt cotton.
Mirids are not susceptible to the Bt toxin so they started to thrive when farmers used less pesticide,
Mirids can reduce cotton yields just as much as bollworms, up to 50%when not controlled, Wu adds.
The insects are also emerging as a threat to crops such as green beans, cereals, vegetables and various fruits.
The rise of mirids has driven Chinese farmers back to pesticides they are currently using about two-thirds as much as they did before Bt cotton was introduced.
As mirids develop resistance to the pesticides, Wu expects that farmers will soon spray as much as they ever did.
The team attributed this to increased pesticide use to deal with secondary pests. The conclusion was controversial,
an entomologist at the University of Minnesota in St paul. The finding reminds us yet again that genetic modified crops are not a magic bullet for pest control,
They have to be integrated part of an pest-management system to retain long-term benefits. Whenever a primary pest is targeted,
other species are likely to rise in its place. For example, the boll weevil was once the main worldwide threat to cotton.
As farmers sprayed pesticides against the weevils, bollworms developed resistance and rose to become the primary pest.
Similarly, stink bugs have replaced bollworms as the primary pest in southeastern United states since Bt cotton was introduced.
Along with genetically modified crops, says Andow, farmers need effective systems for responding to changes in pest abundance.
This needs to be based on research into the timing dosage and frequency of pesticide use needed to tackle new pests.
When farmers decide how to control pests, they tend to overuse pesticides, he says. Wu and his colleagues are seeking the most effective way to use pesticide,
and trying to reduce mirid damage to cotton by growing crops the pests prefer nearby.
Meanwhile, Chinese researchers are trying to develop cotton plants that kill both bollworms and mirids. Wu stresses,
however, that pest control must keep sight of the whole ecosystem. The impact of genetically modified crops must be assessed on the landscape level,
taking into account the ecological input of different organisms, he says. This is the only way to ensure the sustainability of their application.
Conservation's poverty reduction claims questioned: Nature Newsthe conservation of biodiversity is touted often as a win-win solution both for the environment and for the world's poorest people,
Carbon dioxide is released also by plants and animals so to gain an accurate picture of the contribution of fossil-fuel burning,
'Levin says that her finding shows the pitfalls of relying on self-reporting. If you want to know
which release chemicals that deter insects but these can be expensive or difficult to implement.
Organic farms win at potato pest control: Nature Newsa study suggesting that organic agriculture gives better pest control
and larger plants than conventional farming is sure to reignite longstanding debates about the merits of organic versus conventional agriculture.
Organic agriculture promotes more balanced communities of predators, says David Crowder, author of the new study published today in Nature1.
and they may have better, organic pest control. Much focus is put on species numbers or'richness'.
'But the research by Crowder, an insect ecologist at Washington state University in Pullman, and his colleagues, shows the importance of'evenness'the relative abundance of different species. Evenness quantifies not just the presence of different species,
or whether there is an equal distribution of numbers between species. The team looked at the bugs, nematodes and fungi that attack the hated Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata).
the evenness of predators differed drastically. Organic fields where only a limited number of man-made chemicals can be used had far greater evenness than those where pesticides were applied regularly.
which they manipulated the evenness of predators. Increasing the evenness led to what the researchers call a powerful trophic cascade,
resulting in fewer potato-munching beetles and larger potato plants. Although the work of Crowder and his group does not address the issue of yields from organic versus conventional farms
their study found that the increased evenness of organic farms compared with that of conventional farms led to 18%lower pest densities and 35%larger plants.
Mosquito spray affects bird reproduction: Nature Newsa widely used microbicide may not be as environmentally friendly as previously thought.
The bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) is now the most commonly used microbicide to control mosquitoes worldwide
But a new study has revealed adverse effects on the reproductive success of birds. When ingested by water-inhabiting mosquito larvae,
toxic proteins produced by Bti cause pores to form in the guts of the larvae,
and is favoured the method of mosquito control in West Africa, the United states and Europe. The handful of previous field studies on its toxicity to vertebrate populations have not found significant adverse impacts.
But work1 by Brigitte Poulin, a bird ecologist at the Tour du Valat research centre in Arles, France,
and her colleagues in the Journal of Applied Ecology provides evidence that mosquito control has effects further up the food chain.
The team shows that the breeding success of house martins (Delichon urbicum) in Bti-treated areas in a national park in the Camargue, France,
dropped dramatically compared with that of birds living in untreated sites. The fall in reproductive success was due to the loss of mosquitoes the birds'preferred food source.
We demonstrated that Bti clearly has an impact on house martins says Poulin. Before the Bti spraying in 2006, the researchers found no difference in type
and size of prey eaten by the birds in the control sites and the areas
which were to be treated. Over the next three years, the group recorded 9, 051 flights to obtain food
and 14,857 prey items collected by the birds across three control sites and three treated sites.
They found that birds inhabiting the control sites predominately ate mosquitoes and midges. But flying ants accounted for a larger proportion of the birds'diet in the treated areas.
They found that 58%of the differences in food source and 63%of the variation in the size of prey taken by birds in the control
and treatment sites is due to Bti application. In contrast, differences in these factors as a result of naturally occurring seasonal or yearly variations,
%The overall breeding success of birds at sites sprayed with Bti was lower than those at untreated sites.
The former produced on average two fledging chicks per nest in 2009. In contrast, birds at the control sites achieved an average of three fledging chicks.
Pounlin says she hopes that the results will stop a proposed expansion of Bti spraying in the Camargue,
where the aim is to reduce mosquito numbers for human comfort rather than for disease control.
Pierre Mineau, a pesticide ecotoxicologist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, says that the results could help to explain the drop in numbers of insectivorous birds occurring in North america.
these birds are not doing well but we are at a loss to explain it, he says.
Poulin says she is addressing this concern in a second study on the impacts on invertebrates living in reeds beds in the same national park
Mosquito saliva may signal infection outbreaks: Nature Newsbaiting mosquito traps with cards soaked in honey,
and then analysing VIRAL RNA in saliva left by mosquitoes that feed on them, may be a way of tracking the spread of some diseases.
To assess whether mosquito populations are harbouring dangerous viruses, researchers often use traps baited with carbon dioxide
or light to attract the insects, which are then ground up and subjected to genetic analyses to identify any viruses.
But this procedure does not distinguish between viruses that are confined safely to the mosquitoes'gut
and those that have migrated to their salivary glands to be released in saliva when the insects bite a host.
An alternative approach is to analyse blood samples from animals such as chickens and pigs, for antibodies that signal the presence of pathogens.
Both methods put people at risk of exposure to the viruses. Andrew van den Hurk of the Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services in Coopers Plains, Australia,
and his colleagues have developed a method for collecting mosquito saliva by allowing the insects to feed on honey-drenched cards placed in a trap filled with carbon dioxide.
The cards are infused with chemicals that preserve nucleic acids but inactivate viruses, enabling researchers to collect them safely.
The researchers infected mosquitoes in the lab with West Nile Ross River or chikungunya viruses. About 10 days later, they captured more than 90 mosquitoes,
placed each one in a separate vial and allowed them to feed on the honey-soaked cards for 2 days.
whether the insects had ingested it. The team then used a genetic test to analyse VIRAL RNA on the cards.
They found that many mosquitoes had consumed the honey, and that more than 70%of cards tested positive for the three viruses.
Almost all cards that mosquitoes had fed on tested positive for the viruses they carried. The team next tested their approach in the field.
Their results showed that traps containing honey-soaked cards attracted more mosquitoes than those without cards,
with more than 75%of mosquitoes consuming honey while in the traps. Each week, the team collected cards and trapped mosquitoes and shipped them to a lab,
where they were tested for Ross River and Barmah Forest viruses. VIRAL RNA was found on the cards and in the mosquitoes that fed on the cards.
The approach is promising because it detects viruses only when mosquitoes are capable of transmitting them.
Viruses in mosquito saliva can be transmitted, but those in the gut cannot infect a new host when a mosquito bites.
But the usefulness of the cards may vary according to the mosquito species and the geographical region
van den Hurk says. For instance, Aedes aegypti, which spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses, prefers blood meals over honey.
The kinds of mosquitoes they trapped with this method are not necessarily the most important vectors for some viruses,
says Scott Weaver, who studies virus-mosquito interactions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
The method does not indicate which species, or how many mosquitoes, deposited viruses on the cards.
As a result, it would be nearly impossible to quantify the risk of infection on the basis of the amount of VIRAL RNA on the cards
scientists could then use more comprehensive analyses to determine whether the mosquito preys on humans,
and to calculate the infection rate in mosquitoes and assess the potential threat. Next, van den Hurk will compare the sensitivity of the approach with those of other standard methods,
such as the use of animals. At this stage, we really don't want to say that one system is better than another
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