6 12 january 2012stem-cell regulation China has ordered a halt to unapproved stem-cell treatments, and says that it will stop accepting new applications for clinical trials using stem-cell products until July.
The 10 january announcement by the government's health ministry was viewed as an effort to crack down on a flourishing trade in unproven stem-cell therapies,
which are offered widely and loosely regulated in the country. Telescope rivals The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has launched a competition for a giant ground-based telescope
Puravida Fotograf  a/Demotix/Corbischilean reserve scorched by wildfires Forest fires in Chile have ravaged almost 15,000 hectares of native forest and steppe in the Torres del Paine National park in Patagonia burning more than 8
soya bean and rapeseed causes a similar level of pollution to oil obtained from oil sands
Pfefferkorn and his colleagues have unearthed one such time capsule from 298-million-year-old rocks in northern China a'forest Pompeii'where the weight of falling ash ripped leaves from twigs,
Besides sporting a broad, low canopy of tree ferns, the peat forest contained trees that looked like feather dusters, with trunks twice the height of telephone poles;
vines and three species of an enigmatic group called Noeggerathiales small spore-bearing trees that scientists think are close relatives of the earliest ferns."
"This is a wonderful study, says Robert Gastaldo, a palaeobotanist at Colby College in Waterville, Maine."
ESA, CNES, ARIANESPACE, OPTIQUE VIDEO DU CSG, L. MIRARESEARCH Vega launches Europe's Vega rocket, a low-cost launcher intended to get small scientific satellites into low-Earth orbit,
sphere on top of the rocket's payload) which will study the Lense-Thirring effect, a distortion of space-time caused by Earth's gravity.
grew 30.3 million hectares of GM soya, maize (corn) and cotton last year, a 19%increase on 2010.
sugar cane and beef. These standards focus on everything from soil management to workers'rights, and include limits on deforestation.
which released an analysis on 28 march that identifies countries in which investing in projects for production of sugar cane,
'With more than US$4 million in seed money from Norway, the consortium plans to announce an initial round of projects in the run-up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de janeiro (Rio+20) in Brazil in June.
which have yields only 3%lower than in conventional farming and oilseed crops such as soybean,
And studies of PLANT DNA in soil from French Alpine meadows and a tropical rainforest in French guiana agreed well with ground-based vegetation studies8.
algal blooms and damage to important wetlands, eucalyptus forests and wildlife. To address these problems,
The plan would mean fewer blooms of blue-green algae and less risk of acidification of the Lower Lakes.
In the past, researchers have examined herbal medicines by running assays for toxic compounds and using DNA tests to determine
including a poisonous herb called Ephedra and the woody vine Aristolochia. Sometimes known as birthwort, Aristolochia  contains aristolochic acid,
which can cause kidney and liver damage and bladder cancer. Medicinal use of the herb probably explains high rates of bladder cancer in Taiwan,
At least one of the four medicines that contained Aristolochia DNA also contained aristolochic acid. Other medicines contained DNA from plants in the same family as ginseng the root of which is illegal to trade internationally as well as soya and nut-bearing plants,
which can cause severe allergic reactions. But many PLANT DNA sequences could not be pinned to individual species,
and drug regulatory agencies should consider adopting deep-sequencing techniques to screen herbal medicines; his team has applied for a grant to test its methods on supplements that are on the market in Australia.
The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is an increasingly popular fruit, with 145.8 million tonnes produced globally in 2010.
but also in other crop species from the Solanaceae family, such as aubergines (Solanum melongena) and peppers (Capsicum spp..
They also hope it will help in the development of tomatoes that can survive pests, pathogens and even climate change,
says Allen Van Deynze, a molecular geneticist at the Seed Biotechnology Center at the University of California,
and a lead researcher on the project, explains that the group started out using traditional tools to sequence the genomes of the domesticated tomato cultivar Heinz 1706 (the one used to make the famous ketchup) and its closest wild relative, Solanum pimpinellifolium.
and was identified first in grapes (Vitis vinifera) 2, but what interests Giuliano is that a second event occurred around 60 million years ago,
Researchers tested milk from dairy herds across England and Wales for antibodies against F. hepatica, an indication of infection,
War on weeds loses groundwith its jumble of leaves and pointy, green, flower spikes, the plant known as pigweed or palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) isn t much to look at.
But to farmers in the southeastern United states, it is a formidable foe. Having evolved the ability to withstand glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto s popular herbicide Roundup,
it now flourishes unchecked alongside crops such as cotton and soya bean that are modified genetically to be glyphosate tolerant.
North carolina, part of the US Department of agriculture (USDA), who notes that 383 known weed varieties have the genetic defences to survive one or more herbicides."
"Weed resistance is a game changer for agriculture in the same way that drug resistance has been a game changer for the health-care industry,
who spoke on 10 may at a Weed Summit in WASHINGTON DC convened by the National Academies.
"You re applying two different ways of killing the weed at the same time, says Mark Peterson, global biology team leader at Dow."
weed ecologist David Mortensen of Pennsylvania State university in University Park and his colleagues argue that the growing number of multiresistant weed varieties proves that"weeds can defy the probabilities (D. Â A. Â Mortensen
says Carol Mallory-Smith, a weed scientist at Oregon State university in Corvallis. The threat of multiresistance has prompted a return to older methods of weed control.
Stanley Culpepper, a weed scientist at the University of Georgia in Tifton has shown that planting a cover crop of rye blocks sunlight
and reduces the number of pigweed seeds that germinate by 75%.%In Georgia and elsewhere, Culpepper says,
herbicide resistance is already forcing farmers to combine such techniques with conventional herbicide use. New machinery could also help.
At the weed summit, agronomist Michael Walsh of the University of Western australia in Crawley described the Harrington Seed Destructor,
a harvester that collects weed seeds along with the crop, smashes up about 95%of them,
"The weeds that have survived the crop season are the ones that are the most likely to have stacked resistance
The USDA and the agrochemical industry are looking into the use of the natural chemical defences of plants and microbes to control weeds.
and disrupts weed-cell division. Such solutions may be easier on the environment but if overused could still breed resistance.
"The reality of weed management without the silver bullet of glyphosate is need that we to revert to a many-hammers approach crop rotations, cultivations, tillage,
Most fuel ethanol is made by fermenting the sugars in grains or sugar cane, but cellulosic ethanol can be made from municipal waste, wood chips, grass,
and the stalks, leaves and stems of food crops. It is seen as a more sustainable biofuel
US research thrift Research universities in the United states need to become more efficient and more productive, a 14 Â June report from the US National Academies urges.
but also corn and cotton. It legalized the growing of GM CROPS in 2005, after it became clear that about three-quarters of the soya crops produced in the southern state of Rio grande do Sul were already being grown from Roundup Ready seeds that had been smuggled in from Argentina.
farmers can spray they fields with the chemical to control weeds without risking damage to their crops.
Monsanto argues that most Brazilian farmers still use smuggled seeds, and that the company is consequently being deprived of revenue
But the Brazilian Association of Seeds and Seedlings, a trade body, says that 70%of soya-bean farmers now buy their Roundup Ready seeds legally.
when we buy the seeds and then when we sell the soy
Risk assessment of US agro-biosafety lab found wantingan independent panel reviewing the dangers associated with establishing a high-security laboratory for studying animal diseases in the heart of US cattle country has found that the government
because sulphadoxine and pyrimethamine were used to treat the disease before the wormwood wonder drug artemisinin became the gold standard cure.
contributing to a sizeable overall drop in predicted US oilseed production for 2012-13.""Persistent and extreme June dryness across the central and Eastern corn belt and extreme late June and early July heat from the central Plains to the Ohio river Valley have lowered substantially yield prospects across most of the major growing regions,
The seed company Pioneer hi-bred in Johnston, Iowa, last year commercialized a conventionally bred drought-tolerant hybrid variety,
or master, teachers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Using $1 Â billion dedicated for the purpose in Obama s 2013 budget request,
and develop effective STEM teachers. Clinical trials The European commission has adopted proposals for new rules to replace its directive on clinical trials,
they could eventually be used to generate stem cells and sex cells, or in reproductive cloning. But the cells had to be frozen within days of George s death.
Much of the island s original vegetation is intact, but without tortoises  once the island s dominant herbivore  there is a danger that some plant species could be choked out and lost.
29 june 5 july 2012cell bank to close The Massachusetts Human Stem Cell Bank, at the University of Massachusetts Medical school in Shrewsbury, will close
to allow work on newly derived human embryonic stem-cell lines while restrictions were in place on federal funding.
with the difference due to factors such as the time it takes for roots to decay, and the fact that forest debris cut in one year might be burned in another (see Carbon lag).
and point to studies showing that weeds and insects have evolved resistance to the modified crops3.
Seed companies can counter this by engineering new crops that are resistant to additional herbicides such as a new soya bean developed by Dow Agrosciences of Indianapolis,
During the past five centuries, ranches, sugarcane plantations, logging and hunting have destroyed nearly 90%of the forest,
The site was one of many hotspots that still have especially high concentrations of dioxins after being sprayed with herbicides such as the infamous Agent orange (used to defoliate jungle vegetation) from 1962 to 1971.
India has approved only one GM crop (cotton) for cultivation; GM brinjal (aubergine) was approved in 2009,
but in 2010 the government banned its cultivation indefinitely, after public opposition. See go. nature. com/r6zcy8 for more.
Rapeseed biodiesel fails sustainability testbiodiesels made using rapeseed oil may not be sustainable enough to be used in the European union (EU),
Germany, calculated the greenhouse-gas savings of rapeseed biofuel in several different situations. They looked at factors such as variations in soil quality and fertilizer application during crop production,
the team found greenhouse-gas savings of 29.7%for rapeseed, well below the commission's 38%estimate.
when the team used best-case greenhouse-gas-saving values for rapeseed production, did they find that the biofuel produces low enough emissions to be regarded as a sustainable biofuel under RED,
"Saying that rapeseed is sustainable in every case, as the EU does now, is simply not correct,
rapeseed biofuel would be even less sustainable, the authors say. Fausto Freire, who conducts research on biofuels at the University of Coimbra in Portugal
and Vietze s conclusion that the actual greenhouse-gas savings of rapeseed biofuel are much lower than those estimated by the commission.
and would be carried by the same homegrown rocket used to launch its 2008 Moon probe,
which protects native vegetation on private property and was in the process of being revised by Congress to be less strict.
and remove tree stumps from recently deforested land. It is unclear what effect, if any, the relaxed rules have had on the overall performance of the programme with respect to the uptake of loans.
Stem-cell funds The European parliament s legal committee has recommended that research involving human embryonic stem cells should not be funded in the European union s upcoming Horizon 2020 research programme.
The presence of the substance is probably the result of the use of arsenic-based pesticides in cotton fields that were used later for rice farming.
The engineered maize seeds produced proteins decorated with sugars that could be converted to human forms.
And drugs made in duckweed safflower and tobacco have progressed as far as clinical trials. However, making proteins with certain sugar patterns using these systems is still difficult or impossible.
In terms of controlling protein modifications, Kermode s localization technique is"a significant improvement for the production of biopharmaceuticals,
and seeds are ideal for long-term protein storage. However, Kermode says, the transgenic crops should be grown in contained greenhouses to prevent them from escaping into the environment.
Enzymes purified from the engineered seeds are functional, but they have not yet been tested in cells, let alone humans.
The team also needs to ensure that the seeds produce the protein in higher quantities.
The virus gained two new mutations in its trip between the cages one from aspartic acid to glycine in the haemagglutinin protein (HA225G),
Anil Kumar Wahal, the director of the FSI, denies that forest cover has been overestimated. The FSI team that conducted the field visit in May 2011,
of which Gill was reported part a few sporadic patches of felling, and old stumps in the field,
But for crispbreads, the mean actually rose, from 232 to 249 â°Ã Â g â°kg Ë 1. Overall, 6-17%of the food categories tested exceeded indicative values
Stem-cell bid Tom Okarma and Michael West former chief executives of biotechnology firm Geron, sent the company s shareholders a letter bidding for its stem-cell assets on 18 Â October.
Geron, based in Menlo Park, California, spent more than a decade developing a spinal-cord-injury treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells
and performed early clinical testing in 2010. But John Scarlett, the company s current chief executive, shut down the programme last November,
and most make their homes high up in the branches of trees, yet when this habit started has been a contentious issue.
says palaeontologist Robert Anemone at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.""The anatomy of these specimens certainly matches that of known Paleocene primates,
and often uneven, branches. Moreover, the trait is found almost exclusively in arboreal animals.""We really think this closes the question of where the first primates were living,
says Anemone. The team behind the identification of the fossils point out that flowering plants went through a period of major diversification just
when Purgatorius was emerging.""We think there is a connection here between primates and plant evolution,
its Falcon 9 rocket was designed to handle such a problem. see go. nature. com/rvdn4f for more.
its output second only to that of the United states. Fermenting the sugars in the country s abundant sugar cane produced a motor fuel that lowered carbon dioxide emissions,
Forty-one of the country s roughly 400 sugar-cane ethanol plants have closed over that time.
Rather than developing new plantations, the industry fell back on harvesting cane from older less-productive sites,
technical director and acting president of UNICA, Brazil s sugar-cane industry association, the government knows that the situation is unsustainable.
second-generation ethanol, produced from the tough cellulose in plant stalks. Cellulose is difficult to break down and ferment,
In December last year, the Brazilian Development Bank launched a 1-billion-real (US$481-million) credit line to stimulate research and development in cellulosic biofuels and other advanced sugar-cane technologies.
The Center for Sugarcane Technology, an industry-sponsored organization based in S £o Paulo has taken up a 357-million-real loan to build a cellulosic ethanol plant next year,
which would use waste plant matter from conventional sugar-cane fermentation.""We can double fuel yield per hectare
"Nothing shall compete with conventional sugar-cane ethanol until 2050
Pig geneticists go the whole hogt. J. Tabasco is something of a porcine goddess at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where her ruddy,
but the fungus responsible has never wrought such havoc before. The fungus, Exserohilum rostratum, is a plant-eating generalist equipped with a spore-launching mechanism ideal for going airborne,
is not an especially picky eater and, although it prefers grasses, will dine on many items including humans.
The errant fungus has been identified in lab samples from 52 of those affected and was similarly found growing in unopened vials of the steroid alleged to have caused the outbreak, according to the U s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The fungus, which seems to prefer tropical and subtropical environments, has turned up on a wide variety of plant species,
an emeritus professor in the Department of Plant pathology at the University of Minnesota who retired in 2001 from the U s. Department of agriculture's Cereal Disease Lab (then the Cereal Rust Lab). Early in his career,
but only distantly related, fungi with multicellular dark spores that were causing disease in grains such as corn.
He named one new genus he had created Exserohilum for the prominent protuberances called hila (the belly buttons of the fungal and botanical world) on its spores.
when the plant died the fungus was first in line to feed on its decaying remains. I think it's just a general weak pathogen of plants,
while alive and not really do much damage until the leaf senesces. Leonard found E. rostratum on corn, sorghum and Johnsongrass fairly often,
and stalks when insects drilled into the plant, creating a convenient landing pad of dying tissue for the fungus.
Most often the fungus shows up on grasses and other monocots plants often distinguished by flower parts in threes and parallel leaf venation such as pineapples, bananas and sugarcane,
but it has also been found on non-monocots such as grapes and muskmelon. It's a fungus that is not, apparently, very picky about its food.
It's just a really common fungus in the environment that mostly lives on dead and dying plant tissue,
Leonard says. There are many such others, and many of them can also occasionally infect animals or people.
Leonard has observed one other intriguing characteristic of E. rostratum in his lab: The fungus can grow from a single spore to a lawn of freshly spore-crowned fungal filaments on a piece of dried leaf in two days flat faster and more abundantly than any other related species he studied.
This is a fungus very well-adapted to colonizing senescent or dead leaf tissue once conditions are right,
Leonard says. So that would be another reason E. rostratum would be a likely candidate for showing up in a messy lab
. But if the fungus is primarily tropical and subtropical, what was it doing in a place like New england?
In the summer the fungus can probably find ideal growing conditions in places in the northern U s,
. Leonard explains, or it may be spread northward by winds. The spores have based a static electricity ejection system designed to launch them into the air with ease.
And plentiful lawn clippings provide an ideal place for the fungus to grow. Roberts says the group of fungi pigmented with melanin
(which includes E. rostratum) the same molecule that darkens and protects human skin seem to be generating more human infections for reasons he does not understand.
E. rostratum in addition to causing soft-tissue infections, has provoked also rarely sinus or eye infections, primarily in immunocompromised patients.
Although the identity of the fungus surprised him, Roberts was not surprised by its ability to capitalize on its situation once inside a patient.
After the fungus was injected along with the drug into the epidural space the space between the dura mater,
and the inside walls of the vertebrae the fungus's filaments were able to penetrate the dura mater,
thereby shortening the fungus s deadly path into the spinal fluid. Then, in some fatal cases, the fungal filaments began to grow in the brain,
The fungus's confinement to just three lots of the drug also remains unexplained. If the facility's water or air supplies in general were contaminated,
Fungus that controls zombie-ants has own fungal stalkeran article by Scientific American. An unsuspecting worker ant in Brazil's rainforest leaves its nest one morning.
as if programmed, the ant plunges its mandibles into the juicy main vein of a leaf and soon dies.
Within days the stem of a fungus sprouts from the dead ant's head. After growing a stalk,
the fungus casts spores to the ground below, where they can be picked up by other passing ants.
This strange cycle of undead life and death has been documented well and has earned the culprit the moniker:
zombie-ant fungus even in the scientific literature. But scientists are just learning the intricacies of this interplay between the Ophiocordyceps parasitic fungus
and the Camponotini carpenter ants that it infects. Fossil evidence implies that this zombifying infection might have been happening for at least 48 million years.
Recent research also suggests that different species of the fungus might specialize to infect different groups of ants across the globe.
And close examination of the infected ant corpses has revealed an even newer level of spooky savagery other fungi often parasitize the zombie-ant fungus parasite itself.
We have advanced a great deal in understanding how the fungus controls ant behavior David Hughes, an assistant professor of entomology and biology at The Pennsylvania State university, says.
Deadly infection This clever Ophiocordyceps fungus depends on ants to reproduce and spread, but it has found an abundant host animal.
Evans suggests that a nerve toxin spurred on by the fungus is at least partly to blame
Eventually, an affected ant will stop on the underside of one leaf, roughly 25 centimeters from the forest floor,
and clamp down on the leaf's main vein. This position appears to be optimal for the fungus's later stage in
which it ejects spores onto the soil directly below.)Biting leaves is not normal ant behavior.
The zombies'bites are synchronized near noon (possibly cued by clock genes in the fungus) and usually occur in a north-northwestern orientation.
Scientists have found that the fungus also triggers atrophy in its victim's muscles specifically those around its mandibles.
This atrophy is prompted by metabolites that purge the muscle cells of mitochondria and sarcoplasmic reticulum (which provide energy and signals), according to the BMC Ecology research.
when the infected ant bites onto the leaf vein in it's so-called death grip this atrophy causes it to have lockjaw,
This seemingly small detail is crucial to the fungus's success. Without the death grip,
destroying the launching point for the fungus's spores. By that stage, cells from the fungus have grown even more numerous in the ant's body.
They have proliferated around the ant's brain and between surrounding muscle fibers but have not entered the brain,
About two to three days later a fungal stalk will start to emerge from the back of the ant's head.
After maturing over the course of weeks the stalk's head will shoot spores onto the soil below.
Researchers have discovered also that this relatively slow-growing fungus can have its main stem broken off and regrow it later.
Foraging worker ants can unwittingly pick up spores as they pass by. The death of an ant outside of its colony and subsequent growth of the fungal stalk might be key adaptations of the fungus,
researchers have hazarded. Ants quickly remove dead nest mates so that dying in the nest would not allow sufficient time for stalk development
and spore release before the dead host ant was ejected, Hughes and his colleagues noted in their BMC Ecology paper.
The doomed ants do not wander too far afield, often ending up within meters of their familiar territory.
The fungus has capitalized on ants'social behavior. Sociality can be thought of as evolution's winning lottery ticket
But this zombie fungus is natural selection's tax man. The zombie fungus, however, cannot live without the winning ants'continued success. It appears to be an obligate parasite,
requiring a specific, local species of ant for it to inhabit, grow and propagate its spores.
A specialized but global threat The ants best known for getting zombified by the Ophiocordyceps fungus are tree-dwelling carpenter ants found in Brazil and Thailand,
but the fungus is thought to be distributed broadly in tropical areas around the globe. In fact, the full range of strange behavior observed in Sulawesi
Indonesia was described first in the scientific literature by Alfred Russell Wallace in the 19th century. Although many ants in different areas are infected similarly
the species of fungus infecting them is not at all the same. Instead of one variable species, there may be tens
Hughes and Simon Elliot (of the Department of Animal Biology at the Federal University of Vicosa in Brazil) described four new species of the Ophiocordyceps fungus that were found in just a small section of rainforest in Brazil
This hint at such vast diversity and specialization also contains broader implications for assumptions about fungus numbers in general.
Ancient scourge The zombifying fungus's vast geographic distribution also hints at the possibility that it has been possessing ants at least
Research published in Biology Letters in 2010 describes a 48-million-year-old fossilized leaf from Germany that bears the distinctive scars of a bite from an ant's mandible on its main vein.
During that time period the region of Germany would have been similar in climate to the areas of Thailand where contemporary zombie-ant fungus has been documented.
A parasite's parasite The zombie-ant fungus is not the end of the parasitizing line
Andersen and her colleagues have found that a different breed of fungi grow over the ant corpse and the emerging fungus stalk.
By covering the original fungus and its stalk, this secondary fungus or hyperparasite effectively prevents the zombie-ant fungus from ejecting its spores.
It looks like they completely sterilize it, Andersen says of the second-level parasite. Even these hyperparasites seem to be specialized for growing on specific parasitizing fungi.
They're not really growing on anything else in the area Andersen says. This makes the hyperparasite another obligate parasite,
which depends on the zombie-ant fungus, which depends, in turn, on the carpenter ant colony. Once you're very successful,
The zombie-ant fungus's doom, of course, is little consolation for the infected ant. But the castration of the ant-killing fungus means that it will not go on to turn other local ants into zombies.
This hobble might, in fact, be one of the reasons the zombie-ant fungus has been so successful over the long term.
As a deadly infection it could severely damage an ant colony. But, if another parasite renders more than half of its mature spores infertile
(and more still failing to reproduce due to other interferences), that creates a sort of equilibrium with a colony.
the actual reproduction rate for each mature zombie-ant fungus organism is a little more than one new mature organism,
In addition to the fungicidal fungi scientists have seen also small bugs laying their eggs in the infected ant corpse,
where their larvae can then eat the growing fungus. These bugs include specialized gall midges (in the Cecidomyiidae family)
It seems their entire nutrition comes from eating the fungus that manipulates ant behavior. are specialized such hyper hyperparasites a freak occurrence?
and most ant cadavers have hyperparasites exploiting the zombie-ant fungus at some stage, Hughes notes.
gone and largely invaded by exotic weeds. In fact, the same thing occurs every time I revisit the places that
Learning about zombie-ant funguses is not simply an exercise in outrã Â science. As Hughes notes, discovering more about both the fungus
and the ant behavior and signaling dynamics could add to research about pest control for agriculture.
and the challenges farmers in tropical countries face from insects and fungi that infect their crops,
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