allowing for the mechanized separation of grain from stalks from husks. The device was called originally the thrasher.#
a machine) that cultivates soil in preparation for sowing seeds. It has existed, in some form
More formally, the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohols and carbon dioxide or organic acids using yeasts, bacteria,
Anthony Lackore, 24, graduated from Iowa State in 2010 and works as a production agronomist raising soybean seeds for Dupont Pioneer,
a company that produces hybrid seeds. He had lined the job up by the fall of his senior year.
#or that one can speak of a neuroscience#of the flower? Chamovitz answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. 1. How did you first get interested in this topic?
Even the fact that many people substitute silk flowers for real ones, or artificial Christmas trees for a live one, is exemplary at some level of how we relate to plants.
then we can start to appreciate the very sophisticated biology going on in leaves and flowers.
Another example of a plant using smell is how a parasitic plant called dodder finds its food.
A dodder can detect minute amounts of chemicals released in the air by neighboring plants, and will actually pick the one that it finds tastiest!
In one classic experiment scientists showed that dodder prefers tomato to wheat because it prefers the smell. 3b.
Maybe it makes more sense that the attacked branch is communicating to the other branches of the same tree in an effort for self survival,
For example a very recent study showed that plants also communicate through signals passed from root to root.
We know the signal went through the roots because this never happened if the two plants were simply in neighboring pots.
They had to have neighboring roots. 5. Do plants have a memory? Plants definitely have several different forms of memory,
Wheat seedlings remember that they ve gone through winter before they start to flower and make seeds.
And some stressed plants give rise to progeny that are more resistant to the same stress
just as humans don t have flowers! But you don t need neurons in order to have cell to cell communication and information storage and processing.
and transported to the growing roots, while shoot development is partially dependent on a signal that s generated in the roots.
Leaves send signals to the tip of the shoot telling them to start making flowers.
In this way, if you really want to do some major hand waving, the entire plant is analogous to the brain.
if there could be a botany of humans, minus the flowers! Darwin, one of the great plant researchers, proposed what has become known as the root-brain#hypothesis. Darwin proposed that the tip of the root, the part that we call the meristem,
acts like the brain does in lower animals, receiving sensory input and directing movement. Several modern-day research groups are following up on this line of research.
#32 technological innovations that will change your tomorrow The electric light bulb was a failure. In the early 1800#s, The british chemist Humphry Davy invented the light bulb
cotton and other crops, as well as raise cattle. But increased warming can play havoc with plant growth,
and livestock feed such as alfalfa and clover. Massive loss of honeybees could result in billions of dollars in agricultural losses, experts estimate.
When faced with pathogenic fungi, bees line their hives with more propolis the waxy, yellow substance seen here.
#when their colony is infected with a harmful fungus, bringing in increased amounts of antifungal plant resins to ward off the pathogen The colony is willing to expend the energy
and effort of its worker bees to collect these resins, #says Dr. Michael Simone-Finstrom, a postdoctoral research scholar in NC State s Department of Entomology and lead author of a paper describing the research.
So clearly this behavior has evolved because the benefit to the colony exceeds the cost.##Wild honey bees normally line their hives with propolis,
a mixture of plant resins and wax that has antifungal and antibacterial properties. Domesticated honey bees also use propolis,
The bees also physically removed infected larvae that had been parasitized by the fungus and were being used to create fungal spores.
Researchers know propolis is an effective antifungal agent because they lined some hives with a propolis extract
And apparently bees can sometimes distinguish harmful fungi from harmless ones since colonies did not bring in increased amounts of propolis
the colonies relied on physically removing the spores. However, the self-medicating behavior does have limits.
Historically, U s. beekeepers preferred colonies that used less of this resin, because it is sticky
If planted on the ground the total vegetation would cover an area of 10,000 square meters.
why not plant our greenery upwards, rather than outwards? It is certainly becoming increasingly popular with schemes in Chicago and Suwon, South korea.
but those pesky little husks#he ones that get stuck right between your teeth#ontain incredibly high concentrations of both antioxidants and fiber.
Those hulls deserve more respect, #explains Joe Vinson, one of the researchers. They are nutritional gold nuggets.#
Noise from cars, machines and other forms of human activity could affect the growth of wild flowers,
Such noise may be harmful to some plants because of the longterm impact it has on animals that pollinate flowers
and disperse seeds. Scientists made the findings in tests near the noisy gas wells of New mexico,
The study, probed the noise preferences of different animals that feed on the seeds of the pinon pine tree.
while other seed-eaters, like mice, appeared to prefer foraging in noisy areas. This difference in noise tolerance would affect the likely germination of seeds
because the instinct of jays is to hide many of the seeds, the newspaper quoted Clinton Francis,
lead researcher as saying. Via Times of India Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati i
#Smoking related deaths triple in the past decade A billion people will die from tobacco use and exposure this century one person every six seconds.
and farming in the U s. Monsanto acknowledges it thought weeds would never develop resistance to Roundup.
Weeds that resist glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, or that are hard to control surged 25 percent last year to infest 60 million acres, Antonio Galindez,
The USDA now will take public comment on seed developers petitions for deregulation at the start of the review process
The timing for publication of the first 12 seed-makers petitions under the new process isn t clear
it dispensed with the issue of potential resistant weeds in two modest paragraphs. It told the agency that glyphosate is considered to be a herbicide with low risk for weed resistance.#
#The company also wrote that several university scientists agreed that it is highly unlikely that weed resistance to glyphosate will become a problem as a result of the commercialization of glyphosate-tolerant soybeans.#
#Oops. Since then, resistance to glyphosate has emerged in 20 different weed species. So, the company that helped make glyphosate so prevalent on American farms (it was used on 91 percent of U s.-grown cotton, for example, in 2007),
leading to the evolution of these tough-to-beat superweeds, is now greenlighted for afaster review process by the USDA.
So are crops being pushed by Dow that are resistant to 2, 4-D, the controversial herbicide that was a key ingredient in Agent orange.
Hey Goldilocks! You re in the wrong movie. e..He Steampunk puppeteers gone wild...It was all fun
It s like a rocket,#Biju said. If you miss it the first try, you ll never catch it again.#
#Scientists working on building a better leaf Scientists are analyzing the molecular pathways that plants use for photosynthesis. For decades,
#Some plants, such as sugar cane and corn, already have a turbocharged Rubisco engine, thanks to a molecular pathway known as C4.
Creating an artificial leaf Jones research meshes with Cogdell s efforts to adapt the chemistry of photosynthesis ujsing synthetic biology.
and Biological sciences Research Council, is aimed at developing an artificial leaf that produces a dense, portable fuel you could put in your car.
the main ingredient in the plant resins that are distilled today into turpentine. Under the right conditions, terpene behaves rather like octane,
surprising visitors when they find it has been attached to a different nearby trunk! Via Inhabitat Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati i
What s more is a packet of ground seaweed is included, which makes it all the more enjoyable.
which would fly on an Atlas 5 rocket. Spacex, already selected by NASA to fly cargo to the station,
and Falcon 9 rocket to fly crew as well. Sierra nevada is developing a winged vehicle called the Dream Chaser that resembles a miniature space shuttle.
Like Boeing s spaceship, it too would launch aboard Atlas 5 rockets, which are manufactured and sold by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed martin partnership.
as Jill Wiener, an upstate cut-flower grower, told The Valley Table, You can buy from an organic farmer who s never going to lease their gas rights,
and in table sugar made from sugar cane and sugar beets#has been as detrimental to society as alcohol and tobacco.
, soybean, cotton, potato and rice) not only locally, but also by traveling many thousands of kilometers downwind.
#Researchers calculated projected levels of surface ozone concentration, a powerful air pollutant that is not only harmful to human health (particularly to the respiratory system) but also damages vegetation by damaging plant cells and inhibiting
Or, if introduction of a new GM corn variety designed to be resistant to herbicide-resistant weeds can be stopped,
each targeting weeds that are resistant to the other, and the corn being resistant to both.
Throughout North dakota, little yellow flowers dot thousands of miles of roadsides. These canola plants, found along most major trucking routes, look harmless.
Part of that delusion is not realizing that for opposition to GM CROPS often doesn t stem from opposition to new technology at all.
#Clever modular hydroponics system An indoor garden can improve air quality, make you more productive, and, of course, add a lovely touch of green to an otherwise drab office cubicle or apartment.
My one criticism is that it could fit many more pods (and thus plants) than it does,
Previous research has found evidence that mites, a virus, a fungus, or a combination of these factors might be responsible for the widespread colony collapse.
but that doesn t stop a group of renegade agriculturists from turning public trees into a provider for bountiful harvest by grafting fruit-bearing branches.
with weekly rocket flights departing to human colonies on the Moon and Mars (many of which use the same hydroponic food growing techniques perfected in Qatar) making it a truly intergalactic capital city.
#12 amazing examples of environmental art ives of Grass by Mathilde Roussel Soil, wheat seeds, recycled metal and fabric Brooklyn, New york,
2010 Aleta Florentin of Amber Lotus Publishing curated a new 2014 calendar that brings some of the best examples of environmental art all together in one place.
Photos) Whether these artists are rearranging natural materials found on a site, like branches and rocks,
#Now, courtesy of Amber Lotus Publishing, here is what you can expect to find inside the 2014 Environmental Art Calendar.
Szostalo Twigs, branches, vines and other natural materials Poznan, Poland, 2008 Equilibri by Michael Grab Balanced stones Cattolica, Italy, 2012 Rivulet at Parker
Stem cell therapies, including the recently developed method to create#oeinduced pluripotent cells#(IPCS) by adding four genes to your own skin cells to create the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell
by rejuvenating the heart with reprogrammed stem cells. Health and medicine is now an information technology
After the Department of defense ordered sophisticated rocket pointing controls from CU s labs, researchers, including Mercure,
the assembled flower children were his kind of peopleand, in 1969, a potential market. A health nut already,
filling up gunnysacks with chamomile and red clover blossoms, sewing them into little muslin tea bags, and selling them, in 1969,
and weeds out those that would dive in because of a juicy tax incentive. There are entrepreneurs like Phil Anson,
Tequila Back in 2007, Mexico s blue agave yield (the plant tequila comes from) already wasn t doing so hot.
Growing corn is far more lucrative than blue agave. So what does a farmer do when he wants to replace his blue agave with a cash crop?
Burn it down. Yep, rather than harvest what they already had decided, farmers to burn down fields upon fields of the precious potential tequila.
But as independent farmers see blue agave start rising in value, they ll start replanting those same fields they previously set in flames.
Of course, once that does happen, it takes about 12 years for a blue agave plant to be able to actually produce the fructose necessary to make tequila.
Ohio State s six-wheel, thirty-thousand-pound Terramax was brought up short by some bushes;
In the wrong light, they couldn t tell a bush from a boulder, a shadow from a solid object.
and bushes it should avoid, Thrun and Montemerlo simply drove it down the middle of a desert road.
or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders.
most forms of genetically modified yeast, at the dizzying rate of more than 1, 500 a day.
On Wednesday, Amyris announced another milestone#a memorandum of understanding with Brazil s largest low-cost airline, GOL Linhas Aereas, to begin using a jet fuel produced by yeast starting in 2014.
Much of the early hype surrounding this technology was about biofuels#the dream of engineering colonies of yeast that could produce enough fuel to power whole cities.
Reengineering yeast Since it was founded a decade ago, Amyris has become a legend in the field that sits at the intersection of biology and engineering,
Their first target was yeast. The product of millions of years of evolution, the single-celled organism was capable of a miraculous feat:
Could they tinker with some genes in the yeast to create a biological machine capable of producing medicine?
an ancient herbal remedy found to be more than 90 percent effective at curing those infected with malaria.
It is harvested from the leaves of the sweet wormwood plant, but the supply of the plant had fluctuated sometimes in the past, causing shortages.
Now scientists in a lab in Denmark believe they ve created a type of vanilla flavoring produced by yeast that they say will be more satisfying to the palate and cheaper at the same time.
#oeneither brewer s or baker s yeast is identical to yeast in the wild. I m comfortable that if beer is natural,
They say that representing Evolva s laboratory-grown flavoring as something similar to vanilla extract from an orchid plant is deceptive,
Run by CEO Jim Mason who owns the space#the 5-year-old startup now produces technology used to transform dense biomass like corn husks or wood chips into clean, sustainable,
#The oldest joke in the automotive world is the one about the loose nut between the gas pedal and the steering wheel.
and sunflower on the ISS, but NASA is now researching how vegetables may be grown in space for consumption.
and pumped to the roots of crops via sub surface drip irrigation hosing. A2wh http://a2wh. com/Developed by Joe Ellsworth in Seattle,
One doctor claims that a fern extract, containing the compound polypodium leucotomos, can act as such.
He cites a human study showing less sun damage to the skin of those who were administered the active ingredient
But the solution may have been found in stem cells: Scientists in multiple countries are trying to figure out how to get them to produce the correct tissues and structure for the given situation on demand.
and rockets and he needs no introduction. Musk unveiled his idea for a next-generation transportation system on August 12th,
where Musk hopes to aim his rockets one day. Musk s Spacex and Tesla Motors,
Nebr. to work on filament-wound structures#mix shafts for the food industry and rocket-motor casings.
The price tag for the main trunk alone would be $90 billion, Salter estimated, which is $500 billion in today s dollars.
Calif. headquarters, the man from Mead walked among rockets in assembly, guys in Air Jordans working on cargo pods
and obstacle mapping Hybrid lifecycle charting Chlorophyll damage detection Ground cover profiling Wind profile and wind shear assessment Temperature
and barometric pressure profiling Spore, dust, pollen counts Water quality assessments and survey Methane, ammonia, and CO2 sensing Trait assessment for breeding Wireless data collection from ground sensors Plant status tracking Crop status (growing stage, yield estimates, etc.)
and tracking+Weed levels Drone Startups With military use of drones beginning to level off, the industry itself is searching for other options,
Image identification software will give farmers precise location of weeds that require suppression. 8.)RMAX by Yamaha (rmax. yamaha-motor. com. au) Yamaha s development of utility
-use unmanned helicopters began with a request in 1983 from the external branch of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries,
digging holes, planting the seeds and then applying fertilizer or herbicides. As prices improve for specialty crops,
From stem to stern, it s 1, 200 feet, nearly a quarter of a mile;
When the cost of shipping American cotton to China, having it sewn into shirts there,
that mirnas are#oeessential functional molecules#in Chinese herbal remedies. Finally some people#like the author of acontroversial*column published in The Atlantic#used the study to argue that genetically modified organisms (GMOS) are harmful to eat (despite loads of evidence to the contrary.
including bacteria, fungi, insects, and plants. Galas s team detected the same specific rice mirna that Zhang had dubbed mir-168
3.)Poinsettias won t kill you or your pets, though you still shouldn t eat them.
The flowers might make you a bit sick with some gastrointestinal issues. Source: The New york Botanical garden) 4.)Dropping a penny from the Empire state building won t kill someone.
Since the roots of the plants absorb the nutrients from the water, the leaves and fruits (the bits we eat) are clean,
#Proposal to Eliminate Forest fires Completely Futurist Thomas Frey: Over the past few days I ve been listening to news reports about the devastating fires burning in Colorado.
Drones specifically designed for extinguishing forest fires have the potential to eliminate virtually 100%of the devastating fires that blanket newspaper headlines every summer.
Naturally there s a downside to eliminating forest fires altogether so how should we proceed? The True Cost of Forest fires In 2012 the U s. Forest Service had a budget of $948 million for fire suppression, a decrease of nearly $500 million from 2011.
In the U s.,wildfires burned an average of 6. 9 million acres per year from 2002-2011,
A 2010 report titled#oethe True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U s.#published by the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition challenged traditional methods for calculating the cost of forest fires.
the heat plume coming out of the back of the rocket produces a distinct heat signature instantly detectable by satellites tens of thousands of miles away with infrared sensors.
I can only assume today s technology is hundreds of times more precise than anything we were working with back then. 2007 NASA image of forest fires in California The above photo was infrared taken with thermal imaging sensors on NASA s Ikhana unmanned research
That same technology could be adjusted to detect forest fires at a very early stage. Thermal image of Boston Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in a boat Massachusetts State Police released video taken of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev s
extending tendrils and plumes and interacting with the layers of the air that surrounds us.
Each building could be made from dense layers of ivy-like filters and multiple overlapping layers of openings.
The disconnect, perhaps unsurprisingly, stems from the westernisation of diets and cultures. Why do most of us find eating insects disgusting?
Sadly, since 2010, the fields where the children would hunt for grasshoppers are sprayed with pesticides to ensure maximum yield of cotton harvested from neighboring cotton fields.
The#oegreen#benefits stem from the ratio of amount of food insects will eventually produce to the amount of food they consume.
grows cassava and a kind of leafy spinach in a field she leases. While she consumes some of the produce,
roses. Greenhouse operations, packed with Dutch and Israeli technology, have taken root in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
Tens of thousands of workers carefully harvest the flowers, package them into attractive bouquets, and then bar-code them, before they re flown to Europe
and the United states. Growers can afford to pay relatively high wages because their products command high prices internationally.
however, is evolving to allow more small-scale flower growers to participate. In Kenya, Wilmar Agro Limited acts as an intermediary for more than 2000 small flower farmers,
whose goods it then sells at Dutch flower auctions. 3. International demand for Africa s crops is soaring Global prices for African cocoa,
cotton, and even green beans are at or near historic highs. Cocoa, the key ingredient in chocolate, commands double
what it did in the 1990s, which means the farmers in Ghana who grow it are together collecting $2 billion annually.
Europe s surging demand for fresh vegetables and cut flowers has been a windfall for African farmers.
#In Zambia, for instance, one in five cotton farmers and one in 20 vegetable farmers have achieved now#oecommercial success PDF,#reports Steven Haggblade of Michigan State university and his colleagues.
Africa s#oeforgotten#crops, including cassava, sunflower seeds, and cowpeas, have in the last two decades rapidly expanded in production, bringing unexpected benefits.#
Consider cassava, a protein-rich root that in Latin america goes by the name manioc or tapioca and
whose heartiness has earned it the nickname#oethe Rambo of crops.##In Nigeria alone, output tripled from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s to reach 45 million metric tons per year, according to figures from the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations.
Each additional million metric ton is enough to meet the cassava needs of 22 million Africans.
One reason for the cassava miracle has been the ongoing breeding of improved varieties that are more resistant to disease, pest, and drought.
Dried cassava is increasingly being turned into an easily stored flour called gari in West Africa, that is convenient to cook
and bake with and wildly popular. Experts expect even greater expansion through improved technology. The Gates foundation is funding tens of millions of dollars of cassava-related research.
One project, led by the Donald Danforth Plant science Center, in St louis, is genetically engineering the vegetable to contain more iron and beta-carotene.
aims to raise cassava productivity through genome-based breeding, looking at the variations in the plant s DNA to more quickly identify those strains and traits with the potential to boost yields.
The case of cotton in Burkina faso highlights biotechnology s potential. Breaking ranks with other governments in the region, Burkina approved genetically modified cotton several years ago,
and by 2011 about half of the cotton grown in this West african country was bioengineered. Yields went up,
spending on pesticides and fertilizer went down, and total income roughly doubled. Even if cotton remains the only GM crop in Africa,
the benefit to farmers could still be huge. Most African cotton farmers grow other crops,
sometimes planting them between rows of cotton. So if they can spend less to grow more and better cotton
these other crops should benefit, too. 7. Government support for food producers is getting better Everyone agrees that African farmers remain heavily inhibited by poor governance.
Farm extension services are notoriously inefficient. Irrigation schemes are practically nonexistent. Transport links are terrible; where proper roads do exist,
A parallel success occurred with cassava. Starting in the 1970s, researchers in Nigeria successfully bred varieties of cassava that are more resistant to pests
and disease, mature faster, and are lower in cyanide. Now Nigeria is the world s top producer of cassava.
Felix Nweke, an international cassava expert, has described the transformation as#oean important scientific success story.#
#Targeted subsidies to farmers, which have long been accepted in Europe, the United states, and parts of Asia, are also becoming more common in Africa, thereby raising farmer incomes and output.
and hybrid seeds at a steep discount resulted in record harvests. The country quickly went from shortage to surplus;
Here, hearty cassava is a natural choice. Indeed, hotter temperatures and and less rain may actually result in higher cassava yields,
according to climate scientist Andy Jarvis, lead author of a 2012 paper in the journaltropical Plant Biology.
Colombia, found that cassava outperformed potatoes, maize, beans, bananas, millet, and sorghum in tests of 24 climate-prediction and crop-suitability models.
#oewe were promised rocket jet packs##futuristic, ultra-nutritious crops that would bring exotic produce to the supermarket
the technology has bestowed most of its benefits on agribusiness#almost always through crops modified to withstand weed-killing chemicals
This meant that farmers could kill off the majority of weeds with one herbicide rather than several,
including Monsanto s Bt cotton: a plant modified to produce a bacterial toxin that discourages destructive bollworms and cuts down on the need for pesticides.
At Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, UK, for example, scientists are working on GM plants that will need even less pesticide than Bt cotton,
Unlike Bt cotton and other existing GM organisms, such a crop would need no insect-killing chemical for protection from pests.
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