Livestock provides poor families with up to half their income and 6-35%of their protein intake.
G. WOOD/AFP/GETTY IMAGESCARBON tax Australia introduced a carbon tax on 1 Â July, in
such as measures to speed up approval of generic versions of protein-based drugs. See page 13 for more. UK science chief Mark Walport will be the United kingdom s next chief scientific adviser
a biofuel that could help to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and a route out of poverty for small-scale farmers.
But vast swathes of forest have been cut down to make way for the crop, often in carbon-rich peatlands,
and soil degradation release extra stores of the global-warming gas. A recent life-cycle assessment suggested that it could take up to 220 years for a plantation to become carbon neutral (W. M. J. Achten and L. V. Verchot Ecol.
Soc. 16 14; 2011. In January, after the US Environmental protection agency (EPA) found that palm-oil fuels emitted only 11-17%less greenhouse gas than diesel over their entire life cycle,
it suggested that the oil should not be classified as a renewable fuel. Although a public consultation on the matter concluded in April, the EPA has not set a date to issue its final ruling.
"It is possible to have carbon-neutral plantations if they are grown on already heavily logged and degraded land,
but annual carbon emissions associated with deforestation have not fallen nearly as much, says a Brazilian study that combines satellite data
The difference is in large part due to a natural lag as carbon stocks slowly decay
A direct conversion of that lost biomass into carbon would suggest a drop in annual carbon dioxide emissions from more than 1. 1 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2004 to 298 million tonnes of CO2 a reduction of nearly 74%.
and the fact that forest debris cut in one year might be burned in another (see Carbon lag).
but what we are trying to express is that this is a more correct way to understand carbon emissions,
He estimates that efforts to forestall deforestation in the Amazon have lowered Brazil s overall carbon emissions by roughly 17%since 2004.
allowing Brazilian scientists to provide annual estimates of both deforestation and carbon emissions, and setting the stage for a deeper analysis of the impacts of logging, agriculture and forest regrowth.
scientists do need to better understand the way carbon is cycling through forests. And she says the next major challenge is for INPE to build the effects of widespread logging operations into its emissions model."
In 1957, the virus jumped to Portugal after pigs near Lisbon s airport were fed infected human food scraps (the virus particles can survive meat curing processes.
Pigs can leave virus particles on transport vehicles, for example, exposing whole shipments of uninfected animals.
meanwhile, agribusinesses Dupont and Monsanto have chipped in more than $4 Â million apiece. The labels would not reflect how the crops have been modified,
Battery rescue A123 Systems a leading US manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, may have found a solution to its financial woes.
such as developing metal alloys that can work in deep-water drilling and membranes for purifying oil, gas, water and biofuels.
although no firm date had been set as Nature went to press. www. nasa. gov/msl19-23 august The American Chemical Society holds its autumn meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
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,
particle to the online preprint server arxiv. org on 31 july (ATLAS Collaboration http://arxiv. org/abs/1207.7214 (2012) and CMS Collaboration http://arxiv org
The MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre will use equipment purchased for anti-doping tests to probe biological samples for biochemicals such as proteins and metabolites,
Oddone has overseen the final years of the lab s Tevatron particle collider and a shift in focus to experiments involving neutrinos and high-intensity (rather than high-energy) collisions.
when they announced to the world s media that they had fused deuterium atoms at room temperatures.
GM patent win One of the largest ever US patent settlements saw biotechnology giant Monsanto awarded $1 Â billion on 1 Â August in a dispute with chemical company Dupont
Monsanto, based in St louis, Missouri, argued that Dupont s agriculture subsidiary Pioneer hi-bred (now Dupont Pioneer) in Johnston,
Iowa, infringed a Monsanto patent on Roundup Ready crops, which are resistant to the herbicide glyphosate.
Dupont violated the patent by making soya beans that mingled the Monsanto trait with its own herbicide-resistant technology, the jury concluded.
Brazil s fund for low-carbon agriculture lies fallowrice cultivation has received a boost in Brazil
but it is a net source of greenhouse-gas emissions. The ABC funds low-interest loans for activities such as agroforestry,
As of 2011, low-carbon agriculture money could be used to fund activities that caused emissions of other greenhouse gases,
or had nothing to do with carbon sequestration, such as organic agriculture. Farmers and ranchers can currently use ABC loans to buy cattle
Persuading farmers that going low-carbon is good for business will be difficult in a country where, this year,
the government has to be able to assess how well it is working to reduce carbon emissions,
for example, that"Brazilian soil labs simply aren prepared t to measure total soil carbon content. Assad s team has sampled several sites around the country
one hectare of recovered pasture could store four times as much carbon as one hectare of degraded pasture.
and gas resources off the coast of Alaska have been abandoned following damage to oil containers on the spill-cleanup barge Arctic Challenger,
because he no longer owned the compound, but he did go on to produce treatments for diseases such as cancer at the Wayne State university School of medicine in Detroit, Michigan,
and Chemical Toxicology, looked for adverse health effects in rats fed NK603 maize (corn), developed by biotech company Monsanto to resist the herbicide glyphosate
and approved for animal and human consumption in the European union, United states and other countries. It reported that the rats developed higher levels of cancers
An earlier test of NK603 maize in rats in a 90-day feeding trial the current regulatory norm sponsored by Monsanto showed no adverse effects3.
Monsanto itself said that the study"does not meet minimum acceptable standards for this type of scientific research.
The  3. 2-million (US$4. 1-million) study was led by Gilles-Eric Sà ralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, in collaboration with the Paris-based Committee
The 90-day trial of Monsanto s NK603 maize used in its authorization also used Sprague-Dawley rats,
and a managing editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology, says that the study raised no red flags during peer review.
nanosafety and chemical accidents for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. They were designed for testing chemicals where precise doses of purified and well-characterized compounds can be administered,
whereas compounds in foods are heterogeneous, and doses are difficult to control. Regulators rely mainly on more robust tests that compare the toxicological and nutritional profiles of GM foods with their non-GM counterparts to screen for potential concerns.
But culturing mammalian cells is currently the only way to make some complex protein drugs.
When human proteins such as enzymes are expressed in plant cells, they are decorated usually with plant-specific sugar molecules,
which could prompt a dangerous immune reaction if injected into patients. But today in Nature Communications1, Kermode and her colleagues describe how they avoided these modifications.
The team tweaked the protein-producing genes, not to alter the sequence of the human protein,
but to ensure that, once made, the proteins would not be moved through the cell's Golgi complex,
a structure where the problematic sugars are added. The engineered maize seeds produced proteins decorated with sugars that could be converted to human forms.
Richard Pattison a cell biologist at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant science in Ithaca, New york, calls the approach"very elegant.
Most attempts to solve the sugar problem require mutating the protein, which could disrupt its function,
or engineering plants to modify proteins differently a time-consuming approach that often does not work.
  Other plant systems have been used to make therapeutic proteins. In May, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Elelyso (taliglucerase alfa) a drug for the lysosomal storage disorder Gaucher disease which is produced in cultured carrot cells.
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,
says Herta Steinkellner, a molecular biologist at the University of Natural resources and Life sciences in Vienna.
And there particular advantages of packing transgenic proteins into corn kernels. Cereal crops can be grown using established methods,
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.
The team also needs to ensure that the seeds produce the protein in higher quantities.
however, maize may one day become the go-to way to make complex protein drugs
but that add chemical tags in the form of methyl (CH3) molecules to sections of the DNA.
The virus gained two new mutations in its trip between the cages one from aspartic acid to glycine in the haemagglutinin protein (HA225G),
Choi suggests that it stabilizes the neuraminidase protein, which is involved in viral break out from host cells.
What is your position on cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and other policies proposed to address global climate change
China long ago passed America as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. Developed world emissions have leveled off
So I oppose steps like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system that would handicap the American economy
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and produce the economically-attractive technologies that developing nations must have access to
and natural gas by 2035. Since taking office, electricity production from wind and solar sources has doubled already more than in the United states. We are boosting our use of cleaner fuels,
America has regained its position as the world s leading producer of natural gas. My administration is promoting the safe,
responsible development of America s near 100-year supply of natural gas that will help support more than 600,000 jobs.
but instead to facilitate responsible use of all energy sources from oil and coal and natural gas, to nuclear and hydropower and biofuels, to wind and Solar energy development, economic growth,
from fertilizer manufacture to food storage and packaging, is responsible for up to one-third of all human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the latest figures from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
In two reports published today1, 2, the CGIAR says that reducing agriculture s carbon footprint is central to limiting climate change.
 Vermeulen and her colleagues examined for the first time the carbon emissions for all stages of the global food system.
Previous work has looked only at the contribution of agricultural production to greenhouse-gas emissions, including the release of nitrous oxide from soils from farming techniques such as tilling.
2007 and 2008, the researchers found that agricultural production provides the lion s share of greenhouse-gas emissions from the food system,
releasing up to 12,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year up to 86%of all food-related anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
and transport contributes a large proportion of the food system s greenhouse-gas emissions, whereas in China, for example, fertilizer manufacture has the biggest role, the researchers found.
Bid to curb fried-food chemical goes coldthe rich, roasted aroma of coffee or the golden-brown colour of crispy French fries are enough to set most mouths watering.
Swedish scientists discovered in 2002 that a wide range of baked and fried goods contain worryingly high levels of acrylamide1 a simple organic molecule that is a neuro  toxin and carcinogen in rats.
The finding sparked an international effort to reduce concentrations of the chemical by changing ingredients and cooking methods.
Switzer  land unpicked the chemistry behind the problem3, 4. They found that sugars and amino acids such as asparagine found in potatoes
In August, he showed that acrylamide levels in French fries can be predicted from the cooking methods and the presence of key precursor chemicals in the partially cooked,
Nevertheless, the chemical will always be present in our food, says Margareta TÃ rnqvist from Stockholm University,
and concerns that biofuels may produce greater greenhouse-gas emissions than fossil fuels (see Nature http://doi. org/bmssn7;
Battery bankruptcy A123 Systems, a leading US Â manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, filed for bankruptcy on 16 Â October.
Van Eenennaam once hoped to engineer a cow that produced milk rich in omega-3 fats,
) GM study slammed A study claiming that rats fed Monsanto's genetically modified NK603 maize (corn) or its companion glyphosate-based herbicide,
or'fracking'to extract natural gas had contaminated groundwater near Pavillion, Wyoming. An independent analysis commissioned by environmental groups and published on 3 october supported the EPA's assessment,
Nature went to press before the chemistry prize was awarded, but full details will be available at go. nature. com/5yjkul.
Chemistry lawsuit The American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, announced on 5 october that it would pay US$22. 6 million to Leadscope, a chemical-information company in Columbus
2012) and had been filed unfairly to crush a competitor to its Chemical Abstracts Service, which brings in some $300 million a year to the nonprofit society.
One of those animals, a cow, secretes milk that lacks an allergy-inducing protein because researchers accurately blocked its production using the technique of RNA interference1.
In 2006, scientists at Agresearch in Hamilton, New zealand began to experiment with molecules that interfere with the MESSENGER RNA go-between that enables translation of a gene into protein.
says Stefan Wagner, a molecular biologist at Agresearch. That's why it has taken so long to succeed in making an allergen-free cow,
RNAI cannot eliminate the protein completely because some MESSENGER RNA slips past the blockade, but each TALEN targets a specific DNA sequence in the genome and cuts it.
and leaves no mark in the genome, says Bruce Whitelaw, a molecular biologist at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh in the United kingdom,
Without these receptor proteins to remove cholesterol-containing LDLS from the blood, LDLS build up and lead to atherosclerosis.
Breast-milk molecule raises risk of HIV transmissiona type of sugar that occurs naturally in breast milk can double the likelihood of a HIV-negative baby acquiring the virus through breast feeding
The molecule, called 3'-sialyllactose (3'-SL), is found in varying concentrations in the milk of different women.
Several labs are trying to identify how variation in the prevalence of the large sugar molecules in breast milk, collectively known as human milk oligosaccharides (HMOS), influences infant health.
Agribusiness giant Monsanto, based in St louis, Missouri, has applied to plant 700,000 hectares of genetically modified maize (corn) in the country,
or cancel a mission aimed at pinning down the mysterious carbon sinks that are slowing the rise of greenhouse gases in Earth s atmosphere.
) Neither Japan s existing Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite nor NASA s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2),
implementing, and monitoring greenhouse-gas-emission policies, says atmospheric physicist David Crisp of NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California,
Carbonsat s competitor for ESA funding, FLEX, would also help to pin down carbon sinks, by measuring the faint fluorescence generated by plants during photosynthesis a measure of how efficiently they absorb carbon."
"The last thing we want to do is to destroy the forests or whatever is absorbing almost half of the CO2 that we are emitting,
by using specialist enzymes to break down the long-chain cellulose molecules and Brazil doesn t want to be left behind.
Geneticist Martien Groenen, part of the team that sequenced the pig genome, chews the fat with Thea Cunningham.
Plant defenses which can include induced cell fortification, cell suicide, toxic chemicals, and defensive enzymes and proteins typically were sufficient to keep the infection in check,
but not strong enough to eliminate it. The payoff came when the plant died the fungus was first in line to feed on its decaying remains.
(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.
500 years oldtraces of dairy fat in ancient ceramic fragments suggest that people have been making cheese in Europe for up to 7, 500 years.
with biochemical proof that the strainers were used to separate dairy fats. MÃ lanie Salque, a chemist at the University of Bristol, UK, used gas chromatography and carbon-isotope ratios to analyse molecules preserved in the pores of the ancient clay
and confirmed that they came from milk fats.""This research provides the smoking gun that cheese manufacture was practiced by Neolithic people 7,
000 years ago, says Bogucki.""This is the first and only evidence of Neolithic cheese-making in the archaeological record,
The genetically modified rice strain at the centre of the controversy is engineered to produce à Â-carotene, a precursor of Vitamin a, with the aim of fighting Vitamin a deficiency in developing countries.
The trial was designed to test how efficiently the à Â-carotene is converted to the vitamin once ingested.
each group of two dozen or so children aged six to eight ate meals containing Golden Rice, spinach or à Â-carotene capsules for lunch every week day during the three-week trial1.
The informed-consent form said that the rice contained à Â-carotene, but not that it was modified genetically
United nations data suggest that cities are responsible for some 70%of global greenhouse-gas emissions and that countries with high urbanization rates emit more CO2 per capita (see Urban emitters).
By closely tracking emissions in Los angeles and other mega  cities, researchers hope to test greenhouse-gas monitoring systems that may one day allow scientists to gauge the success of local
To convert atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases into emissions, researchers must understand local meteorology and trace emissions back to their sources.
and forwards through time to understand the greenhouse-gas measurements. The approach builds on the Indianapolis project.
when the combined results of the greenhouse-gas measurements and modelling will enable cities to pinpoint methane emissions from natural-gas leaks, for example,
Ultimately, Miller and Duren envisage a trio of geostationary satellites that would allow constant surveillance of greenhouse-gas emissions not just over Los angeles,
of carbon emissions that they did not actually incur, says a report from CE Delft, a Dutch environmental consultancy group.
carried out research on the molecular basis of human genetic disease at Stanford university in California, and was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
and to find molecular markers that distinguish between different strains of the pathogen and that could be used to develop tailored strategies for its control.
-and-trade system to limit greenhouse-gas emissions remains one of the key failures of Obama s first term.
But scientists and environmentalists are pushing for an expanded effort to nurture low-carbon technologies.
Since then, her agency has developed the first US greenhouse-gas standards for vehicles, tightened air-quality standards and proposed emissions limits for power plants.
Christine Gregoire, Bob Perciasepe A former governor of Washington, Gregoire signed a 2010 law setting up greenhouse-gas reporting requirements
if unexpected, reduction in US greenhouse-gas emissions during his first term. The decline is in part a result of the economic slowdown and a shift in electricity production from coal to natural gas,
which has become cheap and plentiful in recent years. But policies have helped. These include federal greenhouse-gas standards for vehicles
As a next step, Obama s administration is expected to impose two greenhouse-gas regulations targeted at power plants
encouraging the shift towards natural gas. Other rules could target the oil and gas industry by limiting emissions from refineries and drilling sites.
But these piecemeal regulatory efforts will not be sufficient to reduce emissions by 83%by mid-century a target promised by Obama at the Copenhagen talks.
and development that could drive down the cost of large-scale, low-carbon energy, and ultimately make a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade agreement politically palatable.
The President s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has recommended increasing spending on energy research and development from around US$4 billion per year to $16 billion,
ratios of oxygen and nitrogen isotopes in the core show that some 6, 000 Â years after the onset of the Eemian,
it is based not on carbon but on a latticework of boron and nitrogen atoms. Computer simulations have indicated that a rare crystalline form of boron nitride would resist indentation even better than diamond
A nanotwin is a crystalline segment that mirrors the orientation of atoms on the other side of an interface (a so-called twin boundary) within a material.
which the atoms of nitrogen and boron form an onionlike structure of nested layers. Pressed into macroscopic pellets
The reports conclude that these chemicals should be used only on crops that are not attractive to honey bees,
Dust and plant sap contaminated with the chemicals may also pose a risk to bees,
and any ban or restrictions on the use of the three chemicals would require legislation by the European union (EU) or individual nations.
Bayer, a chemical company based in Leverkusen, Germany, which manufactures imidacloprid and clothianidin, said in a statement that it does not believe that the EFSA s reports"alter the quality
The chemical company pins most of the blame for bee declines on parasitic Varroa mites
On 9 Â January, at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long beach, California, astronomers unveiled the telescope s ultra-sharp portrait of the bullets of gas seen in the Orion Nebula.
In the image, clumps of iron gas (blue) race through the nebula, leaving behind pillars of hot, glowing hydrogen gas (orange.
says Gert WÃ rheide, a molecular palaeobiologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.
and moths, says Robert Raguso, a chemical ecologist also at Cornell. We don t know if they can perceive charge differentials,
Globally each year, around 140 million tonnes of nitrogen is lost to the environment as ammonia, nitrogen oxides and other compounds.
But even Monsanto, the agricultural biotechnology giant in St louis, Missouri, was surprised by the furore that followed
In 1999, Monsanto s chief executive pledged not to commercialize terminator seeds. The concept, if not the technology, is now gaining traction again.
This week, the US Supreme court hears arguments that pit Monsanto against 75-year-old Indiana soya-bean farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman
who used the progeny of Monsanto seeds to sow his land for eight seasons. The company says that by not buying seeds for each generation,
"If I were at Monsanto and I learned that patents are not available to protect my soybeans,
Bowman was a regular customer for Monsanto s herbicide-resistant soya beans for his main crop,
but bypassed the company by purchasing seed for a late-season crop from a grain elevator known to contain Monsanto s transgenic seed.
Monsanto sued him. As the case climbed through the court system, it grew from a simple contract violation to a challenge of the idea that companies can use patents to limit the offspring of naturally self-replicating technologies.
The lower courts sided with Monsanto, and many were surprised when the Supreme court took up the appeal.
Another approach is to place the transgene under the control of a switch that must be activated by a proprietary chemical.
That would give companies control over the engineered trait by forcing buyers to return each year to purchase the chemical.
That is the strategy of Ginkgo Bioworks, a four-year-old synthetic biology company in Boston, Massachusetts, that develops made-to-order microbes to churn out marketable chemicals.
a genetic tweak that makes production of the desired chemical dependent on a proprietary additive, supplied by Ginkgo, in its fermentation medium.
and food safety groups are concerned about contamination of food crops with products from a new generation of crops engineered to produce chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
Patents owned by Monsanto required the insertion of three different genes into the plant genome.
Monsanto says it is currently not researching the techniques, and other companies are hoping that they will not have to."
or molecular data, from the living species. They uploaded all their data, definitions and supporting pictures to Morphobank,
"What fascinates me most is the tremendous incongruence between the morphological and molecular data, says Mark Springer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Riverside.
whereas molecular data shows that they belong to different orders. This is why O'Leary and her team relied on both types of information,
whereas other groups have relied on molecular data alone. Comparing the two estimates is like comparing"apples and oranges,
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