and is a key source of drinking water for the region. If current irrigation trends continue unabated 69 percent of the available groundwater will be drained in the next five decades the researchers said in a study published online today (Aug 26) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
#Predicting Mars Cuisine: Grasshoppers with a Side of Fungi (Op-Ed) Doug Turnbull is a hard-science-fiction writer.
The majority of his books novellas and short stories confront problems faced by early settlers of other worlds.
and explore Mars will certainly have to bring their food with them. However if a permanent settlement on Mars is to be both physically
and economically sustainable eventually settlers will have to grow most if not all of their food on the Red planet.
First unlike hardware or electronics food is a consumable which means that the settlers will need a continuous supply.
Sending a kilogram (2. 5 pounds) of basic food to Mars would likely cost many times more than a similar amount of Beluga caviar consumed On earth.
which means that settlers will have to store some food for two-plus years before a new shipment arrives.
It is not possible to ship certain types of food such as fresh vegetables and fruits that far or to store them for many months.
In fact very few foods remain viable over such durations without losing many of the characteristics that make them wholesome and nutritious.
NASA has been funding research into methods of storing food for long periods while keeping astronauts healthy.
However there has been limited only research into actually growing food under the conditions plants are likely to encounter on Mars. The Red planet's gravity is 38-percent that of Earth
or dock with the ISS to replenish food. Powered by two solar panels pointed toward the sun the lab would rotate at two revolutions per minute (rpm) simulating Mars's gravity.
and into several sections like the layers of a cake. One section could house the crew and another the plants in experimental growing media such as simulated Mars soil or fluid for hydroponic gardening.
Even without such studies it is still possible to speculate about food sources for Mars settlers.
Initially a vegetarian diet would seem logical as it is the simplest in terms of agricultural management. Soybeans provide basic proteins capable of sustaining human health.
Greens sprouts and even seaweed may help create a balanced diet. Indeed astronauts have grown successfully peas
All would be likely choices as mainstay foods if they can thrive under Mars-like conditions.
and other sources of nutrients that people take for granted here On earth. At least in the early years Red planet residents will not have access to fruits containing Vitamin c
In addition to providing a food source greenery offers the added benefits of converting carbon dioxide exhaled by settlers into oxygen essential for maintaining a long-term bio-regenerative life support system.
Fungi specifically mushrooms are excellent low-maintenance food sources that require little or no light.
Mushrooms provide essential nutrients including Vitamin d and Vitamin b-6. Easy to grow and harvest mushrooms are ingredients in many popular dishes.
The fungi could grow in compost created using waste material from other agricultural processes as well as sanitary waste.
Mars settlers could also turn to grasshoppers as an additional food resource. While not popular in most European countries and the Anglo-sphere grasshoppers are a major source of animal protein in Asia Africa and South america.
They have a tremendous advantage over many other meat sources because of their extremely efficient conversion of vegetable matter into insect protein.
Grasshoppers are twice as efficient when converting vegetable mass into protein as pigs and five times as efficient as cattle.
In addition the husbandry associated with raising grasshoppers is compared relatively simple to that needed for cattle chickens
or hogs and their rapid reproduction rate and short life cycle allows a stable and continuous harvest.
and many would not suffer from the Eeeew factor many Westerners associate with eating insects.
So grasshoppers may become a meat staple for Mars residents. Of course this would depend upon the guaranteed reliability of grasshopper containment systems.
Mars settlers certainly would not fare well with the grasshopper equivalent of Star trek's tribbles.
Speaking of Star trek a version of its food replicator is in the process of moving from science fiction to science fact.
Scientists have synthesized successfully meat using a 3d printer to align stem cells from animals in laboratory Petri dishes creating both hamburger
and chicken from materials that were never part of a living animal. Perhaps in the future the list of 3d printed proteins would also include fish.
NASA has experimented also with using 3d printers for making chocolate and even pizza. The grasshoppers would make a better dessert if dipped in the 3d printed chocolate.
Perhaps in the future the list of 3d printed proteins will include fish. While the exact forms that agriculture would take on Mars are still very much an unknown at least one thing is clear:
Before many years have passed Mars settlers certainly will have developed their own unique cuisine. Turnbull's most recent Op-Ed was Why Robots May be the Future of Interplanetary Research.
Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook Twitter and Google+.
Nearly a third of all the food produced in the world is lost or wasted according to the UN s World Resources Institute.
If we convert this mass into calories it constitutes nearly a quarter of all food produced
It is a sad irony that we waste so much food especially fruit and vegetables but still fail to feed the world s ever increasing population.
Clearly our ability to produce larger quantities of fruit and vegetables is not the only guarantee for global food security.
We need to start minimising the amount of food that is produced and then lost. Loss happens when food is spilt in transit
or spoilt from heavy bruising or wilting. It is unplanned the result of an agricultural process gone wrong or technical limitations in storage infrastructure packaging or marketing.
Good food is wasted also when it is thrown simply away before or after it spoils. A key way to minimise the amount of food lost is through postharvest technology
which can help make food last longer without losing nutrients. Once developed it needs to be integrated into the global supply chain of food production.
We need to optimise the food we already produce especially in developing countries. This can be done by significantly improving the way food is handled after harvesting particularly to make the process more hygienic.
We should make sure postharvest techniques are environmentally friendly and of course nontoxic to humans when applied to food.
The use of natural biodegradable products as an alternative to synthetic chemicals has shown remarkable improvements in maintaining fruit quality
and extending shelf life. These natural products are nontoxic to humans and safe. Chitosan for example is a natural product obtained from crustacean shells.
It has been shown to significantly maintain papaya fruit when applied to it. In combination with Gum arabic (hardened sap obtained from the acacia tree) it can also delay the ripening of bananas.
Cinnamon oil is another natural product that has been shown to delay postharvest rotting in bananas and extending their storage life for up to 28 days.
The way that fresh food is packaged is crucial to how long it can last. Synthetic chemicals are used currently to control postharvest diseases
This includes packing food in containers that modify the atmosphere to prevent decay hot water treatment
Once proper postharvest technologies are used efficiently food losses can be minimised and the problem of food insecurity alleviated.
Hopefully too we can develop better ways of reducing the huge amount of food loss that takes place
and focus on getting food to those who need it. Asgar Ali receives funding from the Ministry of Agriculture Malaysia.
and to accept a carbon source of corn-based sugar. The microorganisms feed on the plant-derived sugars and produce PHA.
The PHA is separated then from the bacteria and made into pellets that can be molded into plastic products.
and it competes with the food supply. Mango Materials'process uses bacteria grown in fermenters to transform methane and oxygen along with added nutrients (to supply excess carbon) into PHA.
Eventually the PHA-rich bacteria now literally swollen with PHA granules are removed from the fermenters
whereas Mango Materials uses waste methane which is considerably less expensive than sugar. By using methane gas as the feedstock we can significantly drive down costs of production Morse says.
#New Tech Sheds Light on the Future of Food#This article was published originally at The Conversation.
The challenges of growing enough food to feed the world have grown more severe in the 21st century.
We need to feed more people with limited agricultural land and resources. We need to make better use of land light and logistics for an increasingly urban population.
And we need to incorporate zero-waste and low-energy technologies into the task of food production.
What can achieve the intensification of food supply we require but in a way that is also sustainable and less harmful to the environment?
There is an urgent need to develop new methods for sustainable food production. This includes a greater emphasis on urban agriculture such as vertical farming
and planned could provide the sustainable means to improve food supply we need. Ideally urban agriculture fits neatly alongside
There is potential for these multifunctional techno-greenhouses built around LED grow lights to increase the quality of the food we eat
For example new software and apps will allow users to look at the name of a restaurant or bar and instantly view reviews.
and nutrients from a culture medium underneath it delivering water and nutrients to the plants on top
and nutrients to pass through. And because there's no soil there's a lot less need to spray for pests.
For countries like the UAE which imports 90 percent of its food this technology could be crucial for fighting food scarcity and conserving water.
He was found guilty of embezzling government funds and buying human eggs in violation of the country's bioethics law,
collected over meals and cocktails during the course of an often contentious week. As he rattled through the scenarios
Another cadre of researchers is pushing a more benign technology that involves seeding clouds with sea salt to increase their brightness.
and do not compete for land with food, but the cellulose they contain is hard to break down.
Scientists know how to convert these materials into simple sugars, but doing so requires energy and specialized enzymes, or both.
Nature Newsresearch Policy Events People Business Trend watch Research Crop catalogue A global search to gather the wild relatives of essential food crops such as wheat,
aims to increase food security by finding genetic traits that might be suited to future climates. Samples of wild plants will now be conserved alongside existing stores of domesticated seeds (such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.
Studies in animals suggest that exposure to bisphenol A a hormone-disrupting plasticizer used in food-can linings
and food security in response to climate change in the region. go. nature. com/b4gqxb 2 december Commercial spaceflight company Spacex, of Hawthorne, California,
but the USDA jury-rigged it, says Bill Freese, science-policy analyst at the Center for Food safety in WASHINGTON DC.
and former head of the USDA's National Institute for Food and Agriculture. The Kentucky bluegrass decision drives this point home,
yet many Americans are concerned increasingly about the health and safety of our food. The use of hormones, antibiotics and pesticides,
What steps would you take to ensure the health, safety and productivity of America s food supply?
our food safety system needed to be modernized. One in four people were getting sick every year due to food-borne illness,
and children and the elderly were more at risk. I signed the most comprehensive reform of our nation s food safety laws in more than 70 years â oe giving the Food and Drug Administration the resources,
authority and tools needed to make real improvements to our food safety system. We have strengthened standards,
prevented food from being contaminated with dangerous bacteria, bolstered surveillance used to detect contamination problems earlier,
and responded to illness outbreaks faster. I am also working to bolster the use of organic farming methods
and minimize pesticides and antibiotics in our food. I set the ambitious goal to increase the number of certified organic operations by 20 percent â oe
I am protecting human health by ensuring that the foods the American public eats will be free from unsafe levels of pesticides by making sure that all new,
And I will continue to work on food safety issues to ensure that public health is the priority in our food safety system.
Preventive practices are the best tool to reduce the incidence of food-borne illnesses because they provide the greatest control over the potential risks of contamination
to develop specific guidance for the commodities most often associated with food-borne illness outbreaks.
and a collaborative instead of combative relationship between regulators and businesses, America s food system will continue to be the world s best.
and secure safe drinking water for all Americans today and for years to come. I will modernize the federal laws
and improving the nation s drinking water and sanitation infrastructure. The Internet plays a central role in both our economy and our society.
Originally, engineered animals were produced with the aim of making food safer, healthier and more abundant.
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,
Biofuels are falling from grace around the world as critics charge that devoting millions of hectares of agricultural land to fuel crops is driving up food prices
That, combined with the cost of pure ethanol, has meant that"the share of alcohol in our transport fuel matrix has dropped from 55%in 2008 to 35,
Seed-patent case in Supreme Courta technology called a terminator was never going to curry much favour with the public.
a seed that could be harvested for food but would not produce offspring. The controversial proposal raised concerns that it would make farmers dependent on industry for their livelihood.
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.
which provide nutrients to the soil below. It says that sustainable intensification of African agriculture will produce higher yields and more nutritious foods while reducing reliance on fertilizers and pesticides,
thus lowering greenhouse-gas emissions. Energy spending Investment in renewable energy technologies still falls short of the level needed to clean up the global energy system
On 17 april, the corporation filed a court brief arguing that Canadian anti-dumping regulations do not apply to"ocean pasture replenishment and restoration.
is trying to use genes from grape varieties to engineer a wine grape that is resistant to Pierce s disease a condition caused by a bacterium that has made it difficult to grow wine grapes in the state.
Sally  Mackenzie, a plant biologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, contacted APHIS about the high-yield offspring of a transgenic sorghum grass plant
where soils often lack crucial nutrients and help to increase yields. But fertilizers are costly for subsistence farmers
might help to halve the amount of fertilizer needed to bring food self-sufficiency to Sub-saharan africa, according to proponents.
Widespread use of chemical fertilizer has increased greatly food sufficiency in many countries, for example in China and India,
"We do need to increase food productivity in a sustainable way, says Ronald  Vargas, a soils and land management officer at the FAO in Rome."
Soil nutrients and soil acidity can be determined easily with readily available cheap test strips, he adds.
and organic fertilizer produced on-farm does not replenish soils with nutrients, he says.""We will need to find solutions that fit local farmers.
dried grasses and other indigestible plant matter could greatly improve the efficiency of converting waste biomass to fuel.
and diesel substitutes, can be produced from simple sugars, usually by fermentation. Most of the sugars come from foodstuffs,
including sugar cane and maize (corn). But most of the biomass produced in agriculture and forestry lies unused in more-complex chains of sugars, for example lignin and cellulose.
These tough, recalcitrant materials, which provide structural support for wood, grasses and the non-edible parts of crops, are hard to break down.
Producers of cellulosic ethanol currently spend 15-20%of their fuel costs on acids and enzymes to loosen
chemists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have invented now a process that they say easily extracts sugars from lignin and cellulose fibres."
and easily recovered from a mixture of dissolved sugars. Chemist James Dumesic, who is also part of the Wisconsin-Madison team,
the researchers will test their solvent at pre-pilot scales producing 1 litre of sugars per day says Luterbacher,
and Brazil either using enzymes to break up plant material into fermentable sugars, or applying extremely high temperatures to break down biomass into syngas (hydrogen and carbon monoxide).
Claire Curry, a bioenergy analyst at the information firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance, expects that some 50 million to 60 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol could be produced commercially worldwide this year up from just a few
and drinking that to get minerals...just saying@mosaic i understand your wishes but as I read teh REALSTATE options availbe most properties are considered unknown.
The workers at the space station use the water for drinking and growing plants. This water is part of them.
The workers of the moon eventually come back home to earth and spread across the earth these new bacteria.
We've set the bar incredibly low he says. For the errors worrisome enough to require human hands back on the wheel Google's crew of young testers have been trained in extreme driving techniques including emergency braking high-speed lane changes
and then ticked off the goodies the Android operating system search voice social maps navigation even Chauffeur.
It's a catch-22 a classic chicken-and-egg problem: Which will come first the $100-million lidar order from a car company?
when exiting the store with a boat-load of groceries in the pouring rain. Automated Carsthis is a good project
I guess. 1: 42 there's a guy on stage named Donald mustard hahahaha1: 43 colonel mustard is talking about lens flares1:
44 when will they talk about whether the thing will shatter if you drop it1: 47 Jenna Wortham who writes about technology for a website called the New york times told me she wants the gold iphone.
Finally thiis is Popular Science for Christ's sake not for your drunken bashing on products.
Here is copied my response from the Facebook feed: Mr. Nosowitz is perhaps my most despised writer to date.
Experts worry it may reach the European bread basket as well as China and India. Liang's program a collaboration between the United nations'Food and agriculture organization and the International atomic energy agency supported the Kenyan researcher who developed the new wheats.
what about that family that died after eating that new Winderbread whole wheat bread? Bubba: Winderbread? I had that for lunch.
You don't mean...Joe: Yup. You'd better get to a doctor. Bubba: Oh my God!
Slate estimated back in 2010 that by the time you've read your 23rd book on the Kindle you've gotten yourself equal to the environmental cost of reading physical books--so everything after that is gravy.
In my opinion it's important to have numerous copies of unmodifiable works of literature spread across the world in different languages.
but that CO2 is reintegrated into either the manmade agricultural food system or the natural system.
Food production technology continues to improve worldwide as does energy production. We feed more produce more energy
They're just a cabal making fat-cat bucks looking to protect their income of major dough.
I but our system of infrastructure for food and water is tenuous. Now I don't know who GFN is
what scientists and engineers can do to continue food and energy for a massive population.
but their unofficial headquarters is an open-air bar called the Drop off originally built for the production crew of CBS's Survivor:
Several days into the expedition they head there for dinner and order a round of local Red Rooster beers.
As they wait for their food Mark Moline an oceanographer from the University of Delaware opens a Toughbook laptop
On closer inspection it seems to have intact wings and a tail. We got a plane!
The next day Bentprop compares the aircraft in the western lagoon with a hundred different vintage planes.
For the rest of his life Mccullah who after his rescue went back to the base had a brandy
-and-bar symbol the aircraft has been scoured to bare aluminum. Scripps wants to use its technology to document this chapter of the Corsair's story too before it ends altogether.
#Genetically modified food has all the ingredients to scare the pants off us: Chemicals! Technology! Big ag!
or any approved genetically modified food on the market to allergies one of his sources plant geneticist Pamela Ronald told him.
I quickly discovered that blaming GMO foods for any kind of health problem is controversial in the medical
Food scientist Richard Goodman for example told Entine The risks from GM foods are infinitesimally small though no such viewpoints made it into Elle's pages.
or stopped if the genetically modified food causes harmful side effects. Why would they do that?!
The scientific consensus is that all GMO products currently on the market are as safe or in many cases safer than conventionally grown food.
/27/the-genetics-and-politics-of-genetically-modified-foods/Good article natarajanganesan. Did you write that?
And thank you Empmortakaten for pointing out that there is greater public health risk from so-called organic foods than from GMO foods.
They rarely provide studies of GMO foods that show measurable harm (because there aren't any)
Like it or not GMO foods are here to stay and all the studies so far show that they are just as safe as non-GMO foods.
Empmortakaten you're information source is this: www. axismundionline. com/blog/the-new-is-gm-food-safe-meme/www. axismundionline. com:
Rave Rockstep Party Madness with added Science I think you've been Rave Rockstepping to some really bad sources during your Party Madnessthis is not a news source...
Sincerely-Joehttp://www. joesid. comso TANGSTEN point us to a study not tainted by seed dispensary money that shows that GMO foods are measurably more dangerous than non-GMO foods.
if you happen to be a lab rat bred with a specific hypersensitivity to certain food
Caen University-The study published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology found that rats fed on a diet of 33 per cent NK603 corn
and others exposed to Roundup the weedkiller used with it developed tumours liver damage and digestive problems. www. english. rfi. fr/americas/20120920-monsanto-gm-maize-may-face-europe-ban-after-french-study-links-cancersincerely-Joewww. joesid. compoor rats...
Oh wait we ate that last night? Google: NK603 corni don't want to come off as rude or arrogant.
âÂ#Âoethere has not been one study that links the genetically engineered corn or any approved genetically modified food on the market to allergies.
Just because âÂ#Âoeno documented case of any health problem in humansã¢Â# has been âÂ#Âoelinked toã¢Â# genetically modified food doesn't mean there isn't a connection it only means that the bribed crooks who call themselves Ã
The environmental enslavement prospects the New world Order envisions with genetically modified food is greater than that with radium
It is possible that specific GMO foods in the future--ones not studied and certified yet--may turn out to be more harmful than their non-GMO counterparts.
and found to be at least as safe for consumptions as non-GMO foods. Environmental concerns remain to be tested more fully perhaps but so far so good.
How can anyone claim that the food is safe if you only test it for 90 days?
and are accepted by EFSA-European Food safety Authority. It's because of this rat dilemma they have highlighted another study that used a different animal for 5 years.
and market authorizations for the thousands of chemicals and GM foods that were authorized on the basis of these studies should be revoked.
Given the widespread use of GMO feed for livestock as well as humans this is a cause for concern.
The results indicate that it would be prudent for GM CROPS that are destined for human food
and animal feed including stacked GM CROPS to undergo long-term animal feeding studies preferably before commercial planting particularly for toxicological and reproductive effects.
when billions of you are hanging GMO algae food sustenance bags off the sides of your houses
Just add a few beef genes here and there another bag full of bread genes. Coffee-sized machines 3d-print algae foodstuffs-precursor so we can handle the texture-hurdle. z=textstyle-frac {3}
{4}+ i epsilonhi Joecan you cite one case in which a farmer was sued when his fields were contaminated by a neighbor's GMO crop?
A study was published recently examining adverse effects of Bacillus thuringensis (aka the Bt toxin) that Monsanto builds into their corn and soy.
First Long term Study Released on Pigs Cattle Who Eat GMO Soy and Corn Offers Frightening Results www. nationofchange. org/first-long-term-study-released-pigs-cattle-who-eat-gmo-soy
-and-corn-offers-frightening-results-13723stunning Corn Comparison: GMO versus NON GMO www. momsacrossamerica. com stunning corn comparison gmo versus non gmoknown to Kill Cows Castrate Wildlife Induce Spontaneous abortion in Lab Rats...
1. A 2008 long-term study commissioned by the Austrian Agency for Health and Food safety looked at how Monsanto s genetically modified corn currently eaten
and the sex of the mammal all three varieties of GMO corn caused damage to the animals major detoxifying organs namely the liver and the kidneys.
Other effects were also found in the heart adrenal glands spleen bone marrow lymph nodes and other blood-making organsã¢Â#Âll of which are signs of severe toxicity. 3. This past year Food Chemical Toxicology published the results of a two-year study conducted by scientists at the University of Caen
Institute of Biology in France looking at the effects of genetically modified corn. The research showed that in both male
and female rats the death rates for the animals fed GMO corn was two to three times higher than the animals eating non-GMO corn.
GMO-eating females developed more mammary tumors as well as pituitary gland and hormonal abnormalities. GMO-eating males developed significantly more cases of liver damage liver failure
and severe kidney malfunctions. 4. Profit Pro a crop analysis and management company recently released a report that showed staggering nutritional deficiencies in GMO corn
Deficiencies in these vital nutrients are associated with increased rates of osteoporosis cancer and other diseases.
and are forcing farmers to dump even more varieties of toxic chemical herbicides and pesticides on our foods in order to stay ahead of nature s race.
GMO foods got sideeffects -if they arent carefully made and tested yet they can also be healthy and better if doen right.
and GMO foods-but if you have to choose inbetween GMO food and starvation for a month-there is nothing to choose.
They are already working on better solutions than GMO foods. 3-D printers can now print food that provides everything you need to survive.
The only reason this hasn't completely solved our food problem already is that the technology is fairly new
http://newsfeed. time. com/2013/05/24/nasa-funded-3d-food-printer-could-it-end-world-hunger/Here is an article from Popsci detailing the same thing:
Versus the choice of malnutrition or weird food its easy to choose weird food. There is a second but even more weird alternative that
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