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Archive for the ‘food’ category: Page 241

May 1, 2018

How bacteria are not only resisting antibiotics, but eating them too

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food

As if it’s not bad enough that bacteria are increasingly becoming resistant to our best antibiotics – some bugs are even eating the drugs. An international team of scientists has now examined just how the bacteria disarm and consume the antibiotics as food, uncovering new potential ways to fight back against resistance.

Bacteria are evolving resistance to antibiotics at an alarming rate, thanks to overprescription and overuse. If left unchecked, reports suggest that by 2050 the so-called superbugs could be responsible for up to 10 million deaths a year, ushering in a new dark age of medicine where our drugs simply don’t work.

Adding insult to injury, some species of bacteria flaunt their resistance by actually chowing down on antibiotics. New research out of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has set out to examine just how the bacteria manage to do this.

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May 1, 2018

Most microplastic harm done at lowest levels of food web, according to analysis

Posted by in category: food

Purdue University scientists led a comprehensive analysis of research concerning the effects of microplastics on aquatic life, with the results showing widely different impacts among different types of animals. Strong negative effects were particularly apparent for small animals, such as larval fish and zooplankton, a source of food for many species, suggesting serious potential consequences that could ripple throughout the food web.

Tomas Höök, an associate professor in Purdue University’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources and director of the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program, led a team that designed a meta-analysis of research related to the effects of microplastics on aquatic life. The analysis, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, used results from 43 other studies that each considered the effects of microplastics on consumption of , growth, reproduction, and/or survival of aquatic . The analysis mathematically calculated one or more effect size(s) for each study, then those effects were combined statistically to understand the big-picture effect on animals. The animals included in this study were all aquatic but ranged from fish to mussels to sea urchins to worms.

The most significant findings included:

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Apr 29, 2018

Poor countries can increase food production

Posted by in categories: food, government

Poor countries tend to have out one-tenth of the crop yield per hectare compared to the yield from rich countries. Farmers in rich countries are more productive than those in poor countries because they use better technology and infrastructure, and are subject to better government policies.

If all the world’s farmers extracted the maximum potential output from their fields, the gap in yields between rich and poor countries would vanish almost entirely.

So what would it take for the developing world to catch up?

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Apr 28, 2018

You Know That Romaine-Linked Outbreak? DNA Tech Is Fixing It

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health

Whole genome sequencing is more precise than other methods, and it just keeps getting faster and cheaper. Joel Sevinsky, head of the Molecular Science Laboratory at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), told the Associated Press his lab can sequence the genome of a suspected pathogen in less than 72 hours.

Whole genome sequencing is already helping researchers address food-borne outbreaks, including a 2017 salmonella outbreak that stretched across 21 states, and the current romaine outbreak.

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Apr 27, 2018

How much does infrastructure boost an economy?

Posted by in categories: economics, food

Before 1870, India barely had railroads. It didn’t have many canals either, and only a small percentage of the population lived along the three main rivers. So when goods needed to be transported, people used steer, which could pull freight about 20 miles per day.

But the British, India’s colonial rulers, started building rail lines, and then built some more. By 1930, there were more than 40,000 miles of railroads in India, and goods could be shipped about 400 miles a day.

The result? As MIT economist David Donaldson shows in a newly published study on the economic impact of building infrastructure, railroads fostered commerce that raised real agricultural income by 16 percent.

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Apr 26, 2018

This company is making an at-home CRISPR kit to find out what’s making you sick

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, habitats, health, mobile phones

A new biotech company co-founded by CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna is developing a device that uses CRISPR to detect all kinds of diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and Zika. The tech is still just in prototype phase, but research in the field is showing promising results. These CRISPR-based diagnostic tools have the potential to revolutionize how we test for diseases in the hospital, or even at home.

Called Mammoth Biosciences, the company is working on a credit card-sized paper test and smartphone app combo for disease detection. But the applications extend beyond that: The same technology could be used in agriculture, to determine what’s making animals sick or what sorts of microbes are found in soil, or even in the oil and gas industry, to detect corrosive microbes in pipelines, says Trevor Martin, the CEO of Mammoth Biosciences, who holds a PhD in biology from Stanford University. The company is focusing on human health applications first, however.

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Apr 24, 2018

Organic agriculture is going mainstream, but not the way you think it is

Posted by in categories: food, sustainability

One of the biggest knocks against the organics movement is that it has begun to ape conventional agriculture, adopting the latter’s monocultures, reliance on purchased inputs and industrial processes.

“Big Organics” is often derided by advocates of sustainable agriculture. The American food authors Michael Pollan and Julie Guthman, for example, argue that as organic agriculture has scaled up and gone mainstream it has lost its commitment to building an alternative system for providing food, instead “replicating what it set out to oppose.”

New research, however, suggests that the relationship between organic and conventional farming is more complex. The flow of influence is starting to reverse course.

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Apr 22, 2018

The future of farming is moving indoors. Here’s why

Posted by in categories: food, futurism

It’s what’s inside that counts.


What happens when you bring agriculture, technology and architecture together?

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Apr 20, 2018

Model suggests well-designed subsidies can help farmers and give consumers better food choices

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, government, sustainability

When it comes to pegging the blame for the obesity crisis, farm subsidies are a popular target. Subsidies, the argument goes, encourage farmers to grow less-healthy foods—corn, turned into corn syrup, is the common culprit here—and fewer unsubsidized fruits and vegetables.

Not everyone agrees. Experts caution that cheap corn isn’t the only cause of poor nutrition and that other factors, like technology, are responsible for the low cost of . Still, it’s reasonable to ask: How can subsidies be used to make healthier food options more available?

One answer: by making sure that subsidies take into account consumer welfare as well as farmers’ incomes, suggest UCLA Anderson’s Prashant Chintapalli, a Ph.D student, and Christopher S. Tang. In a working paper examining a type of subsidy called “minimum support ,” or MSPs, the authors suggest that backing a diverse mix of crops—including fruits and vegetables—would give consumers a wider selection and be most effective at raising farmer profits at a lower cost to the government.

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Apr 17, 2018

What Will the Automated City of the Future Look Like?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, drones, food, health, robotics/AI, sustainability

Many large cities (Seoul, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Singapore, Dubai, London, San Francisco) serve as test beds for autonomous vehicle trials in a competitive race to develop “self-driving” cars. Automated ports and warehouses are also increasingly automated and robotized. Testing of delivery robots and drones is gathering pace beyond the warehouse gates. Automated control systems are monitoring, regulating and optimizing traffic flows. Automated vertical farms are innovating production of food in “non-agricultural” urban areas around the world. New mobile health technologies carry promise of healthcare “beyond the hospital.” Social robots in many guises – from police officers to restaurant waiters – are appearing in urban public and commercial spaces.


Tokyo, Singapore and Dubai are becoming prototype ‘robot cities,’ as governments start to see automation as the key to urban living.

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