Water issues create strong undercurrent at Rio+20

By Brooke Barton
The Guardian – Last month, I was one of more than 40,000 people who descended upon Rio de Janeiro for the Rio+20 Earth Summit. 40,000 is quite a crowd, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the rapid population growth Rio has seen since the first Earth Summit in 1992 – more than 800,000 residents in 20 years.

Brazil’s population as a whole is growing rapidly, and it’s changing just as fast. Across the nation, a rising middle class is snapping up air conditioners and other appliances and is expected to push national demand for electricity up 56% by 2021. More than 20 hydroelectric plants are scheduled to be built along the Amazon river’s tributaries to meet the new demand for power, but these projects are facing several challenges….>>Read More<<

Source and Photo: The Guardian, July 4th, 2012
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Fresh Fruits and Vegetables are Increasingly Recognized as A Source of Food Poisoning Outbreaks

ScienceDaily  — Raw fruits and vegetables are good for you but may also send you to the doctor, according to research published today by Cambridge University Press in the journal Epidemiology and Infection.

Source and Photo: ScienceDaily, Feb. 11, 2009.
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Genome sequence of foxtail millet (Setaria italica) provides insights into grass evolution and biofuel potential

Nature Biotechnology – Foxtail millet (Setaria italica), a member of the Poaceae grass family, is an important food and fodder crop in arid regions and has potential for use as a C4 biofuel. It is a model system for other biofuel grasses, including switchgrass and pearl millet. We produced a draft genome (~423 Mb) anchored onto nine chromosomes and annotated 38,801 genes. Key chromosome reshuffling events were detected through collinearity identification between foxtail millet, rice and sorghum including two reshuffling events fusing rice chromosomes 7 and 9, 3 and 10 to foxtail millet chromosomes 2 and 9, respectively, that occurred after the divergence of foxtail millet and rice, and a single reshuffling event fusing rice chromosome 5 and 12 to foxtail millet chromosome 3 that occurred after the divergence of millet and sorghum. Rearrangements in the C4 photosynthesis pathway were also identified…. Read More.

Source and Photo: Nature Biotechnology, May 13rd, 2012.
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