Acidification of Arctic waters threatening fish reproduction

MSN News – The Arctic ecosystem, already under pressure from record ice melts, faces another potential threat in the form of rapid acidification of the ocean, according to an international study published on Monday.

Acidification, blamed on the transformation of rising levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air into carbonic acid in the sea, makes it harder for shellfish and crabs to grow their shells, and might also impair fish reproduction, it said.

Grassroot-level innovations may hold the key to global challenges

By Duncan Garde, Agustina Memoli and Paulina Polak

The Guardian - Low tech, grassroot-level innovations may hold the key to overcoming some of the resource challenges we face today; and we might be missing them. The solutions below are some exceptional examples of grassroots level innovations. The question is – how many other potential world changing solutions have remained in obscurity at source, never replicating sufficiently to make a significant change? ….>>Continue Reading<<

Source and Photo: The Guardian, 17th April, 2013.
Follow Labex Korea by Twitter and Facebook

Virological studies on an anaerobic digestion system for liquid pig manure

Abstract from ScienceDirect – Samples of raw liquid pig manure, anaerobic digester effluent, screened digester solids, screened digester effluent, anaerobic digestion residue derived by centrifugation of the screened digester effluent, the centrifuge centrate and the final stored liquid effluent were collected at monthly intervals for 9 months from an anaerobic digestion system operated at a 375-sow pig farm. Porcine enteroviruses were isolated on pig kidney-cell cultures, most frequently from the raw manure, and significantly less frequently from the screened digester solids, anaerobic digestion residue and the final liquid effluent. It was concluded that the anaerobic digestion system resulted in significant, but incomplete, reductions in viral infectivity.

Click here to access the complete article by payment
Follow labex Korea by Twitter and Facebook

Effect of Organic Acids on Salmonella Typhimurium Infection in Broiler Chickens

Poultry Science – An alternative to antibiotics is the use of certain organic acids for routinely encountered pathogens in the poultry industry. Direct acidification of drinking water with organic acids could significantly reduce the amount of recoverable Salmonella Typhimurium (ST) from the crop and caecal tonsils when used during the pre-slaughter feed withdrawal period.

Plant Genomes Can Help Solve Global Problems

BSAS/WPSA - A leading plant scientist has outlined to a meeting of animal scientists how advanced plant breeding techniques have the potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems – including the prevention and treatment of human and farm animal diseases and more sustainable food production.
Plant biologists have tended to follow rather than lead scientists in other fields, according to Professor Maurice Moloney, Director and CEO of Rothamsted Research in the UK.

Could Wine Industry Waste Be Used in Broiler Feed?

GLOBAL – Waste products from the food industry represent growing challenges as consumer consciousness develops about the environmental, social and political context of meat production, reports editor, Michael Priestley, from a British Society of Animal Science (BSAS) conference.

National action against hunger crucial in post-2015 world

FAO – National leadership and action are crucial and governments have the primary responsibility for assuring the food security of their citizens, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva today told a high-level meeting on the UN’s vision for a post-2015 strategy against world hunger. The UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) deadline will pass in 2015.

Japan Stimulus to Boost Science

By Dennis Normile
Science — Japan’s government today approved a plan to spend $116 billion to jump-start the economy and set the stage for long-term growth. Sources in the Japanese press are hinting that research on renewable energy and on stem cells could land a significant chunk of the new cash.

Pesticide makers, facing EU ban, propose plan to help bees

MSN News - Syngenta and Bayer, top producers of the pesticides blamed for a sharp fall in bee populations around the world, have proposed a plan to support bee health to try to forestall a European Union ban on the products.

EU governments failed this month to agree a ban on three widely used pesticides linked to the decline of honeybees, but the European Commission is threatening to force one through unless member states agree a compromise.

Cotton Candy for Plants

By Traci Watson
Science – Even plants like a sugar rush. Or so researchers have discovered while studying the sweetness of sap, which carries sugars from a plant’s leaves to other locales, such as the roots. Plants face a tricky balancing act as they load sugar into their sap. Sap with too much sugar is too thick to flow easily, but sap with too little sugar makes for inefficient transport. In today’s Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers say they devised a mathematical model that predicts the sweet spot for sap: 23.5% sugar by weight. That’s far sweeter than Coke, which is 10% sugar. The researchers dug through the literature and found sap sugar-levels for 41 plants, which together average roughly 18%—not far from the model’s predictions. The outliers include maize (41%; pictured above) and potato (50%), suggesting that humans have domesticated plants that are on a natural sugar high.

Source and Photo: Science, 19th March, 2013
Follow labex Korea by Twitter and Facebook