pronald | April 25, 2011Merry Mou won first place in the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship. 700 to 900 students participate with their research projects in a variety of categories, including physics, biology, and computer science. Winners are chosen to go on to state and national competitions.
Merry Mou won 1st place in Botany in the 2010 Championship for her project, Phenotypic and Genotypic Analyses of Oryza Sativa T-DNA Lines, which was completed in the summer of 2010 as part of the Young Scholars Program under the guidance of postdoctoral fellow Manoj Sharma. She will be participating…
pronald | April 24, 2011Today we took the children to Table Mountain, a volcanic mesa in northern California.
It is a special place, preserved from development by the dense, rocky texture of the soil- no good for farming. We strolled through carpets of flowers Lasthenia californica (California goldfields). Blemnosperma nanum (yellow carpet), Lupinus nanus, Triteleia ixiodies (pretty face), Castilleja exserta (purple owls clover), Triphysaria eriantha (Jonnytuck or Butter 'n' eggs), Eschscholzia caespitosa, (foothill poppy), popcorn flower and gaze at the box kites flying overhead. The blue, grey and white match the…
pronald | April 4, 2011I walked into the gleaming 'Orchard in a box", a closed greenhouse where no pollen can flow outside. The apple was red, red, red inside and out and I wanted it. But because I was in New Zealand, where experimenting with genetically engineered food is highly regulated, tasting was banned.
How was this forbidden fruit created? By overexpression of an apple transcription factor in the white-fleshed, tasty Royal Gala variety. The transcription factor was isolated from an apple that has both red flesh and red skin, that occurs in Central Asia. However, these apples are normally quite bitter…
pronald | March 17, 2011With religious wars around the world erupting almost constantly, you might be feeling grateful that you live in a country where there is separation of church and state. But dont rest too easy, another conflict is brewing- this time in agriculture.
Twenty years ago organic farmers in our area began growing specialty sunflowers to sell for cut flowers. Although most of the pollen from organic sunflowers does not travel further than 3 meters, some of it can travel up to distances of 1000 meters, which can cause problems for growers of certified sunflower seed. If stray organic pollen should…
pronald | March 11, 2011Roxana Robinson, a fiction writer, recently described her writing process in an interview with the New York Times.
Writing a story, she said, is "incredibly exhilarating. . . . It's like doing a cliff dive, the kind that only works when the wave hits just right. You stand on top, poised and fearful, looking at what lies below: you must start your dive when the wave has withdrawn, and there's nothing beneath you but sand and stone. You take a deep breath and throw yourself over, hoping that, by the time you hit, the wave will be back, wild and churning, and full of boiling energy. It's kind…
pronald | February 7, 2011Recipe of the week: Turnip Blue Cheese Gratin
Raoul has lots of turnips and rutabagas at the farm.
This recipe was provided by our friends Sue and Buck at a recent bring-your-best-dish-ever potluck. It was delicious. The chef used rutabagas instead of turnips, but feel free to use either or mix and match.
Ingredients
2 cloves garlic, smashed
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup half-and-half cream
5 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
2 large leeks - cleaned, and cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds
2 large turnips (or rutabagas), peeled and sliced
1 cup cubed butternut squash (optional)
4 large mushrooms…
pronald | January 21, 2011DESPITE overwhelming evidence to the contrary, roughly one in five Americans believes that vaccines cause autism -- a disturbing fact that will probably hold true even after the publication this month, in a British medical journal, of a report thoroughly debunking the 1998 paper that began the vaccine-autism scare. says Michael Willrich, a professor of history at Brandeis University in todays NYT
Similarly, according to Dr Oz, the TV host, papaya genetically engineered with a snippet of a mild strain of a virus to make it disease free, causes infertility. This in face of overwhelming evidence…
pronald | January 3, 2011 Happy New Year!
Here is a post from Raoul at the Student Farm at UC Davis.
From the vegetable's point of view the holidays weren't that great. Continuous rain or fog was only broken up by hard frosts. Our head rot resistant broccoli varieties proved to be not as resistant as advertised, hence there is no broccoli in the Student Harvest baskets today. The good news is that greens and root vegetables are doing fine.
Today's baskets include: rutabagas, fennel, collards, delicata squash, cilantro, radicchio, Purple Haze carrots, Komatsuna, Dino kale, Chinese cabbage, beets, carinata kale,…
pronald | December 28, 2010Happy Holidays from my friends Finn and Gunilla with winter photos of their farm.
pronald | December 18, 2010Did you not finish all your papers and grants before the holidays? Do you still have papers to review? Dont be discouraged, Twisted Bacteria has posted humorous quotes to cheer you up.
Every December, the journal Environmental Microbiology publishes a collection of quotes made by peer reviewers while assessing manuscripts submitted to the journal. Some of them are hilarious! I am extracting a few of them from the last two years, but I recommend reading them all!
Here you go:
Desperate referees:
This paper is desperate. Please reject it completely and then block the author's email ID so…
pronald | December 13, 2010"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, amongst the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life".
Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, 1962
"We live in a world which is penetrated through and through by science and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game by taking sides. . . . No one who has read a page by a good critic or a speculative scientist can ever again think that this barren choice of yes or no is all that the mind offers"
Jacob Bronowski, author of Science and Human Values, 1956
pronald | December 10, 2010The Digital CuttleFish writes another good verse.
This one is for Dr. Oz.
Tomorrow's Table
I'm healthy and wealthy; I've outgrown my past;
When I need to lose weight, I can diet or fast;
Starvation is not in the lot I've been cast--
My perspective is clearly not skewed.
I can buy the best produce they've managed to breed,
Have it shipped to my doorstep with mind-boggling speed;
In a world of such plenty, I don't see the need
For genetically modified food
We can learn about foods from the Frankenstein myth
And distill what we know into substance and pith:
It's much safer, our going without…
pronald | December 7, 2010Click here to see the Dr. Oz show on GE crops with yours truly.
I tried to provide a science-based perspective to the audience.
It was a tough go, though, because one of the other panelists (Jeffery Smith, a former Iowa political candidate for the Natural Law Party with no discernible scientific or agricultural training) believes that eating GE crops causes infertility, organ damage and endocrine disruption. Of course, the scientific evidence for these statements is about as strong as saying that looking at carrots will give you brain tumors.
Can the audience glean that from the information…
pronald | December 4, 2010These video photoessays - one interviewing Colombian coffee growers, another Ghanaian farmers - document how a 2-degree rise in temperature has already hurt some of the world's most vulnerable people. The videos show how rising temperatures have damaged crops, led to increased pests and disease, and ultimately forced farmers to switch to less profitable crops - or even abandon their land entirely.
These are striking examples of what the future could hold: a massive human migration as breadbaskets turn into to dust bowls.
From the CGIAR Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, Food Security
pronald | November 29, 2010Tune in and let me know how it turned out.
Find your local station and air time here.
pronald | November 25, 2010Great article by Nicolas Kristof in the NY Times.
He writes about the promise of biofortification for saving the lives of the poor and malnourished.
Children have been dying for lack of vitamin A, iron and zinc for thousands of generations. These new seeds may finally help end the scourge of starvation in this century, on our watch. And that's a special reason to give thanks.
pronald | November 21, 2010On Monday afternoon, yours truly will appear with Dr. Oz, "America's doctor," (the tag bestowed on him by no less than Oprah Winfrey) before a live audience in New York City. Although I have never seen the show, a New York Times magazine article written by the brilliant Frank Bruni, suggests that the show, and Dr. Oz himself, are both pretty entertaining.
As one of the most accomplished cardiothoracic surgeons of his generation, Mehmet Oz has transplanted lungs and repurposed hearts; implanted mechanical devices to provide the pump and pulse for patients that cannot manage that on their own;…
pronald | November 18, 2010The last common ancestor of plants and animals may have lived 1 billion years ago. Plants and animals have occasionally exchanged genes, but for the most part, have countered selective pressures independently. Microbes (bacteria, eukaryotes, and viruses) were omnipresent threats, influencing the direction of multi-cellular evolution. Receptors that detect molecular signatures of infectious organisms mediate awareness of non-self, and are integral to host defense in plants and animals alike. The discoveries leading to identification of these receptors and their ligands followed a similar…
pronald | November 14, 2010In the recent debate on sustainable agriculture, I noted that "The likelihood of pollen from GE cotton causing harm to the environment is about as likely as a poodle escaping into the wild."
Amidst the avalanche of comments, noone rebutted the peer-reviewed data indicating that biotechnology has already contributed to enhancing the sustainability of our farms as measured by environmental and socio-economic benefits. But there were several people who were concerned about the poodle.
Let me explain.
The farms here in the great Central Valley of California supply 50% of the nation's fruits and…
pronald | November 11, 2010One more day to vote in the , which asks the question "Is Biotechnology compatible with sustainable agriculture?"
PZ Myers answers the question this way: "this is weird: agriculture is biotechnology, and just breaking ground with a sharp stick and throwing some seeds in is an example of an 'unnatural' human practice"
He also publishes the opposition's "top secret email", which has some gobbledy-gook about how farmers are turning against GE crops (um, name one?) and contaminating nature (massive reductions in insecticide use on BT cotton fields and enhanced biodiversity is destruction?). PZ…