>Field studies find lower productivity with GM seeds

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Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university’s department of agronomy, said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had “noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions”. He added: “People were asking the question ‘how come I don’t get as high a yield as I used to?'”

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

The GM crop – engineered to resist Monsanto’s own weed killer, Roundup – recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the modification hindered the crop’s take-up of the essential element from the soil. Even with the addition it brought the GM soya’s yield to equal that of the conventional one, rather than surpassing it.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a “decrease” in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over.

Monsanto said yesterday that it was surprised by the extent of the decline found by the Kansas study, but not by the fact that the yields had dropped. It said that the soya had not been engineered to increase yields, and that it was now developing one that would.

Critics doubt whether the company will achieve this, saying that it requires more complex modification. And Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington – and who was one of the first to predict the current food crisis – said that the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved.

A former champion crop grower himself, he drew the comparison with human runners. Since Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile more than 50 years ago, the best time has improved only modestly . “Despite all the advances in training, no one contemplates a three-minute mile.”

Last week the biggest study of its kind ever conducted – the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger.

Professor Bob Watson, the director of the study and chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when asked if GM could solve world hunger, said: “The simple answer is no.”

http://www.ranchers.net/forum/about25546.html

>Crystal skulls ‘are modern fakes’

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Two of the best known crystal skulls – artefacts once thought to be the work of ancient American civilisations – are modern fakes, a scientific study shows.

Crystal skulls are the focus of the story in the latest Indiana Jones film.

But experts say examples held at the British Museum in London and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC are anything but genuine.

Their results show the skulls were made using tools not available to the ancient Aztecs or Mayans.

Researchers say the work, which is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, should end decades of speculation over the origins of these controversial objects.

And it casts serious doubt over the authenticity of other crystal skulls held in collections around the world.

A team including Margaret Sax, from the British Museum in London, and Professor Ian Freestone, from Cardiff University, used sophisticated techniques to work out how the two skulls had been made. “There are about a dozen or more of these crystal skulls. Except for the British Museum skull and one in Paris, they seem to have entered public awareness since the 60s, with the interest in quartz and the New Age movement,” Professor Freestone told BBC News.

“It does appear that people have been making them since then. Some of them are quite good, but some of them look like they were produced with a Black & Decker in someone’s garage.”

He added: “There seems to be the assumption that if it is roughly worked, it is more likely to have been made by a traditional society. That’s untrue of course, because people were quite sophisticated. They might not have had modern tools, but they did a good job.”

The researchers used an electron microscope to show that the skulls were probably shaped using a spinning disc-shaped tool made from copper or another suitable metal.

The craftsman added an abrasive to the wheel, allowing the crystal to be worked more easily.

Modern technology

This “rotary wheel” technology was almost certainly not used by pre-Columbian peoples. Instead, analysis of genuine Aztec and Mixtec artefacts show they were crafted using tools made from stone and wood.

The British Museum skull was worked with a harsh abrasive such as corundum or diamond. But X-ray diffraction analysis showed a different material, called carborundum, was used on the artefact in the Smithsonian.

Carborundum is a synthetic abrasive which only came into use in the 20th Century: “The suggestion is that it was made in the 1950s or later,” said Professor Freestone.

Who made the skulls is still a mystery. But, in the case of the British Museum object, some point the finger of suspicion at a 19th Century French antiquities dealer called Eugene Boban.

“We assume that he bought it from, or had it made from [craftsmen] somewhere in Europe,” said Professor Freestone, a former deputy keeper of science and conservation at the British Museum.

Anonymous donation

Contemporary documents suggest Mr Boban was involved in selling at least two of the known crystal skulls – the one held in London and another in Paris.

The London skull was probably manufactured no more than a decade before being offered up for sale.

Despite the findings, a spokeswoman for the British Museum said the artefact would remain on permanent display to the public.

The skull held by the Smithsonian was donated to the museum anonymously in 1992, along with a note saying it had been bought in Mexico in 1960.

Nothing is known of its history before that date, but like the British object, it was probably manufactured shortly before being purchased.

The researchers were not able to determine where the quartz used in the skulls was quarried. But locations with suitably large deposits include Brazil, Madagascar and, possibly, the Alps.

Professor Freestone said the work did not prove all crystal skulls were fakes, but it did cast doubt on the authenticity of other examples: “None of them have a good archaeological provenance and most appeared suspiciously in the last decades of the 20th Century. So we have to be sceptical,” he explained.

The findings are likely to be a disappointment to enthusiasts and collectors; the skulls have become a part of popular culture, appearing in numerous films and novels. – bbc

>Who’s the Brain Behind ‘Aztec’ Crystal Skulls?

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A swashbuckling archaeologist returns to the big screen next week, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As the title suggests, the precious artifact this time around is a crystal skull. In reality, crystal skulls are immersed in intrigue — and not just the kind Hollywood would have you believe.

Some of the skulls are in museums; others are held by private collectors. The largest known specimen can be found at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. But you won’t see it on display. You have to wend your way down a long hallway lined with ceiling-high cabinets filled with human bones. In a back office, inside a locked filing cabinet, the skull is in the care of anthropologist Jane Walsh.

“This is actually called milky quartz,” Walsh explains as she gingerly lifts the carved quartz skull out of a drawer. It’s the size of a bowling ball, smooth as ice, with hollow eye sockets. “It weighs 31 pounds,” she says. “I know because I carried it to London.”

This skull was mailed to the Smithsonian in 1992. The anonymous donor said it was a genuine artifact of the Aztec empire, which collapsed in the 1500s.

Walsh wondered if her skull was the real McCoy.

She did some reading and discovered that there are dozens of crystal skulls around the world. Most are quite small, the size of golf balls. They started to appear in the antiquities trade in the 1860s. Several were sold from Mexico by a French collector named Eugene Boban.

Revealing Origins

But Walsh’s studies didn’t shed light on the big question: Could the Aztecs have carved these pieces? Walsh studied the kinds of tools the Aztecs used to carve stone, such as the pump drill, a wood-and-rope contraption that spins a wooden rod with a stone tip. Such tools left distinctive marks, different from those left by modern tools such as fast-spinning rotary wheels.

Walsh needed someone to help analyze the skull, so she took it to Margaret Sax at the British Museum in London. Sax is an expert on markings from carving and polishing. She examined the tool marks under a powerful scanning electron microscope, just as she had done with another big crystal skull her museum had owned for over a century. It, too, was supposed to be ancient Mexican.

But just like the British specimen, Walsh’s artifact wasn’t authentic.

“The tool marks on both the Smithsonian skull and the British Museum skull were clearly produced by wheel cutting,” she says, “and so we are able to say they are of post-Columbian date.” The marks’ shape, depth and surface texture indicated the skulls had been made by rotary tools, and no one in Central or South America was known to have those until Europeans arrived.

Now Walsh and Sax are looking at the type of quartz from which the skulls are made. Small imperfections could help identify where it came from. They say neither of the two skulls is likely from Mexico, home of the Aztecs.

An Invented Artifact

One thing the scientists have figured out is that the British Museum’s skull came from Boban, that mysterious French collector. In the late 1800s, he first described it as a piece of artwork. Then he began calling it an Aztec artifact, in an attempt, Sax says, to make it “more appealing in order to sell it.”

So, what are these things? Walsh says they’re not exactly “fakes” because they aren’t copies of anything.

“I don’t think there are any real ones,” she explains. “They’re really a kind of invented artifact. … Some person or some workshop was cranking them out and selling them to a European or North American audience, which is where they all wind up.”

Eventually, they wind up locked away in the bowels of a museum.

Walsh returns the skull to its place in the drawer. “We should have him face out,” she says, and then laughs. “People keep telling me not to look it in the eye.” – npr

>Sound ’cause of shadow spectacle’

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Mysterious bands of shadow which sometimes pass across the ground during an eclipse might be produced by sound pulses, according to a new theory.

“Shadow bands” have been observed travelling across the ground before and after totality – when the Moon completely covers the Sun.

Many attribute these regular light and dark bands to atmospheric turbulence.

But astrophysicist Dr Stuart Eves thinks the phenomenon could be down to something called infrasound.

One astronomer who has studied “shadow bands” was sceptical of the new idea, however. Professor Barrie Jones, from the Open University in Milton Keynes, said that sound travelled too fast to be responsible for the phenomenon.

Prior to the eclipse totality, the bands are usually seen to pass over the ground in the direction in which the eclipse is travelling.

After totality, the bands are often seen spreading at an angle to the path of the eclipse.

Early theories suggested this effect was due to diffraction of the Sun’s rays around the limb of the Moon. But this theory has fallen out of favour.

The theory currently favoured by many astronomers is that the bands result from illumination of the atmosphere by the thin solar crescent a minute or so before and after the eclipse totality.

This means that the light from a distant point can reach a particular place on the ground by a variety of paths, each one is bent in a different way as it passes through the atmosphere.

Thus in some places, the light waves reinforce and the light level is enhanced, whilst in others the waves tend to cancel each other out and the light level is reduced.

When the effects of all the paths taken through the atmosphere are taken together, the result is a ragged banded pattern of light and shade – shadow bands.

‘Sonic boom’

The newest idea involves infrasound – sound with a frequency too low to be heard by the human ear.

“As the eclipse shadow moves through the atmosphere, the sudden disappearance of the Sun changes the Earth’s temperature,” Dr Eves, an astrophysicist who works for Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), told BBC News.

This rapid cooling of the air sets up a difference in pressure. The potential energy associated with this pressure difference then escapes as high-intensity infrasound.

Dr Eves says the speed of the Moon’s shadow is generally supersonic and likens the phenomenon to the sonic boom of a jet breaking the sound barrier.

But the sound pulses are not generated as single events. Instead, they are created continuously along a “shock front” which moves ahead of the eclipse itself.

This infrasound “front” may create a pattern of peaks and troughs in the atmosphere, which changes the speed and direction of light waves – an effect called refraction – passing through it.

This in turn is responsible for generating the shadow bands seen on the ground.

Dr Eves says the effect could be similar to the way light and dark bands cross a swimming pool when the wind blows on a sunny day.

“If proven, it would be a something of a revelation that eclipses are a sonic as well as an optical phenomenon,” he said.

“None of the [existing] theories seem to take account of the fact that shadow bands change direction,” he explained.

But Dr Eves draws a comparison with the waves created when a ship travels through water. If this is correct, then it would explain why shadow bands seen before the eclipse would mostly travel in the direction of the eclipse shadow.

After the eclipse, the shadow bands would travel at angles in the same bay that waves diverge behind a ship.

Too quick?

Barrie Jones, who is director of the physics and astronomy department of the Open University, told BBC News: “I’m not sure how infrasound could generate the bands – it’s too fast.

He added: “Infrasonic waves in the atmosphere would move at the speed of sound, which would be something like 400m/s. Shadow bands move at wind speed, so they can be anything from stationary to a few metres per second.”

“The [accepted] theory works, there’s no need to seek an alternative,” said Professor Jones.

Stuart Eves thinks that demonstrating a role for infrasound might explain some other puzzling phenomena associated with eclipses.

For example, long period Foucault pendulums – designed to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth – have been known to swing wildly during eclipses.

Some researchers have proposed that gravitational effects may be responsible.

But Dr Eves thinks the disruption to pendulums may be caused by infrasound pulses causing the ground to vibrate, disrupting the pendulum’s rhythm.

In addition, animals, and in particular birds, have been seen to exhibit unusual behaviour. In the case of birds this includes premature roosting and apparent signs of distress or alarm.

Birds have auditory ranges that extend well beyond those of humans, and might be affected by low frequency sound pulses. – bbc

>Vandals damage Stonehenge

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Vandals used a hammer and screwdriver to vandalise the Stonehenge ancient monument, the first such incident for decades, officials said Thursday.

The night-time attack by two men last week involved the central megalith in the 5,000-year-old ring of standing stones, with English Heritage saying the vandals could have been looking for a souvenir.

A chip of stone about the size of a large coin was removed, while a 2.5-inch long scratch was left on the Heel Stone, at the centre of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, near Salisbury.

“Thanks to the vigilance and quick action of the security team at Stonehenge, very minimal damage was caused,” said a spokeswoman for English Heritage.

“A tiny chip was taken from the north side of the Heel Stone with a screwdriver and hammer, but as soon as the two men were spotted by security guards they escaped over the fence and drove off.

“This is now a matter for the police,” she added.

A spokeswoman for Wiltshire Police said: “Two male offenders were seen disturbing the monument with a hammer and screwdriver… It is believed they could be two men seen acting suspiciously on a previous occasion.”

Stonehenge is one of the world’s best preserved prehistic monuments. In around 2,600 BC, 80 giant standing stones were arranged on Salisbury Plain, where there was already a 400-year-old stone circle.

Around two centuries later, even bigger stones were brought to the plain.

Today, only 40 percent of the originals remain. But around 850,000 visitors per year come to marvel at the 17 stones which are still intact.

The biggest stones came from a quarry some 18 miles away, while some of the others come from a range of hills in south-west Wales — a 150 mile journey. – yahoo

I wonder which will win out in the end, the creative or the destructive side of human nature.

>Company offers to clone dogs for 5 highest bidders

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A Northern California biotech company announced Wednesday that it will clone dogs for the five highest bidders in a series of online auctions. Some ethicists condemned the offer, fearing it could lead to human clones.

Opening bids start at $100,000 for the service being offered by Mill Valley-based BioArts International. The cloning process is to be performed by a South Korean scientist who suffered international disgrace after being found to have faked research.

BioArts chief executive Lou Hawthorne formerly ran Genetic Savings & Clone, which offered to clone pet cats for $50,000 but folded in 2006 because few were willing to pay so much.

But Hawthorne said in a phone interview that another service his old company provided — the storage of pet DNA for future possible clones — showed him the market for dog clones was strong.

“The average dog owner has a different relationship with his dog than the average cat owner,” Hawthorne said. “The level of intensity on the dog side just dwarfed what we saw on the cat side.”

To conduct the clonings, BioArts has partnered with a South Korean research team that recently created three clones of Hawthorne’s family dog, Missy, who died in 2002.

The team was led by Hwang Woo-suk, who scandalized the international scientific community in 2005 when his breakthrough human cloning research involving embryonic stem cells was found to have been faked.

Tests performed at the University of California, Davis’ Veterinary Genetics Laboratory found that DNA samples taken from Missy and the three other dogs appeared to belong to the same individual.

Hawthorne said that after spending 15 years with Missy, he is taking pleasure in seeing her mischievous streak coming out in her clones. They also like steamed broccoli just like she did, he said.

Some groups that monitor advances in genetic technology argue that the company’s project, called Best Friends Again, could serve as a gateway to more unsavory practices.

“Many people consider pets to be part of our families,” Marcy Darnovsky, associate director of the Oakland-based Center for Genetics and Society, said in a statement. “If we get used to cute cloned puppies, will some people expect cute cloned babies next?”

Critics also have lambasted the project for its association with Hwang. Earlier this month, a researcher close to Hwang told The Associated Press that the scientist, who went into seclusion after the deception was exposed, had established a pet-cloning company in Seoul.

Hawthorne said he was wary of working with Hwang at first but said the Korean scientist had assembled the best technology and talent available. All of Hwang’s results connected to dog cloning have been independently verified, Hawthorne said.

BioArts said in a statement it has been granted the sole license for cloning dogs, cats and endangered species using patented processes developed for the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the first successfully cloned animal.

Groups critical of the dog-cloning effort also say the process is cruel, arguing that hundreds of failures are typical before one mammal is successfully cloned.

But BioArts found that dogs are much less likely to miscarry or give birth to malformed offspring during the cloning process than other animals, Hawthorne said.

“If everything isn’t perfect, it doesn’t work at all,” he said. “With other species, their reproductive systems are more tolerant of error.”

The auctions are scheduled to begin June 18. – yahoo

>Pilots run out of fuel, pray, land near Jesus sign

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It seemed like an almost literal answer to their prayers. When two New Zealand pilots ran out of fuel in a microlight airplane they offered prayers and were able to make an emergency landing in a field — coming to rest right next to a sign reading, “Jesus is Lord.”

Grant Stubbs and Owen Wilson, both from the town of Blenheim on the country’s South Island, were flying up the sloping valley of Pelorus Sound when the engine spluttered, coughed and died.

“My friend and I are both Christians so our immediate reaction in a life-threatening situation was to ask for God’s help,” Stubbs told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

He said he prayed during the ill-fated flight Sunday that the tiny craft would get over the top of a ridge and that they would find a landing site that was not too steep — or in the nearby sea.

Wilson said that the pair would have been in deep trouble if the fuel had run out five minutes earlier.

“If it had to run out, that was the place to be,” he said. “There was an instantaneous answer to prayer as we crossed the ridge and there was an airfield — I didn’t know it existed till then.”

After Wilson glided the powerless craft to a landing on the grassy strip, the pair noticed they were beside a 20-foot-tall sign that read, “Jesus is Lord — The Bible.”

“When we saw that, we started laughing,” Stubbs said.

Nearby residents provided them with gas to fly the home-built plane back to base. – yahoo

Actually, Jesus himself handed the pilots the first can of gas… Of course, given the number of churches and religious billboards, it may have been quite  trick not to land somewhere near one. 😉

>Acrobatic dog steals show

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The two-year-old Tibetan mastiff called Hu Hu (Tiger) performed the stunt at a special event to showcase dog tricks in Chongqing city.

They watched as he climbed to the top of a four metre platform and balanced along two thin steel wires.

Spectators held their breath and occasionally called out “slow down, slow down” to Hu Hu.

He paused occasionally before completing the 10 metre walk to the other end.

The dog’s owner, Mr. He, says Hu Hu was a gift from a friend. He trained Hu Hu for more than a year to walk across wires, reports Chongqing Business News. – ana

Does the dog like doing this? Might be cruelty to animals. What do you think?

>Dozens sickened in Japan after suicide

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A Japanese farmer who committed suicide by drinking pesticide vomited the poison at a hospital before he died, releasing toxic fumes that sickened more than 50 people, the hospital said Thursday.Doctors were trying to pump the 34-year-old man’s stomach when he threw up, spraying his rescuers with chloropicrin, causing 54 doctors, nurses and patients to develop breathing problems and eye sores.

Ten of them were hospitalized themselves, and 90 hospital personnel had to be called in to help with the emergency Wednesday night, said Tomoko Nagao, spokeswoman for the Red Cross Kumamoto Hospital in southern Japan.

The most severely injured was a 72-year-old pneumonia patient, whose condition worsened after exposure to the fumes, Nagao said. The hospital’s emergency ward was closed and firefighters called in to decontaminate it.

The doctors were not wearing protective gear and were unprepared because the paramedics who brought the farmer to the hospital had not identified the pesticide, said a local police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of protocol.

The incident came amid a string of suicides in Japan by people mixing household chemicals to create lethal fumes. Many bystanders in recent months have been sickened by fumes that escaped into adjoining rooms, apartments or homes.

Seishi Takamura, a doctor who treated the farmer, said he could not stop coughing after inhaling the fumes, which smelled like chlorine, Kyodo News agency reported.

Chloropicrin is a highly volatile pesticide with a pungent odor that can cause breathing difficulties and sometimes death when inhaled in large amounts. – bb

Talk about passive aggressive!