by
Pamela Ronald on 25 April 2011
From Tomorrow's Table
Merry 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 in the California State Science Fair in May.
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by
Frank N. Foode on 8 March 2011
Howdy How y’all, its your friendly neighborhood genetically modified organism, here, Frank N. Foode. I greet each sunrise with my chloroplast grana revving up their photosystems with the incoming light. Before long I am splitting water and ready to greet the world. Then I check my twitter feed (as all plants should). This morning I was in for a bit of a shock – and I don’t mean from the cold morning air.
Andrew Kimbrell, the dude who runs the Center For Food Safety, just typed up some opinions about genetically engineered crops like me. In The GMO Reality Check, and it was published in Organic Connections Magazine. I must say that I was quite shocked at some of the things he said, especially about genetics:
Faulty Science
“There’s a very good reason we haven’t seen these promises come about,” Kimbrell explained. “The theory behind genetic engineering, which is the understanding of what a gene is and what a gene is not, has changed dramatically over the last decade. The idea that DNA—and particularly the part of DNA that we call a gene, which is a little above 1.5 percent of DNA—somehow controls traits is now not scientifically valid. Today most major scientists realize that DNA is not an actor, but is acted upon. There are millions of what are called epigenetic markers—various proteins and chemicals—that control how DNA is expressed in the cell. This idea that the DNA contains a trait such as drought resistance, size or nutrition is naive—and it was wrong.
Whoa, Nellie! That’s an incredible expression of incredulity about the genetic origin of traits. Now, I know everyone will just love to jump on this one, but the interview touches on some other things that I would like to highlight to give you a flavor of what this lawyer thinks about lil’ ole me:
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by
Steve Savage on 10 February 2011
In 2008, the National Agricultural Statistics Service of USDA conducted a detailed survey of Organic agriculture in the US. Participation rates were high with Organic growers, so the data is quite reliable. What it showed was probably surprising to many. After at least three decades of “rapid growth,” Organic now accounts for 0.52% of harvested US cropland. NASS did not go ahead and compare the yields of Organic crops to equivalent data for the rest of agriculture, but all that data is publicly available and I have posted a comparative analysis on SCRIBD (which is also embedded at the end of this post). Organic crop yields are generally lower, but it is hard to put that into perspective.
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Organic Infighting over GE Alfalfa
As soon as the topic of coexistence came up. Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association fired off a shot, with USDA Recommends “Coexistence” with Monsanto? We say Hell No!