Technology Is Making Huge Changes In The World Of Agriculture.

FORBES held its second AgTech Summit, showing off the varieties of technologies that are changing the future of farming, from big data to robots to satellites to machine learning to benevolent fungi. Julie Borlaug, the granddaughter of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Norman Borlaug, who’s carrying on the family legacy by pushing innovation in agriculture to ensure we can feed the future. Kim Nicholson, the VP of Business Development for Spensa Technologies. They manufacture the “Z-Trap,” a device that replaces the painstaking work of estimating pest populations by hand with real-time data. The Z-trap is capable of not only collecting bugs, but it zaps them with electricity in a way that allows the species of bug to be identified, making it much more efficient for farmers to control pests in their fields. more

Stem cell breakthrough restores eyesight in blind rabbits.

Scientists have been able to restore vision in blind rabbits by creating eye tissue from human stem cells, a development that could lead to human trials to help restore vision within the next two years. Researchers from the Cardiff University and Osaka University in Japan collaborated to grow multiple different cells similar to those found in the eye. Cells they created to be similar to cells in the cornea were able to surgically repair the front of the eye in the blind rabbits. The scientists behind the work say the breakthrough could lead to clinical human trials of anterior eye transplantation to restore loss of damaged vision. Andrew Quantock from Cardiff University, who coauthored the work, explained that the research published in the journal Nature shows that human stem cells are able to take on the characteristics of the cornea, lens and retina. "We've been using human iPS cells -- which are induced pluripotent stem cells -- growing them in a 2D culture dish. Spontaneously the cells, after several weeks, created four zones on their own," Quantock told WIRED. "Each zone has the molecular characteristics of a different part of the eye." "We took cells from the third zone, which most looks like the corneal epithelium, and grew those further out before transferring them onto the animal model, which was functional and worked." The scientists were able to show that the corneal cells could be cultivated and transplanted onto the eyes of "rabbits with experimentally induced blindness" to repair the front of the eye. At present 4,000 corneal grafts are performed by the NHS each year. However these rely on human organ donation, although some human patients in the UK have received stem cell treatments to save their eyesight.More

Drug delivery in blood stream using 3D printed microfish.

The "microfish" created by a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego, who claimed they can print hundreds of the tiny robots in seconds. This 3D-printed robots in the shape of small fish may one day be able to swim through bloodstreams, delivering drugs to the human body and removing toxins. The study, published in Advanced Materials, shows the robots measure just 120 microns long by 30 microns thick -- making them smaller than the width of a human hair. The microfish are made with platinum nanoparticles in their tails which, when they come into contact with hydrogen peroxide, causes their tails to move. Tiny iron oxide particles in their heads also allow the robot shoal to magnetically steer themselves. The research showed the microfish could both sense toxins and work as detoxifying robots. Their bodies glowed a fluorescent red color when placed in contaminated liquid as a result of toxic-neutralizing particles reacting to the poison.more

Nanovaccines and cancer immunity.

Yvette van Kooyk is making a cancer vaccine at the nano scale. "By using nanotechnology to deliver vaccines into the body, we can create more powerful cancer treatments," says van Kooyk, an immunologist at the VU University Medical Centerin Amsterdam. She's building nanovaccines out of glycans, sugar molecules that naturally bind to receptors on immune cells in the body. "The glycan is used for specifically targeting the cells that you need," van Kooyk explains. She exploits this trait by attaching the glycans to cancer-fighting antigens, relying on the sugar molecules to transport those antigens directly into the target immune cells, where they trigger an immune response, telling the body to attack its cancerous cells. The vaccine can target immune cells so precisely, "you don't lose your vaccine to other cells," van Kooyk says. That enables the vaccine to launch a targeted and particularly powerful immune response that may be capable of destroying tumours. Now, she is tailoring the nanovaccine to work on diseases including melanoma, pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma, a brain tumor. The goal is to give patients lifelong immunity from certain cancers so that they don't develop again, she says. In three years, she estimates, they will start trial the vaccines on humans. Read

Cancer therapy using nanoparticle drug delivery in dogs with osteosarcoma.

An engineer teamed up with a veterinarian to test a bone cancer drug delivery system in the dogs because they are closer in size and biology to humans . Dogs also have naturally occurring bone cancers, which also are a lot like human bone tumors. The researchers report their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the clinical trials, the dogs tolerated the highest planned doses of cancer-drug-laden nanoparticles with no signs of toxicity. As in mice, the particles homed in on tumor sites, thanks to a coating of the drug pamidronate, which preferentially binds to degraded sites in bone. The nanoparticles also showed anti-cancer activity in mice and dogs. These findings are a proof-of-concept that nanoparticles can be used to target bone cancers in large mammals, the researchers said. The approach may one day be used to treat metastatic skeletal cancers. The aim of the research was to evaluate these drug-delivery strategies, not only in a mouse model, but also at a scale that would mimic what a person would get. The amount of nanoparticle that was administered to these dogs was a thousand-fold greater in quantity than would typically be given to a mouse and result was satisfactory.

Protect yourself from malaria sleep with a chicken next to your bed.

Scientists have shown that malaria-transmitting mosquitoes actively avoid feeding on certain animal species such as chickens, using their sense of smell. Odors emitted by species such as chickens could provide protection for humans at risk of mosquito-transmitted diseases, according to a study in the open access Malaria Journal. Researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia found that Anopheles arabiensis, one of the predominant species transmitting malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, avoids chickens when looking for hosts to feed on. This indicates that, unlike humans, cattle, goats and sheep, chickens are a non-host species for An. arabiensis and that the mosquitoes have developed ways of distinguishing them from host species. A corresponding author, explained they were surprised to find that malaria mosquitoes are repelled by the odors emitted by chickens. This study shows for the first time that malaria mosquitoes actively avoid feeding on certain animal species, and that this behavior is regulated through odor cues. The research team collected data on the population of human and domestic animals in three Ethiopian villages. They also collected blood-fed mosquitoes to test for the source of the blood that the mosquitoes had fed on. People living in the areas in which the research was conducted share their living quarters with their livestock. The researchers found that while An. arabiensis strongly prefers human over animal blood when seeking hosts indoors, it randomly feeds on cattle, goats and sheep when outdoors, but avoids chickens in both settings, despite their relatively high abundance. Since mosquitoes select and discriminate between their hosts mainly based on their sense of smell, the researchers collected hair, wool and feathers from potential host and non-host species to analyze the odor compounds present in them. Identifying certain compounds that were only present in chicken feathers, the researchers used these and other compounds obtained from all species to test their ability to repel mosquitoes from mosquito traps. The traps were set up in 11 thatched houses in one of the villages for a total of 11 days. In each of the houses, a single volunteer aged between 27 and 36 years slept under an untreated bed net. The researchers found that significantly fewer mosquitoes were caught in traps baited with chicken compounds than in control traps. Suspending a living chicken in a cage next to a trap had a similar repellent effect. An. arabiensis is difficult to control with existing methods, according to previous research. The results of this study suggest that, in combination with established control methods, the odors emitted by chickens and other non-host species could prove useful in controlling An. arabiensis.

Dogs and autism spectrum disorder.

New research shows that dogs de-stress families with autistic children ,Owning a pet dog reduces stress and significantly improves functioning in families who have a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder .The study, carried out by researchers at the University of Lincoln and published in the American Journal of Veterinary Behavior UK, and funded by the US-based Human Animal Bond Research Initiative (HABRI) Foundation, also found a reduction in the number of dysfunctional interactions between parent and child among families which owned a dog. Professor Daniel Mills, Professor of Veterinary Behavioural Medicine in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Lincoln, led the research. He said: "While there‭ ‬is‭ ‬growing‭ ‬evidence ‬that ‬animal-assisted‭ -‬therapy‭ ‬can aid in ‬the‭ ‬treatment‭ ‬of‭ children with ‬autism‭ ‬spectrum‭ ‬disorders, this study is one of the first to examine how‭ ‬pet‭ ‬dog‭ ‬ownership‭ ‬can also ‬improve‭ ‬the‭ ‬lives‭ ‬of‭ ‬those‭ ‬more widely affected‭ ‬by‭ ‬autism. Researchers have previously focused on the positive effects that assistance dogs can have on the child's well-being and have passed over the impact they might also have on close relatives, but our results show that owning a pet dog (rather than a specifically trained assistance dog) can considerably improve the function of the whole family unit.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ He