Georgia signs four-year cooperation agreement with FAO.

Continuous improvement of Georgia’s agriculture, food safety, veterinary services and plant protection – and its response to climate change, biodiversity and other environmental issues – are the priorities set out in a new agreement with FAO signed here today. Georgian Minister of Agriculture Levan Davitashvili signed the “FAO Country Programming Framework for Georgia 2016-2020,” together with Raimund Jehle, Regional Strategic Programmes Coordinator for FAO in Europe and Central Asia and FAO Representative in Georgia. The four-year agreement aims at institutional, regional and sectoral development of agriculture and related subsectors. “The Country Programming Framework makes available FAO expertise and innovative international best practices in agriculture to support Georgia in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals,” Jehle said. “The agreement contributes continue

Edibles for Pets.

Cannabis business owners may see pet care products as a wide-open market to increase sales, but regulations and uncertainty make it a hazardous opportunity.Americans spend more than $60 billion annually on their pets. As cannabis becomes more widely accepted as medicine, it’s natural that some people have begun to consider the market for cannabis-based medicines for pets. A wide variety of products targeted toward pets have already been introduced, from treats containing CBD to whole-plant tinctures. Due to the huge pet care industry and potential for increasing revenue, dispensary owners might be tempted to stock these products. However, the potential legal implications, coupled with a lack of understanding of pets’ needs, make this a risky investment. For thousands of years, cannabis has been used to treat illness in humans and animals. In Ancient Greece, a poultice made from cannabis was used to treat a variety of ailments in horses. As recently as 1920, a tincture made from cannabis was used to alleviate the pain associated with colic in horses. This treatment was administered with the full support of the American Veterinary Association. However, when marijuana was officially outlawed, these treatments lost support from the AVA. continue

Pill Expands In Stomach to Stay For Weeks Delivering Medication.

Pill Expands In Stomach to Stay For Weeks Delivering Medication.Many drugs require precise ingestion regimens that optimize the effect of the medication, but getting patients to follow the schedule is often easier said than done. Additionally, some drugs may work better if only they could be delivered continuously in small doses, over a period of days or weeks. At MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston researchers have created a capsule that expands in the stomach and delivers its drug payload in a controlled manner over an extended period of time. It consists of a flexible hub and six drug-loaded legs that are bunched together and stuffed inside a dissolvable pill. When the pill reaches the stomach, the legs of the device open up and prevent it from leaving the stomach. This lets the slow-release mechanism within the legs to deliver the medication over a long time. After a few weeks, the hub eventually dissolves, letting each leg go and having each small piece now able to pass further down the GI tract. more

USB Stick Measures HIV Levels Within Half Hour.

Researchers at Imperial College London and DNA Electronics, a company with offices in London, UK and Carlsbad, CA, developed a computer USB stick that takes a drop of blood and measures the amount of HIV particles. The chip produces results within 30 minutes, while the average in a test of nearly 1000 samples was only 21 minutes. According to the company, the accuracy is good enough for it to be used to monitor viral loads in patients taking anti-retroviral drugs to see whether the therapy’s effect is holding up. The chip amplifies HIV-1 RNA and uses an assay that changes the sample’s acidity if the target RNA is present to generate an electrical signal. This signal travels down the USB stick and to the computer where an application registers it as having detected the virus. From the study abstract in journal Scientific Reports: Screening of 991 clinical samples (164 on the chip) yielded a sensitivity of 95% (in vitro) and 88.8% (on-chip) at >1000 RNA copies/reaction across a broad spectrum of HIV-1 viral clades. Median time to detection was 20.8 minutes in samples with >1000 copies RNA. The sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility are close to that required to produce a point-of-care device which would be of benefit in resource poor regions, and could be performed on an USB stick or similar low power device.more

Protecting grains with insect proof bags.

A campaign supported by USAid will popularize the use of the gunny bags, which are fitted with plastic linings to control pests without the use of chemicals.The bags apply simple technology, starving insects of oxygen, so they suffocate. This eliminates both the insects and mold by depleting oxygen levels and producing carbon dioxide within the storage unit. In 2014 USAid tested 2,000 bags and trials confirmed effectiveness in entirely eliminating wastage,the hermetic bags can control all pests, including the large stock borer. In Kenya,the insect-proof bags launched this week will stop the loss of about five million bags of maize annually mostly to a notorious pest nicknamed 'Osama' continue

'Augmented Agriculture' and internet of things.

'Augmented Agriculture' the Focus of New Topcon Partnership. Topcon Agriculture officials maintain the company has a core emphasis on “Internet of Things” technology – that is, connecting real-world objects to the Internet. (If you own a smartphone, you are already using IoT technology every day.) With the announcement of a new non-exclusive, long-term partnership, Topcon hopes to keep its IoT ambitions front and center. The partnership is with SDF, a company that manufactures tractors, diesel engines, harvesting machinery and other ag equipment. The agreement will help facilitate “active and continuous cooperation” to develop IoT solutions for the agriculture industry, according to Fabio Isaia, CEO of Topcon Agriculture. “Topcon [is committed] to bring the Internet of Things and augmented agriculture to every farm,” he says. His company seeks to do that through integrating high-precision technology, software and data, Isaia adds. Lodovico Bussolati, CEO of SDF, says he is excited by the potential opportunities the partnership could bring. “Precision farming is a key factor in order to improve both the productivity and the well-being of the end-users,” he says. “The strengthening of SDF’s current collaboration with Topcon reinforces our position in providing to the final customer the most advanced farming technology integrated into our products.” more

When AR takes over we will all rent virtual diamonds and have AI personal shoppers at home.

We live in a dematerialising world - all the objects that were once integral to our daily lives have been subsumed by computers and the internet, from our calendars to our books and all forms of communication. But that physical world, is not done disappearing, according to director of design at Singularity University Labs, Jody Medich. “All those things we thought essential materially, disappeared into the virtual environment,” she told the audience at WIRED Retail, at London’s British Museum. “They have all gone into the screen - but in the future, we are going to be looking through that screen.” Medich is talking about augmented reality, a technology that she says will be ubiquitous in five years time, whether through our phones, headsets like Microsoft Hololens, or AR contact lenses. Just to prove how commonplace we should expect the latter to be, all the big tech players from Apple to Sony have patents pending on the technology. “Sony says its version will record everything you see and play it back to you.” more