Bio-fortified bananas to feed the world.

Bio-fortified bananas to feed the world. EACH year more than twice as many children worldwide die from vitamin A deficiency than are born in Australia. The staggering, tragic statistic is driven by the insidious impact of nutritional deficiencies in staple crops of many developing nations. More than 650,000 children die each year from lack of vitamin A, with several hundred thousand more going blind. One critical staple crop, the east African cooking banana, lacks provitamin A (comprised of alpha and beta carotene) which the liver converts to vitamin A to fuel the immune system, cell growth and vision. There is significant need for more nutritious bananas in countries such as Uganda, Democratic republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Kenya. A team of researchers from Queensland University of Technology have developed a provitamin A-rich biofortified banana. Their research was published in the prestigious Plant Biotechnology Journal. The researchers used a gene from a banana that originated in Papua New Guinea and is naturally very high in provitamin A, but has small bunches, and inserted it into a Cavendish banana.The gene put into the bio-fortified banana was a banana gene, the Papuan New Guinean strain, and it is safe technology. source

How to minimize water borne disease in hydroponics.

How to minimize water borne disease in hydroponics. Although using a hydroponics system may eliminate soil borne pests, there are pests and fungi that spread through water, which means cleaning equipment and using an additional filtration system can drastically help reduce the occurrence of disease spreading. Heat and moisture in an irrigation system left untreated can create an optimal atmosphere for the development of water molds, like Pythium and Phytophthora. These molds can be brought into contact with plants through growing media, which in the case of hydroponics means through recirculating water. These molds can also be transferred from dirty plant trays and plugs or dirty greenhouse surfaces. The microflora in a hydroponics system can develop very quickly, within 20 hours of planting infected plants, bacteria can be traced throughout a system. Symptoms of Pythium present themselves as it eats away at the plant root and attacks the root, which results in stunted growth and plant death. Growers often refer to this mold as root rot. Phytophthora comes in two major varieties that are known to attack floriculture crops, causing root, crown and foliar blight. Essentially, both varieties of this bacterial disease can decimate a crop very easily if using hydroponics systems without an additional filtering system. Some systems come with screen or paper filters to filter out large-sized particles and debris, but often more is needed to combat water borne diseases effectively. For this reason, it is recommended to add or combine a number of additional filtering systems. more

Startup: This man built a $1bn firm in his basement.

Startup: This man built a $1bn firm in his basement. Carl Rodrigues says that his family and friends all thought he had lost his mind. "Everybody thought I had gone completely nuts," he says. "They were saying 'what's wrong with this guy? Is he having a hippy moment?'." Mr Rodrigues, a successful IT consultant, had woken up one day and decided to quit the day job. Instead of doing lucrative work for other people, he was going to retire to his basement and develop a best-selling computer product. 

 The significant problem was that he didn't have any ideas. But to the worry of his wife, and scorn of his mother-in-law - who lived with them - he was undeterred. So back in 2001 he shut himself away beneath his house in the Canadian city of Mississauga, and started to try to dream up something. "My goal was that I wanted to see what I could produce if I did something I really liked," he says. "I didn't know what I was going to do, but I thought I would give it a shot." After a month of working "crazy hours", Mr Rodrigues had come up with his first fully formed idea - a software system that allowed the user to control his or her mobile phone from their laptop.

 Naming his company Soti, sales of the system started to grow slowly, until 12 months later Mr Rodrigues got a phone call out of the blue from one of the UK's largest supermarket groups. The firm didn't want to sell the system to its customers, instead it wanted to incorporate it into its operations, so staff could better communicate and pass on data and other information.

 Mr Rodrigues, now 55 and Soti's chief executive, says: "I was still in my basement when I got a call from the company, saying they would like to place an order. "I don't think they realized that they were talking to just one guy in a basement, so when the person asked to speak to someone in sales I came back on the phone with a slightly different tone." more

First vaccine shows gonorrhea protection.

First vaccine shows gonorrhea protection. A vaccine has for the first time been shown to protect against the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea, scientists in New Zealand say. There are fears gonorrhea is becoming untreatable as antibiotics fail. The World Health Organization sees developing a vaccine as vital in stopping the global spread of "super-gonorrhea". The study of 15,000 young people, published in the Lancet, showed infections were cut by about a third.About 78 million people pick up the sexually transmitted infection each year, and it can cause infertility. But the body does not build up resistance no matter how many times someone is infected. The vaccine, originally developed to stop an outbreak of meningitis B, was given to about a million adolescents in New Zealand between 2004 and 2006. Researchers at the University of Auckland analysed data from sexual health clinics and found gonorrhea cases had fallen 31% in those vaccinated. The bacterium that causes meningitis, Neisseria meningitidis, is a very close relative of the species that causes gonorrhea - Neisseria gonorrhoeae.. It appears the Men B jab was giving "cross-protection" against gonorrhea . The protection seemed to last about two years. source

Chinese authorities investigate dumped pork

Chinese authorities investigate dumped pork: Worries over cold chain integrity and food safety in the imported meat business have arisen in China, where authorities are seeking to trace the origins of a shipment of Danish pork found in a city dump.

Baker's yeast can make plants tolerate soil contamination.

Baker's yeast can make plants tolerate soilcontamination. Most plant species, including crops, cannot tolerate the toxic effects of soil pollutants, which dramatically impair their growth and development. In a new study, a research team discovered that two genes from baker's yeast can increase plant resistance to a broad range of toxic substances, enabling their growth in contaminated soils. The study published in Scientific Reports, a research team led by Paula Duque from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC; Portugal) discovered that two genes from baker's yeast can increase plant resistance to a broad range of toxic substances, enabling their growth in contaminated soils. Heavy metals and organic pollutants released into the environment by the industry, as well as the misuse of herbicides and pesticides commonly used in agriculture, negatively affect the quality of soils. Although some plant species are able to remove soil contaminants and grow normally, but these are a small minority. The current strategies to decontaminate soils are very expensive and not so effective. Researchers has been looking for alternative strategies to make plants more resilient to toxic compounds,and a possible solution may lie in Saccharomyces cerevisiae the common baker's yeast. The incorporation of the yeast to soil will boost growth and also solve an environmental problem of pollution and toxicity.

How cats and cows protect farm children from asthma.

How cats and cows protect farm children from asthma. Microbes on farms protect children from asthma and allergies, but even non-microbial molecules can have a protective effect. Immunologists have shown that a sialic acid found in farm animals is effective against inflammation of lung tissue. This study opens up a wide variety of perspectives for the prevention of allergies Many people suffer from allergies and asthma and in the past decades, these diseases have massively increased in industrialized countries. Today, about 30 percent of children have allergies -- with the exception of farm children. Among farm children, the disease is increasing less dramatically than in the case of their friends who live in the same village, but not on a farm. Microbes that occur in higher amounts and greater diversity on farms protect farm children from allergies and asthma. An environment that is not highly hygienic has a positive effect on the development of the immune system as it learns not to react to harmless materials as is the case with allergies. Not only microbes protect against asthma evidently, but also farm animals: Petting cats and cows and drinking farm milk can also prevent asthma, according to a team of researchers of the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research from the University of Zurich in cooperation with the Center for Allergy Research and Education (CK-CARE) in Davos and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Switzerland in St. Gallen: Early childhood contact with animals and the consumption of food of animal origin seems to regulate the inflammatory reactions of the immune system, more