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Friday, October 10, 2003
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 Facilitating a constructive exchange of knowledge and goodwill worldwide, offering realistic hope for a better world through an impressive vision of inspired solutions, and doing so in such a generous and open spirit as that offered by Synergic Earth is one of the essential steps in creating the worldwide synergy necessary to move this world of ours towards a Human Era. In view of these considerations, I am pleased to inform you with most sincere admiration and appreciation that your website Synergic Earth has been awarded the Human Wisdom Award for Outstanding Vision and contribution to a Human Era. I hope that your exceptional human spirit and optimism will keep inspiring more and more people worldwide to join the human synergy growing every day in our common strive for a better world for all. (10/10/03)
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 Million Belay writes: This is a testimony from one of the poorest nations in terms of food security. The main message is that it is by healing the ecology of an area rather than by treating one part of a system that sustainability in agriculture is achieved. The experience of the Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) and the Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Tigray (BoANR) shows that there is little need for genetically manipulated seeds to improve the livelihood of poor rural communities. The experience outlined below shows how farmers can control their lives by combining their knowledge and science instead of putting themselves in a cycle of debt and despair by borrowing money to buy chemicals and improved seeds. The project was started with four villages in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, and grew to 83 villages, involving more than 2,000 households. It has become the programme of the government of the Tigray region, with the potential of spreading to other parts of Ethiopia. The demand for the project is already huge and the ISD is preparing itself to facilitate its introduction to more areas. (10/10/03)
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 BBC Science -- Photosynthesis is the most important chemical reaction on Earth. It is responsible for virtually all energy available for life in the biosphere. Biologists have determined the structure of the cytochrome, a protein complex that governs photosynthesis in a blue-green bacterium. According to Professor William Cramer of Purdue University in the US, the discovery is a great leap forward in the understanding of photosynthesis. "Where we once could see merely the tip of the iceberg, we can now perceive the entire mechanism of photosynthesis," he says. ... The key to the discovery was being able to crystallise cytochrome molecules, so that they could have their structure determined by an X-ray probe. "Before we found a way to crystallise the cytochrome, we had a general picture of the photosynthetic process, but possessed only a fraction of a percent of the information we now have. Now that we can examine these proteins closely with X-ray crystallography, it could lead to knowledge about how all cells exchange energy with their environment." The molecular layout of the cytochrome gives some indication of the complex motion of electrons and protons across the bacterium's cell membrane, the boundary between the cell and its environment. "Plant cell membranes are like the two ends of a battery," says Professor Janet Smith of Purdue University. "They are positive on the inside and negative on the outside, and they are charged up when solar energy excites electrons from hydrogen within the cell. The electrons travel up into the cell membrane via proteins that conduct them just like wires releasing the energy a plant needs to stay alive. While this general picture has been common knowledge to scientists for decades, the complex motions of electrons and protons in the membrane have not." (10/10/03)
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 BBC Science -- Writing in the journal Nature, scientists describe how 14 whales died during a naval exercise in the Canary Islands. They say sonar use may need to be regulated to protect the mammals. ... They outline the circumstances surrounding the deaths in September 2002 of 14 beaked whales during a Spanish-led international naval exercise in the Canaries. About four hours after "the onset of mid-frequency sonar activity" all 14 stranded themselves and then died on the beaches of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. The Spanish navy then brought the exercise to an end to prevent risking further harm to the cetaceans. A team of Spanish scientists carried out autopsies on eight Cuvier's beaked whales, one Blainville's and one Gervais' beaked whale. ... the scientists, from the UK and Spain, discovered damage to the livers and kidneys of animals they examined, including gas-filled cavities which they say are new to marine mammal pathology. They say the bubbles they found in the animals' tissues resemble those found in divers affected by decompression sickness (DCS). ... The Nature report also details the results of autopsies performed on cetaceans stranded in the UK between October 1992 and January 2003 - three common and three Risso's dolphins, one harbour porpoise, and a Blainville's beaked whale. A team from the UK Marine Mammals Stranding Project found gas bubbles in their blood vessels, and haemorrhages in internal organs, characteristic indications of DCS. (10/10/03)
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 BBC Science -- Volunteers were asked to play a computer game designed to fool them into feeling excluded, while brain scans were taken at the same time. After the computerised snub, the scan detected activity in an area of the brain linked to physical pain. Experts say the study, from the journal Science, is a hint to the importance the brain places on social ties. The researchers involved in the study, from the University of California at Los Angeles, used an MRI scanner to probe the brains of their test subject as their feelings were manipulated. These scanners can detect subtle changes in blood flow to various parts of the brain - which indicate when the region is active. ... Dr Jaak Panksepp, from the Centre for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said that feelings of social exclusion were powerful instincts in animals and humans. He said: "The feelings induced by experimental games in the laboratory, are a pale shadow of the real-life feelings that humans and other animals experience in response to the sudden loss of social support. "Psychological pain in humans, especially grief and intense loneliness, may share some of the same neural pathways that elaborate physical pain. Given the dependence of mammalian young on their caregivers, it is hard not to comprehend the strong survival value conferred by common neural pathways that elaborate both social attachment and the affective qualities of physical pain." (10/10/03)
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 BBC Science -- One genetically modified crop proposed for possible use in the UK is certain to produce large numbers of hybrid plants, British researchers say. ... The researchers are from the University of Reading, the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge, and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorset. Their study, Hybridization Between Brassica napus And Brassica rapa On A National Scale In The United Kingdom, is published in Sciencexpress, the online version of the journal Science. ... They estimate that 1.8 million waterside wild turnips are within 30 metres of rapeseed fields in the UK, and expect the probable emergence of 26,000 hybrid plants at these sites. In calculating the likely rate of hybrid formation by long-range pollen dispersal, they think there will probably be 29 flowering hybrids in the average rape field where weedy wild turnips grow. ... The researchers conclude: "We infer that widespread, relatively frequent hybrid formation is inevitable from male-fertile GM rapeseed in the UK... the substantial numbers of predicted long-range hybrids means physical isolation would tend only to suppress rather than prevent hybrid formation." But they add: "The presence of hybrids is not a hazard in itself and does not imply inevitable ecological change. .. an estimate of hybrid abundance represents only the first step toward a more quantitative assessment of risk at the national level." (10/10/03)
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8:59:31 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
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11/3/2003; 6:43:15 AM.
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