Agriculture
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- Humans
Yet another study links insecticide to bee losses
Since 2006, honeybee populations across North America have been hammered by catastrophic losses. Although this pandemic has a name — colony collapse disorder, or CCD — its cause has remained open to speculation. New experiments now strengthen the case for pesticide poisoning as a likely contributor.
- Humans
Growth-promoting antibiotics: On the way out?
Sixty-two years later — to the day — after Science News ran its first story on the growth-promoting effects of antibiotics, a federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration to resume efforts to outlaw such nonmedical use of antibiotics.
- Humans
Bt: The lesson not learned
The more things change, the more they stay the same, as a Dec. 29 Associated Press report on genetically engineered corn notes. Like déjà vu, this news story on emerging resistance to Bt toxin — a fabulously effective and popular insecticide to protect corn — brings to mind articles I encountered over the weekend while flipping through historic issues of Science News. More than a half-century ago, our magazine chronicled, real time, the emergence of resistance to DDT, the golden child of pest controllers worldwide. Now much the same thing is happening again with Bt, its contemporary agricultural counterpart. Will we never learn?
- Animals
Lost to history: The “churk”
More than a half-century ago, researchers at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center outside Washington, D.C., engaged in some creative barnyard breeding. Their goal was the development of fatherless turkeys — virgin hens that would reproduce via parthenogenesis. Along the way, and ostensibly quite by accident, an interim stage of this work resulted in a rooster-fathered hybrid that the scientists termed a churk.
- Life
Microbes may sky jump to new hosts
The role of microbes in cloud formation and precipitation may not be an accident of chemistry so much as an evolutionary adaptation by certain bacteria and other nonsentient beings, a scientist posited at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
- Humans
Because some foods carry organophosphate residues
Three new papers link prenatal exposures to organophosphate (OP) pesticides with diminished IQs in children. Fruits and veggies are one continuing source of exposure to these bug killers. As to what we’re supposed to do with that knowledge — well, the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization, offers some guidance.
- Tech
Fishy fat from soy is headed for U.S. dinner tables
Most people have heard about omega-3 fatty acids, the primary constituents of fish oil. Stearidonic acid, one of those omega-3s, is hardly a household term. But it should become one, researchers argued this week at the 2011 Experimental Biology meeting.
- Life
Flower sharing may be unsafe for bees
Wild pollinators are catching domesticated honeybee viruses, possibly by touching the same pollen.
- Health & Medicine
Pesticide in womb may promote obesity, study finds
One-quarter of babies born to women who had relatively high concentrations of a DDT-breakdown product in their blood grew unusually fast for at least the first year of life. Not only is this prevalence of accelerated growth unusually high, but it’s also a worrisome trend since such rapid growth during early infancy has — in other studies — put children on track to become obese.
- Agriculture
A taste of the chocolate genome
Competing teams have announced the impending completion of the cacao DNA sequence.
- Health & Medicine
Gloves may head off ‘garden’ variety pneumonia
Compost feels so good, sifting through a gardener’s fingers. Unfortunately, data are showing, this soil amendment can host a germ responsible for Legionnaire’s disease, a potentially serious form of pneumonia.
