Agriculture

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.

Health & Medicine

Wheat genome announcement turns out to be small beer

The DNA sequence released by U.K. team still requires assembly.

Health & Medicine

‘Miracle’ tomato turns sour foods sweet

Pucker no more: That seems to be one objective of research underway at a host of Japanese universities. For the past several years, they’ve been developing bio-production systems to inexpensively churn out loads of miraculin — a natural taste-altering protein that makes sour foods seem oh so sweet. Their newest biotech reactor: grape tomatoes.

Health & Medicine

Chicken poses significant drug-resistant Salmonella threat

More than one-in-five retail samples of raw chicken collected in Pennsylvania hosted Salmonella, a new study found — twice the prevalence reported in a 2007 U.S. Food and Drug Administration survey. And where the bacteria were present, more than half were immune to the germicidal activity of at least one antibiotic. Nearly one-third were resistant to three or more.

Agriculture

Germs eyed to make foods safer

Adding viruses to foods doesn’t sound appetizing, much less healthy. But it’s a stratagem being explored to knock some of the more virulent food poisoning bacteria out of the U.S. food supply. Scientists described data supporting the tactic July 18 at the Institute of Food Technologists’ annual meeting in Chicago.

Ecosystems

Honeybee death mystery deepens

Government scientists link colony collapse disorder to mix of fungal and viral infections.

Agriculture

Rural ozone can be fed by feed (as in silage)

Livestock operations take a lot of flak for polluting. Researchers are now linking ozone to livestock, at least in one of the nation's most agriculturally intense centers. And here the pollution source is not what comes out the back end of an animal but what’s destined to go in the front.

Humans

Mercury surprise: Rice can be risky

A new study out of China shows that for millions of people at risk of eating toxic amounts of mercury-laced food, fish isn't the problem. Rice is.

Plants

Bees face ‘unprecedented’ pesticide exposures at home and afield

Honey bees are being hammered by some mysterious environmental plaque that has a name — colony collapse disorder – but no established cause. A two-year study now provides evidence indicting one likely group of suspects: pesticides. It found “unprecedented levels” of mite-killing chemicals and crop pesticides in hives across the United States and parts of Canada.

Earth

Green-ish pesticides bee-devil honey makers

Pesticides are agents designed to rid targeted portions of the human environment of undesirable critters – such as boll weevils, roaches or carpenter ants. They’re not supposed to harm beneficials. Like bees. Yet a new study from China finds that two widely used pyrethroid pesticides – chemicals that are rather “green” as bug killers go – can significantly impair the pollinators’ reproduction.