http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (AP) -- The chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee wants an investigation into the risk of deadly E. coli getting into school lunches. http://www.physorg.com/news176963421.html Medicine & Health Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:31:50 EST news176963421 An analysis of three and half decades of maize research in African farming communities finds big benefits. A multi-country study, in Agricultural Economics, reports the significant role international maize research plays in reducing poverty. It finds that since the mid-1990s, more than one million people per year have escaped poverty through the adoption of new maize varieties. http://www.physorg.com/news175951762.html Biology Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:29:48 EST news175951762 (AP) -- Trucks that could be hauling livestock along the Kansas and Oklahoma border were detained and their drivers questioned Thursday, during a drill aimed at protecting the nation's food supply from foot-and-mouth disease. http://www.physorg.com/news175502052.html Medicine & Health Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:20:01 EST news175502052 (AP) -- Preliminary tests show three pigs in Minnesota may have contracted the swine flu virus making them the first potential U.S. cases in swine, agricultural officials said Friday. They stressed the finding does not threaten food safety. http://www.physorg.com/news174978587.html Medicine & Health Sat, 17 Oct 2009 06:20:03 EST news174978587 (PhysOrg.com) -- Six new inbred maize lines with resistance to aflatoxin contamination have now been registered in the United States by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). ARS plant pathologist Robert Brown and colleague Abebe Menkir, with the Ibadan, Nigeria-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, developed the lines. http://www.physorg.com/news174894984.html Biology Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:20:01 EST news174894984 Botanists at Britain's Kew Gardens have collected seeds from 10 percent of the world's wild plants, their first goal in a long-term project to protect all endangered species, they said Thursday. http://www.physorg.com/news174815972.html Biology Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:00:56 EST news174815972 Plants may not have eyes and ears, but they can recognize their siblings, and researchers at the University of Delaware have discovered how. http://www.physorg.com/news174747583.html Biology Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:14:10 EST news174747583 With more than 2 million cows on 68,000 farms, Missouri is the third-largest beef producer in the nation. Due to rising feed prices, farmers are struggling to provide feed for the cows that contribute more than $1 billion to Missouri's economy. University of Missouri researcher Monty Kerley, professor of animal nutrition in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is studying how cows might be able to gain more weight while consuming less, potentially saving farmers up to 40 percent of feed costs. http://www.physorg.com/news173611731.html Biology Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:40:02 EST news173611731 According to climate change experts, our planet has a fever -- melting glaciers are just one stark sign of the radical changes we can expect. But global warming's effects on farming and water resources is still a mystery. A new Tel Aviv University invention, a real-time "Optical Soil Dipstick" (OSD), may help solve the mystery and provide a new diagnostic tool for assessing the health of our planet. http://www.physorg.com/news173611636.html Space & Earth Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:29:32 EST news173611636 (PhysOrg.com) -- More of the fertilizers and pesticides used to grow corn would find their way into nearby water sources if ethanol demands lead to planting more acres in corn, according to a Purdue University study. http://www.physorg.com/news173370301.html Space & Earth Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:40:07 EST news173370301 (AP) -- White radishes are taking root on Tony Luthman's farm, the start of what he hopes will create a welcome mat for the corn he plants in the spring. http://www.physorg.com/news172474657.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:30:01 EST news172474657 Kudzu, the fast-growing vine that has gobbled up some 10 million acres in the Southeast, may prove to be a valuable dietary supplement for metabolic syndrome, a condition that affects 50 million Americans, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). http://www.physorg.com/news171195492.html Chemistry Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:40:01 EST news171195492 Native pollinators such as these fat, fuzzy bumblebees, once an overlooked sideshow in the insect world, are gaining widespread appreciation among everyone from backyard gardeners to big-time farmers. That's because European honeybees, the pollination mainstay of commercial agriculture, continue to struggle, with bee keepers routinely losing 30 percent of their bees every winter. Yet farmers count on those bees to pollinate some $15 billion in crops annually. http://www.physorg.com/news171137363.html Biology Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:40:02 EST news171137363 (AP) -- Federal officials will reconsider whether a bird that breeds in Colorado and neighboring states and summers in California should be protected. http://www.physorg.com/news170743878.html Biology Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:51:36 EST news170743878 After a three-year slog Colombian scientists have revved up a car that runs on yucca-derived ethanol, spurring hopes that the Latin American staple could be transformed into an abundant fuel. http://www.physorg.com/news170094894.html Technology Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:35:32 EST news170094894 A collaborative team led by a University of Hawai'i at Manoa researcher has published the first-ever assessment of snail and slug species that are of potential threat to the nation's agriculture industry and the environment, should they ever be introduced in the U.S. http://www.physorg.com/news168252688.html Biology Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:52:28 EST news168252688 (PhysOrg.com) -- It has been a dismal two decades for the 450-year-old Florida citrus industry: On top of the constant pressure from hurricanes, a citrus canker epidemic shrank U.S. citrus production by roughly one-third in the 1990s, despite an eradication campaign by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://www.physorg.com/news167060063.html Biology Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:40:01 EST news167060063 An effort to eradicate the light brown apple moth by introducing sterile males into the population is doomed to failure and will waste millions of taxpayer dollars. http://www.physorg.com/news166796786.html Biology Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:29:49 EST news166796786 Managing plant diseases that threaten the food supply and economy is a challenge for agriculturalists around the world. http://www.physorg.com/news166786016.html Biology Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:27:18 EST news166786016 (PhysOrg.com) -- With the caloric needs of the planet expected to soar by 50 percent in the next 40 years, planning and investment in global agriculture will become critically important, according a new report released today (June 25). http://www.physorg.com/news165163033.html Space & Earth Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:38:14 EST news165163033 (AP) -- Gene Lopez has just finished planting his chile field in the same way he's planted his heat-packed crop for three decades. But as the years pass, there seems to be more immediacy behind each seed he places in the ground. http://www.physorg.com/news161243967.html Biology Mon, 11 May 2009 07:00:08 EST news161243967 (AP) -- Southeast Asia will be hit particularly hard by climate change, causing the region's agriculture-dependent economies to contract by as much as 6.7 percent annually by the end of the century, according to a study released Monday. http://www.physorg.com/news160039152.html Space & Earth Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:19:48 EST news160039152 (AP) -- At about the time Foghorn Leghorn appeared on the Looney Toons drawing board in 1946, he began disappearing from America's dinner tables. http://www.physorg.com/news159777888.html Biology Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:45:28 EST news159777888 The use of genetically engineered corn and soybeans in the United States for more than a decade has had little impact on crop yields despite claims that they could ease looming food shortages, a study released on Tuesday concluded. http://www.physorg.com/news158950784.html Biology Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:00:19 EST news158950784 Which is a better strategy, specializing in one crop or diversified cropping? Is conventional cropping more profitable than organic farming? Is it less risky? http://www.physorg.com/news158234623.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:04:18 EST news158234623 Herbicide drift, which occurs when pesticides "drift" from the targeted application area to a nearby non-targeted area, is a particular concern in Midwestern regions of the United States. In the Midwest, where the topography is relatively flat and large-scale farms and agriculture production facilities reside side-by-side with housing developments and woodlands, herbicide drift can have an impact on wildlife, livestock, timber production, and quality of life for human neighbors. http://www.physorg.com/news157215488.html Biology Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:58:28 EST news157215488 Unraveling the origins of agriculture in different regions around the globe has been a challenge for archeologists. Now researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report finding evidence of early human experiments with grain cultivation in East Asia. They gathered this information from an unlikely source―dog and pig bones. http://www.physorg.com/news157048577.html Other Sciences Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:37:07 EST news157048577 (AP) -- As momentum builds to rework the nation's food-safety system after a salmonella outbreak linked to peanuts, the drug industry is hoping for a happy side effect: faster approvals for new medicines. http://www.physorg.com/news156957177.html Medicine & Health Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:13:25 EST news156957177 (PhysOrg.com) -- In the middle of MIT`s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) sits a platform of fake grass with tomato plants nestled in terra cotta pots, growing under the light of an artificial sun. But this urban, indoor garden has a twist: the caretakers of the plants are entirely robotic. http://www.physorg.com/news155904807.html Electronics Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:54:22 EST news155904807 Deficit irrigation is an agricultural technique used to achieve a variety of results depending on the crop. For white wine grapes, it balances the crop load by limiting the canopy size so there aren't too many leaves shading the grapes. For red wine grapes, deficit irrigation again limits canopy size, but also affects berry components associated with wine quality. http://www.physorg.com/news154094372.html Biology Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:00:44 EST news154094372