Lifeboat Foundation

Seafood consumption is both a love and a necessity for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. And its supply is a key part of maintaining food security for the whole planet. But during a time of rapid population growth and increasing demand, stocks of wild fish and invertebrates (such as mussels and prawns) are declining.

The problem is that policies and plans designed to make sure there are enough fish and invertebrates almost exclusively target fishing activity. But we also need to protect the critical habitats that are essential for the sustainability of these stocks and fisheries.

Most species that are fished require more than a single habitat to live and thrive. Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), for example, spends its adult life shoaling in deep water where it lives, feeds and spawns. But juveniles require more stable habitat such as seagrass meadows. So, if we want to manage fish and invertebrate stocks for sustainability reasons, it is essential to protect the supporting habitats of targeted species.

Continue reading “Loss of marine habitats is threatening the global fishing industry – new research” »

Insect-sized flying robots could help with time-consuming tasks like surveying crop growth on large farms or sniffing out gas leaks. These robots soar by fluttering tiny wings because they are too small to use propellers, like those seen on their larger drone cousins. Small size is advantageous: These robots are cheap to make and can easily slip into tight places that are inaccessible to big drones.

But current flying robo-insects are still tethered to the ground. The electronics they need to power and control their wings are too heavy for these miniature robots to carry.

Now, engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time cut the cord and added a brain, allowing their RoboFly to take its first independent flaps. This might be one small flap for a robot, but it’s one giant leap for robot-kind. The team will present its findings May 23 at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Brisbane, Australia.

Coral reefs are the fish nurseries and so without them there will be no fish!

Japan’s biggest coral reef has not recovered from bleaching due to rising sea temperatures, with only one percent of the reef in a healthy condition, according to a government study.

The overall volume of coral in Sekisei Lagoon in southwestern Japan near Okinawa had already plunged by 80 percent since the late 1980s due to rising water temperatures and damage caused by coral-eating starfish.

Continue reading “Only 1 pct of Japan’s biggest coral reef healthy: survey” »

Groundwater being pumped from a highland aquifer, only to be whisked away in tankers and sold in little plastic bottles by a multinational corporation – it’s a difficult concept for a small farming town to swallow.

Just ask the residents of Stanley, Victoria, whose four-year court battle to stop a farmer bottling local groundwater for Japanese beverage giant Asahi ended in failure last month. They were left with a A$90,000 bill for legal costs.

Locals have clashed with the bottled water industry in many parts of the world, including the United States and Canada, and perhaps most famously in the French spa town of Vittel, where residents have accused Nestlé of selling so much of their water to the rest of the world that they barely have enough left for themselves.

A UCF research team with collaborators at Virginia Tech have developed a new “green” approach to making ammonia that may help make feeding the rising world population more sustainable.

“This new approach can facilitate ammonia production using renewable energy, such as electricity generated from solar or wind,” said physics Assistant Professor Xiaofeng Feng. “Basically, this new approach can help advance a sustainable development of our human society.”

Ammonia, a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, is essential to all life on the planet and is a vital ingredient in most fertilizers used for food production. Since World War I, the ammonia in fertilizer has been primarily produced using the Haber-Bosch method, which is energy and fossil-fuel intensive. There have been substantial obstacles to improving the process, until now.

If someone tells you to go suck an egg, you might want to think twice about it if you live on the east coast. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last month that a Salmonella outbreak affecting hundreds of millions of eggs had been traced back to a farm in Hyde County, North Carolina. Public health officials have traced consumers’ illnesses in nine different states to the outbreak. Last week, the CDC released a map showing the outbreak’s spread.

Rose Acre Farms, the company responsible for the outbreak, distributes eggs all over the US, to both grocery stores and restaurants. As a result of contamination on the North Carolina farm, over 206 million eggs were exposed to Salmonella braenderup, a bacteria that causes severe diarrhea. The outbreak began in mid-April and appears to be slowing down, but in a multi-state outbreak like this, officials at the CDC may not hear about people getting sick right away. Therefore, the data on the case continues to evolve as reports roll in. The most recent numbers count 35 illnesses, 11 hospitalizations, and no deaths. Here’s a map of the outbreak’s current extent:

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Australia’s recycling crisis needs us to look into waste management options beyond just recycling and landfilling. Some of our waste, like paper or organic matter, can be composted. Some, like glass, metal and rigid plastics, can be recycled. But we have no immediate solution for non-recyclable plastic waste except landfill.

At a meeting last month, federal and state environment ministers endorsed an ambitious target to make all Australian packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025. But the ministers also showed support for processes to turn our waste into energy, although they did not specifically discuss plastic waste as an energy source.

The 100% goal could easily be achieved if all packaging were made of paper or wood-based materials. But realistically, plastic will continue to dominate our packaging, especially for food, because it is moisture-proof, airtight, and hygienic.

A team of researchers at the University of Texas has found NAD+ synthesis and consumption integrate glucose metabolism and adipogenic transcription during adipocyte differentiation. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their research into how glucose is converted into fat in the body and what they found. Sophie Trefely and Kathryn Wellen with the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, respectively, offer a Perspective piece on the work done by the team in Texas in the same journal issue.

As obesity rates continue to climb around the globe, scientists continue to explore why it is happening. In addition to studying the psychological aspects involved, scientists would also like to better understand why eating too much makes people gain weight. In this new effort, the researchers looked more closely into why consuming too much glucose causes the body to produce fat.

Prior research has shown that nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is an important molecule that plays a role in a wide variety of physiological and pathological processes. Its oxidized form, NAD+, has also been found to act as a cofactor in metabolic pathways, and more importantly, perhaps, is consumed by various enzymes. Once consumed, NAD+ is broken down into nicotinamides and ADP-ribose. This, the researchers note, means that NAD+ must be resynthesized for normal cellular function to continue. They further note that some prior research has suggested that lower-than-normal levels of NAD+ can alter metabolism, leading in some cases to higher disease susceptibility.

Continue reading “Researchers find glycolysis links to gene transcription via NAD+” »

In the heart of San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, which not long ago was dirt lots and warehouses, Emily Leproust is cooking up what she — and $209 million worth of investor cash — believes is the future of DNA production.

Leproust is CEO of Twist Bioscience, a 5-year-old biotech company striving to make the production of synthetic DNA — which is used in fragrances, genetically modified foods and pharmaceutical drugs — cheaper, faster and smaller.

The same lab-manufactured DNA, Leproust hopes, could also transform the way data, from music to medical records, is stored.

Continue reading “Data storage on DNA: Where Silicon Valley meets biotech” »