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New Biotechnology Improves Crop Tolerance To Stress And Absorption Of Nutrients

Researchers at the ASU School of Life Sciences may have found a way to improve crop performance and yield with the help of some new biotechnology. They’ve discovered a method to enhance a plant’s tolerance to stress, which could help them survive inclement conditions and still produce food.

The world’s population is currently exploding. There is already well over 7 billion people on Earth, and that number is expected to grow even larger in the next few years. This means that feeding the human race will become more of a challenge in the coming decades.

As the human population grows, climate change is taking its toll. Weather conditions are shifting in areas that are usually used to grow crops, which means that plants in those areas may not produce as much as they normally would. Drought, abnormal heat and other conditions could cause farms to lose production.

Brain stimulation may help people with anorexia

FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 — Brain stimulation may ease major symptoms of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, a typically hard-to-treat condition, a new study suggests.

British researchers evaluated anorexia patients before and after they underwent repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS), a treatment approved for depression.

“With rTMS we targeted … an area of the brain thought to be involved in some of the self-regulation difficulties associated with anorexia,” study first author Jessica McClelland, a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London, said in a school news release.

A Brain Parasite Might Be Causing Road Rage

“We don’t yet understand the mechanisms involved — it could be an increased inflammatory response, direct brain modulation by the parasite, or even reverse causation where aggressive individuals tend to have more cats or eat more undercooked meat”.

The study looked at 358 adults, and found that chronic latent infection with T. gondii is associated with intermittent explosive disorder and increased aggression. Antibodies were collected between 1991 and 2008.

University of Chicago researchers say a parasite commonly spread from cats to humans may play a role in impulsive aggression. Approximately 16 percent of those in a “other psychiatric conditions” organisation had a infection, though reported identical exam scores in charge to a healthy group.

Domino’s unveil ‘world’s first’ pizza delivery robot

The fast-food retailer built the droid with Australian startup Marathon Robotics using a robot sourced from the military and its own technology, including Domino’s GPS tracking data.

DRU, which could spell the beginning of the end of the pizza delivery boy, has a sensory system that uses lasers to move around obstacles in its path to travel unassisted to a customer’s address.

The four-wheeled robotic unit travels up to speeds of 20km/h and is designed to cruise on footpaths, trails and bike paths.

We should be more afraid of computers than we are – video

Specifically, artificially intelligent computers…


As sophisticated algorithms can complete tasks we once thought impossible, computers are seeming to become a real threat to humanity. Whether they decide to pulp us into human meat paste, or simply make our work completely unnecessary, argues technology reporter Alex Hern, we should be afraid of computers.

Soil Biodiversity Product Earns Organic Certification

Cape Coral, FL-based Ecological Laboratories Inc. has received organic certification for Quantum Light, its flagship beneficial bacteria product specifically formulated to improve soil biodiversity and increase crop yields. With this certification, Ecological can now support the rapidly growing organic farming and lawn care markets with its all-natural product technologies.

“Our objective continues to be the development of products focused on improving crop yields which at the same time contribute to the protection of farms, and the land and water surrounding them,” said Alan Schatten, chief operating officer of Ecological. “This certification is the first of many steps we intend to take to further our mission.”

“Our technology platform, which has been used to solve environmental problems worldwide for over 40 years, continues to grow and improve,” said Delvia Lukito, assistant vice president of research, development and laboratory operations. “Our team will continue to focus its efforts on developing products to support the good work being carried out by the organic farming community.”

DOE’s ARPA-E TERRA projects seek to accelerate sustainable energy crop development

ARPA-E creating sustainable energy crops for the production of renewable transportation fuels from biomass.


In Washington, the DOE’s ARPA-E TERRA projects seek to accelerate the development of sustainable energy crops for the production of renewable transportation fuels from biomass. To accomplish this, the projects uniquely integrate agriculture, information technology, and engineering communities to design and apply new tools for the development of improved varieties of energy sorghum. The TERRA project teams will create novel platforms to enhance methods for crop phenotyping (identifying and measuring the physical characteristics of plants) which are currently time-intensive and imprecise.

The new approaches will include automated methods for observing and recording characteristics of plants and advanced algorithms for analyzing data and predicting plant growth potential. The projects will also produce a large public database of sorghum genotypes, enabling the greater community of plant physiologists,

Bioinformaticians and geneticists to generate breakthroughs beyond TERRA. These innovations will accelerate the annual yield gains of traditional plant breeding and support the discovery of new crop traits that improve water productivity and nutrient use efficiency needed to improve the sustainability of bioenergy crops.

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