As one is?wont to do, I was checking the French iOS app store rankings this a.m. just to make sure that my old mainstay app?"ameli, l'Assurance Maladie" was still in spot No. 3 when sacrebleu! --?Path was the No. 1 free app in France. Now I've never really clicked with Path, rarely checked in with people there (it's super awkward to name drop digitally) and have too much FOMO to stomach scrolling through all the things you people are doing on weekends without me. Though I found the redesign to be a vast improvement, I didn't actually use the app at all until people began to say things like, "Did you see all the crazy stuff he/she posted on Path?"
Attorney General Eric Holder, the nation's top law enforcement official, is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 15, 2013, prior to testifying before the House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the Justice. Department. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte,R-Va., wants to know more about the unwarranted targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department's secret seizure of telephone records at The Associated Press. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Attorney General Eric Holder, the nation's top law enforcement official, is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 15, 2013, prior to testifying before the House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the Justice. Department. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte,R-Va., wants to know more about the unwarranted targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department's secret seizure of telephone records at The Associated Press. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 15, 2013, before the House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the Justice Department. Holder is expected to face aggressive questioning on topics ranging from the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press to the government's handling of intelligence before the Boston Marathon bombings. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Attorney General Eric Holder, the nation's top law enforcement official, prepares to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 15, 2013, before the House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the Justice Department. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte,R-Va., wants to know more about the unwarranted targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department's secret seizure of telephone records at The Associated Press. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
A man holds a sign t-shirt protesting the Guantanamo detention facility as Attorney General Eric Holder, right, arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 15, 2013, to testify before the House Judiciary Committee Justice Department oversight hearing. Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., watches at left. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress Wednesday that a serious national security leak required the secret gathering of telephone records at The Associated Press as he stood by an investigation in which he insisted he had no involvement.
Pestered by Republicans and some Democrats, Holder testified that he has faith in the individuals conducting the broad investigation, driven in large part by GOP outrage last year over the possibility that administration officials leaked information to enhance President Barack Obama's national security reputation in an election year.
Holder said he had recused himself from the case because "I am a possessor of information eventually leaked." He said he was unable to answer questions on the subpoenas and why the Justice Department failed to negotiate with the AP prior to the subpoenas, a standard practice.
That elicited frustration from some committee members with the Obama administration and the attorney general.
"There doesn't appear to be any acceptance of responsibility for things that have gone wrong," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told Holder. He suggested that administration officials travel to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and take a photo of the famous sign, "the buck stops here."
It was the Justice Department's No. 2 official, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who made the decision to seek news media phone records, Holder said.
Last year, Holder appointed two U.S. attorneys to lead a Justice inquiry into who leaked information about U.S. involvement in cyber-attacks on Iran and an al-Qaida plot to place an explosive device aboard a U.S.-bound flight. Holder had resisted calls for a special counsel, telling lawmakers that the two attorneys, Ron Machen and Rod Rosenstein, are experienced, independent and thorough.
Holder was grilled on several scandals rocking the administration, including the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service and any missteps in sharing intelligence information prior to the bombings in Boston.
Responding to news of the gathering of AP records, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., planned to revive a 2009 media shield bill that protects journalists and their employers from having to reveal information, including the identity of sources who had been promised confidentiality.
The law does contain some exceptions in instances of national security.
"This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public's right to the free flow of information," Schumer said in a statement. "At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case."
The White House threw its support behind the legislation, said a White House official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the topic and demanded anonymity. Ed Pagano, President Barack Obama's liaison to the Senate, placed a call Wednesday morning to Schumer's office to ask him to revive the bill, a move the senator had planned to make.
Obama's support for the bill signaled an effort by the White House to show action in the face of heated criticism from lawmakers from both parties and news organizations about his commitment to protecting civil liberties and freedom of the press.
White House officials have said they are unable to comment publicly on the incident at the heart of the controversy because the Justice Department's leak probe essentially amounts to a criminal investigation of administration officials.
Holder on Tuesday defended the move to collect AP phone records in an effort to hunt down the sources of information for a May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bombing plot around the anniversary of the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. The attorney general called the story the result of "a very serious leak, a very grave leak."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee, said Wednesday that the leak was "within the most serious leaks because it definitely endangered some lives."
Feinstein said it was her understanding that the information gathering did not focus on the "content of phone calls," but rather "to see who reporters have spoken to, that somebody did provide this information with respect to this bomb."
At a news conference Tuesday, Holder defended the subpoenas to the AP and disclosed that the department was investigating the IRS for giving tea party groups extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status.
Documents obtained by the AP suggest the targeting of conservative groups could be more widespread than the IRS has acknowledged. The agency has said it was limited to low-level workers in a Cincinnati office.
At Tuesday's news conference, Holder said the U.S. has gotten good cooperation from the Russians on the Boston bombings investigation. U.S. law enforcement officials are trying to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was indoctrinated or trained by militants during his visit to Dagestan, a Caspian Sea province of Russia that has become the center of a simmering Islamic insurgency.
___
Associated Press writers Josh Lederman, Erica Werner and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.
FILE- In this Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011 file photo, actress Angelina Jolie poses for a portrait to promote her directorial debut of the film "In the Land of Blood and Honey" in New York. Jolie authored an op-ed for Tuesday?s May 14, 2013 New York Times where she writes that in April she finished three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts as a preventive measure. She says she?s kept the process private but is writing about it now with hopes she can help other women. (AP Photo/Carlo Allegri, File) ITALY OUT
FILE- In this Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011 file photo, actress Angelina Jolie poses for a portrait to promote her directorial debut of the film "In the Land of Blood and Honey" in New York. Jolie authored an op-ed for Tuesday?s May 14, 2013 New York Times where she writes that in April she finished three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts as a preventive measure. She says she?s kept the process private but is writing about it now with hopes she can help other women. (AP Photo/Carlo Allegri, File) ITALY OUT
FILE - Actress Angelina Jolie arrives for the British Gala premiere for the film 'Salt', at a central London cinema, in this Aug. 16, 2010 file photo. Jolie authored an op-ed for Tuesday?s May 14, 2013 New York Times where she writes that in April she finished three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts as a preventive measure. She says she?s kept the process private but is writing about it now with hopes she can help other women. (AP Photo/Joel Ryan, File)
FILE - This Feb. 26, 2012 file photo shows actress Angelina Jolie, right, and actor Brad Pitt at the 84th Academy Awards in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. Jolie says that she has had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer. The Oscar-winning actress and partner to Brad Pitt made the announcement in an op-ed she authored for Tuesday's New York Times under the headline, "My Medical Choice." She writes that between early February and late April she completed three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta, file)
Dr Kirsti Funk of the Pink Lotus Breast Center, makes a statement regarding Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy Tuesday May 14, 2013 in Beverly Hills, Calif. Jolie underwent the procedure after learning she had a high probability for breast cancer. ( AP Photo/Nick Ut)
FILE - This Feb. 14, 2012 file photo shows US actress and director Angelina Jolie addressing the audience after premiere of her movie, "In the Land of Blood and Honey," in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Jolie says that she has had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer. The Oscar-winning actress and partner to Brad Pitt made the announcement in an op-ed she authored for Tuesday's New York Times under the headline, "My Medical Choice." She writes that between early February and late April she completed three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts. (AP Photo/Amel Emric, file)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? In her bad girl days, Angelina Jolie's body was a billboard for tattoos that said such things as "Billy Bob."
Now she's sharing intimate details of her anatomy to help women at risk, going public with her preventive double mastectomy to greatly reduce her high odds of breast cancer.
It's the latest peak in Jolie's turn-around from hedonist to humanitarian, party girl to inspirational poster girl. The way she went public with her medical story on her own terms, in her own time ? with a New York Times op-ed piece Tuesday that caught the media fishbowl of Hollywood completely by surprise ? reveals a woman who once seemed out of control to be one of Hollywood's most forceful and compassionate stars, using her fame with surgical precision to promote matters dear to her.
"I'm in awe of her. She remains one of the most inspiring women that I've ever encountered," said former Paramount Pictures boss Sherry Lansing, who heads the Sherry Lansing Foundation for cancer research. "By letting people know about her personal issue, she is touching countless women who have the same genetic mutations, and she is showing them that they have choices and they can be empowered and can take care of their own health. And by doing so, I believe she is going to save countless lives."
Jolie's come a long way from her wild-child days of 10 or 12 years ago. She was branded a home-wrecker when she took up with Billy Bob Thornton, who broke up with Laura Dern and married Jolie. Thornton and Jolie were a tabloid writer's dream team, an odd couple who wore lockets with a drop of each other's blood.
Back in 2000, Jolie proudly showed off the newest of her 10 tattoos, the name "Billy Bob" etched across her left shoulder. The marriage ended three years later, and new home-wrecker accusations arose after Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston for Jolie, his co-star in the 2005 assassin adventure "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."
But since then, while paparazzi stalk them and entertainment reporters scramble to chase the latest rumor that Jolie and Pitt are finally going to wed, they have emerged as the ultimate Hollywood power couple. They switch off on film projects so one is free to mind their six children, they travel the world talking up good deeds.
"If she wasn't one of the top actresses in Hollywood, she'd be one of the top publicists," said Howard Bragman, vice chairman of Reputation.com. "It's hard to think of a couple that has a better image in this town, both for their careers, family, humanitarian work. ... They're very good at it, and one of the reasons is they have a very intimate circle that they trust, and they don't go beyond that. It's unusual in Hollywood circles, but they're very strict about their personal life, about what gets out there. When something gets out there, it's usually planned to get out there. It doesn't leak. They don't even have publicists."
A special envoy on refugee issues for the United Nations, Jolie, 37, has become as much about causes as career.
She still makes big studio entertainment such as next year's "Maleficent," a twist on "Sleeping Beauty" in which she stars as the wicked sorceress who puts a curse on the fairy-tale princess. Yet Jolie puts her humanitarian interests on screen, too, making her directing debut with 2011's "In the Land of Blood and Honey," a war drama about two lovers ? a Bosnian Muslim woman and a Bosnian-Serbian man ? caught up in the horrors of work and rape camps.
"There is no difference between the star Angelina Jolie and the woman Angelina Jolie. The choices she made even as a director are still strong," said Thierry Fremaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival, where Jolie has been a frequent guest with films such as "Changeling" and "A Mighty Heart."
As for Jolie's op-ed piece about her mastectomy, "we all know that she didn't do that for herself but as giving an example to all the women on this planet Earth who are suffering from the same disease," Fremaux said. "We knew she was a great star, but she's a great person, as well."
Jolie wrote about her mother's death from cancer at 56 and that she carries a gene herself that, according to doctors, left her with an 87 percent chance of breast cancer and 50 percent chance of ovarian cancer. She describes in detail the procedures she underwent from early February to late April to remove tissue and reconstruct her breasts with implants.
She was treated at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills, Calif. Dr. Kristi Funk, who founded the center in 2007, read a short statement to reporters Tuesday, saying "we hope that the awareness she is raising around the world will save countless lives."
The procedures reduced her risk of breast cancer to less than 5 percent, Jolie wrote.
"I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made," Jolie wrote. "I can tell my children that they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer."
One of the most remarkable aspects of the story is how two of the most recognizable people in the world were able to make repeated incognito trips to Pink Lotus, where Jolie writes that Pitt was there for every minute of her surgeries. Jolie and Pitt are hounded by the press, so how they kept this a secret is anyone's guess.
"It's almost unspeakably amazing. In this world there is no privacy. David Petraeus couldn't keep a secret," said Hollywood publicist Michael Levine, who once represented Jolie's father, Jon Voight. "It's hard to imagine how they did it."
Announcing it in such a personal and classy way can only enhance Jolie's stature in Hollywood. With family and philanthropic work, Jolie has eased back on film projects, with future prospects including a possible sequel to her action hit "Salt," in which she played a sexy CIA agent on the run.
Will the mastectomy have any effect on Jolie's sex-symbol image?
"I feel like she is the kind of person who will do whatever it takes to still look fantastic. I think she has a discipline that is unmatched," said Dave Karger, chief correspondent for movie-ticket seller Fandango.com. "She will make sure that she looks just as great as she has in the past.
"I don't think that's going to make much of a difference, and I think a lot of people are going to have more respect. This humanizes her in a way. She's not that perfect specimen sticking her leg out at the Oscars anymore. She's a real human being with real health issues like any other human being."
A real human being, and no less of a woman, to hear Jolie tell it.
"I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity," Jolie wrote.
May 14, 2013 ? Alloys like bronze and steel have been transformational for centuries, yielding top-of-the-line machines necessary for industry. As scientists move toward nanotechnology, however, the focus has shifted toward creating alloys at the nanometer scale -- producing materials with properties unlike their predecessors.
Now, research at the University of Pittsburgh demonstrates that nanometer-scale alloys possess the ability to emit light so bright they could have potential applications in medicine. The findings have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
"We demonstrate alloys that are some of the brightest, near-infrared-light-emitting species known to date. They are 100 times brighter than what's being used now," said Jill Millstone, principal investigator of the study and assistant professor of chemistry in Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. "Think about a particle that will not only help researchers detect cancer sooner but be used to treat the tumor, too."
In the paper, Millstone presents alloys with drastically different properties than before -- including near-infrared (NIR) light emission -- depending on their size, shape, and surface chemistry. NIR is an important region of the light spectrum and is integral to technology found in science and medical settings, said Millstone. She uses a laser pointer as an example.
"If you put your finger over a red laser [which is close to the NIR light region of the spectrum], you'll see the red light shine through. However, if you do the same with a green laser [light in the visible region of the spectrum], your finger will completely block it," said Millstone. "This example shows how the body can absorb visible light well but doesn't absorb red light as well. That means that using NIR emitters to visualize cells and, ultimately parts of the body, is promising for minimally invasive diagnostics."
In addition, Millstone's demonstration is unique in that she was able to show -- for the first time -- a continuously tunable composition for nanoparticle alloys; this means the ratio of materials can be altered based on need. In traditional metallurgical studies, materials such as steels can be highly tailored toward the application, say, for an airplane wing versus a cooking pot. However, alloys at the nanoscale follow different rules, says Millstone. Because the nanoparticles are so small, the components often don't stay together and instead quickly separate, like oil and vinegar. In her paper, Millstone describes using small organic molecules to "glue" an alloy in place, so that the two components stay mixed. This strategy led to the discovery of NIR luminescence and also paves the way for other types of nanoparticle alloys that are useful not only in imaging, but in applications like catalysis for the industrial-scale conversion of fossil fuels into fine chemicals.
Millstone says that taken together these observations provide a new platform to investigate the structural origins of small metal nanoparticles' photoluminescence and of alloy formation in general. She believes these studies should lead directly to applications in such areas of national need as health and energy.
Funding was provided by the University's Central Research Development Fund and administered by Pitt's Office of Research and University Research Council.
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican bank, long a source of secret and scandal for the Holy See, plans to publish its annual report online as part of its efforts to be more financially transparent.
Vatican Radio said Tuesday that the bank president, Ernst von Freyburg, announced the plans to his staff Monday and said the bank would launch its own website this year.
The moves come ahead of a July deadline for the Vatican to submit to a new evaluation by the Council of Europe's Moneyval committee, which assesses compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing norms.
The Vatican is seeking to improve its reputation in global financial circles following a series of scandals at its bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, and a 2010 money laundering investigation by Rome prosecutors.
Crop rotation with nematode-resistant wheat can protect tomatoesPublic release date: 14-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Valerie Williamson vmwilliamson@ucdavis.edu American Society of Agronomy
In a study published online today in Crop Science, scientists describe a nematode-resistant wheat. But while the wheat carries the resistance to the pest, the benefits are actually seen in the crop that is grown after it.
Root-knot nematodes cause crop losses around the world, and they can be difficult to control. In order to reproduce, nematodes need to infect a living plant root. Once they are present in soil, they can survive winter in a fallow field and infect plants during the next growing season. Trap crops unsuitable hosts that "trick" the nematodes into starting their life cycle but then prevent them from reproducing are often a better option than leaving the field fallow.
"Once nematodes commit to being a parasite, they have to complete their life cycle," explains Valerie Williamson, lead author of the study and professor at University of California Davis. "If they don't reproduce, the population dies out."
Trap crops can reduce the number of parasites in the soil and lessen the effects of the pests on the next crop in the rotation. But crops resistant to nematodes can be hard to find due to the pest's wide range of hosts, and trap crops are often plants that are less valuable to farmers. In the present study, researchers found a resistant strain of wheat that can reduce nematode numbers in soil and protect the next rotation of tomato plants.
"What's nice about this finding is that wheat is what farmers often use as a rotation crop in California," says Williamson.
The researchers were surprised to find the resistant wheat. They had tried a number of different rotation crops before turning to wheat. Wheat breeder and senior co-author Jorge Dubcovsky then gave Williamson a strain of wheat called Lassik. Lassik is similar to wheat that is commonly grown, but it has a slight difference. A small segment of genes from another wheat strain relocated, through breeding, into Lassik.
This relocated segment has no effect on yield or behavior of the crop, but Williamson and her co-authors found that it did have a benefit it made the wheat resistant to nematodes. "Dubcovsky gave us this strain because it had other resistance genes in it," says Williamson. "It turned out, to our surprise, that it also had nematode resistance."
Once they realized that the Lassik wheat was more resistant to nematodes than the wheat normally grown, the research team validated the source of the resistance by comparing pairs of strains with and without the relocated segment. Then to determine if rotating the resistant wheat with tomato plants would help protect the tomatoes, the authors grew Lassik wheat and used some of the soil to plant tomato seedlings. The wheat had the effect they were hoping for the tomatoes grown in soil from the resistant wheat plots were less damaged by nematodes.
"If farmers use a wheat that does not have the resistant genes, more nematodes survive, and they'll be there when they plant tomatoes," explains Williamson. "But if they plant the resistant wheat, there won't be as many nematodes in the soil." Dubcovsky noted that the last three bread wheat varieties released by the University of California Wheat breeding program and the USDA- supported Triticeae-CAP project all carry this resistance gene and are readily available to growers.
The results from the study offer a promising option for reducing nematode damage. The next step is to verify the findings on a larger scale. Williamson and her team grew plants both in greenhouses and in small microplots. They are now anticipating that agronomists will try the rotation on a field scale.
"We wanted to get the results out there so that people who work in the field, farm advisers for example, can see if it works in practice as well as it did in a controlled experiment."
###
View the abstract at: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.2135/cropsci2012.12.0681
To obtain a copy of the complete article, please contact Madeline Fisher at 608-268-3973, mfisher@sciencesocieties.org or Caroline Schneider at 608-268-3976, cschneider@sciencesocieties.org.
The corresponding author, Valerie Williamson, can be contacted at vmwilliamson@ucdavis.edu.
The full article is available for no charge for 30 days following the date of this summary. View the abstract at https://www.crops.org/publications/cs/abstracts/0/0/cropsci2012.12.0681.
Crop Science is the flagship journal of the Crop Science Society of America. Original research is peer-reviewed and published in this highly cited journal. It also contains invited review and interpretation articles and perspectives that offer insight and commentary on recent advances in crop science. For more information, visit http://www.crops.org/publications/cs
The Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), founded in 1955, is an international scientific society comprised of 6,000+ members with its headquarters in Madison, WI. Members advance the discipline of crop science by acquiring and disseminating information about crop breeding and genetics; crop physiology; crop ecology, management, and quality; seed physiology, production, and technology; turfgrass science; forage and grazinglands; genomics, molecular genetics, and biotechnology; and biomedical and enhanced plants.
CSSA fosters the transfer of knowledge through an array of programs and services, including publications, meetings, career services, and science policy initiatives. For more information, visit http://www.crops.org
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Crop rotation with nematode-resistant wheat can protect tomatoesPublic release date: 14-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Valerie Williamson vmwilliamson@ucdavis.edu American Society of Agronomy
In a study published online today in Crop Science, scientists describe a nematode-resistant wheat. But while the wheat carries the resistance to the pest, the benefits are actually seen in the crop that is grown after it.
Root-knot nematodes cause crop losses around the world, and they can be difficult to control. In order to reproduce, nematodes need to infect a living plant root. Once they are present in soil, they can survive winter in a fallow field and infect plants during the next growing season. Trap crops unsuitable hosts that "trick" the nematodes into starting their life cycle but then prevent them from reproducing are often a better option than leaving the field fallow.
"Once nematodes commit to being a parasite, they have to complete their life cycle," explains Valerie Williamson, lead author of the study and professor at University of California Davis. "If they don't reproduce, the population dies out."
Trap crops can reduce the number of parasites in the soil and lessen the effects of the pests on the next crop in the rotation. But crops resistant to nematodes can be hard to find due to the pest's wide range of hosts, and trap crops are often plants that are less valuable to farmers. In the present study, researchers found a resistant strain of wheat that can reduce nematode numbers in soil and protect the next rotation of tomato plants.
"What's nice about this finding is that wheat is what farmers often use as a rotation crop in California," says Williamson.
The researchers were surprised to find the resistant wheat. They had tried a number of different rotation crops before turning to wheat. Wheat breeder and senior co-author Jorge Dubcovsky then gave Williamson a strain of wheat called Lassik. Lassik is similar to wheat that is commonly grown, but it has a slight difference. A small segment of genes from another wheat strain relocated, through breeding, into Lassik.
This relocated segment has no effect on yield or behavior of the crop, but Williamson and her co-authors found that it did have a benefit it made the wheat resistant to nematodes. "Dubcovsky gave us this strain because it had other resistance genes in it," says Williamson. "It turned out, to our surprise, that it also had nematode resistance."
Once they realized that the Lassik wheat was more resistant to nematodes than the wheat normally grown, the research team validated the source of the resistance by comparing pairs of strains with and without the relocated segment. Then to determine if rotating the resistant wheat with tomato plants would help protect the tomatoes, the authors grew Lassik wheat and used some of the soil to plant tomato seedlings. The wheat had the effect they were hoping for the tomatoes grown in soil from the resistant wheat plots were less damaged by nematodes.
"If farmers use a wheat that does not have the resistant genes, more nematodes survive, and they'll be there when they plant tomatoes," explains Williamson. "But if they plant the resistant wheat, there won't be as many nematodes in the soil." Dubcovsky noted that the last three bread wheat varieties released by the University of California Wheat breeding program and the USDA- supported Triticeae-CAP project all carry this resistance gene and are readily available to growers.
The results from the study offer a promising option for reducing nematode damage. The next step is to verify the findings on a larger scale. Williamson and her team grew plants both in greenhouses and in small microplots. They are now anticipating that agronomists will try the rotation on a field scale.
"We wanted to get the results out there so that people who work in the field, farm advisers for example, can see if it works in practice as well as it did in a controlled experiment."
###
View the abstract at: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.2135/cropsci2012.12.0681
To obtain a copy of the complete article, please contact Madeline Fisher at 608-268-3973, mfisher@sciencesocieties.org or Caroline Schneider at 608-268-3976, cschneider@sciencesocieties.org.
The corresponding author, Valerie Williamson, can be contacted at vmwilliamson@ucdavis.edu.
The full article is available for no charge for 30 days following the date of this summary. View the abstract at https://www.crops.org/publications/cs/abstracts/0/0/cropsci2012.12.0681.
Crop Science is the flagship journal of the Crop Science Society of America. Original research is peer-reviewed and published in this highly cited journal. It also contains invited review and interpretation articles and perspectives that offer insight and commentary on recent advances in crop science. For more information, visit http://www.crops.org/publications/cs
The Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), founded in 1955, is an international scientific society comprised of 6,000+ members with its headquarters in Madison, WI. Members advance the discipline of crop science by acquiring and disseminating information about crop breeding and genetics; crop physiology; crop ecology, management, and quality; seed physiology, production, and technology; turfgrass science; forage and grazinglands; genomics, molecular genetics, and biotechnology; and biomedical and enhanced plants.
CSSA fosters the transfer of knowledge through an array of programs and services, including publications, meetings, career services, and science policy initiatives. For more information, visit http://www.crops.org
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
May 13, 2013 ? Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world's tallest peak is shedding its frozen cloak. The scientists have also been studying temperature and precipitation trends in the area and found that the Everest region has been warming while snowfall has been declining since the early 1990s.
Members of the team conducting these studies will present their findings on May 14 at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico -- a scientific conference organized and co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union.
Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters (590 feet), according to Sudeep Thakuri, who is leading the research as part of his PhD graduate studies at the University of Milan in Italy.
Glaciers smaller than one square kilometer are disappearing the fastest and have experienced a 43 percent decrease in surface area since the 1960s. Because the glaciers are melting faster than they are replenished by ice and snow, they are revealing rocks and debris that were previously hidden deep under the ice. These debris-covered sections of the glaciers have increased by about 17 percent since the 1960s, according to Thakuri. The ends of the glaciers have also retreated by an average of 400 meters since 1962, his team found.
The researchers suspect that the decline of snow and ice in the Everest region is from human-generated greenhouse gases altering global climate. However, they have not yet established a firm connection between the mountains' changes and climate change, Thakuri said.
He and his team determined the extent of glacial change on Everest and the surrounding 1,148 square kilometer (713 square mile) Sagarmatha National Park by compiling satellite imagery and topographic maps and reconstructing the glacial history. Their statistical analysis shows that the majority of the glaciers in the national park are retreating at an increasing rate, Thakuri said.
To evaluate the temperature and precipitation patterns in the area, Thakuri and his colleagues have been analyzing hydro-meteorological data from the Nepal Climate Observatory stations and Nepal's Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. The researchers found that the Everest region has undergone a 0.6 degree Celsius (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in temperature and 100 millimeter (3.9 inches) decrease in precipitation during the pre-monsoon and winter months since 1992.
In subsequent research, Thakuri plans on exploring the climate-glacier relationship further with the aim of integrating the glaciological, hydrological and climatic data to understand the behavior of the hydrological cycle and future water availability.
"The Himalayan glaciers and ice caps are considered a water tower for Asia since they store and supply water downstream during the dry season," said Thakuri. "Downstream populations are dependent on the melt water for agriculture, drinking, and power production."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Water Research Institute-Italian National Research Council are funding this research.
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Geophysical Union. The original article was written by Sudeep Thakuri, Graduate School of Earth, Environment and Biodiversity, University of Milan, Milan, MB, Italy, and Water Research Institute, National Research Council , Brugherio, MB, Italy and colleagues.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
As one is?wont to do, I was checking the French iOS app store rankings this a.m. just to make sure that my old mainstay app?"ameli, l'Assurance Maladie" was still in spot No. 3 when sacrebleu! --?Path was the No. 1 free app in France. Now I've never really clicked with Path, rarely checked in with people there (it's super awkward to name drop digitally) and have too much FOMO to stomach scrolling through all the things you people are doing on weekends without me. Though I found the redesign to be a vast improvement, I didn't actually use the app at all until people began to say things like, "Did you see all the crazy stuff he/she posted on Path?"
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Public release date: 14-May-2013
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