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Windows / Mac Compatible. Includes live video seminars, enchanting renewal songs and a thousand page illustrated codex.
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of Eden AV-CD by secure
internet order >> CLICK_HERE
Windows / Mac Compatible. Includes
live video seminars, enchanting renewal songs and a thousand page
illustrated codex.
Return to Genesis
CONCERN over the accidental planting of genetically modified seed on several farms in Europe reached fever pitch last week. And now a company in the US has wamed that the problem is probably commonplace. "My guess is that it happens all the time," says Jeffrey Smith, vice president of marketing and communicafi6ns at Genetic ID of Fairfield, Iowa. The company, which screens agricultural produce for GM material, found that more than half of 20 random samples of conventional seed taken from American distributors contained some GM seed. 'fhe latest European furors began with the news that farmers throughout the cmtinent have planted conventional oilseed rape containing traces of a sterile GM variety known as RT 73, which has not been approved for commercial planting in Europe. In Britain alone, 9000 hectares were sown with the adulterated seed in 1999, followed by 4700 hectares this spring. In other European countries, including France and Sweden, ministers have considered ordering the destruction of affected crops. Opponents of GM crops accused goverrunents of allowing the release of such crops before their environmental impact had been properly evaluated. But this week, Genetic ID told New Scientist that such contamination might be just the tip of the iceberg. It says that in tests done last year, but not widely publicised, 12 out of 20 random American consignments of conventional maize seed contained detectable traces of GM maize. Two of these contained almost 1 per cent GM maize. Pioneer Hi-Bred, the largest supplier of both conventional and GM seeds in the US, acknowledged that low levels of mingling are inevitable. "Absolute zero purity is not achieved in any agricultural produce anywhere in the food chain," says Doyle Karr, a spokesman for the company. Karr says Pioneer's conventional maize seeds exported to and grown in Europe could well contain traces of Bt maize, a GM variety that makes a toxin lethal to larval pests. But he adds that European govemments have already approved this variety. But other GM crops that have not been approved have probably been planted on European fan-ns. In 1998, Britain imported a total of 491 000 tonnes of soybeans for sowing from the US and Canada. If an estimated 1 per cent were GM, roughly 5000 tonnes of GM soybeans were unwittingly imported. The Ministry of Agriculture does not break down statistics according to how much imported seed is used directly in food, and how much is planted on farms. Many in the industry believe the solution lies in internationally agreed testing procedures and limits on contamination. Smith thinks a 0.1 per cent hmit should be set for accidental contamination. "You can't offer 0 per cent, because it's not scientifically feasible or defensible," he says. But such limits would raise another dilemma-who shoulders the responsibility if the threshold is breached? Farmers think seed suppliers should carry the can. "The seed suppliers need to guarantee what that seed is, and bear social and economic responsibility for that," says Gary Goldberg of the American Com Growers Association. But segregating crops won't be easy. Farmers in the US send their seed to elevators, companies that pool seed from many farmers and then sell it on for distribution and export. A survey of almost 1200 elevators by Pioneer shows few are willing to test their deliveries and segregate GM from nonGM crops this autumn (see Table). However, Smith is confident that the companies are already taking the lessons on board. "My guess is that when harvest comes around, the percentage testing and segregating wifl be much higher." Andy Coghlan
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DVD Clear NS 27 May 2000
FROM this week, well-heeled gadget fans will be able to buy a home-cinema system that lets them watch the astonishingly high-quality pictures that till now have stayed locked inside DVD movie discs. But Hollywood studio bosses are worried. They see the new system as a pirate's charter, and have been fighting to keep the pristine digital signal out of consumers' hands for fear that people will make broadcast-quality copies. DVDs store video as digital code, compressed to the MPEG-2 standard used for digital TV. The data rate varies continually between 3 and 10 megabits per second, depending on whether the system is coding moving detail or static scenery. Flat-panel plasma screens and digital video projectors work best if they are fed a pure digital signal. Most have an input socket called a serial digital interface (SDI). This is an interface used by broadcasters to carry video at data rates up to the 270 megabits per second needed for uncompressed studio-quality pictures. To prevent digital copying, DVD players and digital TV receivers only have low-quality analogue video outputs, which has made it impossible to connect them to the highresolution screen's SDI input. But now David Garrett, who was formerly an engineer with Britain's Ministry of Defence, has developed a custom microchip which takes MPEG-2 data from a DVD or digital TV receiver and converts its into a high-quality 10-megabits-persecond video signal. Garrett's company, Function Communications of Chelsea, fits these chips and SDI sockets to off-the-shelf DVD players or digital TV receivers, so that they can connect to the SDI input on a plasma screen. Up to 27 of Garrett's modified DVD players can be combined, and their 10-megabit-per-second outputs interleaved to let a single SDI cable deliver a menu of different movies-to hotel bedrooms, for instance. Garrett says he has sold hundreds of modified terrestrial and satellite receivers to European broadcasters, including the BBC, who use them to monitor and record broadcasts. Garrett's DVD technology was first shown at a DVD conference in Dublin last month. DVD players, made by Pioneer and Wharfedale, connected direct to the SDI inputs of a Hitachi-Fujitsu plasma screen and an NEC digital projector with 1024-by768-pixel resolution. MGM and Technicolor provided a DVD of the James Bond movie The World is Not Enough. Bob Auger of Electric Switch, a DVD production company, says: "This is the first time DVD is being seen as it is meant to be seen." "The people from MGM couldn't wait to get their discs in the player," says Garrett. "We were running the equipment 24 hours a day because so many producers wanted to see what their discs looked like." Garrett admits that his technology has been made possible by loopholes in Hollywood's contracts with DVD makers. "All the manufacturers of DVD players have signed an agreement not to provide a Firewire digital output. But there is no mention of SDI," he says. Firewire feeds high-quality video into computers. Function Communications is now putting together the ultimate home cinema kit. For i'10 000, customers will be able to buy a modified Pioneer DVD player and a 107-centimetre (42-inch) plasma screen. Ironically, some of the most enthusiastic buyers of such screens are super-rich Hollywood actors and rock musicians, who now look likely to be pitched against the copyright-protecting moguls of the entertainment industry who employ them. Barry Fox
Pollution and Predators NS 27 May 2000
AIR pollution can wreck trees by culling the predators that normally keep leafmunching insects in check, say ecologists in Finland. Though this has long been suspected as a cause of damage to plants, this is the first time researchers have found hard evidence for it. Plagues of insects often devastate plants in polluted areas. Ecologists reasoned that this could happen either because pollution makes parasites of these insects less active, or because it kills off predators that eat the insects. Till now, however, researchers have always failed to detect any signs that pollution keeps the pests' enemies at bay. But past studies had only looked at small subsets of the insects' enemies. Elena Zvereva and Mikhail Koziov of the University of Turku in Finland decided to test the theories again by studying the entire troop of enemies of the leaf beetle Melasoma lapponica. Exploding populations of this beetle have periodically stripped nearly all the leaves from willow trees in forests near a nickel-copper smelter on the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. This is one of the world's worst black spots for sulphur dioxide and heavy-metal pollution. Zvereva and Kozlov measured pollution levels at 10 sites up to 36 kilometres from the smelter each year between 1993 and 1998. They also checked the density of adult beetles at the sites, and collected evidence of predation and parasitism of adults, eggs, larvae and pupae. The results showed that parasites killed more M. lapponica at polluted sites than at relatively clean ones. But fewer predator attacks at the polluted sites meant that overall, around 20 per cent more insects survived there. "It's clear that reduced predation is one of the most important causes of the herbivore population increase in polluted regions," Zvereva concludes. Head counts of the wood ant, one of the most voracious predators of the beetle, confirmed that its numbers had dwindled in areas where smog was worst. Zvereva says their work highlights the importance of long-term studies of the entire range of natural enemies of animals to pin down the effects of pollution on plants. "Most researchers have only looked at one species or one group of predators," she says. "This may easily produce mis leading conclusions." Hazel Muir
Source: Journal of.4pplied Ecology (vol 37, p 298)
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Eating your greens is now even better for you NS 27 May 2000
SUPER-BROCCOLI that packs an extra punch against cancer has been bred from ordinary broccoli and a scrawny wild Sicilian relative. Compared with regular broccoli, it contains 10 times as much sulphoraphane, a substance that helps to neutralise cancer-causing substances in the gut. "The super-broccoli looks and tastes the same as ordinary broccoli," says Gary Williamson, head of the team at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich that developed the souped-up version. Sulphoraphane is found in all brassicas, including sprouts and cauliflower. But broccoli has the highest concentrations. When sulphoraphane is released in the gut by broccoli, it steps up production of glutathione transferases-powerful enzymes that destroy cancer-causing substances in food, such as those found in heavily barbecued meat. Williamson, who described the super-broccoli earlier this month at an Institute of Food Research seminar in London, expects that people who eat it will produce even higher concentra tions of glutathione transferases. Trials are due to begin soon in human volunteers, who will eat either super-broccoli or ordinary broccoli. Williamson wants to see if the superbroccoli boosts concentrations of glutathione transferases in gut and blood samples compared with ordinary broccoli. He also hopes to show the superbroccoli is better at protecting the DNA in cells from the ravages of time. The super-broccoli, originally bred at the nearby John lnnes Centre, is being developed with two commercial partners. Andy Coghlan
Rich in carcinogens
NS 27 May 2000
Dioxins make high-fat diets a recipe for cancer
THE risk of developing cancer as a result of exposure to dioxins is 10 times as great as previously estimated, according to a leaked report from the US Environmental Protection Agency. The controversial reassessment of the threat, which the agency had planned to release in June, also warns that the chemical can disrupt children's nervous and immune systems. Dioxins are a by-product of many industrial processes, including waste incineration, paper bleaching and plastics production. The chemicals build up in the environment and also accumulate in animal fat.
After a review of reports published over the past few years, the EPA concludes that people who eat a lot of high-fat foods such as meat and milk could have a 1 per cent chance of developing cancer as a result. There is evidence that even low levels of dioxins can disrupt children's developing nervous and immune systems, according to the report. "It's the developmental exposures that will be more significant," argues Ellen Silbergeld, an epidemiologist and toxicologist at the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore, although the EPNs dramatic cancer estimates have attracted most attention. Industry sources challenge this view. "These draft conclusions may not hold up to scientific scrutiny," says David Fischer of the Chlorine Chemistry Council near Washington DC. Fischer argues that scientists have yet to see and respond to the report, and points out that emissions of industrial dioxin have been slashed by nearly 80 per cent over the past decade. "The EPA has already done about-as much as it can in dealing with the large known sources of dioxin," he says. But this isn't enough, says Rick Hind of Greenpeace in Washington DC. He says the EPA should insist that industrial processes producing high levels of dioxins should be replaced by safe alternative methods. Hind also objects to the report's contradictory suggestion that the EPA may decide to advise people to avoid fatty foods while also arguing that the food supply is fundamentally safe. "We don't buy that," says Hind. The problem stems from the industrial use of chlorine, he says. "We need long-term solutions." Nell Boyce, Washington DC
