| Underwater Suffering: Do Fish Feel Pain? Many a seafood fan has parroted the popular idea that fish and crustaceans do not feel pain. New research, however, suggests that they may, revealing that their nervous system may be more complex than we thought--and our own awareness of pain may be much more evolutionarily ancient than suspected. [For more on pain, see the special section beginning here .]Joseph Garner of Purdue University and his colleagues in Norway report that the way goldfish respond to pain shows that these animals do experience pain consciously, rather than simply reacting with a reflex--such as when a person recoils after stepping on a tack (jerking away before he or she is aware of the sensation). In the study, the biologists found that goldfish injected with saline solution and exposed to a painful level of heat in a test tank “hovered” in one spot when placed back in their home tank. Garner labels that “fearful, avoidance behavior.” Such behavior, he says, is cognitive--not reflexive. Other fish, after receiving a morphine injection that blocked the impact of pain, showed no such fearful behavior. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Can Climate Change Cause Conflict? Recent History Suggests So Some experts call the genocide in Darfur the world's first conflict caused by climate change. After all, the crisis was sparked, at least in part, by a decline in rainfall over the past 30 years just as the region's population doubled, pitting wandering pastoralists against settled farmers for newly scarce resources, such as arable land. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Limits of Perception “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” --Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism [More] rss.sciam.com |
Breeding Cassava to Feed the Poor (preview) The diet of more than 800 million people revolves around neither wheat, nor corn, nor rice. Instead in many countries the main staple consists of the starchy roots of a plant variously called cassava, tapioca, manioc or yuca (not to be confused with the succulent plant yucca). Indeed, cassava contributes more to the world’s calorie budget than any other food except rice and wheat, which makes it a virtually irreplaceable resource against hunger. Throughout the tropics, families typically cultivate it for their own consumption on small parcels of land, although in Asia and in parts of Latin America the plant is also grown commercially for use in animal feed and starch-based products. The root’s nutritional value, however, is poor: it contains little protein, vitamins or other nutrients such as iron. Better varieties of cassava could thus effectively alleviate malnutrition in much of the developing world.Because of that promise, the two of us and our colleagues at the University of Brasilia and others are devoted to creating hardier, more productive and more nutritious varieties and making them widely available to farmers in developing countries. Our team focuses largely on applying traditional breeding techniques to form hybrids between cassava and its wild relatives, taking advantage of traits that have evolved in the wild plants over millions of years. This approach is less costly than genetic engineering and does not raise the safety concerns that make some people wary of genetically modified crops. Meanwhile researchers and nonprofit organizations in the developed world have begun to take an interest and have produced genetically modified cassava varieties for the same purposes. The recent completion of a draft genome sequencing of cassava may open the way to further improvements. [More] Cassava - Rice - Latin America - Genetically modified food - Genetic engineering rss.sciam.com |
Power Hackers: The U.S. Smart Grid Is Shaping Up to Be Dangerously Insecure President Barack Obama’s talk about the need for a “smart grid” sounds, well, smart. What’s not to like about the idea of an electricity grid that can work at top efficiency? By wrapping power transmission lines in advanced information technologies and the Internet, a smart grid would enable us to integrate alternative energy sources such as rooftop solar panels and local wind turbines into the power supply, balance supply with demand and optimize the flow of power to each consumer--even down to the level of individual appliances. It would vastly improve the reliability, availability and efficiency of the electric system. As currently envisaged, however, it’s a dangerously dumb idea.The problem is cybersecurity. Achieving greater efficiency and control requires hooking almost every aspect of the electricity grid up to the Internet--from the smart meter that will go into each home to the power transmission lines them­selves. Connecting what are now isolated systems to the Internet will make it possible to gain access to remote sites through the use of modems, wireless networks, and both private and public networks. And yet little is being done to make it all secure. [More] rss.sciam.com |