Greedy gorgers force strawberry farmer to end pick-your-own offer

By Amol Rajan
Friday, 20 June 2008

A family fruit farm has stopped allowing people to pick their own strawberries because customers were eating too many of the fruits without paying.

Hacker’s Fruit Farm, near Cambridge, has offered locals the chance to pick their own strawberries for 40 years.

But Mark Spight, who runs the farm, said that he was getting sick of watching people eat up to £15 worth of strawberries with clearly no intention of paying for them.

“The cheek of people was unbelievable. People were treating it like a giant open buffet. We’d expect to make about £40,000 during the strawberry season but we lost £10,000 of that to greedy gorgers,” Mr Spight said.

“One woman came up to the counter, covered in juice on her trousers, up her arms and even in her hair. But she handed over a punnet with four strawberries in,” he added.

Mr Spight said he had even spotted one family “sitting in the field with a bowl of water to wash them in and a bowl of cream that they then dipped them in.”

The farm has grown strawberries for 85 years and enjoyed its heyday in the mid-1980s, when the fruit covered 20 of its 35 acres. In time, however, competition from supermarkets in Cambridge has caused the size of the farm to diminish to just four acres, with the rest rented out to grow wheat.

Mr Spight took over the farm five years ago from his wife Hayley’s father and two uncles. They, in turn, had inherited the farm from their parents.

Now, however, with a gloomy economic climate and food prices around the world inflating fast, Mr Spight can no longer afford to be lenient in enforcing his “pick your own” policy.

He claims it was costing his family up to £225 a day. “Children would play in the fields ripping up the green fruit and throwing them at each other but the parents would get defensive if you confronted them. It’s vandalism. You wouldn’t do that in Tesco.”

Mr Spight’s strawberries, which cost just £1 for a pound, are now being replaced by rows of berries, including gooseberries, loganberries, tayberries and currants.

The berries’ acidic taste will mean they, unlike the strawberries, will continue to be sold on a “pick your own” basis.

“We still allow ‘pick your own’ for the berries as they are far too sharp for people to gorge themselves on,” Mr Spight said. “But we will only allow in people who look likely to behave.”

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Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide ‘renewable petroleum’

Some diesel fuel produced by genetically modified bugs

Chris Ayres

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.

What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. “How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?” he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being “prerevenue”.

Inside LS9’s cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.

The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.

However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.

“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

Are Americans ready to be putting genetically modified bug excretion in their cars? “It’s not the same as with food,” Mr Pal says. “We’re putting these bacteria in a very isolated container: their entire universe is in that tank. When we’re done with them, they’re destroyed.”

Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”

Power points

— Google has set up an initiative to develop electricity from cheap renewable energy sources

— Craig Venter, who mapped the human genome, has created a company to create hydrogen and ethanol from genetically engineered bugs

— The US Energy and Agriculture Departments said in 2005 that there was land available to produce enough biomass (nonedible plant parts) to replace 30 per cent of current liquid transport fuels

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150-year-old Monkey puzzle tree facing chop because council says its needles are ‘like syringes’

By Beth Hale
Last updated at 12:14 PM on 24th May 2008

For 150 years, it has stood in splendid serenity on the village green, harming no one and pleasing many.

Over the decades, the monkey puzzle tree at West Cross, near Swansea, became a much-loved local landmark.

But now it is facing the chop … because, in modern Britain, the needle-like points of its leaves are deemed a danger to health and safety.

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Threatened: A 150-year-old monkey puzzle tree is facing the chop after health and safety experts said its needles could injure schoolchildren

One expert likened the effect of the needles to being pricked by a hypodermic syringe.

‘Every effort is made in this day and age to prevent children playing with discarded syringe needles,’ a report stated.

‘Every effort must be made to prevent children coming into contact with these potentially, equally sharp needles.’

But a campaign to save the 50ft tree, also known as a Chilean Pine, has been launched by residents, who insist the prickly foliage is not likely to present the same risk of spreading infectious diseases as a discarded syringe.

The protest is being led by Mike and Carol Crafer, who are threatening

to sell up if the tree – which stands in front of their home – is axed. ‘It’s another case of health and safety gone mad,’ said Mrs Crafer, a 49-yearold mother of two. ‘The tree’s needles are not that dangerous – comparing them to syringes is ridiculous.

‘The tree is part of the local landscape and has been for a century and a half. It rarely sheds its foliage and there are plenty of volunteers here who would be happy to clear up the needles.’

Danger: Tom Henderson, five, of West Cross, Swansea, with one of the needles

Her husband, a 57-year-old sustainability manager with Thames Water, said: ‘This is a crazy decision to cut the tree down.

‘We have put this to the test by trying to prick ourselves with the needles, but have not been able to – that’s how dangerous they are.’

The Crafers led more than 30 banner-waving residents in a protest against Swansea Council’s decision to cut the tree down,

The council brought in two independent health and safety experts who both advised to give the monkey puzzle the chop, especially since a new school is being opened nearby.

A council spokesman said: ‘Safety experts have said the tree is too much of a risk to children for it to remain.

‘One expert likened the tree foliage to discarded syringe needles and warns they pose a probable risk of serious injury to children. The authority could find itself defending any litigation, should this arise.’

However, Martin Caton, MP for Gower, Swansea, yesterday said the decision ‘stinks’.

He added: ‘ I urge everyone who cares about the quality of their environment to protest against this council plan.’

The monkey puzzle tree: A ‘living fossil’ the dinosaurs dined on

• The monkey puzzle tree is native to the Andes of Chile and Argentina.

• Plant collector Archibald Menzies is thought to have introduced it to Britain in
1795.

• It got its name when a gardener in Cornwall was showing his specimen to friends and one remarked: ‘It would puzzle a monkey to climb that.’

• It is sometimes associated with bad luck.

• Often described as a living fossil, its family the Araucariaceae can be traced back to the Mesozoic era, which started 250million years ago.

• Far from deterring monkeys, the spiky leaves probably developed to try to fend off grazing dinosaurs.

• Araucarias can live for 1,200 years and reach 160ft.

• To some indigenous peoples of Chile and Argentina, the tree is sacred.

• The seeds were traditionally collected as a food crop.

• Trade in its timber is now banned because it is so rare.

Platypus Looks Strange on the Inside, Too

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Published: May 8, 2008

If it has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, lays eggs like a bird or a reptile but also produces milk and has a coat of fur like a mammal, what could the genetics of the duck-billed platypus possibly be like? Well, just as peculiar: an amalgam of genes reflecting significant branching and transitions in evolution.

Greg Wood/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A platypus baby, or puggle, being held before being transferred back to its burrow at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia.

An international scientific team, which announced the first decoding of the platypus genome on Wednesday, said the findings provided “many clues to the function and evolution of all mammalian genomes,” including that of humans, and should “inspire rapid advances in other investigations of mammalian biology and evolution.”

The research is described in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature by a group of almost 100 scientists led by Wesley C. Warren, a geneticist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The single subject of the study was a female platypus named Glennie, a resident of Glenrock Station in New South Wales, Australia, whose DNA was collected and analyzed.

The platypus, native to Australia, is so odd that when the first specimens were sent to Europe in the 19th century, scientists suspected a hoax. It was classified as a mammal, one of only two monotremes (echidna is the other) living today that are offshoots of the main mammalian lineage. The divergence occurred some 166 million years ago from primitive ancestors combining features of both mammals and reptiles.

“What is unique about the platypus is that it has retained a large overlap between two very different classifications, while later mammals lost the features of reptiles,” Dr. Warren said in an interview.

In their investigation of the platypus genetic blueprint, the scientists found that its genome contains about 18,500 genes, similar to other vertebrates and about two-thirds the size of the human genome. The platypus shares 82 percent of its genes with the human, mouse, dog, opossum and chicken. Some repeated elements in the genome, the scientists noted, hold hints as to the chronology of changes in the platypus.

Of particular interest, the researchers reported, the analysis identified families of genes that link the platypus to reptiles (like those for egg-laying, vision and venom production), as well as to mammals (antibacterial proteins and lactation). The platypus lacks nipples; the young nurse through the abdominal skin.

One surprise was finding genes responsible for sensitive odor receptors. As a primarily aquatic animal, the platypus was already known to rely on electrosensory receptors in its bill to detect faint electric fields emitted by underwater prey. So why the considerable ability to sense odors? The scientists speculate that it may involve sexual communication or the use of water-soluble odorants in navigating and hunting underwater.

Richard K. Wilson, director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University, said that the comparison of the platypus genes with those of other mammals was the beginning of an examination of how “genes have been conserved throughout evolution.”

The project, involving scientists from eight countries, was primarily financed by the National Human Genome Research Institute in the United States. Its director, Francis S. Collins, said, “As weird as this animal looks, its genome sequence is priceless for understanding how mammalian biological processes evolved.”

Japanese insects to be released into countryside to kill Britain’s most persistent weed

By BEN CLERKIN -  5th May 2008

An army of Japanese insects is to be released into the countryside to destroy Britain’s most persistent weed.But the controversial plan to eradicate Japanese knotweed has sparked fears among conservation groups that the alien species could damage native plants and wildlife.

Millions of jumping plant lice are to be set loose under a plan to kill off knotweed, a highly invasive plant, which causes millions of pounds of damage every year.

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Plans to destroy Japanese knotweed using jumping plant lice have been criticised because of the potential side-affects the insects can have on other plants and wildlife

It will be the first time a foreign species has been used in Britain to control a plant.

The lice, or psyllids, are sap-sucking insects, are the size of a grain of sand. They lay eggs on the plant and the hatched larvae suck out the sap.

Critics point out, however, that plants and wildlife in Australia and Hawaii have suffered adverse side-effects after introducing different alien species to control invading organisms.

Jumping Japanese plant lice will destroy the weed

But scientists who drew up the plans insist that the psyllid has been thoroughly tested against nearly 100 British plants and crops without any ill effects.

The psyllid is a natural enemy of knotweed in Japan, where the plant grows on rocky, volcanic slopes.

Knotweed is now so widespread in Britain that it would cost about £1.6 billion to control with conventional methods, such as herbicides.

Dick Shaw, of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International, said: “Japanese knotweed has been described as having the biodiversity value of concrete – it just smothers the ground in a mass.

“We hope that the psyllid will get the plant under control and limit it to smaller patches around the country.”

But wildlife groups are cautious about introducing new species.

Chris Rostron, of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “Invasive species such as Japanese knotweed pose a serious threat to Britain’s biodiversity, particularly wetland habitats.

“But introducing any non-native species for biological control carries risks and must be thoroughly researched and monitored.”

The plans are expected to be published in a public consultation and the insects could be released into the country by summer next year.

Knotweed first escaped into the wild in the UK in the mid-19th century after being imported from Japan as a garden plant.

Capable of regenerating from tiny fragments, the plant quickly took hold across the country.

Its stems, which resemble bamboo and grow to a height of about 10ft, can push through concrete and can damage buildings.

However critics of the containment policy to release psyllids point to the failure of similar policies abroad, including the release of cane toads in Australia to control the cane beetle.

In the event, the toad spread rapidly itself. In a separate move, predatory snails and flat worms were introduced into Hawaii to control the giant African land snail but ended up attacking native snails, too.

The amazing ‘pixie dust’ made from pigs bladder that regrew a severed finger in FOUR weeks

By FIONA MACRAE – 1st May 2008

Scientists are claiming an amazing breakthrough – regrowing a man’s severed finger with the aid of an experimental powder.Four weeks after Lee Spievack sliced almost half an inch off the top of one of his fingers, he said it had grown back to its original length.

Four months later it looked like any other finger, complete with “great feeling”, a fingernail and fingerprint.

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The secret to the astonishing regrowth is said to be the powder described by Mr Spievack, a Cincinnati model shop salesman, as “pixie dust”.

More properly known as extra-cellular matrix, it is bursting with collagen, the protein that gives skin its strength and elasticity, and is made from dried pig’s bladder.

It was developed to regenerate damaged ligaments in horses.

“The second time I put it on I could already see growth,” said Mr Spievack, 69.

“Each day it was up further.

“Finally it closed up and was a finger. It took about four weeks before it was sealed.”

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Pain plane: Lee Spievack’s model aircraft which was responsible for his injury

Mr Spievack damaged his finger in the propeller of a model plane three years ago.

He turned down a skin graft in favour of the “pixie dust” recommended by his brother, a former surgeon and the founder of the firm that makes the powder.

While it is not entirely clear how the powder works, its developers believe it kick-starts the body’s natural healing process by sending out signals that mobilise the body’s own cells into repairing the damaged tissue.

Dr Stephen Badylak, of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, told the BBC: “There are all sorts of signals in the body.

“We have got signals that are good for forming scar tissue and others that are good for regenerating tissues.

“One way to think about these matrices is that we’ve taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals which were always there for constructive remodelling.”

In other words, the powder directs tissues to grow afresh rather than form scars.

He believes the powder also forms a microscopic scaffolding for the body’s own cells to build round.

“We’re not smart enough to figure out how to regrow a finger,” said Dr Badylak.

“Maybe what we can do is bring all of the pieces of the puzzle to the right place and then let Mother Nature take its course.

“There’s a lot more that we don’t know than we do know.”

Dr Badylak has both medical and veterinary degrees. He has had more than 180 scientific papers published and this year won a coveted Carnegie Science Centre Award for Excellence.

His work is driven by a successful heart operation he carried out on a dog in the 1980s, in which part of a pig intestine was used to fashion a makeshift aorta for its heart.

Months later, an examination revealed that the transplanted intestine part had morphed into a vessel that looked much like an aorta.

The “pixie dust” powder is made by scraping the cells from the lining of a pig’s bladder.

After these are discarded, the remaining tissue is “cleaned” in acid and dried out.

Its benefits may not be limited to finger tips, with the U.S. military poised to try it out on soldiers whose fingers have been amputated.

The patients will have the end of the damaged finger or thumb reopened surgically, to allow the powder to be sprinkled on the raw flesh three times a week.

The hope is they will have enough regrowth to allow them to perform the pinching motion needed to hold a toothbrush or do up a button.

Burns victims could also benefit.

Dr Badylak, scientific adviser to the company making the powder, also intends to see if the technique will regrow oesophagus tissue removed in cancer patients.

Even entire limbs might one day be conjured up by the “pixie dust”, Dr Badylak believes.

He said: “I think that within ten years we will have strategies that will re-grow the bones and promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones.

“And that is a major step towards eventually doing the entire limb.”

Some animals can regenerate tissue without “pixie dust”.

For example, an adult salamander can regenerate a lost leg over and over again, regardless of how many times the part is amputated.

Tyrannosaurus Rex ‘was more like a chicken than a crocodile’

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Friday, 25 April 2008

The largest carnivore that ever walked the planet – Tyrannosaurus rex – is more closely related to the modern chicken than it is to living reptiles such as the alligator or crocodile, a study of the dinosaur’s fossilised protein has found.

Researchers analysed a tiny shred of 68-million-year-old protein taken from the leg of T. Rex and compared it to the same protein found in 21 modern species. They confirmed that the giant predator is closely related to chickens and ostriches, but only to a lesser extent to reptiles such as alligators and crocodiles, which were thought to be more closely related to dinosaurs than other living creatures.

It is the first time that scientists have been able to trace a relationship between dinosaurs and birds through molecular analysis of animal protein, although anatomical studies have already produced convincing evidence of a link between birds and dinosaurs.

“These results match predictions made from skeletal anatomy, providing the first molecular evidence for the evolutionary relationships of a non-avian dinosaur,” said Chris Organ, a researcher in evolutionary biology at Harvard University in the US.

Proteins are composed of amino-acids arranged in a sequence that mirrors the order of chemical bases on molecules of DNA, so scientists can look at short strands of protein– called peptides – to investigate the relationships between species: alive or dead.

“Even though we only had six peptides – just 89 amino-acids – from T. rex, we were able to establish these relationships with a relatively high degree of support,” Dr Organ said. “With more data, we would likely see the T. rex branch on the phylogenetic tree between alligators and chickens and ostriches, though we cannot resolve this position with currently available data.”

John Asara and Lewis Cantley, of Harvard Medical School, were the first experts to capture and sequence pieces of collagen protein from T. rex. The samples were taken from the thigh bone of a T. rex unearthed in the “badlands” of Wyoming and Montana. “Most of the collagen sequence was obtained from protein and genome databases,” Dr Asara said, “but we also needed to sequence some critical organisms, including modern alligator and modern ostrich.

“We determined that T. rex grouped with birds – ostrich and chicken – better than any other organism that we studied. We also showed that it groups better with birds than modern reptiles, such as alligators and green anole lizards.”

The study, published in the latest edition of the journal Science, will add to the growing evidence that birds are descended directly from a group of dinosaurs that grew feathers, possibly as a form of thermal insulation, before they learnt to fly.

In China, scientists have found many examples of feathered dinosaurs, including several that may have used their wings to glide. One fossilised dinosaur had feathers growing in both pairs of limbs, suggesting that four-winged flight may have been possible among some species.

Revealed: The world’s oldest tree that took root 10,000 years ago

By KEITH MURRAY – 18th April 2008

The world’s oldest tree has been found – 9,550 years after taking root.The spruce began growing in central Sweden shortly after the Ice Age and is still going strong.

Researchers carbon-dated genetic material to suggest it hails from 7,542BC.

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Ancient: The mountain spruce stands on a root system that is nearly 10,000 years old

Previously, scientists believed the earth’s oldest trees were 4,000 to 5,000-year-old pine trees found in North America.

A team led by Professor Leif Kullmann, of Umea University, found around 20 spruces which are over 8,000 years old.

The trunk of the mother tree would survive for around 600 years but the spruces were able to grow a series of new ones.

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Stoneage man is followed by the civilisation which built Stonehenge. Troy is taken by the ancient Greeks

Julius Caesar expands the Roman empire. Attila the Hun ruled central Europe and much of Russia. The Magna Carta is signed in England

The Black Death strikes. King Henry VIII transforms England, and Oliver Cromwell turns England into a republican commonwealth

The atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Berlin wall comes down with the fall of the Soviet empire, and the World Trade Center is attacked

Prof Kullmann said: “It was a big surprise because we thought until now that this kind of spruce grew much later in those regions.”

The oldest, a bristlecone pine named Methuselah in California’s White Mountains, is believed to be 4,768 years old, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The Swedish spruce’s genetic material age was calculated using carbon dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida.

Spruces, which according to Kullmann offer rich insight into climate change, had long been regarded as relatively newcomers in the Swedish mountain region.

The discovery of the ancient tree had therefore led to “a big change in our way of thinking,” he said.

Prof Kullman and colleagues found a cluster of around 20 spruces that are over 8,000 years old.

The visible portion of the spruce was comparatively new, but analysis of four “generations” of remains – cones and wood – found underneath its crown showed its root system had been growing for 9,550 years.

Prof Kullmann believes that the ancient humans who lived there may have imported the tree as the glaciers receded 10,000 years ago.

“Man immigrated close to the receding ice front. We have also found fossil acorns in this area, and people may have taken them with them as they moved over the landscape.”

The summers 9,500 years ago were warmer than today, though there has been a rapid recent rise as a result of climate change that means modern climate is rapidly catching up.

The tree probably survived as a result of several factors: the generally cold and dry climate, few forest fires and relatively few humans.

Now the nature conservancy authorities are considering putting a fence around the record breaking tree to protect it from trophy hunters.