New method for measuring RNAi pesticide in soil
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed an extraction and cleanup method that, for the first time, will allow for measurements of RNAi pesticides in soil.
Creating plants that make their own fertilizer
Much of modern agriculture relies on biologically
available nitrogenous compounds (called “fixed” nitrogen) made by an
industrial process developed by German chemist Fritz Haber in 1909. Himadri Pakrasi, PhD, a scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, thinks it should be possible to design a better
nitrogen-fixing system. His idea is to put the apparatus for fixing
nitrogen in plant cells, the same cells that hold the apparatus for
capturing the energy in sunlight. The National Science Foundation just awarded Pakrasi and his team $3.87 million to explore this idea further.
Déjà vu all over again? Cultural understanding vs. horrors of eugenics
Scientific efforts to explain feeblemindedness, delinquency and racial inferiorities date to the Spanish Inquisition. And while the horrors of Nazi Germany exposed fatal flaws
in science’s quest to build the master race, the ethical dilemmas posed
by the science of eugenics are far from behind us, warns an anthropologist from Washington University in St. Louis.