Corn That Clones Itself
From MIT's Technology Review: CIMMYT (International Center for the Improvement of Maize and Wheat), located just outside of Mexico, produced the wheat varieties like Sonora, Yaqui, Kauz, Sujata, Sonalika, and more about 40 years ago. Those varieties have surplanted the native varieties in countries such as China and India and have allowed them to feed themselves. Corn is the next biggest crop worldwide, and CIMMYT is looking to do for corn what it did for wheat - but this time, they're looking at producing corn that can clone itself instead of reproducing. The idea isn't far fetched or scary as it may appear. Many plants already reproduce in a cloning fashion called apomixis. There are numerous benefits of reproducing this way. Read the article to learn more.
The first chef
First came fire ... and then, as the camera shifts to the soon to be late-village idiot, you're left wondering -- just what was going through that mind -- and food is put on the fire, for the first time, and cooking is accidentally discovered by humanity. The first chef is ridiculed by grunts, then the local thug tries a sample of the burnt carcass, and soon, everybody gets queued at the McDonalds drive-thru. What happened? Richard Wrangham of Harvard believes there's more to cooking than evolutionary history would have you believe. Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort...
Comments
Post a Comment