A team of scientists has forecast the direction of nutrition research. The panel identified the following ten areas of research which they believe will be the focus of nutritional scientists in the next six years:

(1) Global Food Security: The scientists predict that global food security, food safety, and sustainability will occupy the spotlight by 2020 as all are influenced by global climate change and access to clean water. Additional issues to be looked at will include the increasing development of genetically modified (GM) food crops.

(2) Microbiome/Microflora: By the end of the decade, scientists will determine how regulating the microorganisms in the body can advance disease prevention, with a focus on the effects of nutrition, dietary supplements, and physical activity on specific microflora populations and/or the interrelationships among populations.

(3) Gene Expression: Research will examine how nutritional programming of gene expression, both in the human genome and in our associated microflora microbiome impacts disease expression and progression. By 2020, the panel predicts that scientists will better understand how many diseases have their roots during the gestation of the fetus (in utero) and in early childhood development, and how nutrition might change the manifestation of these diseases.

(4) Energy Metabolism: Viewing energy balance as a multidimensional system, rather than as isolated parts that somehow work together, will lead to new insights and solutions to address the obesity problem, in both developed and developing countries. One strategic use of nutrition to enhance bioenergetics will be a focus on cellular energy and mitochondrial function. Dietary manipulations and use of certain food components or supplements may be a means to enhance mitochondrial function and thus affect energy metabolism and energy fluxes in the body.

(5) Cancer: By 2020, genomic and metabolomic profiles and large dataset analysis will offer new opportunities to identify relevant indices and biomarkers and conduct timely, cost-efficient clinical interventions on nutrition and cancer. Medical professionals will expand their thinking about the role of natural products to consider how they might complement conventional care, such as increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy or radiation.

(6) Inflammation: Future nutrition research will likely focus on the role of diet and nutraceuticals to help moderate inflammation and possibly reduce the risk of cancer and other inflammatory mediated diseases and conditions. Nutrition scientists must identify foods, beverages, and dietary patterns that are both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory.

(7) Aging: The increasing number of aging persons will beg the question of “Who wants to live a long and unhealthy life, where quality of life deteriorates slowly and for a long time?” Nutrition research will address that issue along with cancer and vascular disorders, obesity, metabolic syndrome, locomotive syndrome, cognitive impairment, and problems related to taste, mastication, and swallowing.

(8) Bioengineering: Advances in bioengineering will continue to bring new approaches to clinical nutrition and to nutrition education. This will lead to research espousing the development and use of new monitoring technologies and tools that individuals might use to better follow their nutritional and health status.

(9) Nutrition Education: Food choices are very personal, and modification of food intake is a complex issue that requires much new research. Although educators can provide people with multiple types of useful information, food choices usually are based on four factors: flavor, economics, availability, and convenience. Research is needed to identify which messages and vehicles will effectively reach which audiences to effect behavior change and improve overall health.

(10) Interdisciplinary and Cross-discipline Collaborations: Emphasis on translational research will be more common, requiring collaborations among those in basic and clinical research, nutritional epidemiology and biostatistics, food science, exercise science, nutrition communications, public policy, and scientific ethics. Teams of researchers rather than individual scientists will produce answers to the most critical health issues, working across disciplines to bring a holistic and more representative approach to successful and sustainable solutions.

Taken together, these 10 elements will usher in the next decade where the emphasis will be on personalized nutrition based, in part, on a better understanding of the role that one’s genetic background has, along with a better appreciation of the interplay between diet and the microbiome.

Consider the Source

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

“Petri dish milk will mirror the formula of the real thing — the yeast cultures will be churning out real milk proteins — it will retain the taste and nutritional benefits of cow milk,” says Perumal Gandhi, a co-founder of the synthetic dairy start-up Muufri (pronounced Moo-free) in San Francisco, California. “That will distinguish it from soy – and almond-based alternatives.”

Gandhi and Muufri co-founder Ryan Pandya are both vegans who view the livestock industry’s practices as inhumane. “Dairy production is responsible for roughly 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions each year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, mostly because cows belch methane. And although dairy is already a more efficient way than meat of converting plant feed into animal protein, bioengineers can do even better than nature,” Gandhi says.

Muufri will contain only those essential proteins, fats, minerals, and sugars. Pandya and Gandhi’s plan is to insert DNA sequences from cattle into yeast cells, grow the cultures at a controlled temperature and the right concentrations, and harvest milk proteins after a few days. The process is extremely safe, says Gandhi: It’s the same one used to manufacture insulin and other medicines.

Although the proteins in Muufri milk come from yeast, the fats come from vegetables and are tweaked at the molecular level to mirror the structure and flavor of milk fats. Minerals, like calcium and potassium, and sugars are purchased separately and added to the mix. Once the composition is fine-tuned, the ingredients emulse naturally into milk.

By controlling the ingredients, however, Pandya and Gandhi hope to make milk more healthful. The team is experimenting, for instance, with sugars other than lactose, which 65 percent of adults have trouble digesting. And it has engineered a more healthful, unsaturated fat that retains the distinct flavor of dairy. Reproducing that flavor is a prime goal for Gandhi and Pandya, who were not always vegan—and who say they miss the taste of cheese, butter, and ice cream.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

A small study using brain scans suggests the addictive power of unhealthy, high-calorie food can be reduced and the brain retrained to prefer healthy, lower calorie foods. Participants who followed a 6-month behavioral weight-loss program showed significant changes in the way the reward centers in their brains responded to the two types of food.

The study team, including researchers from Harvard Medical School and Tufts University, both in Boston, MA, reports the findings in the journal Nutrition & Diabetes.

There is strong evidence to suggest individuals can retrain the brain to focus on healthy eating with early rewards. The scan results showed that compared to the controls, the group that followed the weight-loss program showed increased reward center activity in response to seeing images of low-calorie foods at the end of the program, and decreased activity in response to high-calorie foods.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

Parque de la Papa farmers began to stir in their seats, waiting for an opportunity to share their stories. Others came from as far as Bhutan and China. They discovered that their cultures were more similar than they had expected, and that one concern had been troubling all of them: Climate change was making it harder to grow food on the mountains that had sustained them for centuries. They were meeting to do something about it.

During a series of talks held between April 26 and May 2, 2014, the farmers forged a unique partnership that now includes the exchange of indigenous crop varieties and farming methods. They hope these initiatives will help protect agricultural biodiversity in the face of climate change. The exchange will begin with potatoes—a sturdy crop that thrives in the mountains of China, Bhutan, and Peru. Such collaboration will give the farmers an opportunity to experiment together from a distance, as they search for the hardiest, most resilient varieties.

Andean farmer Lino Mamani curates the traditional seeds collection at Parque de la Papa, where six Quechua communities live and grow about 600 varieties of potato. “We can learn more from others with similar problems about technology that might be useful.”

Working with scientists has been an emotional, challenging process, Mamani said. “Scientists would just take seeds from us, not recognizing our knowledge.” But the tides are turning as climate change edges on, pushing science and tradition closer together to resolve common goals and slow the process of agricultural degradation. He went on to say “It’s time traditional knowledge and science work together.”

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

“The way solar is progressing it will just be a matter of time before it becomes competitive with fossil fuels and eventually replace them.”

So says Dr Jon Major who led a team at Liverpool University that has found a way of replacing one toxic element, used in the process of manufacturing solar cells, with a material found in bath salts.

Around 7% of the solar cells manufactured today are made from a material called cadmium telluride. The cadmium telluride cells are thinner than silicon and they are popular because they are also lighter and cheaper.

They have more than one drawback. Tellurium is rare. And a toxic chemical, cadmium chloride, is needed to manufacture the the cells. Cadmium chloride is also expensive. In addition, a significant proportion of the manufacturing cost of cadmium telluride cells is to protect the workforce from toxins and to dispose of contaminated waste products safely, according to the research team.

Dr Major discovered that a cheaper, non-toxic alternative, magnesium chloride, could be used instead of the toxic compound and work just as well. Magnesium chloride is completely safe. It is used to make tofu and is found in bath salts. It also extracted from sea water and so is a small fraction of the price of cadmium chloride.

Dr. Major believes that solar energy could eventually meet the world’s energy needs.

“There is enough sunlight that falls on the Earth every hour to generate enough electricity for the planet for a year,” he said.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

Ethanol is but one of the products the bacterium can be taught to produce. Others include butanol and isobutanol (transportation fuels comparable to ethanol), as well as other fuels and chemicals-using biomass as an alternative to petroleum.

Janet Westpheling, a professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of genetics, and her team of researchers — all members of U.S. Department of Energy-funded BioEnergy Science Center in which the University of Georgia is a key partner — succeeded in genetically engineering the organism C. bescii to deconstruct un-pretreated plant biomass.

Pretreatment of the biomass feedstock — nonfood crops such as switchgrass and miscanthus — is the step of breaking down plant cell walls before fermentation into ethanol. This pretreatment step has long been the economic bottleneck hindering fuel production from lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks.

The UGA research group engineered a synthetic pathway into the organism, introducing genes from other anaerobic bacterium that produce ethanol, and constructed a pathway in the organism to produce ethanol directly.

“Now, without any pretreatment, we can simply take switchgrass, grind it up, add a low-cost, minimal salts medium and get ethanol out the other end,” Westpheling said. “This is the first step toward an industrial process that is economically feasible.”

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

This is the Ecooking unit that Italian manufacturer Clei showed in Milan at the 2014 Salone del Mobile furniture fair. The Ecooking kitchen’s moving parts rotate around a central pivot that also serves as the exhaust pipe for the sink and dishwasher — and as the conduit for the plumbing and electricity.

The tower can be placed against one wall, as the rotating elements open in three of the cube’s four directions, for a span of 270 degrees. Because appliances are close to each other, they can “easily interact and exchange heat, moisture and cooling with one another and with the environment to save energy.

The microwave is at the top; below it is a small dishwasher. The water from the sink and dishwasher is reused to nourish the tower’s simple herb garden. The vertical garden has special grow lights. The tower has an induction cooktop. When the tower is placed near a window, to take advantage of the sunlight, solar panels positioned on upper modules of the tower can power appliances.

Consider the Source

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

“Citizens not only reject unregulated and hazardous GMOs, but are willing to defy the indentured politicians who pass laws that take away county rights to ban GMOs and obliterate a 100-year tradition of home rule and balance of powers between counties and the state.” So said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and the Organic Consumers Fund.

Jackson County Oregon is a hotspot for supplying seed to the rest of the world. But with Syngenta growing GMO sugar beet crops in small plots peppered all over the narrow valley, contamination was inevitable according to Elise Higley, Jackson County family farmer and director of OurFamilyFarmsCoalition.org.

The GMO ban enacted by Josephine County Oregon is expected to face a legal challenge by way of S.B. 863, a controversial law passed by the Oregon legislature last October. The state law strips counties of the right to pass GMO bans. The Jackson County ban enjoys more protection, since that initiative was introduced before the state law went into effect.

It is important for farmers to grow crops, let them go to seed, and then save that seed to grow the next year. This allows farmers to grow varieties that work well for a particular region. But using purchased seed to sell or plant next year’s crops is illegal with patented GMO seeds, and a farmer could be sued out of existence even if GMO seed accidentally winds up in a neighboring farmer’s field, contaminating the crop.

The decisive county GMO ban victories come just months before the entire state of Oregon will vote on Ballot Initiative #44, which, if passed in November, would require mandatory labeling of GMO foods and foods containing GMO ingredients. “These victories make it clear to agribusiness giants like Monsanto and Dow that the day has come when they can no longer buy and lie their way to victory,” Cummins says. “By using the tools of democracy, such as ballot initiatives, citizens can overcome corporate and government corruption through honest campaigns, built on a foundation of truth, science and fair play.”

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

If it lives up to its billing, it will help accelerate the big green future. Companies and homeowners could pull the plug on their local utility by banking electricity from solar arrays and wind farms for use when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. A 250-kilowatt battery system installed in a 40-foot container, for instance, could store solar energy from the rooftop arrays of a 40-home neighborhood for later use.

This magic box is called a vanadium redox flow battery. The heart of a flow battery are two electrolyte solutions — one positive, one negative — contained in separate tanks. When the solutions are pumped through a power cell containing a membrane, a chemical reaction takes place that generates electricity. When the process is reversed, the electrolyte stores energy.

The key component is vanadium, a naturally occurring element that can exist in positive and negative states, eliminating the contamination and degradation that occurs when two different elements are used to create a chemical reaction. Flow batteries are not as efficient as solid-state lithium-ion batteries. But unlike lithium-ion batteries that lose their capacity over time as they charge and discharge, the nontoxic electrolyte in a vanadium flow battery is endlessly reusable and never loses its efficiency.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!

Lignocellulose, a raw material in biomass, can be converted to biofuels and is often considered a long-term alternative to the diminishing supply of fossil fuels. The conversion process involves biomass pretreatment, hydrolysis of constituent carbohydrates and catalytic conversion of platform chemicals. Proposed strategies to convert lignocellulose to aviation fuels have underused components, preventing their commercialization.

A collaboration between several research groups has taken a hydrolysis-based approach to produce aviation fuel from red maple biomass. The proposed method focuses on synthesizing levulinic acid and furfural from lignocellulosic 5- and 6-carbon sugars and catalytically upgrading these to jet fuel range alkanes. This combined techno-economic analysis considers several possible processing options at points throughout the procedure and combines the most viable to create a comprehensive conversion process, which can produce jet fuel priced at $4.75 (£2.88) per gallon.
Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!