VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

The Most Direct Link to Knowledge Workers in the Southeast Forest Economy

All Friday Reports are posted at www.vardaman.com/friday.php

Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company

FRIDAY REPORT OF 07/07/06

The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy

QUOTATIONS FROM LIBERATION BIOLOGY BY RONALD BAILEY

“Like other proposals to introduce genetically modified organisms into the environment, genetically modified trees have given rise to opposition, despite their many benefits for preserving and restoring woodlands. In 2001 the radical environmentalists of ELF destroyed genetically modified trees at the University of Washington at Seattle and a poplar farm in Oregon. More moderate environmental activist groups such as the Sierra Club are calling for a worldwide moratorium on planting genetically modified trees. They fear that the GM trees will somehow harm natural forests by interbreeding with their wild relatives. As in the case of biological control of pests, looking at current silvicultural practices can help make clear the benefits and risks involved with GM trees. ‘Many ecological criticisms of GM trees appear to be overstated,’ concludes a recent study by silviculturalists at Oregon State University. ‘The ecological issues expected from the use of GM poplars appear similar in scope to those managed routinely during conventional plantation culture, which includes the use of exotic and hybrid genotypes, short rotations, intensive weed control, fertilization and density control.’ For example, choosing to plant a conventional poplar or a poplar genetically modified to produce less lignin will have far fewer ecological effects than choosing between planting a poplar, modified or not, and a conifer. ‘The specific changes in wood chemistry imparted by GM, will be orders of magnitude less than the vast number of new chemicals that distinguish a pine from an aspen,’ notes the study…

“If antibiotech activists are truly concerned about gene flow, they should welcome such technologies. If the pollen from crop plants incorporating TPS fertilized any neighboring conventional crops or weeds, any seeds produced would be sterile, so genes for traits such as herbicide resistance or drought tolerance couldn’t be passed on.

“This point escapes some biotech opponents. ‘The possibility that [TPS] may spread to surrounding food crops or to the natural environment is a serious one,’ writes Vandana Shiva in her book Stolen Harvest. ‘The gradual spread of sterility in seeding plants would result in a catastrophe that could eventually wipe out higher life forms, including humans, from the planet.’ The biological ignorance of Shiva’s claim is breathtaking. This dire scenario is not just implausible but biologically impossible: TPS causes sterility; that means, by definition, that it can’t spread…

“The fact is that pollen flow between conventional varieties of crop plants and landrace varieties and wild relatives has been going on since the dawn of agriculture, yet no one has ever called such gene transfers ‘contamination.’ One or two traits carried by transgenes are unlikely to cause any more or less harm to landraces than the thousands of genes conventional varieties have no doubt been transmitting to them for decades…”

“Farming, it’s worth remembering, is the opposite of letting nature run wild – that’s why agriculture is so much more productive than hunting and gathering…

“If antibiotech activists want to favor certain wildlife and not others, that is their choice. But they cannot make the case for their preferences by arguing that ‘science’ has somehow proved their point…

“The EU justifies its ban of and import restrictions on biotech crops based on the ‘precautionary principle,’ which states that regulators do not need to show a biotech crop is unsafe before banning it; they need only assert that it has not been proved harmless. The precautionary principle is best summed up as ‘regulate first, ask questions later.’

“The strictest interpretations of the precautionary principle jettison entirely the notions of tradeoffs, requiring that any new technology never cause any harm to the environment or human health. Of course, accurately predicting in advance the benefits and harms that a technology may one day produce is impossible. This inherent uncertainty means that opponents of a new technology can always stall its introduction by endlessly demanding more research be done to rule out even their most far-fetched fears…

“In other words, the only way to protect completely against unknown risks is never to do anything for the first time…”

“Another increasingly popular neuropharmaceutical is modafinil, commercially available as Provigil in the United States. Modafinil is a psychostimulant drug that heightens alertness, brightens mood, and improves memory. Its side effects are minimal, and unlike amphetamines or cocaine, modafinil does not induce jitteriness, nor do users experience a cycle of highs and lows. Modafinil also does not boost heart rates and blood pressure, and it appears to be nonaddictive. Clinically modafinil is used to treat narcolepsy, in which patients experience uncontrollable urges of daytime sleepiness. The US military is also very interested in modafinil because it can be safely used by troops and pilots who must stay alert for prolonged periods of time. It is also increasingly becoming a lifestyle drug used by professionals, shift workers, and students who want to remain alert for long periods of time. Researcher Barbara Sahakian from Cambridge University reported that in a double-blind trial of sixty healthy volunteers, modafinil significantly improved mental functioning, planning complex problems, recalling strings of numbers, and remembering abstract patterns. ‘In my mind, it may be the first real smart drug,’ Sahakian asserts. ‘A lot of people will probably take modafinil. I suspect they do already.’”

“ANTS ON STILTS HELP SHOW BUGS HAVE ‘PEDOMETERS’”
by Richard A. Lovett for National Geographic News

Our title and quotes below are from its Internet page of 6/29/06:

“Hunting for food, ants roam haphazardly. But when they find it, they use celestial cues, perhaps from the sun, to head back to their nests more or less in a straight line – rather than retracing the tortuous journeys they’d made on their outbound searches. So how does an ant know when to stop running?

“It must not be based on seeing the nest entrance, because a returning ant rarely runs straight down into its hole. Instead, when they think they’re in the right area, they stop running, make a U-turn, and pace back and forth until they find it…

“Instead, a new study suggests that ants have ‘pedometers,’ or step counters, that help them gauge how far they have traveled. After watching ants in Africa’s Sahara, Harald Wolf, of the University of Ulm in Germany, decided to put the pedometer idea to the test in the laboratory.

“Food was placed about 33 feet (10 meters) from an ant nest. When ants found the food the researchers collected the insects before they had time to carry it back to the nest.

“Twenty-five of the ants were then put gently on their backs. Scientists glued stilts made of pig bristles to the insects’ legs – a delicate procedure that had to be done quickly so the ants wouldn’t forget what they were doing and fail to return home…

“Another 25 ants had their legs surgically shortened by cropping off part of the bottom segment. This procedure, Wolf said, is not as cruel as it sounds, because ants do not experience pain, ‘at least not in a sense even remotely comparable to what we mean by that term.’

“For the ants on stilts, each step now covered more distance than they were used to. They overshot the nest, running an average of more than 50 percent farther than they should have. Those with shortened legs undershot by nearly as much. Interestingly, the ants quickly adjusted to their new leg lengths.

“After the initial experiment, the ants were promptly returned to their nest. The next day the modified ants were allowed to engage in normal foraging and they returned to the nest as well as the ‘normal’ ants…

“How exactly the ants calculate the distance they’ve traveled remains a mystery, though Wolf’s team doubts that the insects have the brainpower to literally count steps…”

To read all the article, click on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news and then on the title of the article.

“BIRD EXTINCTION ESTIMATES MAY BE TOO LOW”

Our title and quotes below are from 07/05/06 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN:

“Since 1500, more than 150 bird species have disappeared from the world… Some biologists suggest that current extinction rates have been seriously underestimated and will rise rapidly in the coming century.

“Stuart Pimm of Duke University and his colleagues analyzed current estimates of bird extinction rates. Out of 9,975 known bird species, 154 have disappeared, or roughly 1.3 percent…

“Conservation, however, will not be enough to save many of the bird species most at risk. Habitat destruction partnered with climate change, which particularly impacts those birds lingering at the edges of their ranges, will eventually doom 1,700 species of birds. ‘Millions of people are fond of birds,’ the authors note. ‘Whether fondness will prove sufficient to protect the thousand or more species threatened with habitat loss across tropical forests remains to be seen. Even if it does, this fondness for birds is not likely to protect completely the remainder of diversity.’”

Visit our partner Wiley.com to save 15% on How to Make Money Growing Trees and their entire selection of Forestry and Agricultural titles. Your discount will be applied automatically upon checkout. If you do you not see the discount being applied, please enter code aff15 in the Promotion Code field and click the Apply Discount button.