Genetically modified crops on the rise
LONDON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- The amount of the world's farmland utilized for growing genetically modified crops increase by about 10 percent last year, a biotechnology organization says.
The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications says it calculates more than 2.5 billion acres have been cultivated with GM crops since their introduction in 1996, the BBC reported Tuesday.
ISAAA is an organization partly funded by industry that promotes biotechnology in agriculture.
"We can recount a momentous year of progress in biotech crop adoption," said Clive James, ISAAA chairman and founder.
However, critics of GM crops say this is still just 10 percent of the world's arable land area as defined by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Greenpeace, opposed to GM crop introduction, has presented a petition to the European Commission demanding it stop approving new GM varieties.
"Today's European data show that GM crops are failing in the field and on the market; farmers and consumers are not falling for biotech industry propaganda," Greenpeace EU agriculture policy adviser Stefanie Hundsdorfer said.
"GM crops are not more productive and are less resistant to extreme climate conditions than normal crops," she said. "They do, however, present a serious risk for our environment."
Virtually all the GM strains being grown worldwide have been engineered for just two traits: disease resistance and herbicide tolerance, the BBC reported.
Canadians call for action on hazardous BPA
OTTAWA, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Canada's declaration that bisphenol A is a health hazard must be followed up with legislation to protect people from exposure, researchers say.
Bisphenol A, one the most commonly manufactured chemicals in the world and widely used in a range of common materials and food packaging, has estrogenic properties and may have negative effects on human health, an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal said Tuesday.
Canada became the first country in the world to declare BPA a health hazard when Health Canada invoked a "precautionary principle" October 2010.
However, researchers say, positive action beyond just declaring the chemical a hazard is needed.
"Health Canada continues to maintain that bisphenol A is safe at current exposure levels and does not pose any risk to the general population; regulations to remove bisphenol A from all food-contact sources, or ban it completely, are not yet forthcoming, presenting a conflict that is likely to confuse the public," the CMAJ article said.
"By invoking the precautionary principle, Health Canada has both the power and responsibility to restrict human exposure to bisphenol A; in taking the action to label bisphenol A a toxic chemical, Health Canada now must follow through with strong legislation that will protect the people of Canada from continued exposure," the article said.
T. rex not a 'top' predator, study says
BERKELEY, Calif., Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Tyrannosaurus rex, long held as the "top dog" predator of Earth's dinosaur period, was more an opportunistic feeder than a top hunter, U.S. paleontologists say.
Researchers say that rather than ruthlessly stalking herds of duck-billed dinosaurs and claiming the role of apex predator, T. rex was more likely an opportunistic predator, like the hyena in Africa today, subsisting on both carrion and fresh-killed prey and exploiting a variety of animals, not just large grazers, a University of California, Berkeley, release reported Tuesday.
Paleontologists John "Jack" Horner from the Museum of the Rockies and Mark B. Goodwin of UC Berkeley say a new census of dinosaur skeletons unearthed in eastern Montana shows that Tyrannosaurus was too numerous to have subsisted solely on the dinosaurs it tracked and killed with its scythe-like teeth.
"In our census, T. rex came out very high, equivalent in numbers to Edmontosaurus, which many people had thought was its primary prey," Horner, a professor at Montana State University, said. "This says that T. rex is not a cheetah, it's not a lion. It's more like a hyena."
Normally, Goodwin said, top predators are one-third or one-fourth as abundant as their prey, because of the larger energy needs of carnivores.
Opportunistic hunters like the hyena, however, can be twice as abundant as the top predators.
"If you count the lions and the leopards and the cheetahs in the Serengeti, the number still does not equal the number of hyenas, because hyenas have a much wider food source," Horner said. A hyena will eat "anything else that it can catch or is dead," he said.
Similarly, T. rex was eating anything it could, he said. "There's no evidence that T. rex could run very fast, so it wasn't out there being a cheetah. If it could get a sick animal, it would."
Laptops seen as male fertility risk
PADUA, Italy, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Men using a laptop computer for more than an hour may be at risk of lower male fertility due to a rise in testicle temperature, an Italian researcher says.
Padua University researchers measured temperature variations in the testicles of men using a portable computer on their laps, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
"Up till now there had only been empirical observations that suggested an increased testicle temperature can affect the production of sperm," researcher Carlo Foresta said, referring to known risks such as wearing tight pants, taking a sauna or suffering from a fever.
Researchers used a stick-on computer chip to measure the temperatures.
"It's quite usual to see young men holding their laptops on their laps, especially on trains," Foresta said, "and we've found that this habit can raise the temperature of the testicles by two degrees in an hour."
The Padua University also examined at-risk groups like the obese and men with variococele, a condition where veins in the testicles are enlarged.
"Infertility is associated with a rise in temperature, which in both groups was about one degree," Foresta said.
