Monsanto threatens to quit Indian GM-cotton market if govt cuts its royalties

From:  RT

Published time: 5 Mar, 2016 01:42

Farmers plough and sow cotton seeds in a field in Shahpur village, India © Amit Dave / Reuters

American agrochemical giant Monsanto has threatened to pull out of India and hold back new genetically modified cotton technologies if the government continues its “arbitrary and potentially destructive” interventions that seek to cut the company’s royalty fees. 

Last year the Indian government issued an order to control cotton seed prices effective from the 2016-17 crop year. In a ruling, the antitrust regulator, Competition Commission of India, accused the GMO giant of potentially abusing its dominant position on the market. The Agriculture Ministry set up a special committee tasked with implementing brackets for seed price along with royalty fees, after the completion of an investigation into the matter.

Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (MMB), a joint venture with India’s Mahyco, licenses its products to a number of local seed companies in exchange for royalties. The company also sells seeds directly though the local licensees.  MORE

Oil spilled in Louisiana platform blaze

From:  UpStream

By Caroline Evans and news reports
15 March 2016 23:35 GMT

On fire: Louisiana oil platform US Coast Guard

An "unkown amount" of oil spilled from a storage tank into a Louisiana canal Tuesday after the platform it was on caught fire, according to the US Coast Guard.

 

The fire started Tuesday morning while the platform near the community of Bayou Sorrel was being dismantled.

There were two people on the platform at the time, but no injuries were reported.

The platform houses two storage tanks containing up to 786 barrels of oil. Both caught fire and were still burning late Tuesday, according to the Coast Guard. MORE

Would you live in a house made of sand and bacteria? It's a surprisingly good idea

From:  CNN

By Kieron Monks, for CNN

Peter Trimble found his formula through trial and error. A design student at the University of Edinburgh, he was aiming to produce an artistic exhibition for a module on sustainability, when he stumbled on "Dupe," a living alternative to concrete. 

A lab technician introduced Trimble to Sporosarcina pasteurii, a bacterium with binding qualities, sometimes used to solidify soil to hold road signs in place. The student tested it with one of the world's most abundant resources - sand. Pumping bacterial solution into a sand-filled mould, he added nutrients, urea derived from urine as fertilizer and calcium. After a year, and hundreds of failed experiments, this process manufactured a stool around 70% the compression strength of concrete. 

The process requires less than one-sixth of the energy used in concrete production, and is completely biodegradable. Crucially, Trimble believes his mechanism has the added benefit that it could be employed by anyone, anywhere.MORE

Permit for 98-year-old pipelines under St. Clair River sparks alarm

From:  MLive

by Garrett Ellison

The Marlene Green freighter leaves Lake St. Clair and heads into the St. Clair River, the border between the United States and Canada, on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008. (AP file/Duane Burleson)

 MARYSVILLE, MI — A pair of idled St. Clair River oil pipelines originally built in 1918 are generating outrage among Michigan environmental groups and attention from Congressional legislators although the pipeline owners say there are no current plans to send crude oil through them.

Texas-based Plains All American Pipeline's request to update usage permits on a group of border-crossing pipelines the company bought in 2012 touched off alarm among environmentalists after a Federal Register notice flew under everyone's radar until the public feedback window expired on Feb. 24.

The lack of environmental review by the U.S. State Department, which has jurisdiction over border-crossing pipelines, has upset groups like the Sierra Club and FLOW (Flow Love of Water), which only became aware of the pipelines last week, just as public comment on the permit was ending.  MORE

 

 

A disaster waiting to happen in Oklahoma? The link between fracking and earthquakes is causing alarm in an oil-rich town

From:  Independent 


by Andrew Dewson - April 6, 2015

A transportation hub, Cushing, Oklahoma, is home to just 8,000 people and 87 million barrels of oil. Due to fracking, it’s now one of the most active seismic areas in the US – and potentially the scene of a catastrophe. 

Oil storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, located at the convergence

of several pipelines; the number of earthquakes above 3.0 on the Richter scale has risen from two in 2008 to 585 in 2014 Bloomberg

 At first glance the small town of less than 8,000 inhabitants looks like typical country America, the kind of place that John Updike might once have written about. Except Cushing, in north-east Oklahoma, is very different.

On top of its human residents, it is also home to about 87 million barrels of oil storage. The biggest ocean-going supertankers carry about two million barrels. The Exxon Valdez spilled less than half that amount when it hit Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1989.

Now, more tanks are being built in Cushing as storage companies seek to increase stocks at lower oil prices.  MORE

Do you feel anxious?

 Steve is an inventor, with multiple products, which he originated after he nearly died of petroleum poisoning.  He has written multiple books and is completely dedicated to making life healthier. 

by Steve Tvedten

If I told you that bacteria could alleviate your anxiety you’d probably think I was joking or uninformed. But, if you suffer from anxiety, particularly social anxiety, you’ll be happy to learn about the exciting research conducted by researchers at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia that shows bacteria, indeed, may be the solution to your anxiety. The study, which was published in Psychiatry Research, found that regular consumption of fermented foods replete with plentifu l amounts of beneficial bacteria reduced social anxiety.

In the College of William and Mary study, 710 students completed food diaries about their intake of fermented foods over the previous 30 days. They were also asked about exercise frequency and their consumption of fruits and vegetables so that the researchers could control for healthy habits beyond fermented food intake. Researchers found that those who ate higher amounts of fermented foods had lower levels of social anxiety. The link was particularly noticeable among those who demonstrated signs of neuroticism.

Matthew Hilimire, a professor of psychology at the College of William and Mary and one of the researchers who conducted the study said in an interview with PsychCentral, “It is likely that the probiotics in the fermented foods are favorably changing the environment in the gut, and changes in the gut in turn influence social anxiety,”

The study found that those people who are prone to anxiety experience less social anxiety when they frequently consume fermented foods replete with probiotics.

It may be hard to comprehend how bacteria can affect your mind, but an increasing body of research is proving that they do. A study conducted by researchers at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Canada and published in the medical journal Gastroenterology, found that the specific probiotic known as Bifidobacterium longum eliminated anxiety and normalized behavior. The Canadian scientists found that chronic gastrointestinal inflammation induces anxiety-like behavior and alters the biochemistry of the central nervous system.

A French study published in the British Journal of Nutrition confirms both the American and Canadian studies. They found that the same probiotic strain studied by the Canadians: B. longum, along with another probiotic strain known as Lactobacillus helveticus reduced anxiety. Additionally, the French found that these two probiotics reduced psychological stress, depression and feelings of anger and hostility.

While it is not yet clear the exact mechanism or mechanisms at work, it is believed that the probiotics reduce gastrointestinal inflammation and boost serotonin levels. Serotonin, a feel-good brain hormone sometimes called the happiness hormone, once believed to be the exclusive domain of the brain, is also produced by the gut. Actually, it is estimated that about 90 percent of the body’s serotonin can actually be found in the gastrointestinal tract (GI tract). That’s right: your intestines do some of the same work as your brain. Actually, many scientists now refer to the gut as the body’s “second brain” because the gut-brain health link has been the focus of a growing body of research proving the connection.

While yogurt is probably the fermented food that first comes to mind and indeed offers many health benefits, there are many superior fermented foods that offer larger volumes of probiotics and a wider variety of strains, such as kimchi and sauerkraut. Check out my article “9 Reasons to Love Sauerkraut” and “Make Your Own Sauerkraut” for more information.

 

Dr. Michelle Schoffro Cook, PhD, DNM is a registered nutritionist and international best-selling and 19-time published book author whose works include: The Probiotic Promise: Simple Steps to Heal Your Body from the Inside Out.

OBITUARY: Shale impresario Aubrey McClendon dies on heels of indictment

From:  Energy Wire 

Mike Lee, Saqib Rahim and Mike Soraghan, E&E reporters
EnergyWire: Thursday, March 3, 2016

 

Aubrey McClendon, the larger-than-life co-founder of Chesapeake Energy Corp. who was a leader of the American oil and gas renaissance, died yesterday in a fiery car crash, less than a day after the Justice Department announced he had been indicted on federal antitrust charges.

McClendon was at the wheel of a 2013 Chevy Tahoe that crossed the center line of a road in Oklahoma City and crashed into a bridge support just after 9 a.m. local time yesterday, Capt. Paco Balderrama of the Oklahoma City Police Department said in a videotaped news conference. The Tahoe was engulfed in flames (E&ENews PM, March 2).

"He pretty much drove straight into the wall," Balderrama said. "There was plenty of opportunity for him to correct or get back on the road, and that didn't occur."  MORE