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By Erin Jordan
Register Iowa City Bureau
Iowa City, Ia. - The FBI is investigating whether recent damage to science buildings at Purdue University and the University of Minnesota-Duluth is related to vandalism at an animal research lab at the University of Iowa.
"We are aware of the other two outside of Iowa that, on the surface, have similarities," said FBI spokesman Jeff Tarpinian. "We are looking into whether there are any links."
Animal rights activists are suspected in the vandalism at the U of I's Seashore Hall and Spence Laboratories late Saturday or early Sunday. That's when someone took an unspecified number of mice, rats and other animals, damaged more than 30 computers, and dumped chemicals. The vandalism, concentrated in animal research labs used primarily by the psychology department, caused tens of thousands of dollars of damage, the U of I reported.
A Sunday-morning fire at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., destroyed the aquaculture research and training center, setting back research on wild fish preservation. No one was injured in the fire, which also ruined tanks and scientific equipment in a $1 million building that opened in 1992.
The University of Minnesota-Duluth is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or people responsible for more than $1 million in damage to a science center under construction. The weekend vandalism included plugging drains and leaving water running in one wing of the building, breaking windows, and spraying fire extinguishers, officials said.
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By Terry Devitt
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, taking a swing at keeping Wisconsin competitive in the superheated world of biomedical research, announced today (Nov. 17) that over the next several years Wisconsin would invest up to $750 million, including more than $500 million in new facilities and direct research support for scientists at UW-Madison.
Speaking to reporters and technology leaders at UW-Madison's Biotechnology Center, Doyle outlined a strategy aimed squarely at bolstering Wisconsin biotechnology, health sciences and stem cell research.
"Wisconsin leads the world in groundbreaking biomedical research, but we need to continue to move forward," Doyle said. "The state, in partnership with the university and our other private partners, has an aggressive and comprehensive strategy to ensure that we remain at the forefront not only of scientific discoveries, but of creating thousands of new high-tech jobs."
Included in Doyle's plan are:
- A new $375 million public-private research institute, to be known as the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. The proposed institute would occupy the entire 1200 and 1300 blocks of University Avenue and would become a massive interdisciplinary research center that would combine biology, bioinformatics, computer science, engineering, nanotechnology and other fields in one setting. The first phase of the project would use $50 million, which already had been earmarked for the fourth phase of the BioStar initiative.
- A new $134 million interdisciplinary research complex near University Hospital and Clinics. The new center would be translational in nature, helping bring basic research discoveries to clinical fruition at a more rapid pace.
- $1.5 million annually to support research on Alzheimer's disease at UW-Madison.
- A new $132 million research facility at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital that will focus on infectious disease control, cardiovascular illnesses and bioengineering.
In addition, Doyle pledged to smooth the bureaucratic and legal hurdles that impede the ability of faculty to take their innovations to market, and to provide more venture capital for startup research-based businesses through the Wisconsin Department of Commerce.
The new strategy is designed to bolster the university's science research infrastructure at a time when other states, notably California through a recently passed referendum, will begin to invest heavily in such things as stem cell research.
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By SCOTT KILMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Agriculture Department may have uncovered a second case of mad-cow disease, elevating fears that the brain-wasting disease might be spreading in the U.S. cattle herd.
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New tests show initial screening was false alarm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- No sign of mad cow disease was found in an animal the Agriculture Department had singled out for followup tests, officials said Tuesday. Initial screenings last week had raised the possibility of a new case of the disease in the United States.
A more definitive test at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, came back negative, the officials said. The announcement was a relief to the U.S. beef industry, which is still trying to recover from the nation's first case of the disease last December.
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By Barry Shlachter
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
While ranchers exhaled a collective sigh of relief, cattle buyers went on a spending spree Wednesday, driving up prices after results of a "gold standard" test showing that a suspect cow did not have bovine spongiform encephalo-pathy, or BSE, popularly known as mad-cow disease.
"I can't deny the waiting period takes its toll," Shane Sklar, executive director of the 3,000-member Independent Cattlemen's Association of Texas, said of the five days it took to hear the all-clear. "Nobody likes that suspense."
But he said the ultimate result showed "we've had the safeguards in place."
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By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A divided United Nations on Friday rejected a U.S.-led campaign to ban all cloning of human embryos, including for stem-cell research, as a General Assembly committee opted instead for a nonbinding declaration.
With some viewing the practice as the destruction of human life and others as a potentially lifesaving avenue of medical research, "we thought it would be unbearable for the international community to be divided on an issue like cloning," said Ambassador Mohamed Bennouna of Morocco, chairman of the assembly's treaty-writing legal committee.
"The bottom line is that stem-cell research will advance. This declaration will not chill stem-cell research," said Bernard Siegel, a Florida attorney who led a lobbying drive by scientists and patient advocacy groups to defend cloning for therapeutic ends.
Adopting an agreement reached late on Thursday between supporters and foes of Washington's three-year drive for a broad anti-cloning treaty, the U.N. committee shunted aside the U.S. proposal by consensus.
In its place, the panel adopted a resolution instructing a working group to meet in February for talks on a political declaration put forward by Italy as a face-saving compromise.
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ISU scientists want to fight soybean rust, just found in the U.S.
By Anne Fitzgerald
Register Agribusiness Writer
Iowa State University researchers are joining a soybean rust expert from Brazil to find ways to fight the disease that was found this fall for the first time in the United States.
On Nov. 10, federal officials announced that the fungus had been discovered in Louisiana State University research plots near Baton Rouge. After the U.S. Department of Agriculture made the announcement, soybean futures prices rose by as much as 30 cents per bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.
Plant disease and crop specialists have said the wind-borne disease could reach Iowa next year. This year, cool, wet weather contributed to a record U.S. soybean crop. Next year, similar conditions could set the stage for a widespread outbreak of the disease.
Industry experts fear that if soybean rust spreads to other parts of the United States, the effect could be even more devastating than last year's soybean aphid outbreak, which cut soybean yields in much of Iowa by 50 percent or more. In Brazil, the United States' main competitor in soybean production, the soybean fungus caused more than $2 billion in losses to farmers this year, said Alvaro Almeida , the leading soybean rust researcher for Embrapa Soja , the Brazilian equivalent of the USDA's agricultural research service.
Primary factors were yield losses that ranged up to 75 percent, along with the added expense of treating the disease, he said.
Early detection and treatment are key to preventing yield losses, he said. So far, he added, spraying diseased fields with fungicide is the only way to combat the fungus.
Almeida visited the ISU campus in Ames last week to speak to researchers and others about the disease. He will collaborate with Thomas Baum and Steve Whitham , who are plant pathologists and ISU faculty members leading a new initiative to find ways to protect soybeans from the fungus. In January, Martijn van de Mortel , who is completing a doctoral degree in microbiology at ISU, will join their team.
Using biotechnology to more fully understand how the disease works, the researchers hope to devise new methods for managing it, said Baum, director of the institute's center for plant responses to environmental stresses.
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By Jeremy Smith
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - UK scientists pronounced some genetically modified (GMO) crops harmless Monday but European Union experts demurred, declining to approve another new GMO product for the eighth time in a row.
The EU environment experts also brushed aside an attempt by the executive Commission to enlist their support in forcing five member state governments to end bans on GMO foods and crops within 20 days.
The lack of agreement underscores lingering European distaste for "Frankenstein" foods just six months after the bloc ended a five-year blockade on authorizing new GMO products.
UK scientists revealed that after four years of study they had found no evidence that GMO herbicide-tolerant varieties of sugar beet and rapeseed harmed the environment and added that the controversial technology could even save growers money.
The UK findings might further inflame environmentalists eager to keep the controversial products that have swept North and South American fields off European shores.
In Brussels, an environmental group Monday accused Europe's top food safety agency of repeated bias in favor of GMO foods and links with the biotech industry.
But the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) denied the allegations of bias made by Friends of the Earth Europe.
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By David Cullen
A controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops brewed in Britain Monday after a major government and industry-backed study found no evidence they harmed the environment.
The project, which focused on how gene-spliced herbicide-tolerant varieties of sugar beet and rapeseed fared against non-GMO crops when grown in rotation, found that the technology could even help growers save money.
The four-year study, part-funded by the government but assisted by the biotech lobby, enraged green groups who immediately dismissed the results as one-sided.
The biotech industry provided researchers with GMO seeds and some of the sprays.
"Our research indicates that there was no long-term difference in weed populations in field areas using these GM and non-GM crops," Jeremy Sweet, who coordinated the study, said.
"In addition, growing GMO herbicide-tolerant crops could provide farmers with the flexibility to improve plant diversity," Sweet added.
However, the study found that in the case of rapeseed, high numbers of seeds remained in the field long after harvest, creating a problem for later-sown crops.
"Oilseed rape needs to be carefully managed," Sweet told reporters.
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The German parliament has passed a controversial legal amendment that will protect farmers who grow conventional crops from any contamination by genetically modified versions.
The decision by the Bundestag on Friday means that GM farmers will be financially liable for any economic damage caused if their crops contaminate neighbouring non-GM products. The amendment now has to pass through the Bundesrat, the chamber of the federal states. The process is likely to be completed by the end of 2004.
The ruling obliges farmers of GM produce to take precautionary action to prevent “material negative effect” from their GM crops on neighbouring non-GM crops. For example, GM farmers should lay down minimum distances between fields.
A negative financial effect would include a situation, for example, where a conventional farmer was obliged to label their produce as “genetically modified” owing to cross-contamination. Under European Commission legislation, any produce which contains more than 0.9% GM material must be labelled as GM produce.
Certified organic farmers unable to label their produce as organic could also claim. The change in law will additionally demand a site register of where all GM crops are grown, as well as a compensation scheme.
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