modified 2.mod.999 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Just beyond the defunct Koloa Sugar Mill on the Hawaiian island of Kauai's south shore are acres of cornfields that have sprouted over the past decade in a state made famous by its pineapples, bananas and sugarcane crops. Slightly out of place in the Aloha State, they otherwise look quite conventional, although in fact they are not: The crop is among a bounty of others in the state that are grown from seeds that have been genetically engineered or modified (GM) to produce sturdier plants able to withstand weather and disease as well as thrive in the face of insects and chemicals sprayed on them to kill destructive weeds. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.blogspot.com

In front of one plot of corn stalks is a red and white sign warning, "Danger: pesticides. Keep out." Tacked to it is a list containing 15 chemicals that may have been applied to the crop. In this case, the chemicals circled are the herbicides pendimethalin (brand name: Prowl), dicamba (Banvel) and atrazine, the latter of which is banned in the European Union (E.U.) because of its link to birth defects in frogs that live in groundwater contaminated with it. http://louis1j1sheehan.blogspot.com


I pass these corn fields every day when I go to the beach to go swimming," says Marty Kuala, 68, a 36-year resident of the town Koloa who worked in a plant nursery (that grew native plants such as naupaka, a’ali’i, and naio) in 2005. "It's kind of a new thing that we're starting to see these fields [of genetically modified or engineered crops] all over the place. GMOs [genetically modified organisms] are growing in the Mahaulepu area on Kauai's south shore and even in the large populated areas of Lihue, our biggest town."
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This year, only 1.67 million tons of raw sugar were produced, nearly one million tons less than just a decade earlier; only 13,900 acres (5,625 hectares) in the state were set aside for pineapples in 2006 [the latest year for which pineapple stats are available) compared with a whopping 76,700 acres (31,039 hectares) in 1991.

The other crops vying for state land: flowers and nursery plants, macademia nuts, coffee, milk, algae, tomatoes, bananas and papaya.

Genetically modified food has been a source of debate since hitting the market in 1994. The E.U. had banned the imports of GM crops for 20 years, however in 2006 the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that the ban violated international trade rules. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deemed it safe and has so far declined to limit or block the burgeoning industry.

The extraordinary biodiversity (and, so, native plants competing for space and nutrients), along with the intractable problem of invasive species would seem to make Hawaii the least likely place to grow controversial crops, risking their uncontrollable spread. But scientists seed companies and some scientists believe say the benefits outweigh the risks of damage to the fragile ecosystem, most notably Hawaii's crop-friendly moderate year-round climate—an average of 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius)—and its open acreage. And over the past 10 years, Hawaii has become the locus for genetically modified crop field trials and a microcosm for the controversies over the safety of growing and eating transgenic food.

To date, Hawaii's fertile soil has nourished more than 2,230 field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops, including corn, soybeans, cotton, potatoes, wheat, alfalfa, beets, rice, safflower, and sorghum—more than any other state. A total of 4,800 acres (1,940 hectares) of such crops now grow throughout the state, some 3,500 (1,415) of which are corn and soybeans, 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of which yield genetically engineered papaya, and the remaining 10 percent are field trials for new potential GM crops. "Hawaii is ideally suited for field trials and seed production, because of the climate and the ability to grow corn and soybeans 52 weeks a year," says Cindy Goldstein, a spokesperson for Johnston, Ia.–based Pioneer Hi-Bred International (a subsidiary of DuPont) in Waimea, Kauai. Her company has been producing GM corn and soybeans in Hawaii since the mid-1990's, when the FDA approved the crops for commercial sale.

Goldstein says that seed companies can harvest three to four yields of corn per year in Hawaii compared with only a single yield in the continental U.S. thanks to its temperate tropical climate. Other parts of the world with similar climates may also be well suited for corn and soybean seed production. But Goldstein notes that Hawaii has the added advantage of extensive amounts of available land due to the downturn in sugar and pineapple over the past decade, a victim of skyrocketing production costs compared with lower rates in developing countries.

As a result, many U.S. seed companies, including Pioneer Hi-Bred, Monsanto and Syngenta, have turned the Islands into a sprawling living nursery for GM corn seed. Genetically engineered corn seed is now the top crop in Hawaii, comprising 92 percent of the state's GM seed industry valued at $97.6 million for the 2006 to 2007 season. http://louis3j3sheehan3.blogspot.com



"Genetically engineered crops can actually help our environment, help our economy, and secure jobs for our agricultural workers," says Ching Yuan Hu, associate dean of research at the University of Hawaii at Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Hu is quick to point out, however, that he only supports the development of GM crops in which cross-pollination with non-GM crops can be prevented to ensure that engineered traits will not dilute the gene pool of conventional crops, thereby causing target species to develop resistance. http://louis8j8sheehan8.blogspot.com


The university is currently engineering seeds for disease-resistant bananas, a new variety of papaya, and Spanish lime—plants that Hu deems safe. Hu notes that it generally takes from seven to nine years to bring a new GM seed to market.

But not everyone is on the GM bandwagon. Critics worry that the pests genetically engineered crops were originally created to withstand will eventually build resistance to the crop, and that the engineered traits will spread virulently via the wind, birds and bees.

"One of the biggest concerns with growing crops like Bt [Bacillus thuringiensis] corn [engineered to produce the pest killer, Bt, which has been used for decades by organic farmers to control crop-eating insects] is that you're putting insects under the greatest selection pressure to become resistant to Bt, a natural insecticide," says Bill Freese of the Center For Food Safety, an environmental advocacy group in Washington, D.C., that promotes alternatives to unsustainable food technologies. He adds that if insects become resistant to this natural pesticide, organic farmers may lose one of their best and safest antipest weapons.

"The broader implications of growing GM crops is that it will create unwanted genetic material and traits in a wider and wider swath of major crops," such as spreading herbicide tolerance or pest resistance into wild relatives and then outward from there, Freese adds.

Conventional Hawaiian papayas have already come under scrutiny by organic farmers and environmental organizations in Hawaii for "genetic drift"—crops grown from non-GM seeds that test positive for being GM. In response, South Korea stopped buying papayas from the island of Hawaii, and Hawaiian papaya farmers who ship to Japan now have to test their trees for contamination and certify that they're "clean". In other words, these countries don't trust the genetic integrity of Hawaii's "non-GM papayas," which in turn has economically harmed many of the islands organic papaya farmers, and can lead to them losing their organic certification.

There have also been questions about the safety of genetically engineered foods. In Europe, the European Food Safety Authority determines whether new GM products are safe for consumers and the environment. That view is then considered by the 27 member states, which make the final decision. It requires all genetically modified foods to be labeled, and, currently, only one genetically modified crop—Bt corn—has been approved to grow in the E.U. (mainly in Spain, but also in Germany, the Czech Republic and Portugal).

The FDA does not require GM foods to be labeled as such, insisting that studies have shown it to be as safe as foods produced using conventional breeding techniques. It is the seed companies that conduct the safety tests for new GM food products, passing the safety and nutritional information to the FDA for the agency's scientific evaluation.

"I haven't seen sufficient data from a legitimate organization without a conflict of interest to show that the stuff is healthy or safe," says Lorrin Pang, a public health specialist in Maui, and a consultant to the World Health Organization on tropical diseases, "I haven't seen data that says it isn't, either—but I'm from a drug and vaccine background that operates on the precautionary principle: You don't give something to the public until it's proven safe."

Pioneer Hi-Bred's Goldstein insists that foods made with genetically modified ingredients are safe, noting that they have been in the U.S. marketplace since 1996 and that "over a trillion meals containing biotech ingredients have been consumed in the U.S. with no documented negative health impacts."

The genetically modified seed biz may be booming in the 50th state, but not everyone is pleased about it. The Hawaii County Council (county legislature) last month voted to ban the growth of genetically modified taro (a tropical plant whose potato-like root is a staple of the Hawaiian diet) and coffee on the Big Island (Hawaii). The reason: pollen from GM crops could contaminate the non-gm varieties and destroy farmers' livelihoods. The concern seems to be greater with these products, because they’re specialty crops commonly grown on the Islands, as opposed to corn, raising the possibility of cross-pollination.

There is also an emotional element to banning GM taro. According to legend, the taro plant originated when a child of the gods was born lifeless. From the child’s grave sprouted the first taro plant, forever casting it as a sacred subsistence food and an ancestor to native Hawaiians.

Despite the hoopla, Carol Okada, manager for the Plant Quarantine Branch of Hawaii's Department of Agriculture, says the business is here to stay and will still be booming in Hawaii 10 years down the road. "Even though it's controversial here," she says, "the [GM] seed industry is now the No. 1 industry for us and it is very important in terms of the economy, dealing with invasive species, and giving farmers choices."

The bottom line: Hawaii may be the GM crop test capital of the world, but the debate over biotech foods is far from over. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

greenhouse 9.gre.0001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The United States emitted nearly 1 percent more greenhouse gases in 2005 than it did in 2004, according to an emissions inventory from the Environmental Protection Agency. From 1990 to 2005, the country's greenhouse-gas emissions rose 16.3 percent.http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US

The leading greenhouse gases released in the United States are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. In 2005, the combined output of these gases was equivalent to the emission of 7,260 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide discharged by fossil fuel combustion accounted for 79 percent of the 2005 total. Forty-one percent of this carbon dioxide was from electricity generation, and 33 percent came from ground and air transportation, the agency reported on April 15. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US

Landfills, coal mining, and natural gas systems are the major human-caused sources of methane, while nitrous oxide arises mainly from fertilizer applications and other farming practices, along with the burning of fuel for transportation. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

expertise 882.exp.20 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. A small brain area often treated as solely responsible for face recognition actually fosters expertise at identifying items in any category a person strives to master, from birds to cars to made-up stuff, a new study finds.
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Earlier investigations found that viewing faces activates a section of the visual cortex located near the back of the brain's outer layer. The most pronounced neural responses appear on the right side of the structure, called the fusiform face area, or FFA.

Activity there similarly surges as volunteers peruse whatever objects or creatures they know a lot about, say psychologist Isabel Gauthier of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and her colleagues. This brain response occurred in 11 car buffs as they examined successive pictures of vehicles of different makes and models and in 8 bird aficionados as they inspected images of different avian species, the scientists assert.
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Neither car experts viewing bird species nor bird experts viewing various cars showed such FFA action. In both groups, however, FFA activity also rose markedly as volunteers looked at pictures of familiar objects, such as a chair and a television set, Gauthier's group reports in the February Nature Neuroscience. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging devices to measure the extent of magnetic signal changes—an indirect sign of rising or falling cell activity—in three brain areas thought to support face recognition.

In a related study led by Gauthier, published in the June 1999 Nature Neuroscience, volunteers practiced placing members of an imaginary group—dubbed greebles by the researchers and consisting of plantlike objects with slightly varying shapes—into families. People who excelled at this task displayed elevated FFA activity during ensuing attempts at identifying pairs of matching greebles.

The organization of neurons in and around the FFA supports the recognition of defining configurations of any category's members if a person has had enough experience with that category, the researchers theorize. In their view, this unconscious process precludes the need to consider numerous features for, say, each face or object.

Scrutiny of different faces begins shortly after birth and thus may strongly influence FFA function by adulthood, the researchers hold. This influence need not reflect an innate capacity for face recognition in the FFA, as suggested by some scientists.

high-maintenance Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Lovely yet high-maintenance, vulnerable reefs may not survive global warming, despite labor-intensive conservation efforts. More focus should be on creating and protecting marine refuges in areas that won't collapse when oceans warm, a new study suggests.

"We need to create more parks in low-vulnerability areas where corals are more likely to survive," says marine biologist Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society. "If you allow heavy fishing in those areas, you are degrading what might have been a refuge from climate problems."

Reporting in the April 10 Ecological Modelling, McClanahan and colleagues mapped areas where warming water in the Indian Ocean has most stressed corals.

More than half of marine parks protected under international guidelines in the Indian Ocean are located in regions the team deemed vulnerable to warm-water death. They are vulnerable to a variety of factors, including surface current, temperature, wind and exposure to ultraviolet radiation. And only two of 61 protected marine parks—one east of Madagascar and the other off the southern African coast—are in resilient areas. Unfortunately, McClanahan says, park management off Madagascar is weak.

Climate change has already caused coral death around the globe. Warm waters bleach the corals when the heat-stressed, colorful inner symbionts dash off, leaving the corals to starve. Yet studies have shown that some corals bleach easier than others, and that some regions warm faster, for longer periods.http://www.soulcast.com/Louis3J3Sheehan/

Biodiversity and socioeconomics are considered when no-fish zones are chosen, comments Andrew Baker of the University of Miami in Florida. Nonetheless, policymakers must start to also consider global warming, he says. "We need to prioritize efforts to protect those reefs that are more likely to survive the worst effects of climate change."

ecuador 334.002,6 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. People living in the lowlands of what's now southwestern Ecuador began to grow squash between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago, about the same time that residents of Mexico's southern highlands domesticated the vegetable (SN: 5/24/97, p. 322), according to a study in the Feb. 14 Science.

The comparably ancient roots of plant cultivation in these two regions indicate that "in South America, there was no single center of agricultural origins," conclude Dolores R. Piperno of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama, and Karen E. Stothert of the University of Texas at San Antonio. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com/

In the soil of two prehistoric sites in Ecuador, the scientists isolated and studied microscopic crystals from squash rinds that had been uncovered there. These ancient crystals were the same size as those in the squash's modern domesticated form, but not those in its present-day wild counterpart. Piperno and Stothert were able to date tiny bits of carbon that were trapped inside the ancient crystals as they formed. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

feds 0000199.9223 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. When materials scientist Joseph Michael and his team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., trained their high-powered electron microscope on anthrax spore samples the FBI had sent them in February 2002, they made two crucial discoveries: The first confirmed previous findings that the Bacillus anthracis spores mailed to U.S. Senate offices and various media outlets (shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks) contained silicon, a substance used to turn anthrax-causing spores into a biological weapon.

But it was Sandia's next discovery that marked a critical turning point in the feds's probe of the mysterious mailings, which killed five people, injured 17 and prompted thousands more who were potentially exposed to the deadly spores to take potent antibiotics—in particular, Ciprofloxacin (known to irritate the gastrointestinal tract and cause joint swelling). http://louis-j-sheehan.com Using highly sensitive transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), the researchers came to a startling realization: The silicon had grown organically inside the Bacillus anthracis samples, nothing had been added to weaponize the spores. "The silicon was not on the outside of the spore," says Michael, who headed up Sandia's investigation, "but rather incorporated on the inside."

It was this key information that helped the FBI to rule out the likelihood that a terrorist organization was behind the anthrax mailings and prompted the agency to turn its attention to U.S. government labs as the possible source of the anthrax. This move eventually led the agency to conclude that Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a federal biodefense research laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., who initially assisted with the investigation, was the culprit. Ivins, 62, two months ago committed suicide as prosecutors prepared to charge him in connection with the mailings.

Post-9/11 Scare
FBI Director Robert Mueller, III, this week told a House panel that he plans to commission the National Academy of Sciences to review evidence compiled by the agency's Amerithrax Task Force to erase any remaining doubts that the mailed anthrax came from Ivins's lab—and close a case that began seven years ago when a batch of letters containing Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes the disease anthrax, were sent to several news outlets, including the New York Post and NBC News. http://louis-j-sheehan.com Although only the letters to the Post and NBC were discovered, the FBI concluded that contaminated letters were also responsible for anthrax infections at ABC News, CBS News and for the October 5, 2001, death of Robert Stevens, a photo editor for the National Enquirer publisher American Media, Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla.

Anthrax infection begins within a week of exposure with a few days of fever, chills, chest heaviness, malaise and cough as the spores are absorbed by the lungs. Ultimately the bacteria produce toxins that damage the lungs and poison the blood, potentially sending the victim into septic shock that leads to organ failure and, in many cases, death.

By mid-October, spore-filled envelopes had also been discovered in the offices of former Sens. Tom Daschle (D–S.D.) and Patrick Leahy (D–Vt.), along with ominous messages, including: "You can not [sic] stop us. We have this anthrax" and "Are you afraid?" Buildings throughout Washington, D.C., including the Hart Senate Office Building, the main postal distribution facility and several offices of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were shut down out of fear they had been contaminated. The feds tested 36 postal facilities in the D.C. area (including one where two postal workers died), finding spores at 15 of them. The Hart Building did not reopen until January 2002.

Investigating the Investigators
Congress has called for an investigation of the FBI's work on the anthrax case. One major misstep was revealed Tuesday, when the Los Angeles Times reported that Peter Jahrling, a former senior civilian scientist at the Fort Detrick facility, admitted that he had made an "honest mistake" seven years ago when he told top FBI brass that he believed anthrax spores he examined had been altered to make them more deadly.

Worried that a terrorist organization or a country sympathetic to al Qaeda might be involved, the U.S. Department of Justice in late 2001 commissioned a series of tests to determine whether the spores had been coated with a substance that would prevent them from clumping together, enabling them to hang in the air longer than they would normally, thereby increasing the chance of inhalation.

Early in the investigation, the FBI appeared to endorse the view that only a sophisticated lab could have produced the material used in the Senate attack, investigative journalist Gary Matsumoto wrote in the November 2003 issue of Science. In fact, in May 2002 16 scientists and physicians working for the government published a paper in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, describing the Senate anthrax powder as "weapons-grade" and exceptional: "high spore concentration, uniform particle size, low electrostatic charge, treated to reduce clumping."

In addition, the August/October 2002 newsletter from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), a research organization that the government often turns to for help analyzing potentially pathological substances, reported that a mass spectrometry analysis found silica—a staple in professionally engineered germ warfare powders for decades—in the powder sent to Sen. Daschle. The silica was believed to be there to prevent the anthrax spores from aggregating and make it easier for them to disperse into the air, according to Matsumoto, who added that any such weaponized form of anthrax is "more than 500 times more lethal than untreated spores."

Finding the Right Technology
By the time the Sandia researchers began their work in February 2002, "we had heard just like everyone else that the spores had been weaponized," says Michael, who had proposed a study of the elemental composition of any materials found growing outside the spores.

The first step was to find the silicon. Michael was aware that FBI researchers had analyzed the samples with both scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which scans surfaces with a high-energy beam of electrons, and with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), which analyzes x-rays emitted by a substance after it is hit with charged electrons. But at that point, no one had studied them with a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), which transmits a focused beam of electrons through a small part of a specimen to form an image and could provide compositional information by examining the spores a few nanometers (one nanometer is 40 millionths of an inch) at a time, a higher resolution than SEM could provide, Michael says. http://louis-j-sheehan.com

This enabled Sandia researchers to not only detect the presence of a foreign substance such as silica, but also to determine its location on or inside the spore. "In the FBI's mind, it was important not only that trace amount of elements were present, but also…[to determine]…where those elements were located in the sample through microanalysis," says Paul Kotula, a Sandia material scientist who studied the samples with Michael.

The researchers could find no way that the silica could be placed inside the spore without leaving a residue on the spore's outermost layer. (They found none.) Instead, the researchers determined that the silica formed inside the spore naturally. After only a month examining the anthrax samples in March 2002, Michael and his team were convinced, contrary to other reports, that the anthrax used in the attacks had not been weaponized.

Some of the samples they worked with came from the USAMRIID, which employed both Ivins and Steve Hatfill, another government scientist the FBI pursued but who ultimately turned out to be a dead end. (He was vindicated in June when he won a $5.8 million settlement in June against the Justice Department.) According to Michael, neither he nor other Sandia researchers ever worked directly with any of the USAMRIID researchers, instead obtaining all of the samples they tested through the FBI. Nor did Sandia work with live anthrax; all of the samples they received were first inactivated or irradiated by the FBI.

Michael says he was surprised to hear that the feds were closing in on a scientist at USAMRIID (Ivins, who died of a prescription-drug overdose), but that he was "not surprised the person who did this had knowledge of microbiology."

In the end, it was at Sandia where scientists cracked the mystery behind the mailings. The problem was, says Michael, that he had to keep mum on his findings—which might have calmed a jittery nation still reeling from the 9/11 terror attack—until the FBI wrapped up its investigation. "That's been one of the really frustrating things for Paul and me," Michael says. "We knew the answers but couldn't tell anyone". Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

BAURES 0000125 LOUIS J. SHEEHAN

Louis J.Sheehan

An aerial view of part of Bolivia's Amazon features a curious network of zigzag and straight lines cutting across floodplains. A close-up view reveals the lines to be the remains of an earthworks project that includes a fishery operated by native peoples of the Baures region before Spanish conquest, a new study finds. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

The discovery casts light on engineering and environmental know-how that originated among Amazonian groups at least several thousand years ago, proposes Clark L. Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

"The people of Baures converted much of the landscape into an aquatic farm," Erickson contends. "Rather than domesticate the species that they exploited, [they] domesticated the landscape."

Aerial image shows Baures fish weirs running from lower left to upper right, circular artificial ponds, and a modern path from upper left to lower right.Erickson

It took ingenuity and planning to build the 326-square-mile web of causeways and fish-catching devices, or weirs, Erickson reports in the Nov. 9 Nature. The weirs trapped fish that migrated to and spawned in the savanna during seasonal flooding. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Inhabitants of the region also dug large holes near the fish traps to store water for the dry months, Erickson says. These artificial ponds contained fish, attracted game, and nurtured palm trees that bore edible fruit, he proposes.

Native South American groups still build fish weirs, although they usually construct them in year-round bodies of water. The savanna structures studied by Erickson are longer, more numerous, and more densely packed than modern fish weirs. Radiocarbon dating puts some bits of burned wood from the weirs at 300 years old, providing a minimum age for the earthworks.

The Baures weirs are 3-to-6-feet wide, with earthen sides rising 7 to 20 inches. Every 30 to 100 feet, the channels bend in a sharp angle that contains a funnel-like opening. Several prehistoric Baures communities may have used interconnected fish weirs and causeways for water management as well as fish catching, Erickson suggests. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

The Baures fishery adds to prior South American evidence of prehistoric irrigation canals, dams, and dikes, comments anthropologist Peter Stahl of the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Fish farming and root-crop cultivation (SN: 10/28/00, p. 280: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20001028/note12.asp) are prehistoric practices that might be adapted to tropical areas today in place of "reckless felling of the rainforest," remarks Warwick Bray, an independent archaeologist in Herts, England.