Throughout the history of humankind, there have been those who have embraced change and those who have clung to the old ways because they felt at least the risks were known. Few Edisons or Einsteins were properly recognized during their lifetime. And, since feeding ourselves was the primary occupation of mankind for most of our recorded and prerecorded history, changes in food production have b...

Escape swimming in the predatory sea slug Pleurobranchaea is a dominant behavior that overrides feeding, a behavioral switch caused by swim-induced inhibition of feeding command neurons. We have now found distinct roles for the different swim interneurons in acute suppression of feeding during the swim and in a longer-term stimulation of excitability in the feeding network. The identified patte...

It has been hypothesized that, when engulfing food mixed with inorganic particles during benthic feeding, cyprinid fish use protrusions of tissue from the palatal organ to retain the food particles while the inorganic particles are expelled from the opercular slits. In crossflow filtration, the particle suspension is pumped parallel to the filter surface as filtrate exits through the filter por...

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is currently one of the most promising biological systems for the development of effective obesity pharmacotherapies. Long-acting GLP-1 analogs potently reduce food intake and body weight, and recent discoveries reveal that peripheral administration of these drugs reduces food intake largely through humoral pathways involving direct action on brain GLP-1 receptor...

In the agroecosystem, genetically engineered plants producing insecticidal Cry proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) interact with non-target herbivores and other elements of the food web. Stacked Bt crops expose herbivores to multiple Cry proteins simultaneously. In this study, the direct interactions between SmartStax® Bt maize producing six different Cry proteins and two herbivores with ...

In reference to what was published today at Scidev (Gould, 2006): “GM crops are compatible with sustainable agriculture”, I wish to comment: Massive use of transgenic crops poses potential ecological risks; genetically modified (GM) crops are not compatible with sustainable or organic farming or any other alternative form of production. GM agriculture compromises the capacity of farmers to mana...

Feeding of protozoan and crustacean zooplankton was analyzed by flow cytometry (FCM), resulting in direct counts of particles ingested by each individual. Ciliates (Cyclidium sp.) were allowed to feed on Microcystis aeruginosa and analyzed directly on a flow cytometer for cyanobacterial autofluorescence coincident with each ciliate. Numbers of Microcystis cells ingested (e.g. 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 c...

Wheat is one of the major cereal crops with annual global production over 600 MT from about 200 M hectares (FAO 2012). The cultivation of wheat started about 10,000 years ago as part of the Neolithic revolution which state a transition from hunting and gathering of food to settle agriculture. Earlier cultivated forms of wheat were diploid (einkorn) and tetraploid (emmer) with known initial orig...

It is important to evaluate the ability of novel proteins in food crops and products to elicit potentially harmful immunologic responses, including allergic hypersensitivity. We developed a novel mouse model of food allergy involving an oral challenge of a protein antigen after feeding of the antigen in combination with modulating factors often ingested in daily life, namely, dietary oil emulsi...

the use of fertilizers npk and amendments in sugar cane crops may change the heavy metalsconcentrations in soils, making them available for plants and, consequently, they can be transferred to thehuman food chain. this study describes the redistribution of heavy metals (cd, cr, cu, ni, pb and zn) in soils with sugar cane crops due to fertilizers npk and amendments at corumbataí river basin, são...