SCIENCE IN THE NEWS WEEKLY
Technology: Finding Food, Particles and Electricity
More than 50 years after the start of the green revolution, Bill Gates has called for a new effort—one that should be greener than the first and finally reach the billion or so people on this planet who still go hungry. Gates wasn't specific about how this might be accomplished, but the United Kingdom's Royal Society is convinced that genetically modified (GM) crops will need to be a part of the solution. A society expert panel urged that GM research be stepped up as a part of the £2 billion "grand challenge" to prevent future food shortages. But the push toward GM crops took a step backward in India, where the government bowed to activists and postponed approval of an insect-resistant version of aubergine.
The long-anticipated start-up of the Large Hadron Collider took another step forward as all eight sectors of the collider reached their operating temperature of 1.9 degrees kelvin—colder than outer space. In the U.S., Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory physicists were heartened to learn that $20.7 million in federal stimulus funds have been allocated to build the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator. At the same time, however, the New York Times reported on questions about the effectiveness of such projects in creating jobs.
Equivocal news also hit the budding electric car business last week. Chinese automaker Build Your Dreams announced that its five-passenger E6 electric car, which will become available late this year, will travel 250 miles on a single charge. But the U.S. National Research Council tossed a bit of cold electrolyte on the environmental benefits of such a development, noting that about half of all electricity produced in the U.S. comes from burning coal.
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