science wire

The UK is unprepared for the most complex ever change to its food system, which will be required before Brexit, according to a new briefing paper.

Chester "Chick" Forshey, professor emeritus of pomology, died May 7 at the age of 92. Forshey, who held a bachelor's degree in horticulture and a Ph.D.

After a century of markets dominated by a few types of wheat and white flour, ancient and heritage wheat varieties are making a comeback.

ANN ARBOR'A single amino-acid variation in a key receptor in whales may help explain why some species of cetaceans evolved sleek, muscular bodies to hunt fish and seals, while others grow to massive sizes by filter-feeding on large volumes of plankton, an international research team has found.

UK not ready for Brexit's impact on food, report warns Severe problems with the UK food system are likely unless issues are addressed, according to latest expert report The retail industry is predict

!- Start of DoubleClick Floodlight Tag: Please do not remove Activity name of this tag: UCB001CP Retargeting URL of the webpage where the tag is expected to be placed: http://unknown This tag must be placed between the But we're learning new things about privacy and emails in the age of FOIA.

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Aquatic plants in 'ghost ponds' are able to survive more than 100 years buried beneath cropped agricultural fields, according to new UCL research. Ghost ponds are abundant across many agricultural regions, often visible as damp depressions, areas of poor crop cover, or changes in soil colour. Many UK ponds were filled-in during agricultural land intensification that took place after the 1950s.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs the hemp bill. Looking on, from left, are: Howard Zemsky, president and CEO of Empire State Development and commissioner of the New York State Department of Economic Development; Cornell President Martha E. Pollack; state Sen.

As a nutritional epidemiologist devoted to prevention, Karin Michels has spent much of her career studying how health can be optimized through a proper diet.

A pedestrian walks across O'Connell Bridge in Dublin, Ireland. Stanford researchers used data captured from smartphones of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe to discover a public health risk they call 'activity inequality.' (Image credit: Giuseppe Milo / Creative Commons) A global study based on daily steps counted by smartphones discovers 'activity inequality.' It's similar to income inequality, except that the 'step-poor' are prone to obesity while the 'step-rich' tend toward fitness and health.

As the old saying goes, teaching someone to fish is far more helpful than just giving them a fish. Now, research from WorldFish and MIT takes that adage a step further: Better yet, the study found, is working with the fishermen to help develop better fishing methods. Involving local people in figuring out how to improve their farming and fishing methods provides more lasting and widespread benefits than just introducing new technologies or methods, the researchers showed.

ANN ARBOR'Watching television sometimes gets a bad rap''especially where children and screen time are concerned''but not all of it's deserved.

"Naturalness" is a construct - but according to a new study from the ETH Consumer Behavior group, a product's success on the food market is primarily defined by whether or not consumers perceive it as natural. The increasingly artificial and virtual nature of everyday life has now achieved broad acceptance, and the benefits that technological development bring to everyone cannot be denied.

A multi-year survey of the nutritional, physiological and reproductive health of endangered southern resident killer whales suggests that up to two-thirds of pregnancies failed in this population from 2007 to 2014. The study links this orca population's low reproductive success to stress brought on by low or variable abundance of their most nutrient-rich prey, Chinook salmon.

A small mite is causing big trouble for New York's honeybee population and putting in peril the fruit and vegetable crops that depend on these pollinators. Other beekeeper team findings ' A study of 30 apple orchards revealed a high level of pesticide exposure (five acute cases, 22 chronic). The majority of the high-risk insecticides appear to be coming not from the apples or the pollen that bees are collecting from the apples, but from wildflowers surrounding the orchards, which points to a potential issue in grower spray practices.

Cornell and IBM announced a joint research project June 23 that will use genetic sequencing and big-data analyses to help keep the global milk supply safe.

Big on flavor, aroma and size, Cornell's newest grape lacks one defining feature: a name. Grape breeder Bruce Reisch '76 spent years developing the grape, and now he's offering the public the chance to name it.

Two McGill University research projects aimed at helping farmers mitigate greenhouse gas emissions will receive nearly $3 million in funding from the Government of Canada, federal officials announced.

Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has received â?2m from Barts Charity to launch the Barts Research Centre for Women's Health, with the aim of tackling problems that affect mothers and their unborn and newborn children. Diabetes is one of the key issues the Centre will focus on. In East London where the Centre is based, as many as 10-15 per cent of mothers develop diabetes in pregnancy.

Do you know the difference between freezing wombat sperm and koala sperm? After 13 years researching wombat behaviour and reproduction, Associate Professor Stephen Johnston and his team from The University of Queensland School of Agriculture and Food Sciences are experts on the topic.

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Archaeological digs in the Middle East have revealed the remains of ancient harvests that record how some of the worldâ??s earliest cities grew and developed. A study published in Nature Plants sheds new light on the agricultural and political economy that underpinned the growth of some of the worldâ??s oldest cities in Mesopotamia, in present-day northern Syria.

Obesity and diabetes are rising in Africa, led by higher income countries in the north and south. Diabetes can contribute to early death and lead to health problems such as nerve damage, blindness and amputation.

From left, Neil Mattson, associate professor in the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS); David de Villiers, research associate, SIPS; Kale Harbick, research associa

Angela Ferguson of the Onondaga Nation Farm Crew speaks on the importance of restoration and agriculture to the Haudenosaunee at Cornell Botanic Gardens.

Many of our social media feeds are dominated by beautiful, mouth-watering photos of food. These photos inspire some serious food envy but could they also educate and encourage healthier eating? That was the question explored by a team of researchers from the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

For more than a year, as drought spread across the Northeast, agricultural fields went parched, crops withered, wells ran dry.

Baking meets science in a delicious University of Queensland health initiative that really takes the cake.

A rich trove of once-hidden Cornell agricultural research from journals and other serial publications is now available to the public.

ANN ARBOR'The current 10 percent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in Mexico should reduce obesity in the country by 2.5 percent by 2024 and prevent up to 134,000 new cases of diabetes by 2030, according to a new study co-led by researchers at the University of Michigan.

Doctors have a specific definition of what it means to be overweight or obese. But that's not how it works on the beach, on Tinder or at the workplace.

Indonesian journalists have visited The University of Queensland to hear about a successful cattle fattening project in their nation's east which is bringing significant economic benefits for smallholder cattle farmers.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Healthy mass transit systems could contribute to healthier communities, according to a new study by University of Illinois researchers that determined higher mass transit use was correlated with lower obesity rates in counties across the United States.

The sage grouse is an exceptionally showy bird and an icon of the American West. But its sagebrush habitat is disappearing, and there is debate over how best to protect the populations in an increasingly developed landscape. A new study by University of Washington, state and federal researchers analyzed sage grouse in Eastern Washington and showed a surprisingly large benefit from a federal program that subsidizes farmers to plant year-round grasses and native shrubs instead of crops.

For food entrepreneurs, the bitter battles between small and large companies are increasingly giving way to collaboration in the quest for better-tasting, high-quality food.

Extending NHS weight loss programmes from one session per week for 12-weeks to one session per week for a year helped people who are overweight to lose more weight and keep it off for longer, according to a study published in The Lancet , and led by researchers from the University of Cambridge, University of Liverpool and University of Oxford.

ANN ARBOR'Young children who recognize food name brands, such as Lucky Charms, M&M's and Cheetos, often eat unhealthy items that lead to their high body mass index. The risk of this weight gain, according to a new University of Michigan study, occurs independently of other variables, including family demographics or TV viewing.

For breeders of cassava, a staple food for hundreds of millions in the tropics, producing improved varieties has been getting harder over time. A team at Cornell used genomic analysis of cassava varieties and wild relatives to make a diagnosis: Mutations have corroded the genome, producing many dysfunctional versions of genes and putting at risk a crop crucial to the survival of one-tenth of the world's population.

Many companies want to know how the creation of their products affects the environment. Scientists at Stanford, the University of Minnesota and Unilever have found a way to better predict and quantify environmental impacts.