Beekeepers have lost up to 70 per cent of honey production because of "horrendous" conditions, and the effects of another bad season could be felt by other food crops.

A central Queensland farmer's sunflower crop has become a social media sensation, with surprise crowds of thousands flocking to his property to admire the bright fields.

The Templeton family, fourth-generation farmers who almost lost everything to a pest called pythium, turn to extreme cleaning — with the help of a $250,000 washing machine from Italy — and are recognised for their efforts.

A South Australian citrus grower is lathering his crops in molasses in an attempt to protect the produce from damaging frosts.

One of Australia's largest food exporters, SunRice, cuts more than 30 regional staff after producing its second-lowest rice crop.

Citrus growers on the lower Darling River stare down an unprecedented disaster, with some being forced to abandon their crops as they wait for the Federal Government to agree to a water buyback.

Researchers in Victoria are experimenting with biosolids in a bid to improve farm productivity, and the results are very promising so far.

At a conservative estimate, people around the world are consuming a credit card's-worth of microplastic every week, according to a new study.

It comes as no surprise to researchers that densely-populated beaches in Australia are contaminated with microplastics but what about our remote coastal areas?

From afar, it might look like Michelle Blewitt is teaching bystanders how to pan for gold, as she vigorously shakes a sieve full of sand on a beach, but on closer inspection, she is teaching locals how to hunt for microplastics.

Rain, and lots of it, has fallen across the south-east and is expected to continue for the next few days but what will it mean for the southern cropping season and the drought?

In the early 1970s a company spent millions of dollars developing a cattle and cropping empire near Katherine in the NT. What went wrong?

Drought has collided with high demand for soybeans, lifting prices by around $500 a tonne, prompting warnings of a price hike for soymilk, tofu and tempeh.

A slumping sugar price and demand for reliable irrigation areas for cotton is spurring new interest in growing it in the tropics.

Australian grain growers will produce one of their smallest crops of the decade this year.

Farmers and contractors rush to spend up to $350,000 for hay-baling equipment to make the most of grain crops and strong demand for fodder as the drought rolls on.

Rick Wilkinson And Bob Kostlan Of Austin Ribbon Microphones Conduct DIY Ribbon Mic Build; Dave Royer Of Royer Labs Also Attended To Test Prototype Mics With The School’s Student Section Of AES

Company Will Also Present Its New 4097 Choir Mic To Attendees

The Australian Sound Design Company Chose DPA 6066 Subminiature Headset Microphones For This Prestigious Production Because They Were So Discreet And Easy To Fit.

Acoustic & Lighting Systems And Arcadia Tech Are Now Representing The Company’s Products In These Key Territories.

Check out who's lighting up the mic!

Check out who's lighting up the mic!

One thing you should know about me is that I am from New York and I am half Italian. That means when I like something,…

Researchers in a new U.K.-led study found a staggering volume of microplastics on the seafloor. At up to 1.9 million pieces on a single square meter, it’s the highest level on record.[...]

With the right kind of care, plenty of plants actually do just fine in microgravity.

The technology is still in its infancy, but could someday aid the development of faster, more energy-efficient electronics.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Crawling along the world's river bottoms, the larvae of the caddis fly suffer a perpetual housing crisis. To protect themselves from predators, they gather up sand grains and other sediment and paste them all together with silk, forming a cone that holds their worm-like bodies. As they mature and elongate, they have to continuously add material to the case -- think of it like adding rooms to your home for the rest of your life, or at least until you turn into an adult insect. If the caddis fly larva somehow loses its case, it's got to start from scratch, and that's quite the precarious situation for a defenseless tube of flesh. And now, the microplastic menace is piling onto the caddis fly's list of tribulations. Microplastic particles -- pieces of plastic under 5 millimeters long -- have already corrupted many of Earth's environments, including the formerly pristine Arctic and deep-sea sediments. In a study published last year, researchers in Germany reported finding microplastic particles in the cases of caddis flies in the wild. Then, last month, they published the troubling results of lab experiments that found the more microplastic particles a caddis fly larva incorporates into its case, the weaker that structure becomes. That could open up caddis flies to greater predation, sending ripple effects through river ecosystems. In the lab, the researchers found that the larvae chose to use two kinds of microplastics to build their cases, likely because the plastic is lighter than the sand, so it's not as hard to lift. The problem is that the cases with more plastic and less sand collapse more easily, weakening the larvae's protection from predatory fish, among other things. A more long-term concern is bioaccumulation. "A small fish eats a larva, a bigger fish eats the smaller fish, all the way on up, and the concentrations of microplastic and associated toxins accumulate over time," the report says. "The bigger predators that people eat, like tuna, may be absorbing those microplastics and the chemicals they leach." The study has been published in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mediterranean sediments are shown to have up to 1.9 million tiny plastic pieces per square metre.

Although a robust inflammatory response is needed to combat infection, this response must ultimately be terminated to prevent chronic inflammation. One mechanism that terminates inflammatory signaling is the production of alternative mRNA splice forms in the Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling pathway. Whereas most genes in the TLR pathway encode positive mediators of inflammatory signaling, several, including that encoding the MyD88 signaling adaptor, also produce alternative spliced mRNA isoforms that encode dominant-negative inhibitors of the response. Production of these negatively acting alternatively spliced isoforms is induced by stimulation with the TLR4 agonist lipopolysaccharide (LPS); thus, this alternative pre-mRNA splicing represents a negative feedback loop that terminates TLR signaling and prevents chronic inflammation. In the current study, we investigated the mechanisms regulating the LPS-induced alternative pre-mRNA splicing of the MyD88 transcript in murine macrophages. We found that 1) the induction of the alternatively spliced MyD88 form is due to alternative pre-mRNA splicing and not caused by another RNA regulatory mechanism, 2) MyD88 splicing is regulated by both the MyD88- and TRIF-dependent arms of the TLR signaling pathway, 3) MyD88 splicing is regulated by the NF-κB transcription factor, and 4) NF-κB likely regulates MyD88 alternative pre-mRNA splicing per se rather than regulating splicing indirectly by altering MyD88 transcription. We conclude that alternative splicing of MyD88 may provide a sensitive mechanism that ensures robust termination of inflammation for tissue repair and restoration of normal tissue homeostasis once an infection is controlled.

Saverio Cinti
Nov 1, 2005; 46:2347-2355
Research Articles

Systemic infection and proliferation of intracellular pathogens require the biogenesis of a growth-stimulating compartment. The gastrointestinal pathogen Salmonella enterica commonly forms highly dynamic and extensive tubular membrane compartments built from Salmonella-modified membranes (SMMs) in diverse host cells. Although the general mechanism involved in the formation of replication-permissive compartments of S. enterica is well researched, much less is known regarding specific adaptations to different host cell types. Using an affinity-based proteome approach, we explored the composition of SMMs in murine macrophages. The systematic characterization provides a broader landscape of host players to the maturation of Salmonella-containing compartments and reveals core host elements targeted by Salmonella in macrophages as well as epithelial cells. However, we also identified subtle host specific adaptations. Some of these observations, such as the differential involvement of the COPII system, Rab GTPases 2A, 8B, 11 and ER transport proteins Sec61 and Sec22B may explain cell line-dependent variations in the pathophysiology of Salmonella infections. In summary, our system-wide approach demonstrates a hitherto underappreciated impact of the host cell type in the formation of intracellular compartments by Salmonella.

Cellular membranes are not homogenous mixtures of proteins; rather, they are segregated into microdomains on the basis of preferential association between specific lipids and proteins. These microdomains, called lipid rafts, are well known for their role in receptor signaling on the plasma membrane (PM) and are essential to such cellular functions as signal transduction and spatial organization of the PM. A number of disease states, including atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular disorders, may be caused by dysfunctional maintenance of lipid rafts. Lipid rafts do not occur only in the PM but also have been found in intracellular membranes and extracellular vesicles (EVs). Here, we focus on discussing newly discovered functions of lipid rafts and microdomains in intracellular membranes, including lipid and protein trafficking from the ER, Golgi bodies, and endosomes to the PM, and we examine lipid raft involvement in the production and composition of EVs. Because lipid rafts are small and transient, visualization remains challenging. Future work with advanced techniques will continue to expand our knowledge about the roles of lipid rafts in cellular functioning.