Strawberries are sensitive to cold. Each year, at least 20 per cent of the annual strawberry crop in countries such as Norway is lost due to frost.

Norwegian researchers are working to identify and understand the genes associated with frost tolerance in strawberries. The objective is to strengthen the plants' immunity to frost.

The study, by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, collected information on more than 600 species in southwest Ghana and northern India, two parts of the world where demand for agricultural land is putting ever more pressure on wild species.

"It's been said that nitrogen pollution is the biggest environmental disaster that nobody has heard of," Alan Townsend, Ph.D., observed at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), being held in Denver.

Bruce N. Ames, Ph.D., developer of a widely used test for potential carcinogens that bears his name, spoke at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), being held in Denver.

The project was conducted by an international consortium involving researchers working across four continents, with the majority of the data generated in China. The UK's contribution came from scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich and Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, both of which receive strategic funding from BBSRC.

That adds up to a sizeable impact on carbon uptake from the atmosphere. It also means that water shortages -- already forecasted to be a big problem as the world warms -- could contribute to yet more warming through a positive feedback loop.

The new research quantified irrigation's contribution to global agricultural productivity for the years 1998-2002, estimating the amount of carbon uptake enabled by relieving water stress on croplands.

Commerce Minister Mr. Kittirat Na Ranong said the price of unrefined rice was expected to increase higher than the mortgage rates, adding that he could not be sure whether it would exceed 20,000 THB per ton or not.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kittirat said the government would quickly implement the 300 THB wage scheme and the 15,000 THB salary for new graduates.

If so many poor people live around national parks in developing countries, does that mean that these parks are contributing to their poverty?

Yes, according to the conventional wisdom, but no, according to a 10-year study of people living around Kibale National Park in Uganda that was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Often people have lamented that the poorest of the poor live on the edge of the parks, and the assumption is that it's the parks that are keeping people poor," said Lisa Naughton, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The issue matters, she said, because "people say we can't afford to protect biodiversity" if that inflicts further economic hardship on people who are already poor.

Randy Nelson, geneticist and research leader with the USDA Agricultural Research Service Soybean/Maize Germplasm, Pathology, and Genetics Research Unit in Urbana, Ill., and Lisa Ainsworth, a molecular biologist with the ARS Global Change and Photosynthesis Research Unit in Urbana, are screening soybean varieties for ozone tolerance and sensitivity in SoyFACE (Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment) experiments.