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WASHINGTON  — US government regulators and the auto industry are taking a more lenient approach than safety advocates like when it comes to phasing in automatic braking systems for passenger cars, according to records of their private negotiations.

The technology automatically applies brakes to prevent or mitigate collisions, rather than waiting for the driver to act. It’s the most important safety technology available today that’s not already required in cars.

Such systems should be standard in all new cars, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But instead of mandating it, the government is trying to work out a voluntary agreement with automakers in hopes of getting it in cars more quickly.

But safety advocates say voluntary agreements aren’t enforceable and are likely to contain weaker standards and longer timelines than if the government had issued rules.

There are about 1.7 million rear-end crashes a year in the US, killing more than 200 people, injuring 400,000 others and costing about $47 billion annually. More than half of those crashes could be avoided or mitigated by automatic braking or systems that warn drivers of an impending collision, NHTSA estimated.

“Consumers are going to come up the losers in this process,” said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Centre for Auto Safety.

Meeting minutes obtained by The Associated Press of four of the meetings that NHTSA has held with automakers since October show the government is considering significant concessions.

Records of a meeting on November 12, show that automatic braking systems would be allowed that slow vehicles by as little as 8kph before a collision. Manufacturers would be allowed to exempt 5 per cent of their vehicles from the standard. Some automakers had said it would take longer to ready manual transmission vehicles for the technology. The discussion included an additional exemption for models that manufacturers intend to phase out or redesign.

The minutes from the fourth session, on December 9, indicate that some automakers say they won’t be ready to include the technology in 95 per cent of their vehicles until model year that begins in September 2025. NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety objected, saying such a long timeline “was too late for this effort to be seen as a serious effort”. Automakers are now being polled to see if they can equip 95 per cent of their vehicles by the model year beginning in September 2022.

The agency is required by law to provide meeting minutes of such negotiations and to make them public. NHTSA provided minutes of three of the meetings to the AP; the fourth was obtained from safety advocates.

“This is what happens when you start negotiating with the auto industry,” said Joan Claybrook, a safety advocate and NHTSA’s administrator during the Carter administration. “They want to negotiate this out and they want to negotiate that out,” and establish a deadline driven by their production schedules rather than safety considerations

Besides NHTSA, meeting participants included 16 automakers, two auto industry trade groups and the insurance institute, the insurance industry’s safety research arm. Representatives from Transport Canada, the Canadian government’s auto safety regulator, also attended.

Mark Rosekind, administrator of NHTSA, has said the federal rule-making process is so cumbersome and time-consuming that a voluntary agreement is likely to get the technology into all cars faster. He said regulations remain an option.

The Association of Global Automakers, which has taken the lead for the industry on the issue, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

“Regulations can be too rigid when technology like this is changing quickly,” said Russ Rader, a spokesman for insurance institute. “A complicated regulation could make it more difficult for the automakers and their suppliers to continue to develop the systems.”

Automatic braking is already available in dozens of car models, but typically as a pricey option on higher-end vehicles. Subaru offers it on the Impreza sedan, for example, as part of a $2,895 safety package.

WASHINGTON/DETROIT — US vehicle safety regulators have said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law, a major step towards ultimately winning approval for autonomous vehicles on the roads.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., of its decision in a previously unreported February 4 letter to the company posted on the agency’s website this week.

Google’s self-driving car unit on November 12 submitted a proposed design for a self-driving car that has “no need for a human driver”, the letter to Google from NHTSA chief counsel Paul Hemmersbaugh said.

“NHTSA will interpret ‘driver’ in the context of Google’s described motor vehicle design as referring to the [self-driving system], and not to any of the vehicle occupants,” the letter said.

“We agree with Google its [self-driving car] will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than 100 years.”

Major automakers and technology companies such as Google are racing to develop and sell vehicles that can drive themselves at least part of the time.

All participants in the autonomous driving race complain that state and federal safety rules are impeding testing and eventual deployment of such vehicles. California has proposed draft rules requiring steering wheels and a licensed driver in all self-driving cars.

Karl Brauer, senior analyst for the Kelley Blue Book automotive research firm, said there were still significant legal questions surrounding autonomous vehicles.

But if “NHTSA is prepared to name artificial intelligence as a viable alternative to human-controlled vehicles, it could substantially streamline the process of putting autonomous vehicles on the road”, he said.

If the car’s computer is the driver for legal purposes, then it clears the way for Google or automakers to design vehicle systems that communicate directly with the vehicle’s artificial pilot.

In its response to Google, the federal agency offered its most comprehensive map yet of the legal obstacles to putting fully autonomous vehicles on the road. It noted existing regulations requiring some auto safety equipment cannot be waived immediately, including requirements for braking systems activated by foot control.

“The next question is whether and how Google could certify that the [self-driving system] meets a standard developed and designed to apply to a vehicle with a human driver,” NHTSA said.

Google is “still evaluating” NHTSA’s lengthy response, a company spokesperson said on Tuesday. Google executives have said they would likely partner with established automakers to build self-driving cars.

Worries about people undermining safety

Google told NHTSA that the real danger is having auto safety features that could tempt humans to try to take control.

Google “expresses concern that providing human occupants of the vehicle with mechanisms to control things like steering, acceleration, braking... could be detrimental to safety because the human occupants could attempt to override the [self-driving system’s] decisions,” the NHTSA letter stated.

Hemmersbaugh said federal regulations requiring equipment like steering wheels and brake pedals would have to be formally rewritten before Google could offer cars without those features.

For example, current federal rules require alerts on dashboards if tyre pressure runs low. NHTSA said a test would need to be created that shows the vehicle computer is informed of the problem. NHTSA raised the question of whether humans in the vehicles should also be made aware.

In January, NHTSA said it may waive some vehicle safety rules to allow more driverless cars to operate on US roads as part of a broader effort to speed up development of self-driving vehicles.

NHTSA said then it would write guidelines for self-driving cars within six months. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the administration may seek new legal authority to allow deployment of autonomous vehicles “in large numbers”, when they are deemed safe, the department said.

The process of rewriting federal regulations governing the design, placement and operation of vehicle controls could take months or years. 

MIAMI — Don’t want to fight traffic, travelling for work, can’t afford a $30 barre class? Those excuses for missing your workout no longer fly thanks to a host of new fitness apps and online subscriptions.

There’s a website for your every cardio craving from Pilates to boot camp, some taught by celeb trainers that you likely could never book in person. Bonus: Many of the sites are free or cost far less than a monthly gym fee.

Want it gym-style

Crunch Live includes many of the workouts that earned the brand a devoted following and have been retired from their brick and mortar gyms. Thankfully fans of gospel house aerobics and urban attitude dance classes can get their sweat on in these online classes for $9.99 a month. They also offer more than 75 classes including barre, yoga and strength training, in addition to their killer cardio. And yes, their popular belly, but and thigh boot camp and ab attack are in there too.

LiveStreaming Fitness offers live workouts and even live cooking classes for about $10 a month, including everything from yoga to kickboxing to workouts performed at your desk. If you can’t make a live class, the subscription includes a catalogue of healthy recipes to revamp your takeout night and an extensive collection of classes.

EMG Live Fitness focuses on specialty workouts like piloxing (that’s Pilates and boxing), plyojam, bosu ball, Yollet (yoga and ballet) for just $2 a class or $20 a month for unlimited classes. The handy two-minute clip gives you a preview before you buy. Choose from about 20 different workout styles, with tonnes of classes under each category plus options to join a live class or stream one on-demand.

If you love barre and yoga

At roughly $10 a month, Barre3, inspired by ballet, yoga and Pilates, offers the choice of 200 online classes. Each workout tells what body parts you’re targeting and whether you’ll need equipment like a chair, resistance bands or small weights, and offers a short preview.

With 3,000 online classes that include everything from Hatha to Ashtanga, YogaGlo has something for first timers and advanced yogis. Choose from sessions based on time and difficulty rating. You can also choose whether you want a class just for the sweat factor or one that is more meditative for $18 a month. There’s even a collection of classes that focus on cultivating your intuition, rebooting your brain and releasing stress at work.

Want to follow the popular kids

Sweat with Kayla has amassed legions of loyal #BBG girls (that’s bikini body guide) posting photo results and encouraging each other through the gruelling 28-minute sessions that include cardio and strength training. The 24-year-old Australian trainer, who recently launched her $20-a-month app based on the 12-week Bikini Body Guide, is known for her inspiring Instagram pics and some killer squat, lung, box jump sequences.

Daily Burn — $12.95 a month — includes every workout style imaginable (from kettlebells to yoga to interval training) for every fitness level with series that will challenge even the most hardcore athletes. Celeb trainer Bob Harper’s subscription also includes a meal plan with daily recipes.

The popular 7-minute workout challenge is basic but gets the job done with 12 exercises performed for 30 seconds with 10 seconds rest. The $3 app is based on workouts that promote exercising for shorter, more intense bursts to achieve better results. The moves are broken down with video, audio and text explanations and include fun features to unlock rewards when you reach your goals.

Want it for free

Fitness Blender includes everything from high intensity and fat loss workouts to stretching and low-impact days. They even break it down for you with a handy difficulty rating and estimated number of calories you’ll burn. Fitness Blender also has built-in water breaks and a countdown clock so you know exactly how many more seconds of gruelling tricep dip kicks you’ll have to endure.

BeFit lets you work out with some of the biggest celebrity trainers for free. The YouTube channel features workouts by Jillian Michaels and Denise Austin to yogis like Kino MacGregor and Tara Stiles with tonnes of different exercises to get you bikini ready. BeFit also has a free mobile series with circuit workouts you perfect for when you’re on the go.

Want to train like a celebrity

Gwyneth Paltrow liked the results so much she went into business with her trainer Tracy Anderson. Her $90-a-month subscription allows you to work out with Anderson during a live weekly class along with a breakdown of the moves from a senior trainer plus a dance cardio session and a beginner class, which are all updated weekly.

Kelly Ripa has made no secret of her obsession with Anna Kaiser’s dance cardio workouts. Kaiser’s $50-a-month streaming series offers 10-minute targeted workouts that can be pieced together to fit your needs using everything from weights, resistance bands and physio balls.

If you want to be part of Taylor Swift’s tribe, Ballet Beautiful is a good place to start. Creator and former New York City Ballet dancer Mary Helen Bowers offers a $40 monthly subscription which includes over 100 workouts or the chance to stream classes, like the ultimate supermodel workout, at your leisure starting at $8 each.

Men over 65 who had their testosterone levels reset to those of much younger men didn’t walk any faster. But they had more spring in their step, better erections and a keener interest in sex than men who didn’t get testosterone supplements.

This set of trials, underwritten by the National Institute on Aging and several other national institutes, also found no increased risk of stroke or heart attack in those taking testosterone. At the same time, however, the study’s authors acknowledged that these trials could not have detected anything short of a major jump in cardiovascular events.

In a trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers compared the mood, physical vitality and sexual vigour of older men who got testosterone supplementation for a year with those of their peers who did not. All the men started the trials with testosterone levels of 275ng per decilitres — levels that were pretty low for men over 65 (only about one in five men screened for inclusion in the trial qualified) and “unequivocally low” compared to levels typically seen in healthy young men.

The idea of the Testosterone Trials was to gauge whether men whose testosterone levels are “low for no apparent reason other than age” will benefit by having those levels boosted pharmaceutically. The benefits they found were most apparent in the realm of sexuality, and either modest or not evident on broader measures of health and functioning.

For a year, men in three groups had their testosterone levels boosted to levels typical of a man 19 to 40 years old, using a product called AndroGel (whose maker, AbbVie, provided study funding and donated product, as well as consulting fees to four of the study’s 33 authors). A fourth group got a placebo product, and served as a comparison group for the testosterone-supplemented men on sexual function, vitality and physical well-being.

Men whose testosterone rose most saw the greatest increases in sexual interest and performance, as measured by a daily questionnaire about psychosexual health.

After three months of getting testosterone, the men in the trial’s sexual function arm reported a roughly 60 per cent jump in their sexual activity. That level stayed at more than 50 per cent above their baseline levels until roughly month nine, at which point the increase in sexual activity over baseline slumped to about 20 per cent.

On other measures, compared to men getting the placebo product, those who got the testosterone supplement reported increased sexual desire and better erectile function.

Men who got testosterone showed no less evidence of fatigue. But they scored slightly higher than men who got a placebo on a questionnaire measuring their sense of vitality, and reported slightly lower depression symptoms. And at the end of the trial, men who got testosterone were more likely than men who didn’t to report their energy was better.

The effects of testosterone on men’s physical function were more mixed. In the subset of men who were specifically compared on physical function, testosterone didn’t perform any faster on a six-minute walking test. But by a broader measure that included a questionnaire about physical function, they did a little better.

When all the trial’s participants were tested on walking speed, however, more of those who got testosterone improved than did those who got a placebo. And despite evidence to the contrary, men on testosterone were more likely than those who got a placebo to perceive that their walking had improved.

In addition to the National Institute on Aging’s support, the Testosterone Trials were also funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

PARIS — Organic milk and meat contain about 50 per cent more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than conventionally produced equivalents, according to a pair of recently published large-scale studies.

Previous research has linked omega-3 with reduced rates of cardiovascular disease, improved neurological development, and better immune function.

A team of two-dozen researchers led by Carlo Leifert, a professor at Newcastle University in England, combed through nearly 200 peer-reviewed studies on milk, and 67 on meat.

They found clear differences between organic and non-organic products, especially when it came to omega-3.

“Western European diets are recognised as being too low in these fatty acids, and the European Food Safety Authority recommends we should double our intake,” said co-author Chris Seal, also from Newcastle University.

“Our study suggests that switching to organic would go some way towards improving intakes of these important nutrients.” 

Half a litre of organic, full-fat milk or its equivalent in other dairy products, for example, was found to provide 16 per cent of the recommended daily dose of so-called long chain omega-3, while conventional milk provides 11 per cent.

There are no additional calories in equivalent organic dairy or meat products.

Most people choose organic products for one or more of three reasons: animal welfare, the environment, and health.

“But much less is known about impacts on nutritional quality,” Leifert said in a statement.

Scientists not involved in the research suggested that the health gains identified were minimal.

They also pointed out that the higher omega-3 levels were not directly related to the fact that the products were organic.

“It is the choice of feed, not the organic farming method, which makes the difference,” said Ian Givens of the University of Reading. Organic animals are generally grass-fed.

Modest gains in omega-3 from going organic must also be weighed against the potentially negative impact of saturated and trans fats also found in dairy and meat, others pointed out.

“Oily fish and eggs are more important sources of the long-chain omega-3 fatty acids,” said Tom Sanders, a emeritus professor at King’s College London.

In addition, organic foods also have less iodine, an essential element found in seafood but missing in most other foods. Conventional dairy products have more because it is added to cattle feed.

Iodine is especially important for pregnant women, which means that a “switch to organic milk may exacerbate this deficiency unless consumers include other sources of iodine in their diet”, cautioned Margaret Rayman, a professor of nutritional medicine at the University of Surrey.

Nutrition experts disagree on the extent to which organic foods confer health advantages.

What we have seen so far from cloud computing may be only the tip of the iceberg. The best — or the worst, depending on how you see it — is yet to come.

Cloud computing is but another word for having your files stored on an Internet server and not on your machine’s actual disk, memory or local network server, and for running programmes that also are installed on the Internet, your machine merely accessing them there, when needed.

The push to use more of it continues unabated and International Data Corporation, the Web’s most trusted IT market analyst company, forecasts an increase approaching a big 20 per cent this year, with the cloud market value exceeding $140 billion three years from now. Without surprise, Amazon, Microsoft and Google carve out themselves the lion’s share.

Already several applications and services work only in the cloud. All the new versions of Adobe’s celebrated Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign software are now exclusively cloud-based. GoDaddy, a leading hosting service for websites and e-mail, has discontinued its “simple” e-mail hosting subscriptions and instead offers cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 service with integrated e-mail, whether you like it or not. BitDefender, one of the three major anti-virus providers in the world, has also stopped supplying traditional software installation for the business versions of its products — they want you to do everything in the cloud. The list goes on and on.

At this point, or perhaps by the end of 2016 or early 2017, the question won’t be anymore “do you want to work in the cloud” but rather “do you want to use IT at all”. Little choice will be left; and whether to trust the cloud or not will become irrelevant.

Online banking is one of the cloud’s various aspects, probably one of the most convincing too. The Web services that banks propose today go well beyond simple account balance checking and money transfers. Most banking institutions in Jordan now offer the very convenient E-FawateerCom online payment system that covers a comprehensive range of bills and subscriptions, from electricity, water and telephone, to traffic tickets, charities, some universities, Greater Amman Municipality licences, and last but not least, the Social Security Corporation. E-FawateerCom translates from Arabic as “E-YourBills”. In terms of time and transportation cost, the savings that all these online payments allow you to make cannot be overestimated.

Studies now abound that analyse the benefits of cloud computing, with improved collaboration being a major one. Indeed, having documents and data instantly accessible and synchronised between several users who may be scattered anywhere in the world, thanks to the fact that data is stored and shared somewhere on a Web server, is priceless.

Drawbacks? Yes of course there are quite a few and we all know them, with the most obvious one being a weak, slow or unreliable connection to the Internet. Data confidentiality and privacy? We’ve almost given up on this, however sensitive the issue may be, and we are willing to live with the lack of it and whatever the consequences. In any case, the way things are going, in a couple of years there will be very few of us brave enough to swim against the tide.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple has rejected a judge's order to help the FBI break into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, warning it was "too dangerous" to create such a backdoor to the smartphones.

US magistrate judge, Sheri Pym, ordered Apple on Tuesday to provide "reasonable technical assistance" to the FBI, including disabling an auto-erase feature after too many unsuccessful attempts are made to unlock the iPhone 5C.

Federal prosecutors had filed a motion requesting Apple's help after the FBI failed to crack the phone's code two months into the investigation into the December rampage.

Syed Farook, a US citizen, and his Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik gunned down 14 people at an office party in San Bernardino, California, before they were killed in a shootout with police.

But Apple said it would fight the judge's order, firing the latest shot in a growing debate over encryption pitting the government against tech companies.

"The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers," Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a statement on the company's website.

"We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand."

Cook said it was too risky to provide the requested software because it could allow ill-intentioned individuals to unlock any iPhone and raises major privacy concerns.

"The US government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone," Apple said.

"In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone's physical possession.

"While the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control," he said, adding that Apple has cooperated with the FBI thus far.

By disabling the security features, the FBI would be able to attempt as many different password combinations as needed before gaining access to the phone.

It was the property of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, which employed Farook, and the authority had agreed to the search of the phone.

'Chilling' 

Pym ordered Apple to provide software that would only run on the device in question, or any other technological means to access its data.

But Apple said it was impossible to create such a tool that could only be used once, on one phone.

"Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices," Apple said.

"In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable."

The US government is concerned that commercially-available encryption benefits criminals.

Tech companies, intent on securing the trust of consumers after government spying revelations made by Edward Snowden, have been reluctant to be seen as helping authorities spy on users.

"We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack," Apple said.

"The implications of the government's demands are chilling."

"If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone's device to capture their data."

 Cook warned that if Apple complied with the order, the government could demand surveillance software to intercept, access health and financial data, track users' location or access a phone's microphone or camera without the user's knowledge.

"We are challenging the FBI's demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country," Cook added.

US Attorney Eileen Decker had earlier called the order "another step — a potentially important step — in the process of learning everything we possibly can about the attack in San Bernardino".

FBI Director James Comey revealed last week that investigators had not been able to crack open the phone two months into the investigation.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool,” physicist Richard Feynman famously told the young scientists graduating from CalTech in 1974. Fully cognizant of this truth, the scientific establishment has developed many rules and procedures to weed out false findings from experiments, key among them replication.

Replication means that an experiment can be repeated over and over, by the original researcher or any other competent scientist in the field, and it will produce the same or similar result. Now, science is in the midst of a “replication failure” crisis — at least according to scores of articles in the scientific and mainstream media.

Although replication failure has been a subject of discussion among scientists for some time, it burst into the public arena last summer, when an article showing poor replicability levels of psychology experiments appeared in the journal Science. The authors had reproduced 100 peer-reviewed studies, but got unambiguously similar outcomes to the original research only 39 per cent of the time. The concern spread quickly beyond psychology, setting off a wave of headlines such as, “How Science Goes Wrong” (The Economist), “How Science Is Broken” (Vox), “Getting the Bogus Studies out of Science” (The Wall Street Journal), and “Why We Keep Getting Fooled by Bad Science” (New York Post).

Is science truly in trouble? Rife with fraud? Losing reliability?

Absolutely not. Science is doing what it always has done — failing at a reasonable rate and being corrected. Replication should never be 100 per cent. Science works beyond the edge of what is known, using new, complex and untested techniques. It should surprise no one that things occasionally come out wrong, even though everything looks correct at first.

Replication failures should not be conflated with scientific fraud, which is rightly condemnable. The failure to replicate a part or even the whole of an experiment is not sufficient for indictment of the initial inquiry or its researchers. Failure is part of science. Without failures there would be no great discoveries.

How then should we respond to replication failures? They should be published without prejudice. In science, revision is a victory — not a devious cover-up or intellectual flip-flop. Yes, a complete inability to reproduce results could indicate an overlooked fatal flaw in the study. But it more often stems from subtle inconsistencies between one experiment and the next. Pinpointing that inconsistency is how we discover what we didn’t even know that we didn’t know.

For example, in the early 20th century controversy raged over how nerves made muscles and glands respond. Was it bio-electricity or chemicals? In 1921 an Austrian biologist, Otto Loewi, dreamed, literally, of a simple experiment that would settle the issue and took to his lab in the middle of the night to test it.

He removed the hearts from two live frogs and placed the still-beating hearts in a saline bath. The first heart was dissected carefully to retain the vagus nerve, which speeds or slows the heart rate. The second heart had that nerve removed. Loewi electrically stimulated the vagus nerve of the first heart and watched its beat slow down, as he expected.

Then, Loewi let the solution surrounding first heart flow into the second heart’s liquid bath. Shortly, the second, nerveless heart also began to slow. Loewi’s concluded that the stimulated vagus nerve released a chemical that caused the first heart muscle to slow its contractions — and then that chemical seeped into the saline and had the same effect on the second heart. In short, Loewi had proven that neurotransmission was inherently chemical, not electrical.

LOS BANOS, Philippines — Rice-growing techniques learned through thousands of years of trial and error are about to be turbocharged with DNA technology in a breakthrough hailed by scientists as a potential second “green revolution”.

Over the next few years farmers are expected to have new genome sequencing technology at their disposal, helping to offset a myriad of problems that threaten to curtail production of the grain that feeds half of humanity.

Drawing on a massive bank of varieties stored in the Philippines and state-of-the-art Chinese technology, scientists recently completed the DNA sequencing of more than 3,000 of the world’s most significant types of rice.

With the huge pool of data unlocked, rice breeders will soon be able to produce higher-yielding varieties much more quickly and under increasingly stressful conditions, scientists involved with the project told AFP.

Other potential new varieties being dreamt about are ones that are resistant to certain pests and diseases, or types that pack more nutrients and vitamins.

“This will be a big help to strengthen food security for rice eaters,” said Kenneth McNally, an American biochemist at the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Since rice was first domesticated thousands of years ago, farmers have improved yields through various planting techniques. 

For the past century breeders have isolated traits, such as high yields and disease resistance, then developed them through cross breeding.

However, they did not know which genes controlled which traits, leaving much of the effort to lengthy guesswork.

The latest breakthroughs in molecular genetics promise to fast track the process, eliminating much of the mystery, scientists involved in the project told AFP.

Better rice varieties can now be expected to be developed and passed on to farmers’ hands in less than three years, compared with 12 without the guidance of DNA sequencing.

Genome sequencing involves decoding DNA, the hereditary material of all living cells and organisms. The process roughly compares with solving a giant jigsaw puzzle made up of billions of microscopic pieces.

A multinational team undertook the four-year project with the DNA decoding primarily in China by BGI, the world’s biggest genome sequencing firm.

Leaf tissue from the samples, drawn mostly from IRRI’s gene bank of 127,000 varieties were ground by McNally’s team at its laboratory in Los Banos, near Manila’s southern outskirts, before being shipped for sequencing.

A non-profit research outfit founded in 1960, IRRI works with governments to develop advanced varieties of the grain.

Threats to rice

Farmers and breeders will need the new DNA tools, which scientists take pains to say is not genetic modification, because of the increasingly stressful conditions for rice growing expected in the 21st Century.

While there will be many more millions to feed, there is expected to be less land available for planting as farms are converted for urban development, destroyed by rising sea levels or converted to other crops.

Rice paddy-destroying floods, drought and storms are also expected to worsen with climate change. Meanwhile, pests and diseases that evolve to resist herbicides and pesticides will be more difficult to kill.

And freshwater, vital for growing rice, is expected to become an increasingly scarce commodity in many parts of the world.

As scientists develop the tools necessary to harness the full advantages of the rice genome database, the hope is that new varieties can be developed to combat all those problems.

“Essentially, you will be able to design what properties you want in rice, in terms of the drought resistance, resistance to diseases, high yields, and others,” said Russian bioanalytics expert and IRRI team member Nickolai Alexandrov.

Food revolution

Scientists behind the project hope it will lead to a second “green revolution”.

The first began in the 1960s as the development of higher-yielding varieties of wheat and rice was credited with preventing massive global food shortages around the world.

That giant leap to producing more food involved the cross-breeding of unrelated varieties to produce new ones that grew faster and produced higher yields, mainly by being able to respond better to fertiliser.

But the massive gains of the earlier efforts, which earnt US geneticist Norman Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, have since reached a plateau.

Although the DNA breakthrough has generated much optimism, IRRI scientists caution it is not a magic bullet for all rice-growing problems, and believe that genetically modifying is also necessary.

They also warn that governments will still need to implement the right policies, such as in regards to land and water use.

One of the key priorities of IRRI is to pack more nutrients into rice, transforming it into a tool to fight ailments linked to inadequate diets in poor countries as well as lifestyle diseases in wealthier countries.

“We’re interested to understand the nutritional value.... we’re looking into the enrichment of micronutrients,” Nese Sreenivasulu, the Indian head of the IRRI’s grain quality and nutrition centre told AFP.

Nese believes Type-2 diabetes, which afflicts hundreds of million of people, can be checked by breeding for particular varieties of rice which when cooked will release sugar into the bloodstream more slowly.

IRRI scientists are also hoping to breed rice varieties with a higher component of zinc, which prevents stunting and deaths from diarohea in rice-eating Southeast Asia.

VANCOUVER — The “captain of moonshots” at Google parent company Alphabet sees widespread, world-changing wireless Internet on the horizon.

Astro Teller, head of the boundary-pushing X research team, shared his vision of the future during a talk at the TED Conference here late Monday.

Teller shared insights into the X team’s balloon-powered high-speed Internet service known as “Project Loon”, which aims to get billions more people online by reaching remote or rural regions that are not yet connected.

“There is a lot of different technology out there, rolling them out will be complicated,” Teller said.

“But, somewhere between five and ten years, it will change the world in ways we can not possibly imagine.”

Project Loon began its first tests in Sri Lanka on Monday ahead of a planned joint venture with the government there, the country’s top IT official told AFP.

It promises to extend coverage and cheaper rates for data services.

Service providers will be able to access higher speeds and improve the quality of their existing service once the balloon project is up and running.

Once in the stratosphere, the balloons will be twice as high as commercial airliners and barely visible to the naked eye.

Teller told the TED audience that he expected Project Loon balloons to be tested over Indonesia this year.

Craziest idea to date

The project, he quipped, might be the craziest to date at the X lab, which was once part of Google but became a separate unit with a restructuring that created parent company Alphabet.

The name of the project was intended to remind the team how bizarre it initially seemed.

As with all their projects, members of the X team first tackled the toughest technical challenges facing Loon with an eye towards quickly scuttling the mission if the goal was not realistic, according to Teller.

“We had round silvery balloons; giant pillow-shaped balloons, balloons the size of a blue whale,” Teller said.

“We busted a lot of balloons.”

Each potentially terminal technology challenge for Loon has been surmounted well enough to continue the project.

The current design is a balloon within a balloon, one containing helium to keep it aloft and the other with air that can be released or added to alter the weight and, as a result, move up or down to ride the wind.

The balloons can navigate fairly well, and send Internet signals to each other in order to increase their reach into remote areas.

As a Loon balloon floats out of an area, it hands the connection off to another floating into that same area.

And, Teller said, the bandwidth is good enough to stream free online TED talks for which the conference is renowned.

Last year, one of the balloon stayed up for 187 days, he said, circling the world more than a dozen times.

“Our balloons today do everything we need,” Teller said. “So we are going to keep going.”

Kudos for failure

Teller said his team refers to their base as “The Moonshot Factory” because their goal is to blend audacious ideas with the realities of getting them to market.

People on the X team get kudos, bonuses and even promotions for finding fatal flaws that kill projects and thereby let resources shift to more promising dreams.

“We use the word ‘moonshot’ to remind us to keep our vision big, and the word ‘factory’ to remind ourselves that we need concrete plans to make them real,” Teller said.

“We spend most of our time trying to break things and prove we are wrong.”

X lab’s work on an automated system for vertical farming was killed last year when the team couldn’t get it to grow staple crops such as grains or rice.

An ultra-light air-ship for hauling cargo was abandoned after the team realised the costs to build the first prototype would be astronomical.

“We can’t spend $200 million to get the first data point about whether we are on the right track,” Teller said. “So we killed it.”

The lab’s self-driving car was a natural moonshot, and is humming along, according to Teller.