Free Republic

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington's legal marijuana market opened last summer to a dearth of weed. Some stores periodically closed because they didn't have pot to sell. Prices were through the roof. Six months later, the equation has flipped, bringing serious growing pains to the new industry. A big harvest of sun-grown marijuana from eastern Washington last fall flooded the market. Prices are starting to come down in the state's licensed pot shops, but due to the glut, growers are — surprisingly — struggling to sell their marijuana. Some are already worried about going belly-up, finding it tougher than expected to...

What they’re saying • “The law prohibits us from making such fine utilitarian calculations to balance the smelt’s interests against the interests of the citizens of California. — Federal Judge Jay Bybee • “These regulations have harmed farmers and farmworkers in the Central Valley ... by diverting vast quantities of water away from human use and out to the Pacific Ocean, all to try to improve the habitat of ... a 3-inch fish on the Endangered Species Act list. — James S. Burling, director of litigation for the Pacific Legal Foundation The Supreme Court on Monday steered clear of a...

The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields. But the freshest news from the farm: a new facility using the same technologies has been announced and is now under construction in Hong Kong, with Mongolia, Russia and mainland China on the agenda for subsequent near-future builds. In the currently-completed setup, customized LED lighting developed with GE helps plants grow up...

The study, based on DNA analysis of corn cobs dating back over 4,000 years, provides the most comprehensive tracking to date of the origin and evolution of maize in the Southwest and settles a long debate over whether maize moved via an upland or coastal route into the U.S. Study findings, which also show how climatic and cultural impacts influenced the genetic makeup of maize, will be reported Jan. 8 in the journal Nature Plants. The study compared DNA from archaeological samples from the U.S. Southwest to that from traditional maize varieties in Mexico, looking for genetic similarities that would...

A huge quantity of olive stones on an ancient shipwreck more than 2,000 years old has provided valuable insight into the diet of sailors in the ancient world, researchers in Cyprus said Thursday. The shipwreck, dating from around 400 B.C. and laden mainly with wine amphorae from the Aegean island of Chios and other north Aegean islands, was discovered deep under the sea off Cyprus's southern coast. Excavation on the site, which started in November 2007, has determined that the ship was a merchant vessel of the late classical period. "An interesting piece of evidence that gives us information on...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

A new study suggests that dogs may have first successfully migrated to the Americas only about 10,000 years ago, thousands of years after the first human migrants crossed a land bridge from Siberia to North America. The study, which looked at the genetic characteristics of 84 individual dogs from more than a dozen sites in North and South America, is the largest analysis so far of ancient dogs in the Americas. The findings appear in the Journal of Human Evolution. Unlike their wild wolf predecessors, ancient dogs learned to tolerate human company and generally benefitted from the association: They gained...

Onions are eaten and grown in more countries than any other vegetable but rarely seem to receive much acclaim. It's time to stop taking the tangy, tear-inducing bulb for granted and give it a round of applause, writes the BBC's Marek Pruszewicz. Deep in the archives of Yale University's Babylonian Collection lie three small clay tablets with a particular claim to fame - they are the oldest known cookery books. Covered in minute cuneiform writing, they did not give-up their secrets until 1985, nearly 4,000 years after they were written. The French Assyriologist and gourmet cook Jean Bottero - a...

If global temperatures continue to rise, the taste of your favourite wine could either drastically change, or the drink could be off the menu completely. A wine expert has warned that fine wines in particular, such as Pinot Noir, are having their flavour significantly altered due to climate change. And, as a result, vineyard owners are ditching these grape varieties in favour of those that are better equipped to handle the increases in global temperature.

From my Free Web Book 'AncientCanalBuilders.com' The largest wide-array man made (or at least non natural) structure in the world is in fact an ancient terra formed systems of agricultural-aquaculture canals in Northwestern Botswana and Northeastern Namibia, north of the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa. Obviously quite ancient, the canal systems no longer provide free flowing water throughout its 105,000 mile array, but many sections show obvious intention to provide cross sectional irrigation. These canals are too evenly spaced over too large an area to be any kind of natural formation. Based on entry and exit points, it is readily...

For years, the government has been issuing guidelines about healthy eating choices. Now, a panel that advises the Agriculture Department is ready to recommend that you be told not only what foods are better for your own health, but for the environment as well. That means that when the latest version of the government's dietary guidelines comes out, it may push even harder than it has in recent years for people to choose more fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and other plant-based foods — at the expense of meat....

The settlement was inhabited around 100 B.C. and is one of the most significant Late La Tene sites in Central Europe. The team found the durable eggs of roundworms (Ascaris sp.), whipworms, (Trichuris sp.) and liver flukes (Fasciola sp.). The eggs of these intestinal parasites were discovered in the backfill of 2000 year-old storage and cellar pits from the Iron Age. The presence of the parasite eggs was not, as is usually the case, established by wet sieving of the soil samples. Instead, a novel geoarchaeology-based method was applied using micromorphological thin sections, which enable the parasite eggs to be...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that...

LIMA, Peru -- Even in ancient Peru, it seems dogs were a man's best friend. Peruvian investigators have discovered a pre-Columbian culture of dog lovers who built pet cemeteries and buried their pets with warm blankets and even treats for the afterlife. "They are dogs that were thanked and recognized for their social and familial contribution," anthropologist Sonia Guillen said. "These dogs were not sacrificed." Since 1993, researchers have unearthed 82 dog tombs in pet cemetery plots, laid alongside human mummy tombs of the Chiribaya people in the fertile Osmore River valley, 540 miles southeast of Lima. The Chiribaya were...

Mummified dogs uncovered in Peru By Dan Collins BBC News, Lima Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the mummified remains of more than 40 dogs buried with blankets and food alongside their human masters. The discovery was made during the excavation of two of the ancient Chiribaya people who lived in southern Peru between 900 and 1350 AD. Experts say the dogs' treatment in death indicated the belief that the animals had an afterlife. Such a status for pets has only previously been seen in ancient Egypt. Hundreds of years before the European conquest of South America, the Chiribaya civilisation valued...

WELLINGTON (AFP) – Two blocks of butter have been found intact after nearly a century in an Antarctic hut used by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his doomed 1910-12 expedition, a report said. Television New Zealand reported that conservators found the two blocks of New Zealand butter in bags in stables attached to the expedition Hut at Cape Evans in Antarctica. The extreme cold of the polar region has preserved the hut and expedition equipment inside, but recent signs of deterioration had prompted the Antarctic Heritage Trust to launch a preservation project. The trust's Lizzie Meek said the butter...

Investment guru advises MBA students to study agriculture DECEMBER 06, 2014 08:18 loading Legendary investor Jim Rogers on Thursday advised Master of Business Administration (MBA) students at Seoul National University to quit the MBA program and study agriculture. He argued that by the time the students would retire, agriculture would become the most promising industry. Rogers advised the students to have a switch of ideas and become farmers at a time when everyone else is neglecting agriculture and rush to cities. When the investment guru said he hoped to live as a farmer in China rather than a financier in...

Abstract Microbes in the gastrointestinal tract are under selective pressure to manipulate host eating behavior to increase their fitness, sometimes at the expense of host fitness. Microbes may do this through two potential strategies: (i) generating cravings for foods that they specialize on or foods that suppress their competitors, or (ii) inducing dysphoria until we eat foods that enhance their fitness. We review several potential mechanisms for microbial control over eating behavior including microbial influence on reward and satiety pathways, production of toxins that alter mood, changes to receptors including taste receptors, and hijacking of the vagus nerve, the neural...

Story by Cy Brown Photos by Kaylinn GilstrapDeember 27, 2014 He got Penny for Christmas. He didn’t know he would get a trip into the deepest reaches of the 14,000-year history of dogs in North America.Things we love in the South: Moon Pies, SEC football, Otis Redding, Flannery O’Connor, Cheerwine and, probably more than anything else, our dogs. What is it about Southerners and our dogs? Maybe it's because in the South, we're a bit more country than our cousins to the north. Perhaps we are a generation or two fewer removed from the time when having a dog was...