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Bumblebees, a linchpin of the global food supply, are vanishing across huge swaths of North America and Europe as a result of climate change, a new study says. The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, apparently solve a mystery that's alarmed farmers, experts, policymakers and environmental advocates worldwide, as well as bedeviled researchers. While habitat destruction and potent pesticides known as neonicotinoids have destroyed some bumblebee populations, researchers concluded climate change has played the greatest role in the mass disappearance of bumblebee species, which pollinate plants and crops that are part of the food supply for both animals and...

KARITAINA, Greece (AP) — Ilias Mathes has protection against bank closures, capital controls and the slashing of his pension: 10 goats, some hens and a vegetable patch. Related Stories 1. Pensioners queue outside banks on 1st day of capital control Associated Press 2. Greeks struggle with daily grind as foreigners head to beach Associated Press 3. Greece rattles Europe; Markets close sharply down CNBC 4. The Latest: Moody's downgrades Greece to Caa3 Associated Press 5. Greece says it will consider bank closures and capital controls on Monday Reuters If Greece's financial crisis deepens, as many believe it must, he can...

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. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

Iron Age Britons were importing olives from the Mediterranean a century before the Romans arrived with their exotic tastes in food, say archaeologists who have discovered a single olive stone from an excavation of an Iron Age well at at Silchester in Hampshire. The stone came from a layer securely dated to the first century BC, making it the earliest ever found in Britain -- but since nobody ever went to the trouble of importing one olive, there must be more, rotted beyond recognition or still buried. The stone, combined with earlier finds of seasoning herbs such as coriander, dill...

REMAINS OF FOOD SHED LIGHT ON ANCIENT WAYS BY BEN MURCH 11:00 - 20 November 2004 Exotic spices unearthed beneath the Bath Spa show military administrators lived in the lap of luxury in the city's early days. Food and architectural remains found preserved beneath the remains of Roman buildings provide new evidence of the high living enjoyed by the military rulers of what was then Aquae Sulis in the first century AD. The remains were discovered in 1999, but have only just finished being analysed. The ancient grapes, figs, coriander and a peppercorn - along with highly decorative architectural fragments...

Giraffe was on the menu in Pompeii's standard restaurants, says a new research into a non-elite section of the ancient Roman city buried by Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. The study, which will be presented on Jan. 4 at the Archaeological Institute of America and American Philological Association Joint Annual Meeting in Chicago, draws on a multi-year excavation in a forgotten area inside one of the busiest gates of Pompeii, the Porta Stabia. Steven Ellis, a University of Cincinnati associate professor of classics, said his team has spent more than a decade researching the life of the middle and...

Tea is one of the most popular drinks around the world and new research has revealed that people in China were enjoying the brew long before the pyramids were being built. The findings were made by a Chinese research team, who investigated the Tianluo Mountain, in the city of Yuyao in east China, to find China's earliest remains of human tea brewing. After nearly 10 years of analysis, archaeologists found that people had been brewing tea for around 6,000 years, reported People's Daily Online. The findings from the decade-long excavation were announced at the Archaeological Institute of Zhejing Province, 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. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - there is no...

NCBA will engage EPA in lawsuit alleging overreach in Waters of the U.S. rule, group says. Concerns of cattlemen regarding the U.S. EPA and Army Corps of Engineers Waters of the U.S. rule released last month are coming true, National Cattlemen's Beef Association Vice President of Government Affairs Colin Woodall said Tuesday, but that's actually generating more support for repeal efforts. We just got some more feedback this last weekend that it's the determination of the EPA that any stock tank or pond that runs around in a flooding type event would be considered a 'water of the United States,'"...

Would take away a state's rights once and for all to require labeling of GMO foods. 70 bills have been introduced in over 30 states to require some sort of labeling of genetically engineered (GE) or genetically modified organisms (GMO).1)http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/issues/976/ge-food-labeling/state-labeling-initiatives#  Although very few of these bills or initiatives have passed into actual law, and many have been challenged in court, a new congressional bill would take away the state’s rights once and for all to require labeling of GMO foods.H.R.1599 2)https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1599/text, ironically labeled the  Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015 has been renamed the DARK (Deny Americans the Right...

The Supreme Court has undercut a long-running raisin supply management program, ruling Monday that the federal government must pay for raisins kept out of the marketplace. In a marked victory for Fresno County grower Marvin Horne and other dissident California raisin producers, the divided court said the program that compels some raisins to be held back in a reserve is subject to the just compensation commands of the Fifth Amendment. Raisin handlers set aside 47 percent of their crop during the 2002-03 season and 30 percent for 2003-04, but they were paid for only part of what they surrendered.

Horne v. Department of Agriculture.decision is a big win for those of us who try to make a living in Ag Any net proceeds the raisin growers receive from the sale of the reserve raisins goes to the amount of compensation they have received for that taking. It does not mean that the raisins have not been appropriated for government use, nor can the government make raisin growers relinquish their property without just compensation as a condition for selling in interstate commerce. This is a major blow to government's program of trying to boost prices by keeping crops off the...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says a program that lets the government take raisins away from farmers to help reduce supply and boost market prices is unconstitutional. The justice said Monday that forcing raisin growers to give up part of their annual crop without full payment is an illegal confiscation of private property.

Scientists in the Russian Far East have carried out a post-mortem examination of the remains of the only mummified dog ever found in the world. Found sealed inside permafrost during a hunt for traces of woolly mammoths, the perfectly-preserved body is 12,450 years old. The dog, believed to be a three-month-old female, was unearthed in 2011 on the Syallakh River in the Ust-Yana region of Yakutia, also known as the Sakha Republic. Experts spent the past four years analysing the body – which included not just bones but also its heart, lungs and stomach – but only carried out the...

It's thousands of years since mankind won dominance over nature, and we're still pretty proud. But a top researcher says we've been giving ourselves too much credit - because we were helped by our oldest friends. Humans paired up with dogs as early as 40,000 BC, it is claimed, giving us such an advantage in hunting that it prompted the wipeout of our Neanderthal rivals.

When did dogs first become domesticated? A sophisticated new 3D fossil analysis by biologists Abby Grace Drake, visiting assistant professor of biology at Skidmore, and Michael Coquerelle of the University Rey Juan Carlos contradicts the suggested domestication of dogs during the late Paleolithic era (about 30,000 years ago), and reestablishes the date of domestication to around 15,000 years ago... Whether dogs were domesticated during the Paleolithic era, when humans were hunter-gatherers, or the Neolithic era, when humans began to form permanent settlements and take up farming, is a subject of ongoing scientific debate. Original fossil finds placed dog domestication in...

Dogs and wolves evolved from a common ancestor between 11,000 and 34,000 years ago, according to new research. U.S. scientists said that part of the genetic overlap observed between some modern dogs and wolves is the result of interbreeding after dog domestication and not a direct line of descent from one group of wolves. They believe their research reflects a more complicated history than the popular story that early farmers adopted a few docile, friendly wolves that later became our modern canine companions. Dogs and wolves evolved from a common ancestor between 11,000 and 34,000 years ago but modern canines...

Earlier DNA studies have suggested the modern pooch - in all its shapes and sizes - could track its beginnings back to wolves that attached themselves to human societies in the Middle East or perhaps in East Asia as recently as 15,000 years ago. The problem with these claims is that palaeontologists have found fossils of distinctly dog-looking animals that are 30,000 years old or more. Dr Thalmann, from Finland's University of Turku, and his team, have had another go at trying to sort through the conflicting DNA evidence. They compared genetic sequences from a wide range of ancient animals...

For many years archeologists and other scientists have debated the origins of the domesticated horse. Nailing down a time frame is important because many historians view the relationship between man and horse as one of the most important in the development of our species. Horses allowed early people to hunt for faster prey, to wander farther than before and to create much bigger farms due to pulling plows. Now, new evidence has come to light suggesting that all modern horses, which are believed to have been domesticated approximately 10,000 years ago, descended from one mare around 140,000 years ago. The...

Scientists have traced the origin of the 'speed gene' in Thoroughbred racehorses back to a single British mare that lived in the United Kingdom around 300 years ago, according to findings published today in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The origin of the 'speed gene' (C type myostatin gene variant) was revealed by analysing DNA from hundreds of horses, including DNA extracted from the skeletal remains of 12 celebrated Thoroughbred stallions born between 1764 and 1930. "Changes in racing since the foundation of the Thoroughbred have shaped the distribution of 'speed gene' types over time and in different racing regions,"...