Heading into the dog days of summer, and the living ain’t easy.  But the river sure is high (at least here on the East Coast).  Don’t know about the catfish.  In the mean time, here are some stories worth reading or bookmarking …

I LOVE ITALY AND ITALIANS – That’s all I can say after reading the blog post in TeatroNationale.  The post focuses on the OECD’s report on The Bioeconomy 2030:  Designing a Policy Agenda.   The report itself is a bit dense reading but we encourage everyone to do some skimming.  As TN puts it, “biotechnology has the power to improve human health, address environmental challenges, and change the way the world does business.”  But to do that we need some serious realignement of policies, namely:

To boost innovation and competitiveness, policies for the bioeconomy need to align private sector incentives with public goals such as good health and reduce the cost of regulation, particularly for applications in agriculture and industry. Today, only 6% of business biotechnology R&D expenditure in the OECD is related to agriculture and industry, even though 75% of the potential economic contribution of biotechnology is in these two areas.Meantime, 85% of current business expenditures for biotechnology R&D goes to health, with a 25% potential return. The solution is not to reduce R&D expenditures in health, but to encourage substantially greater public and private investment in other applications of biotechnology.

BIOTECH FOODS AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC – Amidst all the hoo-ha about biotech foods (commonly referred to as GMOs) it is nice to see that the folks who should get it right, get it right.  I can’t tell you how many blog posts we sift through from perhaps well intentioned folk that take fuzzy facts and come to odd conclusions.  If you want to get to the core of the problem, read this post at National Geographic – the pictures, as always, bring the point home.  They, like virtually every other established scientific organization, recognize the contributions of agriculture biotechnology along with the needs for the future.  Here’s how the National Geographic framed the current food crisis:

… von Braun and his colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research are wrestling with right now. This is the group of world-renowned agricultural research centers that helped more than double the world’s average yields of corn, rice, and wheat between the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s, an achievement so staggering it was dubbed the green revolution. Yet with world population spiraling toward nine billion by mid-century, these experts now say we need a repeat performance, doubling current food production by 2030. In other words, we need another green revolution. And we need it in half the time.

GOT (BIOTECH) MILK? – New commercials promoting the benefits of milk should come with a new face.  That of a goat.  That’s right, a goat.  The UCDavis blog has a great story on how they, along with researchers in Brazil, are using bioengineered goat’s milk to help solve the horrific problem of children dying from diarrheal diseases.  According to James Murray:  “This is an exciting partnership that promises to increase our understanding of how lysozyme destroys the harmful bacteria that cause intestinal infections and diarrhea, and encourages the growth of beneficial bacteria.”

AMYLIN AND DIABETES – There’s no shortage of ups and downs in biotech.  Read Xconomy’s report on Amylin and its diabetes drug.  According to the report, over the weekend the company was slated to announce that:

new clinical trial data that suggests its once-weekly shot for diabetes was able to maintain control over blood sugar for two years, while helping patients lose weight and lower their blood pressure.

SUMMER JOBS IN BIOTECH – If you haven’t noticed, the job market is a bit tough out there.  That’s true for high school students who may be interested in biotechnology.  That is why we want to give a special thanks to the HudsonAlpha Institute.  There’s a great story in the Huntsville Times that describes their summer student intern program.  We need more of these programs.  Lots more.  Here’s a snippet:

In their first week, HudsonAlpha K-12 education coordinator Jennifer Carden and BioTrain administrator Dr. Bob Zahorchak showed the interns lab basics, such as how to keep a notebook and handle a pipette. Then they moved on to other lessons that had a more biotech sound to them, such as dilution calculations, pelleting bacterial cells, chemistry/biology interface and spectrophotometry.