Bio100cia-blog - BIO100CIA

Damage From Wayward Weedkiller Keeps Growing

Two weeks ago, in a remarkable move, the State Plant Board of Arkansas voted to ban the sale and use of a weedkiller called dicamba. It took that action after a wave of complaints about dicamba drifting into neighboring fields and damaging other crops, especially soybeans.

That ban is still waiting to go into force. It requires approval from a committee of the state legislature, which will meet on Friday.

Estimates of dicamba’s damage, however, continue to increase. Since the Plant Board’s vote, the number of dicamba-related complaints in Arkansas has soared to 550. Reports of damage also are increasing in the neighboring states of Tennessee, Missouri and Mississippi. The total area of damaged soybean fields could reach 2 million acres.

“I’ve never seen anything even close to this,” says Larry Steckel, a weed specialist at the University of Tennessee. “We have drift issues every year in a handful of fields, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Dicamba is not a new weedkiller; it’s been around for 50 years. It’s being used in a new way, though, because the biotech company Monsanto is now selling new soybean and cotton varieties that have been genetically altered to tolerate dicamba.

A sprayer covers a soybean field with an herbicide to control weeds. Scott Sinklier/Getty Images

Team Chloroplast or Team Mitochondrion?

Poster of this available here!

From the observed rate of expansion, astronomers can estimate the age of the universe. For every year, light travels one light-year across space. So the farthest parts of the universe that we can see are as distant in light-years as the universe is old in years. Light from more distant regions has not had time to reach us. This distance marks the limits of the observable universe–our “cosmic horizon.” Image: NASA Hubble Space Telescope

Gene mutations seem a little “Twilight Zone” to us.

A tardigrade (waterbear) hatching. 

Tardigrades reproduce sexually and females lay eggs. She’ll actually shed her skin first and then lay her eggs inside of it. The babies then hatch from their eggs and then have to crawl out of the skin husk. Fun fact: tardigrades are born with the same number of cells as their adult counterparts - their cells just get bigger as they age. 

ProtoPhotosynthesis™

Nucleus…in a GIF!

Terrifying. 🎃