Rice is the primary food source for more than 3 billion people around the world. Many are unable to afford a diverse and nutritious diet that includes complete protein, grains, fruits, and vegetables. They rely heavily on more affordable cereal crops, including rice, for most of their calories.

My research focuses on health risks associated with climate variability and change. In a recently published study, I worked with scientists from China, Japan, Australia and the United States to assess how the rising carbon dioxide concentrations that are fueling climate change could alter the nutritional value of rice. We conducted field studies in Asia for multiple genetically diverse rice lines, analyzing how rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere altered levels of protein, micronutrients and B vitamins.

Our data showed for the first time that rice grown at the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide scientists expect the world to reach by 2100 has lower levels of four key B vitamins. These findings also support research from other field studies showing rice grown under such conditions contains less protein, iron and zinc, which are important in fetal and early child development. These changes could have a disproportionate impact on maternal […]

No Comments

West Virginia teachers on strike

Training first-world children for a third-world life

It was the strike heard ‘round the country.

West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app. Their governor, billionaire coal baron Jim Justice, pledged to allow them no more than an annual 1% raise—effectively a pay cut considering inflation—in a state where teacher salaries ranked 48th lowest out of 50 states. In February 2018, they finally revolted: In a tense, nine-day work stoppage, they managed to wrest a 5% pay increase from the state. Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have now revolted in similar protests.

It’s the latest battle in a contest between two countervailing forces: one bent on reengineering America for the benefit of the wealthy, the other struggling to preserve dignity and security for ordinary people.

If the story turns out the way the Jim Justices desire, the children of a first-world country […]

1 Comment

In the United States, if you don’t buy a gun for several years, you do not lose your Second Amendment right to bear arms. If you never write a letter to the editor or participate in a street demonstration, you retain your full First Amendment rights to free speech. If you skip church for years on end, the government cannot stop you from finally attending a service.

But according to a decision by the Supreme Court this week, if you fail to cast a ballot, you can be removed from the voter rolls and denied your fundamental right to vote.

The case, Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, involved Ohio’s flawed presumption that citizens who do not vote during a two-year period have moved out of their voting district and become ineligible to vote there. Ohio sends these voters a postcard that is easily overlooked and, if they don’t respond or vote over the next four years, the state cancels their voter registration.

That’s what happened to Larry Harmon, a Navy veteran and software engineer who voted in […]

1 Comment

The evidence is not hidden. Ninety percent of the wealth in the United States is held by 1 percent of households. Intergenerational class mobility has been stagnant for several decades. The racial wealth gap continues to persist. It is so extreme that economists and other experts predict that African-Americans as a group will have zero wealth by 2053. “Tax reform” has continued to divert money upward to the very rich and away from all other Americans. Political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page have shown that America’s elected officials are almost wholly unresponsive to the political demands of the average American.

There can be no real democracy in a country where the courts have decided that  money is speech. Such a power dynamic suppresses the political power of most citizens and grotesquely favors rich people and large corporations.

Despite these facts, poor and working-class Americans are extremely patriotic and nationalistic — much more so than any other group in the country.

Why is this? How do poor and working-class Americans reconcile such enthusiastic […]

No Comments

Credit: Caltech

IQ scores have been steadily falling for the past few decades, and environmental factors are to blame, a new study says.

The research suggests that genes aren’t what’s driving the decline in IQ scores, according to the study, published Monday.

Norwegian researchers analyzed the IQ scores of Norwegian men born between 1962 and 1991 and found that scores increased by almost 3 percentage points each decade for those born between 1962 to 1975 — but then saw a steady decline among those born after 1975.

Similar studies in Denmark, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Finland and Estonia have demonstrated a similar downward trend in IQ scores, said Ole Rogeberg, a senior research fellow at the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in Norway and co-author of the new study.

“The causes in IQ increases over time and now the decline is due to environmental factors,” said Rogeburg, who believes the change is not due to genetics.

“It’s not that dumb people are having more kids than smart people, to put it crudely. It’s something to do […]

1 Comment