Latest news with #ArizonaStateUniversity
Business Recorder
17 minutes ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
PM vows to modernise education centre with ASU partnership
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday pledged to modernise the country's education sector through a partnership with Arizona State University (ASU), aimed at enhancing technical and vocational training. During a meeting with ASU officials led by Doug Becker, founder and chairman of Cintana Education, Sharif said that aligning Pakistan's education standards with international benchmarks was a government priority. 'All government education policies are centred on creating employment opportunities for youth based on their professional skills,' he added. The partnership includes the establishment of the National Institute of Technology (NIT), which is expected to start operations this year and provide world-class training to Pakistani students. The prime minister highlighted reforms made to the National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC), directing the commission to collaborate closely with ASU to bring innovation to vocational education. Doug Becker assured ASU's full support in providing resources and expertise for the initiative. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Atlantic
13 hours ago
- Business
- Atlantic
Tomato Season Is Different This Year
Every summer, there is a brief window—call it August—when the produce is exquisite. The cherries are at their best, as are the peaches, plums, and nectarines. The watermelon is sweet. The eggplants are glossy. The corn is pristine. And the tomatoes! The tomatoes are unparalleled. There's a reason tomatoes are synonymous with summer, staple of home gardens and farmers' markets alike. Giant, honking beefsteaks and sprightly Sungolds are begging to be transformed into salads and gazpachos, tossed with pasta and sliced into sandwiches, or eaten raw by the fistful. Enjoy them while you can. Come fall, tomato season will be over just as quickly as it began. Yes, you can obtain sliceable red orbs in virtually any supermarket, at any time of year, anywhere in the United States. But they are pale imitations of dripping August heirlooms. Out-of-season tomatoes—notoriously pale, mealy, and bland—tend to be tomatoes in name only. They can be serviceable, dutifully filling out a Greek salad; they can valiantly garnish a taco and add heft to a grilled-cheese sandwich. At the very least, they contribute general wetness and a sense of virtue to a meal. Flavor? Not so much. This year, of all years, it's worth indulging in the bounties of high tomato season. The bloodless tomatoes waiting for us in the fall are mostly imported from Mexico, and as with so many other goods these days, they are now stuck in the middle of President Donald Trump's trade war. This week, the White House imposed 17 percent tariffs on Mexican tomatoes. In all likelihood, that will mean higher prices for grocery-store tomatoes, Tim Richards, an agricultural economist at Arizona State University, told me. This will not make them better in terms of color, texture, or flavor—but it will make them cost more. Grumbling about grim winter tomatoes is a long-standing national hobby, and at the same time, their existence is a small miracle. You can eat a BLT in the snow or a Caprese salad for Valentine's Day with no effort at all. In August 1943, before Americans could get fresh tomatoes year-round, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia encouraged housewives to brace for winter by canning as many tomatoes as they could. 'They are in your city's markets and I want to see every woman can them while they are at this low price,' he announced. They wouldn't have to do it for long. By the 1960s, 'just about every supermarket and corner store in America was selling Florida tomatoes from October to June,' the author William Alexander wrote in Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World. They were visually perfect but tasted like Styrofoam, which is in many ways what they were supposed to be: durable, pest-resistant, long-lasting, and cheap. Tomatoes are famously fragile and quick to rot, so they are often picked while still green, and then gassed with ethylene. It turns them red, giving the appearance of ripeness but not the corresponding flavor. In recent years, the situation has somewhat improved: Instead of focusing exclusively on looks and durability, horticulturalists have turned their attention to maximizing flavor. There is another reason year-round tomatoes have improved: Mexico. 'Most of the nice-looking, really tasty tomatoes in the market are Mexican,' Richards said. That includes small varieties such as cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, and cocktail tomatoes, or, as he classified them, 'those little snacking tomatoes in the plastic things.' Mexico manages to produce this steady stream of year-round, pretty-good tomatoes by growing them primarily in greenhouses, which Richards said is the best possible way to produce North American tomatoes at scale. Even in winter, tomatoes sheltered from the elements can be left to ripen on the vine, which helps improve the taste. All of which is to say that an America without easy access to imported Mexican tomatoes looks bleak. Like all of Trump's tariffs, the point of taxing Mexican tomatoes is to help producers here in the U.S. Thirty years ago, 80 percent of the country's fresh tomatoes were grown in America. Now the share is more like 30 percent, and sliding. America could produce enough tomatoes to stock grocery stores year-round—Florida still grows a lot of them—but doing that just doesn't make a lot of sense. 'It's not cost-effective,' Luis Ribera, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University, told me. 'We cannot supply year-round tomatoes at the prices that we have.' Unlike Mexico, Florida mainly grows its tomatoes outside, despite the fact that it is ill-suited to outdoor tomato growing in pretty much all ways: The soil is inhospitable. The humidity is an incubator for disease. There are regular hurricanes. 'From a purely botanical and horticultural perspective,' the food journalist Barry Estabrook wrote in Tomatoland, 'you would have to be an idiot to attempt to commercially grow tomatoes in a place like Florida.' Exactly what the tariffs will mean for grocery prices is hard to say. Tomatoes will be taxed when they cross the border, so importers and distributors will directly pay the costs. But eventually, the increase will likely trickle down to the supermarket. The story of tariffs, Ribera said, is that 'the lion's share is paid by consumers.' In the short term, Richards estimated that price hikes will depend a lot on the variety of tomato, with romas hardest hit. 'That's the one we rely on most from Mexico,' he said. Beefsteaks, he added, will face a smaller increase. Compared with some of the other drastic tariffs that Trump imposed, a 17 percent price bump on Mexican tomatoes hardly portends the tomato-pocalypse. Last year, the average import price of Mexican tomatoes was about 74 cents a pound. If the entire 17 percent increase is passed on to consumers, we'd be looking at an additional 13 cents—enough to notice, but not enough for a critical mass of people to forgo romas altogether. Here's the other thing: People want tomatoes, and they want them now. 'We don't want to wait for things to be in season,' Ribera said, and we aren't about to start. For all of the many problems with out-of-season tomatoes, Americans keep eating them. It was true when winter tomatoes were a novelty: 'I don't know why housewives feel they have to have tomatoes,' one baffled supplier told The New York Times in 1954. But they did, and people still do. Season to season, our national tomato consumption fluctuates relatively little, the grocery-industry analyst Phil Lempert told me. Every burger joint in America needs tomatoes—not the best tomatoes, but tomatoes that exist. There is a whole genre of recipes about how to make the most of out-of-season tomatoes. A lesser tomato, of course, is better than no tomato at all.
Nahar Net
2 days ago
- Health
- Nahar Net
Bees have some ways to cope with warming Earth, but researchers fear for their future
Sweat covers Isaac Barnes's face under his beekeeper's veil as he hauls boxes of honeycomb from his hives to his truck. It's a workout in what feels like a sauna as the late-morning June temperatures rise. Though Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Their body temperatures can be up to 27 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15 Celsius) higher than the air around them. As global temperatures rise under climate change, scientists are trying to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees as they pollinate crops, gather nectar, make honey and reproduce. They noticed flying bees gathering nectar avoided overheating on the hottest days by using fewer but harder wingbeats to keep their body temperature below dangerous levels, according to a study published last year. Scientists also say that bees — like people — may also cope by retreating to a cooler environment such as the shade or their nest. "Just like we go into the shade, or we sweat or we might work less hard, bees actually do the exact same thing so they can avoid the heat," said Jon Harrison, an environmental physiologist at Arizona State University and one of the study's authors. But that means the bees aren't able to do what they normally do, said Kevin McCluney, a biology professor at Bowling Green State University. "They're not going out and getting more nectar. They're not mating. They're not doing the things that bees would otherwise do," McCluney said. Heat is just one challenge for critical pollinator Generally, most bees are heat-tolerant, but as the climate warms, some experts think their ability to fend off disease and gather food might become harder. And habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, diseases and lack of forage for both managed and wild bees are all listed as potential contributors to the global decline of bees and other pollinators. "If you're not well-fed, and your body is intoxicated with pesticides and you have lots of diseases in your body, you're going to be less heat-tolerant than if you were healthy," said Margarita López-Uribe, a pollinator health expert at Pennsylvania State University. Earlier this year, preliminary results from the annual U.S. Beekeeping Survey found that beekeepers lost almost 56% of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the survey started in 2010. Almost all of the managed honeybee colonies in the U.S. are used to pollinate agricultural crops such as almonds, apples, cherries and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and potentially lower yields. "It's a very fragile system if you think about it," López-Uribe said. "Because if something goes wrong, you have these super high-value crops that won't get enough bees for pollination." Losing hives at Honeyrun Farms Back at Barnes' hives in Ohio, thousands of honeybees fly around as he gathers boxes to take back to his farm for honey production. Nearby, a couple of his bees land on milkweed flowers, a rare bit of plant diversity in an area dominated by corn and soybean fields. For Barnes, who operates Honeyrun Farm with his wife, Jayne, one of the challenges heat can pose to his 500 honeybee hives is fending off parasitic mites that threaten the bees. If temperatures get too hot, he can't apply formic acid, an organic chemical that kills the mites. If it's applied when it's too hot, the bees could die. Last year they lost almost a third of the 400 hives they sent to California to help pollinate commercial almond groves. Barnes thinks those hives may have been in poor health ahead of pollination because they were unable to ward off mites when it was hot months earlier. "Dead hives aren't pollinating the almonds," he said. "It's a real ripple effect that stems back from the heat in the summertime." Sometimes the heat helps. Here in Ohio, Barnes' hives last summer produced a bumper crop of honey as they feasted on nearby soybean nectar as the plants bloomed in the heat. Still, the lack of diverse plants for bees to forage in an area dominated by corn and soybean fields isn't ideal. And even the native blooms are appearing erratically, Barnes said. In autumn, his bees search for food on goldenrod, but those blooms are appearing later. And even then, he has supplemented his hive with additional food to keep them healthy into the winter. "Every single plant that blooms is something that the bee can use," Barnes said. "And every single plant is affected by climate change." Research that may aid bees is in peril It's only in the last decade that people have become aware of the magnitude of the pollinator decline globally, said Harrison, of Arizona State University. Data is limited on how much climate change and heat stress is contributing to pollinator decline. "It's a relatively new focus for biology," he said. "I think it's super important, but it's not being studied a ton." The Trump administration's proposed budget would eliminate the research program that funds the USGS Bee Lab, which supports the inventory, monitoring and natural history of the nation's wild bees. Other grants for bee research are also in jeopardy. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said America's pollinators are in "grave danger," and he'll fight for the federal funding. Pollinators contribute to the health of the planet, the crops we grow and the food we eat, he said. "Rather than taking bold action to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed a reckless budget that would zero out funding for critical research aimed at saving important pollinators," he said in a statement to The Associated Press. Harrison said his research on this topic would come to a halt if cuts are made to his federal funding, and it would be more difficult in general for scientists to study the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve how they prevent these losses. Not being able to manage these pollinator deaths could cause the price of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate to jump or become scarce. "Hopefully, even if such research is defunded in the U.S., such research will continue in Europe and China, preventing these extreme scenarios," said Harrison.
Al Jazeera
3 days ago
- Science
- Al Jazeera
Photos: Bees at risk as temperatures rise, Trump to cut research funds
Sweat covers Isaac Barnes's face under his beekeeper's veil as he hauls boxes of honeycomb from his hives to his truck. It is a workout in what feels like a sauna as the late-morning temperatures rise. Though Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Their body temperatures can be up to 15 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the air around them. As global temperatures rise, scientists are trying to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees as they pollinate crops, gather nectar, make honey, and reproduce. They noticed flying bees gathering nectar avoided overheating on the hottest days by using fewer but harder wingbeats to keep their body temperature below dangerous levels, according to a study published last year. Scientists also say that bees, like people, may cope by retreating to a cooler environment such as the shade or their nest. 'Just like we go into the shade, sweat, or we might work less hard, bees actually do the exact same thing so they can avoid the heat,' said Jon Harrison, an environmental physiologist at Arizona State University and one of the study's authors. Generally, most bees are heat-tolerant, but as the climate warms, some experts think their ability to fend off disease and gather food might become more difficult. Habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, diseases, and lack of forage for both managed and wild bees are all listed as potential contributors to the global decline of bees and other pollinators. Isaac Barnes places a full honeycomb onto the back of his truck. [Joshua A Bickel/AP Photo] Earlier this year, preliminary results from the annual US Beekeeping Survey found that beekeepers lost almost 56 percent of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the survey started in 2010. Almost all of the managed honeybee colonies in the United States are used to pollinate crops such as almonds, apples, cherries, and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and potentially lower yields. Back at Isaac Barnes's hives in Ohio, thousands of honeybees fly around as he gathers boxes to take back to his farm for honey production. Nearby, a couple of his bees land on milkweed flowers, a rare bit of plant diversity in an area dominated by maize and soya bean fields. For Barnes, who operates Honeyrun Farm with his wife, Jayne, one of the challenges heat can pose to his 500 honeybee hives is fending off parasitic mites that threaten the bees. If temperatures get too hot, he cannot apply formic acid, an organic chemical that kills the mites. If it is applied when it is too hot, the bees could die. Last year, they lost nearly a third of the 400 hives they sent to California to help pollinate commercial almond groves. Barnes thinks those hives may have been in poor health before pollination because they were unable to ward off mites when it was hot months earlier. It is only in the last decade that people have become aware of the magnitude of the pollinator decline globally, said Harrison, of Arizona State University. Data is limited on how much climate change and heat stress are contributing to pollinator decline. Bees are not able to do what they normally do, said Kevin McCluney, a biology professor at Bowling Green State University. [Joshua A Bickel/AP Photo] The Trump administration's proposed budget would eliminate the research programme that funds the US Geological Survey Bee Lab, which supports the inventory, monitoring and natural history of the nation's wild bees. Other grants for bee research are also in jeopardy. US Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said his country's pollinators are in 'grave danger', and he will fight for the federal funding. Pollinators contribute to the health of the planet, the crops we grow and the food we eat, he said. 'Rather than taking bold action to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed a reckless budget that would zero out funding for critical research aimed at saving important pollinators,' he said in a statement to The Associated Press news agency. Harrison said his research on this topic would come to a halt if cuts are made to his federal funding, and it would generally be more difficult for scientists to study the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve how they prevent these losses. Not being able to manage these pollinator deaths could cause the price of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate to rise or become scarce. 'Hopefully, even if such research is defunded in the US, such research will continue in Europe and China, preventing these extreme scenarios,' said Harrison.
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
Bees have some ways to cope with a warming Earth, but researchers fear for their future
Get Love Letters: The Newsletter A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more. Enter Email Sign Up 'Just like we go into the shade, or we sweat or we might work less hard, bees actually do the exact same thing so they can avoid the heat,' said Jon Harrison, an environmental physiologist at Arizona State University and one of the study's authors. Advertisement But that means the bees aren't able to do what they normally do, said Kevin McCluney, a biology professor at Bowling Green State University. 'They're not going out and getting more nectar. They're not mating. They're not doing the things that bees would otherwise do,' McCluney said. Heat is just one challenge for critical pollinator Generally, most bees are heat-tolerant, but as the climate warms, some experts think their ability to fend off disease and gather food might become harder. And habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, diseases and lack of forage for both managed and wild bees are all listed as potential contributors to the global decline of bees and other pollinators. Advertisement 'If you're not well-fed, and your body is intoxicated with pesticides and you have lots of diseases in your body, you're going to be less heat-tolerant than if you were healthy,' said Margarita López-Uribe, a pollinator health expert at Pennsylvania State University. Earlier this year, preliminary results from the annual U.S. Beekeeping Survey found that beekeepers lost almost 56% of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the survey started in 2010. Almost all of the managed honeybee colonies in the U.S. are used to pollinate agricultural crops such as almonds, apples, cherries and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and potentially lower yields. 'It's a very fragile system if you think about it,' López-Uribe said. 'Because if something goes wrong, you have these super high-value crops that won't get enough bees for pollination.' Losing hives at Honeyrun Farms Back at Barnes' hives in Ohio, thousands of honeybees fly around as he gathers boxes to take back to his farm for honey production. Nearby, a couple of his bees land on milkweed flowers, a rare bit of plant diversity in an area dominated by corn and soybean fields. For Barnes, who operates Honeyrun Farm with his wife, Jayne, one of the challenges heat can pose to his 500 honeybee hives is fending off parasitic mites that threaten the bees. If temperatures get too hot, he can't apply formic acid, an organic chemical that kills the mites. If it's applied when it's too hot, the bees could die. Advertisement Last year they lost almost a third of the 400 hives they sent to California to help pollinate commercial almond groves. Barnes thinks those hives may have been in poor health ahead of pollination because they were unable to ward off mites when it was hot months earlier. 'Dead hives aren't pollinating the almonds,' he said. 'It's a real ripple effect that stems back from the heat in the summertime.' Sometimes the heat helps. Here in Ohio, Barnes' hives last summer produced a bumper crop of honey as they feasted on nearby soybean nectar as the plants bloomed in the heat. Still, the lack of diverse plants for bees to forage in an area dominated by corn and soybean fields isn't ideal. And even the native blooms are appearing erratically, Barnes said. In autumn, his bees search for food on goldenrod, but those blooms are appearing later. And even then, he has supplemented his hive with additional food to keep them healthy into the winter. 'Every single plant that blooms is something that the bee can use,' Barnes said. 'And every single plant is affected by climate change.' Research that may aid bees is in peril It's only in the last decade that people have become aware of the magnitude of the pollinator decline globally, said Harrison, of Arizona State University. Data is limited on how much climate change and heat stress is contributing to pollinator decline. 'It's a relatively new focus for biology,' he said. 'I think it's super important, but it's not being studied a ton.' The Trump administration's proposed budget would eliminate the research program that funds the USGS Bee Lab, which supports the inventory, monitoring and natural history of the nation's wild bees. Other grants for bee research are also in jeopardy. Advertisement U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said America's pollinators are in 'grave danger,' and he'll fight for the federal funding. Pollinators contribute to the health of the planet, the crops we grow and the food we eat, he said. 'Rather than taking bold action to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed a reckless budget that would zero out funding for critical research aimed at saving important pollinators,' he said in a statement to The Associated Press. Harrison said his research on this topic would come to a halt if cuts are made to his federal funding, and it would be more difficult in general for scientists to study the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve how they prevent these losses. Not being able to manage these pollinator deaths could cause the price of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate to jump or become scarce. 'Hopefully, even if such research is defunded in the U.S., such research will continue in Europe and China, preventing these extreme scenarios,' said Harrison. ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
