Latest news with #DonHineman
New Indian Express
02-07-2025
- Health
- New Indian Express
US plans to begin breeding billions of flies to fight a pest. Here is how it will work
Fly feeds on live flesh Most fly larvae feed on dead flesh, making the New World screwworm fly and its Old World counterpart in Asia and Africa outliers — and for the American beef industry, a serious threat. Females lay their eggs in wounds and, sometimes, exposed mucus. 'A thousand-pound bovine can be dead from this in two weeks,' said Michael Bailey, president elect of the American Veterinary Medicine Association. Veterinarians have effective treatments for infested animals, but an infestation can still be unpleasant — and cripple an animal with pain. Don Hineman, a retired western Kansas rancher, recalled infected cattle as a youngster on his family's farm. 'It smelled nasty,' he said. 'Like rotting meat.' How scientists will use fly's biology against it The New World screwworm fly is a tropical species, unable to survive Midwestern or Great Plains winters, so it was a seasonal scourge. Still, the US and Mexico bred and released more than 94 billion sterile flies from 1962 through 1975 to eradicate the pest, according to the USDA. The numbers need to be large enough that females in the wild can't help but hook up with sterile males for mating. One biological trait gives fly fighters a crucial wing up: Females mate only once in their weekslong adult lives. Why US wants to breed more flies Alarmed about the fly's migration north, the US temporarily closed its southern border in May to imports of live cattle, horses and bison and it won't be fully open again at least until mid-September. But female flies can lay their eggs in wounds on any warm-blooded animal, and that includes humans. Decades ago, the US had fly factories in Florida and Texas, but they closed as the pest was eradicated. The Panama fly factory can breed up to 117 million a week, but the USDA wants the capacity to breed at least 400 million a week. It plans to spend $8.5 million on the Texas site and $21 million to convert a facility in southern Mexico for breeding sterile fruit flies into one for screwworm flies. How to raise hundreds of millions of flies In one sense, raising a large colony of flies is relatively easy, said Cassandra Olds, an assistant professor of entomology at Kansas State University. But, she added, 'You've got to give the female the cues that she needs to lay her eggs, and then the larvae have to have enough nutrients." Fly factories once fed larvae horse meat and honey and then moved to a mix of dried eggs and either honey or molasses, according to past USDA research. Later, the Panama factory used a mix that included egg powder and red blood cells and plasma from cattle. In the wild, larvae ready for the equivalent of a butterfly's cocoon stage drop off their hosts and onto the ground, burrow just below the surface and grow to adulthood inside a protective casing making them resemble a dark brown Tic Tac mint. In the Panama factory, workers drop them into trays of sawdust. Security is an issue. Sonja Swiger, an entomologist with Texas A&M University's Extension Service, said a breeding facility must prevent any fertile adults kept for breeding stock from escaping. How to drop flies from an airplane Dropping flies from the air can be dangerous. Last month, a plane freeing sterile flies crashed near Mexico's border with Guatemala, killing three people. In test runs in the 1950s, according to the USDA, scientists put the flies in paper cups and then dropped the cups out of planes using special chutes. Later, they loaded them into boxes with a machine known as a 'Whiz Packer.' The method is still much the same: Light planes with crates of flies drop those crates. Burgess called the development of sterile fly breeding and distribution in the 1950s and 1960s one of the USDA's 'crowning achievements.' Some agriculture officials argue now that new factories shouldn't be shuttered after another successful fight. 'Something we think we have complete control over — and we have declared a triumph and victory over — can always rear its ugly head again,' Burgess said.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kansans intrigued by potential of bringing voters together with multi-party candidate nominations
Former Kansas House Majority Leader Don Hineman said implementing fusion voting in Kansas, which allows more than one political party to nominate a candidate, would help broaden the perspective of a Republican Party that has grown increasingly intolerant of diverse views. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — Former Kansas House Majority Leader Don Hineman finds himself searching for a remedy to the Republican Party's movement away from a framework that anchored GOP role models Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Dole and Nancy Kassebaum. 'It feels like the center of Kansas and also the American political spectrum has been abandoned by the Republican Party,' said Hineman, who left his southwest Kansas seat in the House six years ago. 'Those of us, like me … who identify as Eisenhower, Dole and Kassebaum Republicans, feel as if they were abandoned as well. Where did my party go? What do I do now?' He said one option for drawing the GOP closer to the center would be the return in Kansas to fusion voting, once a common feature of American electoral systems. It would allow more than one political party to nominate the same candidate. If three parties nominated the same individual, the candidate's name would appear on ballots three times in association with each nominating party. This approach to coalition building — used in Kansas until the early 1900s — would determine the winner by combining all votes received by each individual. 'I believe that fusion voting shows us a path forward — a chance at a much brighter future for representative democracy,' Hineman told participants at a fusion voting seminar Thursday at Washburn University in Topeka. He said election of candidates through this method would foster alliances with a more diverse groups of supporters and provide elected politicians greater autonomy to make decisions outside demands of leaders in the dominant Republican or Democratic parties. In Kansas, Saline County District Court Judge Jared Johnson dismissed this week a lawsuit filed in July 2024 by United Kansas, a recognized political party in Kansas, to challenge the state's prohibition on fusion voting. Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a GOP candidate for governor, submitted the motion to dismiss the case based on interpretation of the Kansas Constitution. Schwab said the idea of fusion voting was illegal. Officials with United Kansas plan to appeal the judge's decision to idle the lawsuit. Bill Kristol, editor of the center-right web-based publication The Bulwark and a contributor to CNN and other networks, said he grew up with fusion voting in New York state and was intrigued by how multi-party endorsements could help the electorate find middle ground. He said states should be open to reform such as fusion voting, especially because it didn't require disbanding existing political parties or trigger complex changes in mechanics of voting. 'The obvious point to make, you know, our politics is pretty broken,' Kristol said by video link. 'We can debate who's responsible for that, but surely we can't really think that the two-party system is working well.' Kristol was a Republican for 40 years before declaring himself an independent in 2021. He served in the administrations of Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In 2016, he opposed the nomination of Donald Trump, who was elected to a first term as president. Kristol said he voted for Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024. No longer do the Republican and Democratic parties serve as big-tent organizations skilled at assimilating different groups of people and capable of compromising on finer points of public policy, Kristol said. The two-party system used to work, he said, but dogmatism and authoritarianism has dominated the major parties for the past decade or so. 'It is striking how rigid the parties have become. The gulf between them has widened and the ability and desire to work across the aisle has lessened,' Kristol said. Oscar Pocasangre, senior data analyst in the electoral reform section of the New America think tank, said a shortcoming of elective politics was the insufficient number of competitive races. For example, he said, only 8% of the 2024 races for Congress were decided by less than 5 percentage points. In the four Kansas congressional races, winners secured a seat in the U.S. House with double-digit margins. He said many areas of the United States essentially had one-party rule, but introduction of fusion voting could produce greater competition if minor parties decided to form coalitions to support independent candidates. 'Electoral competition is a feature of elections that makes a lot of the good things about democracy work,' he said. 'Electoral competition is how you get accountability. It's how you get disciplined politicians. Without electoral competition elections lose a lot of their meaning. You get to vote, but not much of a choice.' Jess Wisneski, co-chair of the New York Working Families Party dedicated to labor and community issues, said the history of fusion voting in New York state showed voters appreciated the chance to maintain allegiance to an alternative party while casting votes for candidates capable of prevailing. In New York's 1994 gubernatorial contest, for example, the Republican and Conservative parties aligned with GOP state Sen. George Pataki, while the Democrat and Liberal parties fused for then-Gov. Mario Cuomo. Cuomo won the major-party competition with 2.27 million Democratic votes to Pataki's 2.15 million Republican votes. But Pataki upset Cuomo, the 12-year incumbent, by adding 328,000 Conservative Party votes to Cuomo's 92,000 votes from the Liberal Party.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kansans intrigued by potential of bringing voters together with multi-party candidate nominations
Former Kansas House Majority Leader Don Hineman said implementing fusion voting in Kansas, which allows more than one political party to nominate a candidate, would help broaden the perspective of a Republican Party that has grown increasingly intolerant of diverse views. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — Former Kansas House Majority Leader Don Hineman finds himself searching for a remedy to the Republican Party's movement away from a framework that anchored GOP role models Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Dole and Nancy Kassebaum. 'It feels like the center of Kansas and also the American political spectrum has been abandoned by the Republican Party,' said Hineman, who left his southwest Kansas seat in the House six years ago. 'Those of us, like me … who identify as Eisenhower, Dole and Kassebaum Republicans, feel as if they were abandoned as well. Where did my party go? What do I do now?' He said one option for drawing the GOP closer to the center would be the return in Kansas to fusion voting, once a common feature of American electoral systems. It would allow more than one political party to nominate the same candidate. If three parties nominated the same individual, the candidate's name would appear on ballots three times in association with each nominating party. This approach to coalition building — used in Kansas until the early 1900s — would determine the winner by combining all votes received by each individual. 'I believe that fusion voting shows us a path forward — a chance at a much brighter future for representative democracy,' Hineman told participants at a fusion voting seminar Thursday at Washburn University in Topeka. He said election of candidates through this method would foster alliances with a more diverse groups of supporters and provide elected politicians greater autonomy to make decisions outside demands of leaders in the dominant Republican or Democratic parties. In Kansas, Saline County District Court Judge Jared Johnson dismissed this week a lawsuit filed in July 2024 by United Kansas, a recognized political party in Kansas, to challenge the state's prohibition on fusion voting. Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a GOP candidate for governor, submitted the motion to dismiss the case based on interpretation of the Kansas Constitution. Schwab said the idea of fusion voting was illegal. Officials with United Kansas plan to appeal the judge's decision to idle the lawsuit. Bill Kristol, editor of the center-right web-based publication The Bulwark and a contributor to CNN and other networks, said he grew up with fusion voting in New York state and was intrigued by how multi-party endorsements could help the electorate find middle ground. He said states should be open to reform such as fusion voting, especially because it didn't require disbanding existing political parties or trigger complex changes in mechanics of voting. 'The obvious point to make, you know, our politics is pretty broken,' Kristol said by video link. 'We can debate who's responsible for that, but surely we can't really think that the two-party system is working well.' Kristol was a Republican for 40 years before declaring himself an independent in 2021. He served in the administrations of Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In 2016, he opposed the nomination of Donald Trump, who was elected to a first term as president. Kristol said he voted for Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024. No longer do the Republican and Democratic parties serve as big-tent organizations skilled at assimilating different groups of people and capable of compromising on finer points of public policy, Kristol said. The two-party system used to work, he said, but dogmatism and authoritarianism has dominated the major parties for the past decade or so. 'It is striking how rigid the parties have become. The gulf between them has widened and the ability and desire to work across the aisle has lessened,' Kristol said. Oscar Pocasangre, senior data analyst in the electoral reform section of the New America think tank, said a shortcoming of elective politics was the insufficient number of competitive races. For example, he said, only 8% of the 2024 races for Congress were decided by less than 5 percentage points. In the four Kansas congressional races, winners secured a seat in the U.S. House with double-digit margins. He said many areas of the United States essentially had one-party rule, but introduction of fusion voting could produce greater competition if minor parties decided to form coalitions to support independent candidates. 'Electoral competition is a feature of elections that makes a lot of the good things about democracy work,' he said. 'Electoral competition is how you get accountability. It's how you get disciplined politicians. Without electoral competition elections lose a lot of their meaning. You get to vote, but not much of a choice.' Jess Wisneski, co-chair of the New York Working Families Party dedicated to labor and community issues, said the history of fusion voting in New York state showed voters appreciated the chance to maintain allegiance to an alternative party while casting votes for candidates capable of prevailing. In New York's 1994 gubernatorial contest, for example, the Republican and Conservative parties aligned with GOP state Sen. George Pataki, while the Democrat and Liberal parties fused for then-Gov. Mario Cuomo. Cuomo won the major-party competition with 2.27 million Democratic votes to Pataki's 2.15 million Republican votes. But Pataki upset Cuomo, the 12-year incumbent, by adding 328,000 Conservative Party votes to Cuomo's 92,000 votes from the Liberal Party.
