Ainsley Broussard's List: NATURAL PHENOM

• Ancient wheat plague threatens world crops anew
• By Kerry Sheridan (AFP) – 1 day ago
• Diseases that ravage wheat fields are as old as time itself. The ancient Romans even had a legend to explain the terrible plagues.
• According to the myth, a mischievous young boy tied a flaming wheat straw to a fox's tail, torturing the animal. This single act angered the Roman god Robigus so much that he unleashed a rust-colored plague on the fields that turned all the crops to black.
• "Stem rust, when it goes epidemic, destroys a crop," said Ronnie Coffman, a leading expert on wheat disease and chair of the department of plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University
• "There is nothing left but black stems, zero grain. It is just an absolute devastation."
• The last major epidemic of the fungal disease broke out in 1953 but was quelled with the introduction of a resistant strain of plants in the 1970s, an initiative spearheaded by the late Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Peace Prize winner widely known as the father of the Green Revolution.
• In 1998, a new wave of the stem rust fungus, Ug99, turned up in Uganda, overcoming crops that were once resistant and wielding the potential to kill as much as 90 percent of the world's wheat.
• The disease is now widespread in eastern Africa and threatens to move deep into the Middle East and Asia, where it could wipe out farms, cause rising bread prices and unleash fresh political and economic unrest, experts say.
• Already, the strain has shown up in Iran and in Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland that has plunged into political turmoil in the past five months amid deadly fighting over the future of the country.
• Hikes in food prices have also helped stoke a series of uprisings across the Arab world, Mexico, Haiti and beyond.
• Whipping winds can transport spores as many as 100 miles (160 kilometers) per day, raising concerns among scientists about where the epidemic could turn up next.
• "From Yemen, the wind currents are such that it could be carried to almost any part of the world -- winds blow into south Asia, they blow into central Asia, they blow into Europe even," Coffman told AFP.
• From South Africa, winds could send the plague to the southern cone of Latin America or to Australia, both areas that grow tremendous amounts of wheat.
• Wheat makes up a fifth of the world's food and is second only to rice in the diets of people in developing countries.
• Kenya is one country already grappling with a crisis in wheat production, as small farmers face a loss of as much as 70 percent of their yield, according to Peter Njau, an expert at the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute.
• Large-scale farmers who can afford chemicals to kill the fungus still face rising costs of production, as much as 40 percent higher than in normal years, Njau said in an interview.
• The price of a bag of wheat has risen by about a third
• Kenya is working with experts at Cornell University and in Mexico to deliver new strains that may be able to resist the latest wave of stem rust.
• Experts from around the world are heading to Minnesota next week to share their latest research, as part of an annual meeting beginning June 13 by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative project that was launched in 2005.
• But funding remains a key obstacle, and Singh said world governments must now take steps to replace their wheat crops.

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• Heat burst sends temperature in Wichita soaring to 102 – in the middle of the night
• A heat burst shortly after midnight sent the temperature skyrocketing in Wichita early today, weather officials say.
• 9 June, 2011
• “We went from 85 to 102 in 20 minutes,” said Stephanie Dunten, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wichita.
• The surge in temperatures began at 12:22 a.m. when a pocket of air in the upper atmosphere collapsed to the surface, Dunten said
• That sent winds of more than 50 miles an hour through portions of the city as the air hit the ground and spread out.
• In a heat burst, rain falling from higher elevations cools air beneath it as it evaporates. The cooler air then descends rapidly to the surface, and as the air falls it is compressed and warms dramatically.
• Even though the heat burst occurred after midnight, 102 won’t be today’s high temperature.

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• Fungus outbreak hits Joplin tornado survivors
• June 10, 2011
• As if Joplin residents didn't have enough problems in the wake of last month's tornado that destroyed large segments of the town, a physician in the Missouri community says that some of the survivors are confronting a potentially lethal fungus infection
• At least nine survivors of the tornado have contracted the infections, and a third of them have died -- although it is not clear if the fungus is the cause of death
• The fungal infection in question is commonly called zygomycosis, although the name has formally changed to mucormycosis.
• It is caused by several different fungi that are commonly found in soil and decaying vegetation.
• The fungus typically invades the sinuses, brain and lungs and generally kills about half its victims.
• Those at highest risk are people with weakened immune systems.
• It can produce a variety of symptoms, depending on where the initial infection occurs. Treatment involves surgery to remove tissue that has been killed by the fungus and antifungal medications given intravenously.
• Joplin victims have typically suffered from skin infections because the high winds embedded soil and other debris under the skin, allowing the infections to take root.
• The exact number of victims is unclear, but Schmidt said he knows of at least nine cases.
• Three or four of them have died, he said. "It's difficult to say if it [the fungus] killed them, but it was definitely a contributing factor," he told the News-Leader.
• Patients with the infection have generally appeared at hospitals with visible fungus growing in wounds or on the skin.
• In some cases, Schmidt said, it appears that wounds were not thoroughly cleaned during the massive rescue effort that followed the May 22 tornado

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