Our World — 5 Februrary 2010

Rosanne Skirble | Washington, DC
08 February 2010

MUSIC: "Our World" theme

Straight ahead on Our World: The U.S. space agency pulls the plug on its plan to return humans to the moon; pictures from Pluto reveal dramatic changes in the dwarf planet; and a new web-based English/Creole dictionary for relief workers in quake-ravaged Haiti.

LORI THICKE: "It contains a lot of interesting questions that you might ask someone to ascertain how serious their injuries are.  And it gives a translation of those questions and their possible answers from English into Creole and from Creole back into English."

Machine translators on the ground in Haiti, that and the battle in India over genetically modified food.

Hi!  I'm Rosanne Skirble sitting in for Art Chimes.  Welcome to VOA's science and technology magazine, "Our World."   



Manned Lunar Missions Scrapped

The U.S. space agency's program to put astronauts back on the Moon has been cancelled in the Obama Administration's proposed 2011 federal budget.  In a news conference this week NASA administrator and former astronaut Charles  Bolden said the new budget - which will actually increase by six billion dollars over the next five years - reflects a more sustainable and ambitious path to manned space exploration.

BOLDEN: "We intend to blaze a new trail of discovery and development.  We will facilitate the growth of new commercial industries, and we will expand our understanding of the earth, our solar system and the universe beyond."

In an interview with Our World  this week, the executive editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, Jim Asker, said the plan to scrap the 81-billion dollar moon program not only saves NASA money, but signals a dramatic change in the U.S. manned space program.

ASKER: "NASA is returning to its roots of returning to its roots of being an agency that develops new technologies for space flight and does not try to develop and operate specific systems.  It's really the first time that NASA has sort of thrown its hat over the fence and said, 'We believe that industry and entrepreneur can provide new ways to get to space instead of us designing all the vehicles and putting it out to industry and asking for bids, let's see what their best ideas are." 

What would be the new role for private industry?

ASKER: "Ideally they would like private industry to develop a means to reach lower orbit with cargo and with astronauts.  The immediate need NASA has, of course, is that it's got a very large and capable space station and it needs to keep that resupplied and have astronauts go up and down since the Space Shuttle is retiring.  There is another means to get there.  Russia has its own launch vehicles and spacecraft, but the idea is that U.S. industry would develop its own means to get there."

Is the commercial sector ready for the challenge?

ASKER: "In some ways it certainly is.  The large industrial organizations with names you recognize like Boeing and Lockheed Martin have large rockets that they certainly will look at making them capable of carrying people.  Then there are a number of entrepreneurial outfits that are exploring new cheaper means of getting to space.  And then there is a lot of stuff that people would like to do in terms of funding technology, new kinds of propulsion systems that are cheaper than what we have now.  Ultimately, I think everybody who follows space would like to see the U.S. and indeed the world get to the point where we don't have to use throw away rockets all the time, where we would have vehicles that work more like airplanes where a large portion or the whole thing could be reused."

What's ahead for NASA in the short term.  We've got five shuttle missions, and we also have the International Space Station.  Is that what we see in the short term?

ASKER: "For manned flight that's it for the U.S. There's a lot of unmanned space projects in the works. Mars continues to be of great interest.  There will be some technologies that NASA will work on for manned space flight.  They would like to do things like figure out how to use resources on the moon and eventually mars to create resources for humans to use in their activities there.  There's a lot going on, but for the immediate future it's going to be winding down the space shuttle operations, but the Space Station will keep going on for quite some time."

The President's budget must be approved by Congress.  What opposition do you expect on Capitol Hill?

ASKER: "I've been surprised at how little opposition has been so far.  Perhaps the senators and congressmen are 'reading the tea leaves' [predictions] and seeing what the chances of prevailing against the President are, are more inclined to work with him, frankly than I expected."        

Jim Asker, executive editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine.


Dramatic Changes in Dwarf Planet Pluto
    
Also in space news this week: NASA released the most dramatic images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet, Pluto.  The images taken from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy, spotted, dark-molasses-colored world. Principal investigator Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado says the analysis shows that Pluto has become much redder during the past couple of years.

BUIE: "The ground-based data records most recently published takes us up to the year 2000, and shows that Pluto had a certain reddish color that was constant for 50 years and something happened in those two years before these data were taken and then Pluto's color all of a sudden is significantly redder and this is still a mystery to be worked out."

Buie says the new images – which took four years and 20 computers working continually and simultaneously to process – will help choreograph NASA's New Horizon robotic probe, targeted to fly by Pluto in 2015.


Machine Translator Helps Haitian Relief Effort

Among the rapid responders to the devastating January 12th earthquake in Haiti – which left between as many as 200,000 people dead and 1.5 million homeless – are linguists and computer scientists.  Among them is former Carnegie Mellon University linguist Greg Allen who went to Haiti in 1990s on U.S. army contract.

Allen was fluent in Creole, the language widely spoken in Haiti. His mission on the project, dubbed Diplomat, was to develop an English/Creole speech and text translation system.

ALLEN: "I spent nine months collecting data from different people within the Haitian community.  And then we in-house translated everything that we could for a period of two years."

Computer scientist Robert Frederking with Carnegie Mellon's Language Technology Institute was a lead investigator for Diplomat.

FREDERKING: We built a portable translator that was on a laptop, and we actually sent it down to Haiti. It kind of sat on a shelf for four months and it came back [to the university].  Because it was kind of rare data, I made an effort to preserve it over the years after the project ended.

When Greg Allen, now based in Paris with software giant SAP, watched news of the January 12th earthquake he knew that Carnegie Mellon still had the English/Creole database.

ALLEN: "So I called up Carnegie Mellon, and I said, 'We need to do something. What can we do?'"

On January 21, with Allen's help, Carnegie Mellon made the data public.

ALLEN: "We put out on the Internet site of Carnegie Mellon 13,000 parallel sentences and 35,000 parallel terms."

This rich data set presented an opportunity for Microsoft Research. Their web-based translator service has 23 languages with more added every few months. Product manager Vikrum Dendi, responding to the crisis in Haiti, says his team put an English/Creole translator on the Internet within five days, adding, disaster-specific words and phrases.

DENDI: "So we have taken medical terminology.  We have taken other emergency-type notification and helped translated them into Haitian-Creole and then learned from them. So by doing that what we've been able to do is to deliver a better quality translating those kinds of messages and those kinds of text."

Microsoft regularly updates the translator. Dendi says the more parallel sentences in the system, the more accurate the translation or what he calls a statistical model.

DENDI: "And the system is able to learn from looking at all these sentences."

The Haitian earthquake struck Translators without Borders with an explosion of interest. More than 1,000 Creole speakers from the Haitian Diaspora volunteered their translation services to the Paris-based humanitarian group.  Co-founder Lori Thicke says the non-profit is distributing an English/Creole triage dictionary based on the new data.

THICKE: "It contains a lot of interesting questions that you might ask someone to ascertain how serious their injuries are. And it gives a translation of those questions and their possible answers from English into Creole and from Creole back into English.  For example, 'Where does it hurt? How long have you had this wound?' [It's] that sort of thing."

Thicke says machine translators from Microsoft and more recently Google help volunteers increase their productivity, affording them a rapid first draft that can be later revised.

THICKE: "They are helping us translate documents that might be instructions for building a water purification or for treatment protocols, for educational materials, all really important translations that there might not be a budget for."    
 
And over at Microsoft, Vikrum Dendi adds that his company is working to help integrate as many applications as possible for the translator on mobile devices like the cell phone.



India Debates Genetically Modified Eggplant

The latest battle over genetically modified foods is taking place in India. Researchers have engineered the genes of an eggplant to produce a natural insecticide, which could reduce the amount of bug spray farmers need to apply to the popular vegetable. But opponents say the gene-altered crop has not been adequately tested for its effects on health and the environment.  

VOA's Steve Baragona has more.  

BARAGONA: Indians call the eggplant the "king of vegetables." It's a popular ingredient in many native dishes. But a hungry little caterpillar causes big problems for Indian eggplant farmers.   

The caterpillar, called the fruit and shoot borer, eats holes in the stem of the plant, weakening it and reducing yields. It also munches on the eggplant itself, which is called a brinjal in India. Swapan Datta deputy director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research says consumers won't buy a worm-eaten brinjal.

DATTA: "Instead of a damaged brinjal, if they see a nice-looking brinjal, they buy it. And they're also getting a lot of excessive residues of the pesticides."  

BARAGONA: They're getting pesticides with their eggplant because farmers must spray dozens of times each growing season to keep the fruit and shoot borer off their vegetables.  In addition to the health considerations, these applications cost farmers a lot of money.  But an Indian seed company called Mahyco has developed an eggplant that it says will dramatically reduce the amount of pesticides eggplant farmers spray, and consumers eat. Mahyco's genetically modified eggplant produces a protein called B-t, which kills the caterpillar. B-t is found naturally in a soil bacterium and has been used for decades as an organic insecticide.  Datta's institution was among those reviewing the B-t brinjal for health and environmental safety.

DATTA: "It is absolutely safe. There is no unintended effect, there is nothing indigestible…left, there is no toxicological effect. So the data with the B-t brinjal and non-B-t brinjal, there is no difference."

BARAGONA: But every new genetically modified food has generated controversy, and the B-t brinjal is no exception.

BHARGAVA: "I think it's a disaster."

That's Pushpa Bhargava, one of the pioneers of biotechnology in India. He recommends a different set of tests that should be performed before any genetically modified crop is released.

BHARGAVA: "Only about 10 to 15 percent of these tests [has] been done. And even these have been done by the company applying for permission for open release. And the company's credentials are as bad as could be."

BARAGONA: The company at the heart of this debate is Mahyco's partner: the U.S.-based agribusiness giant Monsanto. Monsanto has a long history of conflicts with green groups over its chemical business, which included such controversial products as Agent Orange and D-D-T. Conflicts have continued as Monsanto has become a leader in crop biotechnology.   Other B-t crops, including cotton and maize produced by Monsanto and other companies have been reviewed, approved and grown widely in the United States, Canada, Australia, and parts of Europe. To date, there have been no reports of serious environmental or health problems.   

But Vandana Shiva, a prominent Indian opponent of crop biotech, is not convinced that something won't come up.

SHIVA: "I think for decades after D-D-T was sprayed you say nothing. Many of these impacts take place much later."   

Whether that criticism swayed him against B-t brinjal – or whether farmers eager to spray fewer pesticides win out – may be evident soon. The environment minister is expected to issue his opinion on February 10.



Balancing Environmental Concerns and Economic Realities on the Farm

Agriculture is the mainstay of economies in the American Midwest. Yet the intensive crop farming practices of the region are detrimental to the environment. And some farmers say measures to prevent or reduce pollution cost them too much money. A South Dakota ecologist thinks there's a better way. He's undertaking a project that promises to put environmental concerns on a par with economic realities. As Johanna Sailor reports, he's trying to prove a farmer can make a living off native prairie grasses.

SAILOR: This is corn and soybean country. So coming across a 260 hectare plot of grass on prime South Dakota farmland is very unusual.

JOHNSON: "I'm sure some are thinking we're nuts. Others think maybe these guys got something, maybe that's a good idea. We'd like to see prairie farms springing up all over eastern South Dakota someday."

SAILOR: Carter Johnson is an ecologist at South Dakota State University, but here at EcoSun Prairie Farms, he's a farmer. This project is designed to prove that growing South Dakota's native plants can be profitable.  

Johnson's plants are as diverse as the revenue opportunities he expects they'll provide. He gently tugs some seeds off the tip of switch-grass. Seeds like these are one income stream. Prairie grass is also selling well as livestock feed. This year, Johnson will add cattle to the landscape to raise grass-fed beef.   

Since the fields here are not plowed, carbon held in the soil is not disturbed and released into the air. Some environmentalists suggest farmers should be paid to store the greenhouse gas in their fields, to offset emissions from industry and cars.   

And if cellulose-based ethanol fuel becomes economically viable, that would also be a market the prairie farm could enter.

JOHNSON: "It's a different way to look at grass than planting it and letting it sit. Let's plant it and put it to work. And make some money off it, while we're also benefiting the environment. Sounds like a win, win deal to me.

Capital investment is much lower here than on a traditional farm, because there's no need for costly equipment like tractors and combines… or the fuel to run them.

As for the environmental benefits: More carbon is held in the ground, runoff from the fields is reduced, and what's grown here can be used for renewable fuels."

SAILOR: Another big plus for Johnson: wetlands are welcome. As he maneuvers his truck through a seasonal wetland of two to three meter tall grass, Johnson stops to point out some newly sprouted prairie cord grass.

JOHNSON: "We should be able to find the buds for next year there.  They're right here. There's one of them right there. See that green bud, and it's sharp, sharp as a razor, so that it won't get grazed off. Here's another one here."

SAILOR: Once dried, this prairie cord grass can be sold as hay. But it's especially valuable to Johnson, because its seeds can be sold to re-plant wetlands. So he can earn money, while restoring an important habitat for birds, insects, plants and other prairie creatures.  

Carter Johnson has devoted much his career to studying wetlands, only to watch them shrink year after year. The loss is due to climate change, but also because farmers – including Johnson's ancestors – drained wetlands to increase the amount of crop land.

JOHNSON: "Some people think I assuaging my guilt from my Norwegian ancestors, that plowed up much of the prairie.  I don't think that's the case.  I'm an ecologist and so I think the whole idea of trying to live off nature and ecosystem services and goods is something we need to be doing, given - especially given the energy situation."

SAILOR: At a typical South Dakota corn and soybean farm, second-generation crop farmer Larry Birgen fires up his combine. He likes the idea of being more environmentally friendly, and not needing costly equipment like this combine.  But before Birgen converts any of his prime crop land, he says he needs to know that prairie farms can make money.

BIRGEN: "If they get to the point and they can show it's economically feasible, I would definitely consider it."

SAILOR: Ecologist Carter Johnson hopes to get to that point in a few years, showing that a prairie grass farm is a money maker, without government subsidies… and inspiring farmers to find creative ways to put environmental stewardship on a par with economic needs.



Eco-Farm.org Fertile Ground for Sustainable Agriculture  

One group that's been closely following the trends in organic agriculture is the Ecological Farming Association, and their home on the Internet – Eco-Farm.org – happens to be our website of the week.

Eco-farm is a non-profit group whose focus is on small-scale sustainable agriculture. Spokeswoman Marcy Coburn says informative blogs and other articles on the website help to promote education and networking.

COBURN: "We have three blogs. We have a genetic engineering blog, which is the Genetic Engineering News Service that then goes out in e-mail, but also gets converted into a blog.  That's posting information that people put out about that subject.  And then we have a farmer blog where we have some guest farmers, who actually write for the farmer blog what they are growing this season or issues that they are having with water or climate change or anything like that."

The third and newest blog is called Eco-farm NextGen and features 'mentor farmers' who dispense advice to, and answer questions from, those new in the field.

COBURN: "I really see a need for that, especially because we get a lot of e-mail communication from people all over the world who are asking questions that we don't necessarily have researchers or staff on hand who can answer those questions. But we definitely have that kind of expertise in our extended cyber-network. So creating a forum for that kind of interaction is really exciting."

In addition to the blogs, news and resource links on the site, Coburn says visitors have access to a full array of speakers and workshops from the recent Eco-Farm annual meeting in California, which included talks and workshops on advances in agricultural techniques, marketing strategies and research.

COBURN: "And that's some amazing content, really high profile people, and it's really inspiring stuff. So that's really great and we encourage any kind of dialogue to happen as a result of listening to those. If people have questions or are inspired again, they can write into blogs and ask questions.  We also link to PowerPoint presentations of some of the hot topic discussions that happen at the conference as well."

And, Coburn suggests checking out the new media options for updated news and postings.

COBURN: "You can go to our website, which is Eco-Farm.org and just click on either the Facebook button or the twitter button or both. Again that address: Eco-Farm.org."

And, that's our program for this week.

 

MUSIC: "Our World" theme



That's our show for this week. We'd like to hear from you. You can email us at ourworld@voanews.com. Or write us at –

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Rob Sivak is our editor. Our technical director is Bob Doughty.  I'm Rosanne Skirble.  Join us online at voanews.com/ourworld or on your radio next week at this same time with Art Chimes as we explore the latest in science and technology on Our World.