The Scientist, our trade publication partner for the daily newsletter at the convention, has extended their editorial submission deadline to April 30th. To submit newsworthy content, go to www.the-scientist.com/bio/index/ . Submit something today!  

A growing chorus of media reports have commented on recent dramatic rises in food prices across the world: Food Prices Rising Across the World -- CNN.com Rising Grain Prices Panic Developing World -- Washington Post United Nations Says Millions At Risk From Soaring Food Prices -- Bloomberg Nearly…

Last week, Britain’s Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) launched a series of studies of the indirect land-use impacts of biofuels, following a lecture by Princeton’s Tim Searchinger, lead author of “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change”…

Dear Colleagues: I have spent a lot of time the last few weeks trying to think through the indirect land use change (ILUC) issue. I have divided my thoughts into two questions that I am asking myself: 1) are we in fact currently able to estimate these changes with any degree of confidence?, and 2)…

The debate over “carbon debt” created by changes in land use has recently expanded to include the issue of competition between food and fuel and its effect on developing countries. David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, one of the lead authors of the "Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon…

Interested in alternative energy sources? BIO's World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing, on April 27-30 in Chicago, IL, is the forum where experts from around the globe come together to discuss this topic, with major themes around sustainability and climate change.  But let's…

Michigan State University Professor of Chemical Engineering Bruce Dale recently sent a letter to colleagues interpreting the analyses by Searchinger et al. and Fargione et al. in Science. In the letter, Dale says, “The Searchinger and Fargione argument at its root is this: corn (and perhaps…

Recently two editorials were written by the NY Times and Washington Post concerning biofuels in which the recent Science papers were referred to. According to the NY Times, "The studies' authors say that some ethanol sources wood wastes, or grasses planted on previously degraded land -- could…

Much of the media coverage of the recent Science Magazine studies made it clear that many hadn't actually read the studies before they reported on them. Some interpreted the studies as condemning corn ethanol production now, not as the worst case scenario of what could happen in the future. …

The full implications of the German Marshall Fund and Nature Conservancy articles in Science and the agenda and arguments of environmental and conservation advocates are coming more into focus. Consider comments posted by Nathanael Greene of the Natural Resources Defense Council on his Switchboard:…