"Salty" Rice Plant Boosts Harvests
British scientists are breeding a new generation of rice plants that will be able to grow in soil containing salt water. Their work may enable abandoned farms to become productive once more.
Tim Flowers and Tony Yeo, from Sussex University’s School of Biological Sciences, have spent several years researching how crops, such as rice, could be made to grow in water that has become salty.
The pair have recently begun a three-year programme, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, to establish which genes enable some plants to survive salty conditions. The aim is to breed this capability into crops, starting with rice.
It is estimated that each year more than 10m hectares (公顷) of agricultural land are lost because salt gets into the soil and stunts (妨碍生长) plants. The problem is caused by several factors. In the tropics, mangroves (红树林) that create swamps (沼泽) and traditionally formed barriers to sea water have been cut down. In the Mediterranean, a series of droughts have caused the water table to drop, allowing sea water to seep (渗透) in. In Latin America, irrigation often causes problems when water is evaporated (蒸发) by the heat, leaving salt deposits behind.
Excess salt then enters the plants and prevents them functioning normally. Heavy concentrations of minerals in the plants stop them drawing up the water they need to survive.
To overcome these problems, Flowers and Yeo decided to breed rice plants that take in very little salt and store what they do absorb in cells but do not affect the plants’ growth. They have started to breed these characteristics into a new rice crop, but it will take about eight harvests before the resulting seeds are ready to be considered for commercial use.
Once the characteristics for surviving salty soil are known, Flowers and Yeo will try to breed the appropriate genes into all manners of crops and plants. Land that has been abandoned to nature will then be able to bloom again, providing much needed food in the poorer countries of the world.
The attitude of the author towards the research project is

All this is important because the finagle factor is still at work. For example, in the artificial sweetener controversy, for example, it is (64) that all the studies sponsored by the sugar industry find that the artificial sweetener is unsafe, (65) all the studies sponsored by the diet food industry find nothing wrong with it.

After too long on the Net, even a phone call can be a shock. My boyfriend’s Liverpudlian accent suddenly becomes hard to understand after the clarity of his words on screen; a secretary’s tone seems more rejecting than I’d imagined it would be. Time itself becomes fluid—hours become minutes, and alternately seconds stretch into days. Weekends, once a highlight of my week, are now just two ordinary days.
For the last three years, since I stopped working as a producer for Charlie Rose, I have done much of my work as a tele-commuter (远程交谈者). I submit articles and edit them via E-mail and communicate with colleagues on Internet mailing lists. My boyfriend lives in England, so much of our relationship is computer-mediated.
If I desired, I could stay inside for weeks without wanting anything. I can order food, and manage my money, love and work. In fact, at times I have spent as long as three weeks alone at home, going out only to get mail and buy newspapers and groceries. I watched most of the blizzard (风) of ’96 on TV.
But after a while, life itself begins to feel unreal. I start to feel as though I’ve merged with my machines, taking data in, spitting them back out, just another node (节点) on the Net. Others on line report the same symptoms. We start to strongly dislike the outside forms of socializing. It’s like attending an A.A. meeting in a bar with everyone holding a half-sipped drink. We have become the Net opponents’ worst nightmare.
What first seemed like a luxury, crawling from bed to computer, not worrying about hair, and clothes and face, has become an avoidance, a lack of discipline. And once you start replacing real human contact with cyber-interaction (网上交流), coming back out of the cave can be quite difficult.At times, I turn on the television and just leave it to chatter in the background, something that I’d never done previously. The voices of the programs soothe (安危) me, but then I’m jarred (使感不快) by the commercials. I find myself sucked in by soap operas, or compulsively (强制性地) needing to keep up with the latest news and the weather. "Dateline," "Frontline," "Nightline," CNN, every possible angle of every story over and over and over, even when they are of no possible use to me. Work moves from foreground to background.