Tag Archives: soil science

Getting the dirt on dirt: a podcast interview with soil biogeochemist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe

The podcast People I (Mostly) Admire isn’t technically speaking a science podcast but its host Steven Levitt, University of Chicago economist and co-author of the “Freakonomics” books, features quite a few scientists in his podcast series on the Freakonomics Radio Network.

One of Levitt’s latest episodes, No. 74 Getting our Hands Dirty on May 6, 2022 features,

Soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe could soon hold one of the most important jobs in science. She explains why the ground beneath our feet is one of our greatest resources — and, possibly, one of our deadliest threats.

Episode Transcript

My guest today Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a leading soil scientist and President Biden’s nominee to be the director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. If confirmed, she will manage a $7 billion research budget.

ASEFAW BERHE: If you were to think about where the large global reservoirs of carbon are — beyond fossil fuel deposits, and the ocean — the next largest reservoir of carbon on the earth system is in soil.

Welcome to People I (Mostly) Admire, with Steve Levitt.

I got interested in soil science a few weeks back and I started doing a little bit of reading. And I stumbled onto Asmeret and her amazing story. Born and raised in civil-war ravaged Eritrea, she became a leading scientist and is poised to take over one of the most important jobs in science. I knew right away I needed to have her on this show.

LEVITT: Have you heard of a man named Sadhguru? He’s an Indian guru who’s currently riding a motorcycle across Europe and the Middle East to bring attention to soil degradation.

ASEFAW BERHE: I’ve seen some social media posts, and I also saw recently the interview he did with Trevor Noah.

LEVITT: Believe it or not, the idea for having you on this podcast came because his publicist somehow got in my inbox of my email. At first, I thought it was a joke, but then he was on Trevor Noah and I said, “Whoa, he must be doing something serious, but it’s not very scientific. I better learn something about the science.” And then I found you because you’re the first name that comes up if you look into soil science.

Here’s a selection of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) episodes (from a May 9, 2022 announcement received via email about the People I [Mostly] Admire podcast series),

While People I (Mostly) Admire hosts guests from all walks of life, Levitt’s conversations with scientists have been some of the most illuminating episodes. If you’re not familiar with the show, here’s a short guide to some of the STEM episodes:

  • We Can Play God Now (Ep. 67, 3/18/22) Gene-editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna worries that humanity might not be ready for the technology she helped develop.
  • The Professor Who Said “No” to Tenure (Ep. 66, 3/11/22) Columbia astrophysicist David Helfand is an academic who does things his own way — from turning down job security to helping found a radically unconventional university.
  • A Rockstar Chemist and Her Cancer-Attacking “Lawn Mower” (Ep. 65, 3/4/22) Stanford professor Carolyn Bertozzi’s imaginative ideas for treating disease have led to ten start-ups. She talks with Steve about the new generation of immune therapy she’s created, and why she might rather be a musician.
  • Cassandra Quave Thinks the Way Antibiotics Are Developed Might Kill Us (Ep. 60, 1/28/22) By mid-century, 10 million people a year are projected to die from untreatable infections. Can Cassandra, an ethnobotanist at Emory University convince Steve that herbs and ancient healing are key to our medical future?
  • Why Aren’t All Drugs Legal? (Ep. 28, Replay 1/14/22) The Columbia neuroscientist and psychology professor Carl Hart believes that recreational drug use, even heroin, methamphetamines, and cocaine, is an inalienable right. Can he convince Steve?
  • Max Tegmark on Why Superhuman Artificial Intelligence Won’t be Our Slave (Part 2) (Ep. 52, 11/19/21) He’s an M.I.T. cosmologist, physicist, and machine-learning expert, and once upon a time, almost an economist. Max and Steve continue their conversation about the existential threats facing humanity, and what Max is doing to mitigate our risk. The co-founder of the Future of Life Institute thinks that artificial intelligence can be the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity — if we don’t screw it up.
  • Max Tegmark on Why Treating Humanity Like a Child Will Save Us All (Ep. 51, 11/5/21) How likely is it that this conversation is happening in more than one universe? Should we worry more about Covid or about nuclear war? Is economics a form of “intellectual prostitution?” Steve discusses these questions, and more, with Max, an M.I.T cosmologist, physicist, and machine-learning expert — who was once almost an economist. He also tells Steve why we should be optimistic about the future of humanity (assuming we move Earth to a larger orbit before the sun evaporates our oceans).
  • Mathematician Sarah Hart on Why Numbers are Music to Our Ears (Ep. 49, 10/29/21) Playing notes on her piano, she demonstrates for Steve why whole numbers sound pleasing, why octaves are mathematically imperfect, and how math underlies musical composition. Sarah, a professor at the University of London and Gresham College, also talks with Steve about the gender gap in mathematics and why being interested in everything can be a problem.

While I’m at it, here’s a couple of my postings on soil,

There’s a lot more should you choose to search ‘soil’.

Getting back to Freakonomics, it’s been quite a while since I’ve come across that term. You can find out more about the community from the freakonomics.com About page,

Freakonomics began as a book, which led to a blog, a documentary film, more books, a pair of pants, and in 2010, a podcast called Freakonomics Radio. Hosted by Stephen J. Dubner,it became and remains one of the most popular podcasts in the world, with a reputation for storytelling that is both rigorous and entertaining. Its archive of more than 400 episodes is available, for free, on any podcast app, and the show airs weekly on NPR stations. Freakonomics Radio is now the flagship show of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which includes the podcasts No Stupid Questions (est. 2020), People I (Mostly) Admire (2020), Freakonomics, M.D. (2021), and a variety of special series. To keep up with everything, you can get our newsletter, read the FAQs, or send inquiries to radio@freakonomics.com.

Oddly, I too have heard from Sadhguru (mentioned early in the interview with Asmeret Asefaw Berhe).

Cyborg soil?

Edith Hammer, lecturer (Biology) at Lund University (Sweden) has written a July 22, 2021 essay for The Conversation (h/t July 23, 2021 news item on phys.org) that has everything.: mystery, cyborgs, unexpected denizens, and a phenomenon explored for the first time (Note: Links have been removed),

Dig a teaspoon into your nearest clump of soil, and what you’ll emerge with will contain more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. We know this from lab studies that analyse samples of earth scooped from the microbial wild to determine which forms of microscopic life exist in the world beneath our feet.

The problem is, such studies can’t actually tell us how this subterranean kingdom of fungi, flagellates and amoebae operates in the ground. Because they entail the removal of soil from its environment, these studies destroy the delicate structures of mud, water and air in which the soil microbes reside.

This prompted my lab to develop a way to spy on these underground workers, who are indispensable in their role as organic matter recycling agents, without disturbing their micro-habitats.

Our study revealed the dark, dank cities in which soil microbes reside [emphasis mine]. We found labyrinths of tiny highways, skyscrapers, bridges and rivers which are navigated by microorganisms to find food, or to avoid becoming someone’s next meal. This new window into what’s happening underground could help us better appreciate and preserve Earth’s increasingly damaged soils.

Here’s how the soil scientists probed the secrets buried in soil (Note: A link has been removed),

In our study, we developed a new kind of “cyborg soil”, which is half natural and half artificial. It consists of microengineered chips that we either buried in the wild, or surrounded with soil in the lab for enough time for the microbial cities to emerge within the mud.

The chips literally act like windows to the underground. A transparent patch in the otherwise opaque soil, the chip is cut to mimic the pore structures of actual soil, which are often strange and counter-intuitive at the scale that microbes experience them.

Different physical laws become dominant at the micro scale compared to what we’re acquainted to in our macro world. Water clings to surfaces, and resting bacteria get pushed around by the movement of water molecules. Air bubbles form insurmountable barriers for many microorganisms, due to the surface tension of the water around them.

Here’s some of the what they found,

When we excavated our first chips, we were met with the full variety of single-celled organisms, nematodes, tiny arthropods and species of bacteria that exist in our soils. Fungal hyphae, which burrow like plant roots underground, had quickly grown into the depths of our cyborg soil pores, creating a direct living connection between the real soil and our chips.

This meant we could study a phenomenon known only from lab studies: the “fungal highways” along which bacteria “hitchhike” to disperse through soil. Bacteria usually disperse through water, so by making some of our chips air-filled we could watch how bacteria smuggle themselves into new pores by following the groping arms of fungal hyphae.

Unexpectedly, we also found a high number of protists – enigmatic single-celled organisms which are neither animal, plant or fungus – in the spaces around hyphae. Clearly they too hitch a ride on the fungal highway – a so-far completely unexplored phenomenon.

The essay has a number of embedded videos and images illustrating a fascinating world in a ‘teaspoon of soil’.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the study by the researchers at Lund University,

Microfluidic chips provide visual access to in situ soil ecology by Paola Micaela Mafla-Endara, Carlos Arellano-Caicedo, Kristin Aleklett, Milda Pucetaite, Pelle Ohlsson & Edith C. Hammer. Communications Biology volume 4, Article number: 889 (2021) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02379-5 Published: 20 July 2021

This paper is open access.

June 4, 2018 talk in Vancouver (Canada): Genetically-Engineered Food: Facts, Ethical Considerations and World Hunger

ARPICO (Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada) is hosting a talk on the topic of genetically modified food. Here’s more from their May 20, 2018 announcement (received via email),

Our third speaking event of the year has been scheduled for Monday, June 4th, 2018 at the Italian Cultural Centre – Museum & Art Gallery. Marie-Claude Fortin’s talk will discuss food systems derived from biotechnology (often referred to as GMO) and their comparison with traditional farming processes, both technical and ethical. You can read a summary of Marie-Claude Fortin’s lecture as well as her short professional biography at the bottom of this message.

Ahead of the speaking event, ARPICO will be holding its 2018 Annual General Meeting in the same location. We encourage everyone to participate in the AGM, have their say on ARPICO’s matters and possibly volunteer for the Board of Directors.

We look forward to seeing everyone there.

Please register for the event by visiting the EventBrite link or RSVPing to info@arpico.ca.

The evening agenda is as follows:

6:00pm to 6:45pm – Annual General Meeting
7:00 pm – Lecture by Marie-Claude Fortin
~8:00 pm – Q & A Period
Mingling & Refreshments until about 9:45 pm

If you have not yet RSVP’d, please do so on our EventBrite page.

Further details are also available at arpico.ca, our facebook page, and Eventbrite.

Genetically-Engineered Food: Facts, Ethical Considerations and World Hunger

In this lecture we will explore a part of our food system, which has received much press, but which consumers still misunderstand: food derived from biotechnology often referred to as genetically modified organisms. We will be learning about the types of plants and animals which are genetically engineered and part of our everyday food system and the reasons for which they have been transformed genetically. We will be looking at the issue from several different angles. You are encouraged to approach the topic with an open mind, and learn how the technology is being used. We will start by understanding the differences between traditional plant breeding, conventional plant breeding, transgenic technology and genome editing. The latter two processes are considered genetic engineering technologies but all of them constitute a continuum of techniques employed to improve domestic plants and animals. We will then go over the ethical paradigms related to genetically engineered food represented by the European and North American points of view. Finally, we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses associated with genetic engineering as a tool to solve world hunger.

Marie-Claude Fortin is a former Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Associate Editor with Crop Science Society of America, Board Member of the Soil and Water Conservation Society and Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and currently responsible for the shared research infrastructure portfolio at the UBC Vice-President Research & Innovation Office. Her main areas of research expertise are crop and soil sciences with special interests in measuring and modeling crop development and various processes on agricultural land: water and nitrogen fertilizer flow through the soil profile, emissions of greenhouse gases and soil physical properties. Her research shows that sustainable crop management practices result in soil environments, which are conducive to resilient crop production and organic matter buildup, which is the process of storing carbon in soils, a most important process in this era of climate change. For the past 18 years, Marie-Claude has been teaching food systems courses at UBC [University of British Columbia], emphasizing impacts of decisions made at the corporate, national and local levels on the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the food system, including impacts of organic and industrial agriculture and adoption of genetically engineered crops and animals, on farmers and consumers.

WHEN (AGM): Monday, June 4th, 2018 at 6:00pm (doors open at 5:50pm)

WHEN (EVENT): Monday, June 4th, 2018 at 7:00pm (doors open at 6:45pm)

WHERE: Italian Cultural Centre – Museum & Art Gallery – 3075 Slocan St, Vancouver, BC, V5M 3E4

RSVP: Please RSVP at EventBrite (https://gmofoods.eventbrite.ca/) or email info@arpico.ca

Tickets are Needed

Tickets are FREE, but all individuals are requested to obtain “free-admission” tickets on EventBrite site due to limited seating at the venue. Organizers need accurate registration numbers to manage wait lists and prepare name tags.

All ARPICO events are 100% staffed by volunteer organizers and helpers, however, room rental, stationery, and guest refreshments are costs incurred and underwritten by members of ARPICO. Therefore to be fair, all audience participants are asked to donate to the best of their ability at the door or via EventBrite to “help” defray costs of the event.

FAQs

Where can I contact the organizer with any questions? info@arpico.ca

Do I have to bring my printed ticket to the event? No, you do not. Your name will be on our Registration List at the Check-in Desk.

Is my registration/ticket transferrable? If you are unable to attend, another person may use your ticket. Please send us an email at info@arpico.ca of this substitution to correct our audience Registration List and to prepare guest name tags.

Can I update my registration information? Yes. If you have any questions, contact us at info@arpico.ca

I am having trouble using EventBrite and cannot reserve my ticket(s). Can someone at ARPICO help me with my ticket reservation? Of course, simply send your ticket request to us at info@arpico.ca so we help you.

We look forward to seeing you there.
www.arpico.ca

I wonder if they’re going to be discussing AquAdvantage salmon, which was first mentioned here in a Dec. 4, 2015 post (scroll down about 40% of the way), again, in a May 20, 2016 posting (AquAdvantage salmon (genetically modified) approved for consumption in Canada), and, most recently, in a Sept. 13, 2017 posting where I was critiquing a couple of books (scroll down to the ‘Fish’ subtitle). Allegedly the fish were allegedly sold in the Canadian market,

Since the 2016 approval, AquAdvantage salmon, 4.5M tonnes has been sold in Canada according to an Aug. 8, 2017 article by Sima Shakeri for Huffington Post (Note: Links have been removed),

After decades of trying to get approval by in North America, genetically modified Atlantic salmon has been sold to consumers in Canada.

AquaBounty Technologies, an American company that produces the Atlantic salmon, confirmed it had sold 4.5 tonnes of the modified fish on August 4 [2017], the Scientific American reported.

The fish have been engineered with a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon to grow faster than regular salmon and require less food. They take about 18 months to reach market size, which is much quicker than the 30 months or so for conventional salmon.

The Washington Post wrote AquaBounty’s salmon also contains a gene from the ocean pout that makes the salmon produce the growth hormone gene all-year-round.

The company produces the eggs in a facility in P.E.I., which is currently being expanded, and then they’re shipped to Panama where the fish are raised.

Health Canada assessed the AquAdvantage salmon and concluded it “did not pose a greater risk to human health than salmon currently available on the Canadian market,” and that it would have no impact on allergies nor a difference in nutritional value compared to other farmed salmon.

Because of that, the AquAdvantage product is not required to be specially labelled as genetically modified, and is up to the discretion of retailers.

As for gene editing, I don’t follow everything in that area of endeavour but I have (more or less) kept track of CRISPR ((clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat). Just use CRISPR as the search term for the blog search function to find what’s here.

This looks to be a very interesting talk and good for ARPICO for tackling a ‘difficult’ topic. I hope they have a lively, convivial, and open discussion.