Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
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Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
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jeudi 4 septembre 2008
How plants grow under the groundAn intercontinental team of 30 researchers composed of mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists and plant sciences researchers has developed new explanations about how root plants grow and develop. As roots provide the crops we eat with water and nutrients, it is essential to learn how they grow -- laterally. 'Lateral roots, as their name suggests, extend horizontally from the primal root, otherwise referred to as parent root, helping the plant to anchor itself in the soil.' This lateral growth, which improves plant stability from violent winds, is achieved with the help of the plant hormone auxin (from the greek word auxano, to grow). But read more...
You can see above several pictures describing this lateral root plant development. (Credit: Malcolm Bennett and 30 other researchers) Here is the original -- but somewhat difficult to interpret -- caption. "LAX3 expression is induced outside the developing lateral root primordia LAX3pro:GUS expression is illustrated at every stage of lateral root primordia development (denoted by roman numerals)."
This research work involved -- at least -- 31 scientists from various laboratories in Europe, Asia and the U.S. It was led by Malcolm Bennett, Professor of Plant Sciences, and other researchers in his lab and at the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology (CPIB), which is part of the Division of Plant and Crop Sciences at the University of Nottingham, UK. For more information about Bennett's research, take a look at these pages about Root Developmental Biology and Root Systems Biology.
But let's come back to the EUROPA news release to discover the importance of lateral roots. "Lateral roots, as their name suggests, extend horizontally from the primal root, otherwise referred to as parent root, helping the plant to anchor itself in the soil. Their first mission is to pass through several layers of tissue before they can enter the soil. Once they have entered the soil they then branch out sideways looking for nutrients and water to help the plant sustain itself. As they extend through the soil, the roots show a wide variation in the way they grow through the soil to exploit the available resources. Olive trees for example, have been known to extend their roots laterally several meters out from their trunk. Without the roots offering stability and providing nutrients, the plant would die."
So how lateral roots grow? "Lateral root growth is achieved when the plant hormone auxin (from the greek word auxano, to grow) acts as a local inductive signal which re-programmes adjacent cells. Auxin then induces the expression of LAX3, which in turn promotes the induction of cell-wall-remodelling enzymes. This results in increased cell separation, allowing the lateral roots to move out."
Here is one Bennett's comment about this discovery. "In addition to providing new biological insight into lateral root emergence, we have identified a large number of genes that control this process. This is really important because this may enable us to breed crops with improved root architecture in the future."
For additional details, here are some excerpts from a previous Nottingham University news release, "The emerging story of plant roots" (July 15, 2008). "Although less visible than shoots, leaves and flowers, plant roots are critical to our lives. They provide the crops we eat with water, nutrients, a firm anchor and a place to store food. Roots are complex branching organs and show a wide variation in the way they grow through the soil to exploit the available resources. The way that new lateral roots are formed and grow is key to this process. Lateral roots originate deep within the parent root and must emerge through intervening layers of tissues before entering the soil. Despite its importance to the integrity and architecture of the root system, little is known about the regulation of lateral root emergence. This question has fascinated, yet frustrated, scientists since the nineteenth century."
Now, they got some answers, and their research work has been published in Nature Cell Biology under the title "The auxin influx carrier LAX3 promotes lateral root emergence" (Volume 10, Issue 8, Pages 946-954, August 2008). Here is the text of the abstract. "Lateral roots originate deep within the parental root from a small number of founder cells at the periphery of vascular tissues and must emerge through intervening layers of tissues. We describe how the hormone auxin, which originates from the developing lateral root, acts as a local inductive signal which re-programmes adjacent cells. Auxin induces the expression of a previously uncharacterized auxin influx carrier LAX3 in cortical and epidermal cells directly overlaying new primordia. Increased LAX3 activity reinforces the auxin-dependent induction of a selection of cell-wall-remodelling enzymes, which are likely to promote cell separation in advance of developing lateral root primordia."
If you want to learn more about this growth process, here is a link to the full article (PDF format, 9 pages, 2.58 MB). The above illustration has been extracted from some supplementary information to this article (PDF format, 6 pages, 1.60 MB).
Sources: European Research Headlines, August 27, 2008; and various websites
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mercredi 3 septembre 2008
A new method to study origin of lifeU.S. researchers at Penn State University have developed a new computational method to understand how life began on Earth about four billion years ago. According to the scientists, their method 'has the potential to trace the evolutionary histories of proteins all the way back to either cells or viruses, thus settling the debate once and for all over which of these life forms came first.' The method, which is based on the study of an ancient group of proteins called retroelements, produces a tree-like diagram, called a phylogenetic tree. One of the team leaders said that 'it is within our grasp to determine whether viruses evolved from cells or vice-versa.' Fascinating! But read more...
You can see above an example of such a phylogenetic tree -- for the baobab. "The baobab tree represents one of the most ancient species of life on the planet. In our paper, we investigate ancient and highly divergent proteins, called retroelements, whose evolutionary histories hold keys to uncovering the origins of life. Our research demonstrates that phylogenetic profiles generated using the Gestalt Domain Detection Algorithm-Basic Local Alignment Tool (GDDA-BLAST) provide an independent method for estimating the evolutionary histories of retroelements." (Credit: Randen Patterson and Damian van Rossum, Penn State) Here is a link to a larger version of this picture (3,386 x 3,543 pixels, 6.80 MB).
This method has been developed at the Eberly College of Science of Penn State by Randen Patterson, an assistant professor of biology, with the help of Damian van Rossum, another assistant professor, and several other researchers.
Now, let's look at the basis of this new computational method. "The team is focusing on an ancient group of proteins, called retroelements, which comprise approximately 50 percent of the human genome by weight and are a crucial component in a number of diseases, including AIDS. "Retroelements are an ancient and highly diverse class of proteins; therefore, they provide a rigorous benchmark for us to test our approach. We are happy with the results we derived, even though our method is in an early stage," said Patterson. The team plans to make the algorithms that they used in their method available to others as open-source software that is freely available on the Web."
For more information, please read the full Penn State news release. But for more details in plain English, you should read "Way to reveal the genesis of all life devised," an article by Roger Highfield, Science Editor for The Telegraph, UK (September 2, 2008). "Many experts believe that the first kinds of life depended on RNA, a more flexible kind of genetic material than the DNA that today carries genes for most life on Earth. Now an American team proposes that a study be carried out of proteins that viruses and other parasites use to pirate DNA, and convert it into RNA, to reveal details of the kind of RNA genetic machinery that must have been present in the first life, which is estimated to have emerged about four billion years ago. The team at The Pennsylvania State University, Penn State, focuses on proteins such as the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which is used by the Aids virus (written in RNA) to alter the DNA or genetic material of an infected cell to produce more virus particles."
This research work has been published online before print on September 2, 2008 by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as an open access article under the title "Phylogenetic profiles reveal evolutionary relationships within the 'twilight zone' of sequence similarity." Here are two links to the abstract and to the full paper (PDF format, 6 pages, 475 KB).
For your convenience, here is an excerpt from the introduction of this highly technical article. "Here, we show that phylogenetic profiles generated with the Gestalt Domain Detection Algorithm–Basic Local Alignment Tool (GDDA-BLAST) are capable of deriving, ab initio, phylogenetic relationships for highly divergent proteins in a quantifiable and robust manner. Notably, the results from our computational case study of the highly divergent family of retroelements accord with previous estimates of their evolutionary relationships."
When will we know if this new method is successful? Time will tell.
Sources: Penn State University Live News, September 2, 2008; and various websites
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mardi 2 septembre 2008
A robotic tuna for the NavyYou might not know that the bluefin tuna is an ultra-efficient swimmer. But the U.S. Navy knows that this tuna can reach speeds of 50 mph. So it wants to build robotic bluefin tunas for submarine surveillance missions. The first prototypes, designed by Massachusetts engineers, should be available by the end of the year. Of course, there are many other autonomous underwater vehicles (UAVs) already on the market. But there is a twist: a vast majority of them uses propellers. In fact, they are gliders, not swimmers. And RoboTuna 2.0 will be able to travel three times longer than these gliders with the same batteries. But read more...
You can see above the RoboTuna II rib cage. (Credit: MIT) Here is a link to a larger version of this photo.
And you can see above the RoboTuna II new tail. (Credit: MIT) Here is a link to a larger version of this photo. Other photos from MIT are available from this gallery.
The RoboTuna II (a.k.a. as RoboTuna 2.0) project is led at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering by David Barrett, associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the SCOPE Program (Senior Consulting Program for Engineering). He worked with Boston Engineering principal engineer Mike Rufo, who is overseeing the project.
So when will the Navy receive its first robotic tunas? "'We expect to have a working prototype by the end of the year,' said Olin's David Barrett in an interview Thursday. 'We have some talented students working on it and we have a great swimming pool for testing.' Barrett said the plan is to test the device later in a lake at Wellesley College."
A bluefin tuna can reach a speed of 50 mph (or about 80 km/h) How can he do it? "The bluefin's torpedo-shaped body is nearly circular in cross-section, making it a natural choice for engineers to study and build prototypes. "'The bluefin tuna is the fastest of fish,' said a specialist at the Fisheries Service. 'It's a powerful and fast swimmer with great hydrodynamics.' The fish tuck their fins in when they want to accelerate. The Olin-Boston Engineering project's robotic tuna is based on the species' biology and behavior with a spine and vertebrae that produce motion via synthetic muscles. Barrett said the robot's fins and tail produce motion and propulsion."
In an article published on July 25, 2008 by Mass High Tech, Massachusetts, "Engineers build 'RoboTuna' for Navy, Brendan Lynch provided additional details. "RoboTuna is designed to be biomimetic, based on animal biology and behavior, and will sport a spine and vertebrae that triggers a wave of motion by using synthetic muscles made of electro-active polymers that run the length of the robot. The fins and tail turn the robot’s motion into propulsion, according to David Barrett."
And why the Navy wants to get these robotic tunas? "The U.S. Navy wants to incorporate the technology into a superefficient, tuna-mimicking submarine of the future, Barrett said. In the near term, the military wants to use the robots for intelligence gathering. A tuna-based robot would be able to go on longer missions and would be able to hold different payloads, such as cameras and radioactivity sensors, in its modular payload bay."
For more information about this project, here is a link to a two-minute video produced by New England Cable News (NECN), Massachusetts, "Robotuna to be used for military intelligence," which contains an interview with Brendan Lynch. You also might want to read about the story of the first RoboTuna, which started 15 years ago at the MIT.
Sources: W. David Gardner, InformationWeek, August 28, 2008; and various websites
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6:36:50 PM
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lundi 1 septembre 2008
Follow that robot!Three years after the development of robots that act like rats, UC Davis engineers have designed a control system for robots allowing them to pick up on cues that the leader is about to turn, predict where it is going and follow it. This system mimics the human ability to capture signals -- consciously or not -- from drivers on the road or people walking in the streets to predict what they're about to do. As said the team leader, 'robots that are better at following could be easier for people to work with.' With this system, an hospital robot could follow doctors during their rounds. The researchers don't say anything about the availability of their system, but read more...
You can see above a robot following its leader. (Credit: UC Davis) Here is a link to a larger version of this photo. And here is a link to more information and other pictures of the commercially available robot used by the team, the ERSP Scorpion Robot from Evolution Robotics.
The research team was led by Sanjay Joshi, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at UC Davis. For this project, he worked with graduate student Michael Chueh, and undergraduate students William Au Yeung and Calvin Lei.
So how does this control system work? "The robot's camera could identify a target on the lead robot, and the robot's onboard computer could combine the target information with behavioral cue information. Rather than have the lead robot signal the follower directly, the research team sent 'behavioral cues' to the follower via wireless link. Effectively, the cues told the robot, 'the leader might be about to turn right' or 'might be about to turn left.' To develop a decision on how to move, the follower robot was programmed to take into account the lead robot's behavioral cues and the follower's prediction of the lead robot's movement, based on the leader's current speed and direction. Robots that incorporated behavioral information into their decisions performed much better at following the leader around corners than others, the researchers found."
An article from PhysOrg.com, "Robots Detect Behavioral Cues to Follow Humans," gives some additional details. Here is a quote from what Joshi said to PhysOrg.com. "As humans, we constantly incorporate other peoples' current actions as clues (cues) as to what they may do in the future. For instance, we have a 'sixth sense' on the highway to know that a certain car will swerve into our lane soon, based on the driver's current driving patterns. Then, we may become more defensive in our own driving. In our work, we wanted to begin the process of allowing robots to use behavioral cues (of humans or other robots), to make the robot's mission more reliable and accurate. In social work environments populated by numerous people and robots, these types of cues should be abundant."
This research work has been published in the August 2008 issue of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics under the name "Following Controller for Autonomous Mobile Robots Using Behavioral Cues" (Volume 55, Number 8, Pages 3124-3132).
Here is the beginning of the abstract. "This paper proposes an autonomous-robot following controller that can integrate information provided from behavioral cues of the leader to increase the reliability and the performance of following. The controller continuously estimates the future predicted position of the leader as it moves, and then directs the follower robot to this position. A Kalman filter is employed for an estimation that uses vision-based measurements of leader position, a dynamic model of the leader, and a behavioral-cue model of the leader. The behavioral-cue model serves to either tune the dynamic model and/or create pseudomeasurements to further help the Kalman filter estimate the leader's future position. Once the leader's future position is estimated, a trajectory planner plans a path to the future position, and a motor controller implements the required control signals to the robot wheels."
Sources: UC Davis News, August 28, 2008; and various websites
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dimanche 31 août 2008
Eco-friendly explosives?Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have added 'green' solvents to an explosive called TATB (1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene). As a result, these explosives may soon get a little greener and a little more precise. As said the project's principal investigator, 'Improving crystal quality and purity leads to explosive materials that are safer (less likely to react violently) when subjected to mechanical impact or heat.' These explosives are used by the U.S. Department of Energy, but also by its Department of Defense and the mining industry. But read more...
You can see above some of the molecules added to the TATB explosive. "Fluoride ionic liquid as a novel super-efficient solvent can lead to high-quality single crystals of technologically important materials. The molecules in red, white, blue and gray are the explosive, TATB. The green balls (fluoride anions) and the gray and blue sticks (cations), act as the solvent. The rocks in the background are TATB crystals." (Credit:LLNL) Here is a link to a larger version of this figure.
This project, supported under the DoE's Transformational Materials Initiative (TMI), was performed at LLNL's High Explosives Application Facility (HEAF) by an interdisciplinary team of researchers belonging to the CMELS Directorate (Chemistry, Materials, Earth and Life Sciences). Some of the researchers involved are Larry Fried, the project's principal investigator, Amitesh Maiti and Phil Pagoria.
Now, let's look at modern explosives. "Most explosives belong to a general class of materials called molecular crystals, which have become important building blocks in a number of other applications ranging from drugs, pigments, agrochemicals, dyes and optoelectronics. Many of these materials, including TATB, are bound together by a strong network of hydrogen-bonds. This extended network often makes these materials nearly insoluble in common organic solvents, leading to poor quality and limited size crystals, which in turn hinders progress in many technological applications."
So the research team looked "for a suitable alternative, which happened to be ionic liquids -- a special type of molten salt that becomes liquid under the boiling point of water (100 degrees Celsius)." However, there is an almost infinite number of solutions to choose from. "To narrow the choices down, Amitesh Maiti used state-of-the-art quantum mechanical simulations to identify a special class of ionic liquids containing fluoride anions that are highly effective in dissolving hydrogen-bonded materials such as TATB."
The team then tested successfully these solvents. But what could be possible applications for these solvents -- besides explosives? "The solvents and the dissolution process developed by the TMI team have applications in other fields as well, such as the production of polymers (plastics) or molecular solids (pharmaceuticals, paints, propellants, explosives). For instance, the team found that fluoride ionic liquids are highly effective in dissolving cellulose (plant fiber), a versatile bio-renewable polymeric material with many applications."
This research work has been published in the Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics under the name "Solvent screening for a hard-to-dissolve molecular crystal" (Volume 10, Issue 33, Pages 5050-5056). Here is the beginning of the abstract. "Materials with a high-degree of inter- and intra-molecular hydrogen bonding generally have limited solubility in conventional organic solvents. This presents a problem for the dissolution, manipulation and purification of these materials. Using a state-of-the-art density-functional-theory based quantum chemical solvation model we systematically evaluated solvents for a known hydrogen-bonded molecular crystal. This, coupled with direct solubility measurements, uncovered a class of ionic liquids involving fluoride anions that possess more than two orders of magnitude higher solvation power as compared with the best conventional solvents."
And here is a link to the HTML version of this paper, with an excerpt from the conclusions. "Possible chemical modifications notwithstanding, the ultimate goal of our project was to generate high-quality crystals from the solution. More specifically, the aim was to achieve large defect-free crystallites, which was expected to lead to a better-formulated material for energetic applications. [We have compared] scanning electron micrograph (SEM) images of commercially available TATB with our new material re-crystallized from an IL solution. The superior quality of the newly re-crystallized TATB is clearly evident.
Sources: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory news release, August 28, 2008; and various websites
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samedi 30 août 2008
Can computers sort data like humans?According to U.S. researchers, it is possible to train computers to discover trends and order in large datasets like we do since our childhood. The new algorithm, which was developed at the MIT, may impact the field of artificial intelligence. This model can help computers recognize patterns like we do. 'Instead of looking for a particular kind of structure, we came up with a broader algorithm that is able to look for all of these structures and weigh them against each other,' said one of the scientists. Besides helping scientists to analyze large amounts of data, this algorithm could also be used to discover how the human brain finds patterns. But read more...
You can see on the left two examples of data structures automatically discovered by computers. On the top, you can see structures learned from biological features, while on the bottom are represented structures learned from Euclidean distances between faces represented as pixel vectors. (Credit: Kemp and Tenenbaum).
The computer algorithm was developed at MIT by Charles Kemp, now an assistant professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, along with Joshua Tenenbaum, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT where he's in charge of the Computational Cognitive Science Group.
But how does this model work? "The model considers a range of possible data structures, such as trees, linear orders, rings, dominance hierarchies, clusters, etc. It finds the best-fitting structure of each type for a given data set and then picks the type of structure that best represents the data."
The MIT news release adds that this is what we're doing everyday -- and often unconsciously. "Several scientific milestones have resulted from the human skill of finding patterns in data -- for example, the development of the periodic table of the chemical elements or the organization of biological species into a tree-structured system of classification. Children exhibit this data organization skill at a young age, when they learn that social networks can be organized into cliques, and that words can fit into overlapping categories (for example, dog, mammal, animal)."
This research work has been published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the name "The discovery of structural form" (Volume 105, Issue 31, Pages 10687-10692, August 5, 2008).
Here is the beginning of the abstract. "Algorithms for finding structure in data have become increasingly important both as tools for scientific data analysis and as models of human learning, yet they suffer from a critical limitation. Scientists discover qualitatively new forms of structure in observed data: For instance, Linnaeus recognized the hierarchical organization of biological species, and Mendeleev recognized the periodic structure of the chemical elements. Analogous insights play a pivotal role in cognitive development: Children discover that object category labels can be organized into hierarchies, friendship networks are organized into cliques, and comparative relations (e.g., 'bigger than' or 'better than') respect a transitive order."
Here is an additional quote. "Standard algorithms, however, can only learn structures of a single form that must be specified in advance: For instance, algorithms for hierarchical clustering create tree structures, whereas algorithms for dimensionality-reduction create low-dimensional spaces. Here, we present a computational model that learns structures of many different forms and that discovers which form is best for a given dataset. The model makes probabilistic inferences over a space of graph grammars representing trees, linear orders, multidimensional spaces, rings, dominance hierarchies, cliques, and other forms and successfully discovers the underlying structure of a variety of physical, biological, and social domains. Our approach brings structure learning methods closer to human abilities and may lead to a deeper computational understanding of cognitive development."
This technical paper has been published as a "open access article." You can read it here or there (PDF format, 6 pages, 477 KB). The illustrations above have been extracted from this article.
In the same issue of PNAS, you'll find an article by Keith Holyoak, professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA and responsible of the Reasoning Lab. His paper, "Induction as model selection," is a commentary about the Kemp and Tenenbaum article.
Here is an excerpt. "All intelligent systems, whether children, scientists, or futuristic robots, require the capacity for induction, broadly defined to encompass all inferential processes that expand knowledge in the face of uncertainty. Any finite set of data is consistent with an infinite number of inductive hypotheses. The apparent accuracy of many everyday inferences therefore suggests that humans have, as the philosopher Charles Peirce put it, 'special aptitudes for guessing right.' How can people, often restricted to sparse and noisy data, achieve some significant degree of success in discerning the underlying regularities in the world? The answer seems to require specifying inductive constraints. The report by Kemp and Tenenbaum in this issue of PNAS represents an important advance in understanding the constraints that guide successful induction across a broad set of domains."
If you want to learn more, here is a link to the full paper (PDF paper, 2 pages, 246 KB).
Sources: Anne Trafton, MIT News Office, August 25, 2008; and various websites
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vendredi 29 août 2008
Israeli caviar coming to supermarkets?Even if you don't often buy real caviar because of its high price, you know that the worldwide production of this gourmet treat has been drastically reduced in recent years because of sturgeon populations decline in the Caspian Sea. Now, Israeli researchers might help caviar lovers. They've started by importing fertilized sturgeon eggs eight years ago. According to the scientists, 'it takes eight to fifteen years for the female sturgeon to reach puberty and start producing eggs, while male sturgeon reach puberty after four or five years.' And fisheries need to wait for the first four years because it's impossible to tell the gender of the fish before this age. After the gender has been determined -- by endoscopy -- male sturgeons are sold on the fish market while females are fed until they can deliver up to $3,000 in caviar. But read more...
You can see above one of these big sturgeons at the Kibbutz Dan Fishery. (Credit: Avshalom Hurvitz) Here is a link to a larger version of this photo. Here are are additional links to Kibbutz Dan fish farms in Israel (Galilee Caviar).
The research team was led by Professor Berta Levavi-Sivan of the Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences. She worked with Dr. Avshalom Hurvitz, a biologist at Dan Fish Farms, and other colleagues in the Department of Animal Sciences.
Now, let's look at how much money a single fish can generate. "The average female sturgeon can produce US$3,000 worth of caviar. This is proving to be big business for Kibbutz Dan in the north of Israel, where 40,000 of the sturgeon are now being reared in outdoor pools. Managing director of 'Caviar Galilee' in Kibbutz Dan, Yigal Ben-Tzvi, estimates that by 2010, the company's annual revenues will reach US$7.3 million." Of course, the researchers would like to "speed up the puberty process of the female sturgeon in order to reduce the time it takes to produce the caviar."
But another issue remains: is sturgeon kosher? "Sturgeon -- and hence caviar -- is not generally considered to be kosher, due to the fish's apparent lack of scales. Kosher fish must have both fins and scales in order to be deemed kosher. However, Prof. Levavi-Sivan, who has undertaken similar fish-rearing projects in Uganda and the Palestinian Authority, suggests otherwise. 'If you ask me, it's kosher! I can even prove it has scales,' she says, insisting that the sturgeon does in fact have tiny scales that can be viewed with a stereoscope."
You also should read one section of a September 2005 Israel High-Tech & Investment Report, "Israeli Fish Farm succeeds in Producing Caviar." Apparently, the Dan Fish Farms were already able to produce caviar at this time. "Galilee Caviar, a subsidiary of Dan Fish Farms in Kibbutz Dan in the Upper Galilee, Israel, is producing caviar from sturgeon roe. The first 20 kg of caviar produced by Galilee Caviar was sent to several leading chefs in Europe, who proclaimed the Israeli-made caviar was of top quality. Plans are now afoot to produce 100 kg of caviar by the end of this year, and during the first stage, to produce 4000 kg of caviar a year, to be sold at $500 per kg, expecting annual revenues to reach $2m."
For more technical information about this project, the research team has recently published an article in the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation under the name "Cloning of Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor I and their expression in male and female fish during the first period of growth" (Volume 31, Number 3, Pages 201-210, March 2008). Here is a link to the abstract.
Finally, a website named Palace of Fine Foods, possibly located in Scottsdale, Arizona, says in Farming the Future that it's proud to announce a relationship with Dan Fish farms in Israel (Galilee Caviar). "We feel they produce the finest Russian Osetra our planet has to offer." You can even buy it here. Personally, I'll skip it. Two varieties are for sale, Plaza Osetra Gold Israel, for $20, and Plaza Osetra Israel, for $10. But how much caviar will you get for this price? "0.00 lbs," says the site, which adds that it has only "1000 item(s) available." The site also says that $10.00 are equivalent to € 8.70. This is a sign that this website has not been updated for a while. Today, $10.00 are equivalent to € 6.80.
So if you want to buy Israeli caviar from this site, you have been warned: do it at your own risk.
Sources: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem news release, August 28, 2008; and various websites
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Roland Piquepaille.
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