Chicken causes power outage at Maui airport

WAILUKU >> A power outage at an airport on Maui was caused by a chicken.

That’s right. A chicken.

The chicken got into a Maui Electric Co. transformer in the rental car area at Kahului Airport on Tuesday afternoon. It caused a power outage that began at 2:07 p.m. that left some passengers having to disembark their planes the old-fashioned way — by mobile stairway.

The airport tower and air traffic was not affected, according to The Maui News.

The chicken got into a Maui Electric Co. transformer in the rental car area at Kahului Airport, Maui Electric company spokeswoman Kaui Awai-Dickson said. Power was restored about a half-hour later. The outage affected the airport and nearby businesses, including the rental car companies, a hotel and department store.

After about a half hour, customers were restored with power with the exception of the rental car companies located just outside the airport. All power was restored at 3:25 p.m.

During the outage, security screenings were performed manually and some electronic doors had to be manned by Transportation Security Administration officials, said Maui District airport manager Marvin Moniz.

He said the outage caused some flight delays of no more than 15 minutes.

Chicken causes power outage at Maui airport – Hawaii News – Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Feds to air-drop toxic mice onto Guam jungles

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam » Dead mice laced with painkillers are about to rain down on Guam’s jungle canopy. They are scientists’ prescription for a headache that has caused the tiny U.S. territory misery for more than 60 years: the brown tree snake.

Most of Guam’s native bird species are extinct because of the snake, which reached the island’s thick jungles by hitching rides from the South Pacific on U.S. military ships shortly after World War II. There may be 2 million of the reptiles on Guam now, decimating wildlife, biting residents and even knocking out electricity by slithering onto power lines.

More than 3,000 miles away, Hawaii environmental officials have long feared a similar invasion — which in their case likely would be a “snakes on a plane” scenario. That would cost the state many vulnerable species and billions of dollars, but the risk will fall if Guam’s air-drop strategy succeeds.

“We are taking this to a new phase,” said Daniel Vice, assistant state director of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services in Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific Islands. “There really is no other place in the world with a snake problem like Guam.”

Brown tree snakes are generally a few feet long but can grow to be more than 10 feet in length. Most of Guam’s native birds were defenseless against the nocturnal, tree-based predators, and within a few decades of the reptile’s arrival, nearly all of them were wiped out.

The snakes can also climb power poles and wires, causing blackouts, or slither into homes and bite people, including babies; they use venom on their prey but it is not lethal to humans.

The infestation and the toll it has taken on native wildlife have tarnished Guam’s image as a tourism haven, though the snakes are rarely seen outside their jungle habitat.

The solution to this headache, fittingly enough, is acetaminophen, the active ingredient in painkillers including Tylenol.

The strategy takes advantage of the snake’s two big weaknesses. Unlike most snakes, brown tree snakes are happy to eat prey they didn’t kill themselves, and they are highly vulnerable to acetaminophen, which is harmless to humans.

The upcoming mice drop is targeted to hit snakes near Guam’s sprawling Andersen Air Force Base, which is surrounded by heavy foliage and if compromised would offer the snakes a potential ticket off the island. Using helicopters, the dead neonatal mice will be dropped by hand, one by one.

U.S. government scientists have been perfecting the mice-drop strategy for more than a decade with support from the Department of Defense and the Department of the Interior.

To keep the mice bait from dropping all the way to the ground, where it could be eaten by other animals or attract insects as they rot, researchers have developed a flotation device with streamers designed to catch in the branches of the forest foliage, where the snakes live and feed.

Experts say the impact on other species will be minimal, particularly since the snakes have themselves wiped out the birds that might have been most at risk.

Rewriting the production of Pacific High value crops

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The Kava store has embarked and completed a research on how the use of solar food dryer rewrite Tamarind production in Lelepa and Havana area and Nangae nut on Nguna, much to the surprise of many Pacific scientists.

The realization and utilisation of the solar food dryer could now provide for thousands farmers, under the trees to maximize profit and taking control to semi value product.

It was developed and modified by Charles Longwah and engineers Miss Telia Curtic, Dr Richard Corkish, head of the school of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering.

The project which was co supervised by professor Robert Fuller, renowned solar dryer expert from Deakin University and Charles Longwah completed value addition and preservation on every Agriculture crop in Vanuatu on how to preserve the produce in two years.

Last month with Miss Electra, a scientist at the Sunshine Coast University of, research work on all analytic, national, humidity of Vanuatu Tamarind. The findings will be release soon this year.

Nangae nut is one most dedicate nuts in the world, when cracked for three it cannot be value added.

The Kava store technique in 2013, “results in a perfect Nangae nut without oxidation and rancid,” says Kava Store entrepreneur Longwah.

Farmer’s use of genetically modified soybeans grows into Supreme Court case – The Washington Post

Farmer’s use of genetically modified soybeans grows into Supreme Court case
By Robert Barnes, Saturday, February 9, 3:12 PM

In SANDBORN, Ind. — Farmer Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s pursuit of new products it says will “feed the world.”

“Hell’s fire,” said the 75-year-old self-described “eccentric old bachelor,” who farms 300 acres of land passed down from his father. Bowman rested in a recliner, boots off, the tag that once held his Foster Grant reading glasses to a drugstore rack still attached, a Monsanto gimme cap perched ironically on his balding head.

“I am less than a drop in the bucket.”

Yet Bowman’s unorthodox soybean farming techniques have landed him at the center of a national battle over genetically modified crops. His legal battle, now at the Supreme Court, raises questions about whether the right to patent living things extends to their progeny, and how companies that engage in cutting-edge research can recoup their investments.

What Bowman did was to take commodity grain from the local elevator, which is usually used for feed, and plant it. But that grain was mostly progeny of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready beans because that’s what most Indiana soybean farmers grow. Those soybeans are genetically modified to survive the weedkiller Roundup, and Monsanto claims that Bowman’s planting violated the company’s restrictions.

Those supporting Bowman hope the court uses the case, which is scheduled for oral arguments later this month, to hit the reset button on corporate domination of agribusiness and what they call Monsanto’s “legal assault” on farmers who don’t toe the line. Monsanto’s supporters say advances in health and environmental research are endangered.

And the case raises questions about the traditional role of farmers.

For instance: When a farmer grows Monsanto’s genetically modified soybean seeds, has he simply “used” the seed to create a crop to sell, or has he “made” untold replicas of Monsanto’s invention that remain subject to the company’s restrictions?

An adverse ruling, Monsanto warned the court in its brief, “would devastate innovation in biotechnology,” which involves “notoriously high research and development costs.”

“Inventors are unlikely to make such investments if they cannot prevent purchasers of living organisms containing their invention from using them to produce unlimited copies,” Monsanto states.

Bowman said Monsanto’s claim that its patent protection would be eviscerated should he win is “ridiculous.”

“Monsanto should not be able, just because they’ve got millions and millions of dollars to spend on legal fees, to try to terrify farmers into making them obey their agreements by massive force and threats,” Bowman said.