(MCT) RALEIGH, N.C. – Knocking out a specific gene in burley tobacco plants significantly… (MCT) RALEIGH, N.C. – Knocking out a specific gene in burley tobacco plants significantly reduces harmful carcinogens in cured tobacco leaves, scientists at N.C. State University have shown.

The findings could lead to less-harmful tobacco products, in particular smokeless forms such as chewing tobacco. The research was sponsored by the tobacco company Philip Morris.

In large-scale field trials involving hundreds of genetically altered plants in three states, Ralph Dewey and Ramsey Lewis, crop scientists at NCSU, teamed with colleagues from the University of Kentucky to silence a gene that turns nicotine into nornicotine, which converts to a carcinogen as the tobacco is cured, processed and stored.

“As far as modifying the genetics of the tobacco plant itself, it’s novel in that sense,” Dewey said. “There is a lot of research being done in this area, but it’s a fairly new field of research.”

Dewey and Lewis stressed that the best way for people to avoid the health risks of tobacco is to avoid using tobacco products. Smoking causes 87 percent of lung cancer deaths, according to the National Cancer Institute, and smokeless tobacco is linked to mouth and throat cancers.

Dewey said the research may have greater potential with smokeless tobacco because the class of carcinogens they studied was more plentiful in those products. Cigarettes have more carcinogens, but the majority of them are products of combustion, he said.

The findings show that targeted gene silencing can work in the field. The field tests in Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina compared cured burley tobacco plants with the troublesome gene silenced and plants that had not been genetically engineered.

The researchers reported a six-fold decrease in the carcinogenic chemical N-nitrosonornicotine in the genetically modified tobacco plants, as well as a 50 percent overall reduction in the class of harmful compounds called tobacco-specific nitrosamines.

The research results were published online in Plant Biotechnology Journal, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. -By Wade Rawlins, McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT) SEATTLE – It was the People’s Choice and Best in Show in the 2007 Street of Dreams, the Best in American Living for 2007, according to the National Association of Home Builders, and the first home in Snohomish County to earn a five-star rating as a Built Green home.

But with 4,750 square feet, a four-car garage and a location in a rural area where subdivisions aren’t supposed to sprawl, was it really green?

The Urban Lodge was one of four mega homes burned in an act of arson this month near Maltby, Wash.

Even before the cork flooring and reclaimed timbers stopped smoking, the fires had reignited an already smoldering debate in a rapidly growing region struggling to find and keep its Pugetopian identity.

The search is on for a sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for the green consumer in the real-estate market, and the debate about what’s truly green brings an answer from every corner.

Green building is no different from a host of other industries suddenly greening conventional products to serve a public that still wants it all – but now wants to feel good about it, too.

Mainstream builders say a greener suburban McMansion is important progress. But their critics say that attitude is just consumers kidding themselves – with developers happy to help.

“People are capable of holding wildly contradictory beliefs,” said Alan Durning of the Sightline Institute, a think tank in Seattle.

‘There is this sort of pastoral ideal that you will live in a place set in parkland like French royalty, and you are a good responsible REI member, and green Northwesterner. So your Land Rover has mute Earth tones, and you probably buy organic pet food for your Labrador retriever.”

The Urban Lodge was built as part of a 48-unit “rural cluster development” near Maltby. Priced at more than $1 million, it was 40 percent more energy-efficient than the same model would have been if it was simply built to code, Lundberg said.

The house included many features that are more friendly to the environment – from drought-tolerant native plants in the landscaping to recycled-glass cabinet pulls and cork floors.

But some say bestowing top environmental honors on a home that’s far from public transit, jobs and shops sends the wrong message. After all, Washington’s biggest source of greenhouse-gas pollution is transportation. -By Lynda V. Mapes, The Seattle Times

(MCT) COLUMBIA, S.C. – Eat smart, move more – it seems like a sensible thing to do.

Many people acknowledge that, but do just the opposite. The result? High levels of obesity among both adults and children. The medical costs associated with obesity are estimated at $90 billion a year.

No wonder policy makers and researchers have been thinking of the epidemic and its solutions in terms of financial gains and losses.

Health economist Eric Finkelstein notes in a recent study that in the United States, although societal norms are more accepting of thin bodies, the economy drives behavior that makes people fat. Cheap, high-calorie fast food is prevalent even in rural areas.

“Food prices have never been cheaper, and access has never been easier,” Finkelstein said. “Once the cost of an activity goes down, it’s easier to do that behavior.”

But whereas it’s cheaper and easier to eat extra calories, it’s become harder to burn them off as television and other pastimes compete with physical activity.

“It’s not that we don’t have time, we’re just not choosing to use that time for physical activity,” Finkelstein said.

Technology has made our jobs better, faster and easier.

“The economy is driving us to engineer physical activity out of the workplace,” said Finkelstein.

Although economic forces drive behavior, health concerns should take precedence over economic ones when addressing obesity, Finkelstein said.

The private sector can get in on the act by using incentives or other strategies to make it cheaper and easier to be thin, not fat.

If the government is going to get involved, they should focus on children rather than adults, Finkelstein recommends.

He and colleague Justin Trogdon published a report last week in the American Journal of Public Health, in which they looked at different business models for the reduction of childhood obesity.

They concluded that steps to address the problem shouldn’t be based on the potential for short-term financial savings.

Instead, they should look at how effective a program is at controlling weight and improving quality of life, compared to other uses for the money.

Heading off obesity during childhood in the long run saves billions of dollars of obesity-related costs during adulthood. -By Czerne M. Reid, McClatchy Newspapers