Central American tropical forests are beginning to disappear at an alarming rate, threatening the livelihood of indigenous peoples there and endangering some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in North America. The culprit? Cocaine. [node:read-more:link]

The breakthrough was possible thanks to a high-end printer that allowed researchers to print soft and rigid materials together within the same components. This made it possible for researchers to design more complex shapes for the robot's legs. The legs are made up of three parallel, connected sealed inflatable chambers, or actuators, 3-D-printed from a rubber-like material. The chambers are hollow on the inside, so they can be inflated. On the outside, the chambers are bellowed, which allows engineers to better control the legs' movements. [node:read-more:link]

A line-item veto by Gov. Terry Branstad on May 12 means the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University remains alive, but it has no money. Officials at Iowa State University and at the Leopold Center were left scrambling to figure out what happens next and how the center will change in the coming months and years.“It’s better than what it was before (the veto),” says Doug Gronau, a farmer who represents the Iowa Farm Bureau on the Leopold Center’s advisory board. “I think there definitely is going to be a reorganization. [node:read-more:link]

The other shoe dropped yesterday when Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said he plans to eliminate the leadership position of Undersecretary of Rural Development. The reorganization follows President Trump’s earlier budget proposal recommending a 21% cut in USDA discretionary spending and the elimination of some rural development programs. The undersecretary position, which was structurally part of the Ag secretary’s executive leadership team, oversees dozens of programs. [node:read-more:link]

A global study of land and agricultural methods shows dramatic differences in soil quality between farms that employ some simple management tools and those that don’t. [node:read-more:link]

If Douglas, Georgia, City Commissioner Olivia Pearson lived in an urban county with better trained election workers, she might not be facing charges that threaten her public office and her freedom, a voting rights consultant said. Olivia Pearson is charged with illegally assisting a voter in the 2012 general election and falsely signing a form explaining her reason for doing so. The event occurred in Coffee County, a rural southeast Georgia county with a population of about 42,000. [node:read-more:link]

A Delaware state court has awarded summary judgment to John Deere & Co. in an asbestos action, finding that the plaintiff had failed to present sufficient evidence to support his assertion that he was injured by asbestos fibers in the defendant’s product. [node:read-more:link]

An appeals court panel on Tuesday approved a lower court's plan for distributing $380 million left over from the U.S. government's loan discrimination settlement with American Indian farmers and ranchers six years ago. The decision wasn't unanimous, however, with one of the three judges arguing that Congress should have had a say. President Barack Obama's administration agreed in 2011 to pay $680 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 1999 by Indian farmers who said they were denied loans for decades because of government discrimination. [node:read-more:link]

The federal government says an Arizona farm has kept temporary Mexican workers in squalid conditions and paid some of them only a fraction of what they are owed. The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against G Farms in El Mirage, located just northwest of Phoenix, last week. A judge was scheduled to hear arguments on Tuesday.The department says that G Farms housed about 70 workers here on a visa in a dangerous and unsanitary encampment composed of school buses, semitrailers, a cargo container and an open-air shed. [node:read-more:link]

Religious beliefs involving the use of pesticides are part of a dispute over noxious weeds on a 2,000-acre organic farm in Oregon that has attracted the attention of organic food supporters. [node:read-more:link]