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Farm Foundation Announces 2025 Award Recipients

Farm Foundation has announced the recipients of its prestigious 2025 awards, recognizing outstanding individuals dedicated to addressing critical issues in food and agriculture. The honorees exemplify Farm Foundation’s work of fostering innovation, leadership, and thoughtful public policy dialogue.

The recipients of the 2025 Farm Foundation Awards are:

Innovator of the Year: Robbie Dye, CEO, and Tyler Speer, COO, co-founders of Our Farms.
Emerging Leader Award: Dr. Shandrea Stallworth, Senior Agronomist and Global Resource, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Regenerative Agriculture, NestlΓ© Purina North America.
RJ Hildreth Public Policy Award: Dr. Keith H. Coble, Vice President for the Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Veterinary Medicine, Mississippi State University.
Book of the Year: Land Rich, Cash Poor by Brian Reisinger, award-winning writer, rural policy expert, speaker, and consultant.

β€œWe received a remarkable range of inspiring nominations this year, and these four honorees stood out for their exceptional contributions,” said Tim Brennan, vice president of programs and strategic impact at Farm Foundation. β€œTheir dedication to tackling critical issues in food and agriculture is vital to improving our food system.”

The awards ceremony will take place during the July 2025 Farm Foundation Round Table meeting in Spokane, Washington.

2024 recipients of Farm Foundation Awards include Dr. Jayson Lusk of Oklahoma State University; Dr. Robert Fraley, former executive vice president and chief technology officer at Monsanto Company; Dr. Yangxuan Liu of the University of Georgia; and Dr. Stephen Adejoro of the Livestock Industry Foundation for Africa.

For more information about the recipients and the Farm Foundation Awards, visit: https://www.farmfoundation.org/programs/farmfoundationawards/

The post Farm Foundation Announces 2025 Award Recipients appeared first on Farm Foundation.

Rocky Mountain snow is contaminated, study shows

Mountain snowpacks accumulate snow throughout the winter, building up stores of water that will supply communities across the American West throughout the long dry season. Now, a new study shows that as storms carry snow to the Rocky Mountains, they are also bringing mercury and other contaminants from mines in the region. The research helps scientists understand how contaminants are spread by atmospheric circulation and has implications for snowpack preservation and illuminating the lasting environmental impact of mining activities.

Combination immunotherapy shrank a variety of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers

A new form of tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy, a form of personalized cancer immunotherapy, dramatically improved the treatment's effectiveness in patients with metastatic gastrointestinal cancers, according to results of a clinical trial. The findings offer hope that this therapy could be used to treat a variety of solid tumors, which has so far eluded researchers developing cell-based therapies.

New 3D technology paves way for next-generation eye-tracking

By integrating powerful 3D imaging technology with advanced computation, researchers can capture gaze direction information from tens of thousands of surface points on the eye instead of about a dozen used by conventional eye-tracking methods. The technique could boost eye-tracking accuracy in a variety of fields ranging from the entertainment industry to medical research and industrial engineering.

We know nanoplastics are a threat -- this new tool can help us figure out just how bad they are

While the threat that microplastics pose to human and ecological health has been richly documented and is well known, nanoplastics, which are smaller than one micrometer (1/50th the thickness of an average human hair), are far more reactive, far more mobile and vastly more capable of crossing biological membranes. Yet, because they are so tiny and so mobile, researchers don't yet have an accurate understanding of just how toxic these particles are.

Researchers develop new way to match young cancer patients with the right drugs

A team has developed a new way to quickly find personalized treatments for young cancer patients, by growing their tumors in chicken eggs and analyzing their proteins. The team has combined these two techniques to identify and test a drug for a young patient's tumor in time to be used for their treatment. Their success in finding a new drug for the patient shows how the study of proteins, known as proteomics, can be a valuable complement to the established study of genes (genomics) in real-time cancer therapies.

An efficient self-assembly process for advanced self-healing materials

Self-healing coatings are advanced materials that can repair damage, such as scratches and cracks on their own. Researchers have developed an efficient method for preparing self-healing films consisting of alternating layers of highly cross-linked organosiloxane and linear polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Their film is more durable than conventional self-healing PDMS materials, offering superior hardness and greater thermal stability while self-healing at mild temperatures, paving the way for stronger, more reliable, and easier-maintained self-healing materials.

Omega-6 fatty acid promotes the growth of an aggressive type of breast cancer, study finds

Linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid found in seed oils such as soybean and safflower oil, and animal products including pork and eggs, specifically enhances the growth of the hard-to-treat 'triple negative' breast cancer subtype, according to a preclinical study. The discovery could lead to new dietary and pharmaceutical strategies against breast and other cancers.

A step toward plant-based gelatin

Researchers present gum tragacanth as a plant-based alternative to gelatin for creating edible films. The team developed films containing different concentrations of gelatin and gum tragacanth and monitored their survivability in water and saline solutions. They found the optimal combination of gum tragacanth and gelatin for maintaining the gelatin's gel-like behavior was a 3-to-1 ratio of the two, respectively. However, gum tragacanth's inclusion leads to a more porous film, making it prone to penetration by water or saline solutions. Though gum tragacanth cannot replace gelatin completely just yet, even a partial replacement is a step forward.

The experts that can outsmart optical illusions

Medical imaging experts are adept at solving common optical illusions, according to new research. The research is the first to show that people can be trained to do better at solving visual illusions, which was previously thought to be near-impossible. The study shows that medical imaging experts are particularly accurate at judging the size of objects in common optical illusions. In other words, they also literally see better in everyday life!
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