|
Issue Date: December 19, 2004
Building a better tree
Science has even designed one that holds heavy ornaments.
What do you get when you mix a Fraser fir with a Balsam? A Fralsam, one of the newest weapons in the Christmas tree grower's arsenal.
With artificial models accounting for nearly 30% of the 33 million Christmas trees sold last year, commercial growers are looking to science for new ways to lure buyers away from the fakes. Take the Scotch pine, a perennial favorite because of its high needle retention, even if you forget to water it. "When I got into the game, Scotch pines would turn yellow in winter," says Henry Gerhold, a professor of forest genetics at Penn State University, where selective breeding helped to produce today's greener, denser version.
Others are genetically manipulating firs and pines to produce taller, denser, sturdier trees that grow faster. It can take 13 to 15 years for a Christmas tree to mature, says John Frampton, a tree geneticist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, so "saving one to three years means more profits for growers."
Not all of the engineering is done in labs; Mother Nature often plays a role. In the '80s, William Weir of Weir Tree Farms in Colebrook, N.H., found his Fraser firs had cross-pollinated with Balsam firs. The result: Fralsam, a tree with the best characteristics of both parents (Fraser's needle retention, Balsam's scent). Today, the farm can barely keep up with the demand. Now Weir's son, Jay, is experimenting with exotics such as Korean fir, Italy's Veitch fir and Russia's Nordmann fir. The Korean fir shows early promise: a dazzling ability to flash when the sun strikes its needles.
At Silver Bells Tree Farm in Silverton, Ore., genetically improved Noble fir seed imported from Denmark produces a better-looking and -smelling, disease-resistant tree with branches that can support heavy ornaments without sagging.
Can mankind ultimately build the perfect Christmas tree? Maybe. Once tree embryogenesis is perfected, scientists should be able to turn out a cloned seedling (called an "embling") that's nearly perfect every time.
Go to top
A room to grow up in
When teenagers want to redo their bedroom décor, it can become a bigger dilemma for parents. At a stage when rebellion is a form of self-expression, how do you determine what's acceptable? We asked room makeover diva Candice Olson, the popular host of the HGTV show "Divine Design" (Thursdays, 9 p.m. ET). Choose your battles, she advises: "The teen years are all about compromise." Here are Olson's three guidelines:
1. Never look under the bed! (OK, maybe not never.) Most teens' idea of cleaning up? Shove it out of sight. If there is space under the bed, it will get higher and higher off the floor with each "cleaning." Instead, give teens an easy way to organize with baskets, storage cubes and cubbyholes. A platform or trundle bed allows for storage units underneath.
2. Create a comfort zone. This gives teens more privacy, something they crave, not far from parents' watchful eyes. Teens' rooms function as a place to chill with friends. So turn the bed into a sofa by day with pillows or an upholstered headboard along the wall, lengthwise. At night, it turns back into a bed.
3. Paint it black (or whatever). Teens should personalize their space. Yes, Mom has to eat it on the paint. Paint is cheap and the easiest part to redo. If you're totally against a lime green room, agree to one accent wall. Same for wild flooring. Most of the floor is covered with furniture, so don't sweat it if your teen picks leopard prints for rugs. Bonus: They don't show dirt!
Go to top
Computer counselor
If your hard drive suffers a breakdown, help is available.
A device the size of a peanut- butter-and-jelly sandwich causes Kelly Chessen's customers a lot of distress. It's a hard drive, prone to crashes, meltdowns and accompanying info loss that send computer users into death spins. As a data crisis counselor at DriveSavers, a Novato, Calif., data recovery firm, Chessen, 31, helps pick up the pieces. We talked with the former suicide hotline counselor:
Describe callers' typical state of mind.
They're talking fast. They're short. They're curt. Other people won't stop talking because they're so upset.
You must hear some crushing stories.
Sometimes it's hard not to cry with them. [One] woman's husband's business was robbed twice. Then they got rear-ended; the kid had a concussion. After all this, the hard drive failed on her birthday. She was in absolute tears.
How is this different from your previous counseling experience?
On a crisis line, you have to help them find their own solution. Here, we have the solution.
You sound really confident.
We've been doing this for 19 years. We have a 90% success rate.
What's a dead giveaway that your hard drive's a goner?
If that drive is making scraping or grinding noises, it could be the arm that reads the platter scraping the data off into data dust. If it's clicking, chances are it'll be recoverable. There's no way to re-create data dust.
Where do you keep important data?
My trusty yellow pad of paper. I hear horror stories all day. Do I want to lose all of my financial information? No!
Contributing: Devin Zatorski, Laura Daily, Vyvyan Lynn
|
