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Home » Legal Updates
7 Automakers Sued Over Alleged Air Bag Defect In 12M Cars
By Mike Curley
Law360 (July 16, 2019, 4:54 PM EDT) — Seven automakers, including Kia and Hyundai, and an air bag systems supplier knew for years about a defect in the air bag deployment systems of more than 12 million cars but failed to warn customers of the danger, a group of car owners allege in a California federal lawsuit.
In a 45-page proposed class action filed Monday, Ryan Baldwin and six other car owners accuse the companies of hiding the defect since 2011, putting their profits ahead of customer safety. The suit names Kia Motors America Inc., Hyundai Motor America, FCA US LLC, Mitsubishi Motors America Inc., American Honda Motor Co. Inc., Acura, Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. and parts supplier ZF-TRW Automotive Holdings Corp. as defendants.
The issue stems from the vehicles' air bag control units, made by ZF-TRW. According to the complaint, the part is responsible for deploying the air bag and controlling the seat belts in the event of a crash, but can be over-stressed by the electricity generated during a crash.
As a result, the defect compromises the seat belt and air bags, putting drivers and passengers at risk, the car owners say.
Jonathan Michaels of MLG APLC, representing the proposed class, said his office receives calls every week about the defect. He believes the case will be bigger than the Takata Corp. air bag scandal, which saw 42 million cars recalled in the U.S., as more information becomes available and an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration continues.
"To put it into perspective, the investigation currently surrounds 12.3 million cars, and there were only 17.3 million new car sales last year," Michaels told Law360 on Tuesday. "If a recall only addressed these 12.3 million vehicles, it would already make it the fourth largest recall in automotive history."
He said NHTSA's investigation into the defect has found it responsible for four deaths, and the agency is aware of other reported deaths related to the defect but has yet to confirm them.
Despite having knowledge of the defect for years, the auto companies have not issued full recalls, while federal regulations require a full recall to be issued within five days of learning of such a defect, according to the complaint. While several of the auto companies have issued partial recalls in the last several years, none has issued a full recall, the complaint says.
"This is one of the most egregious breaches of public trust," Michaels said in a statement. "Clearly, the manufacturers learned very little from the Takata situation."
According to the complaint, NHTSA's investigation found that the car companies were aware of the defect as early as August 2011. The complaint also includes several customer complaints about failures in the air bag system dating back to 2012.
"Defendants could have taken steps to ensure the safety of the public in August of 2011, but instead chose to cover up the safety problems," the car owners wrote.
All the while, the car companies advertised the safety and reliability of their cars — some specifically touting their air bag systems — which the proposed class relied on when deciding what vehicles to purchase and lease, according to the complaint.
None of the car companies instituted any kind of recall until 2016, when FCA instituted a partial recall of 1.4 million vehicles, the complaint says. Hyundai and Kia instituted partial recalls as well in 2018, according to the complaint, and all vehicles in the three recalls contained ZF-TRW's components.
The plaintiffs seek to represent buyers of a number of models manufactured by the seven companies between 2009 and 2019 that contain the affected air bag control units.
Spokespersons for Toyota, Fiat-Chrysler and ZF-TRW declined to comment. A spokesperson for the NHTSA declined to immediately comment.
Representatives for the proposed class and for the other auto companies could not immediately be reached for comment.
The proposed class is represented by Jonathan A. Michaels, Kyle Gurwell and Ryan Jones of MLG APLC and Robert N. Kaplan and Laurence D. King of Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP.
Counsel information for the auto companies and ZF-TRW was not available.
The case is Baldwin et al. v. Kia Motors America Inc. et al., case number 8:19-cv-01376, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
Monsanto Hit With $2B Verdict In 3rd Roundup Trial
From left, Alva Pilliod, lawyer Brent Wisner, Alberta Pilliod and lawyer Michael Miller appear at a news conference, Monday, May 13, 2019, in San Francisco, a few hours after an Oakland, Calif., jury ordered Monsanto Co. to pay the Pilliods $2.055 billion. The Pilliods, of Livermore, Calif., claimed Monsanto's popular weed killer Roundup Ready caused the cancer each are fighting. Monsanto says it will appeal each verdict. (AP Photo/Paul Elias)
By Dorothy Atkins
Law360 (May 13, 2019, 5:04 PM EDT) — A California jury found on Monday that Monsanto's Roundup likely caused a couple's cancer and awarded them a staggering $2.055 billion in damages, slapping the Bayer AG unit with a third consecutive Roundup trial loss.
From left, Alva Pilliod, lawyer Brent Wisner, Alberta Pilliod and lawyer Michael Miller appear at a news conference, Monday after a jury ordered Monsanto to pay the Pilliods $2.055 billion in damages. (AP)
After nearly two days of deliberating, five women and seven men found that it's more likely than not that Roundup was a significant contributing factor in causing Alva and Alberta Pilliod's non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The jury awarded the couple $55 million in noneconomic and economic damages and hit the agrochemical giant with $1 billion in punitive damages for each of the plaintiffs — a $2.055 billion total that doubled what the plaintiffs' attorney suggested in closing arguments.
The verdict wraps a five-week trial over the Pilliods' claims that decades of spraying Roundup on their four properties gave them both aggressive cancer. Alva Pilliod was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, or DLBCL, in 2011 and his wife was diagnosed with primary central nervous system lymphoma, a type of DLBCL, in 2015.
The Pilliods' case was the third to go to trial out of 13,400 pending that allege Roundup causes cancer.
Bayer said in a statement Monday that the company is disappointed with the jury's decision and will appeal the verdict.
During the latest trial, the jury heard testimony from competing oncologists, pathologists and toxicologists who gave starkly different takes on the weedkiller's skin absorption rates and the science backing claims that Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer.
The Pilliods' experts pointed to animal studies, mechanistic data and epidemiological data showing that glyphosate is genotoxic, or DNA damaging, and causes oxidative stress, which can cause cancer mutations. They also cited the International Agency for Research on Cancer's 2015 finding that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.
The Pilliods' expert toxicologist, Dr. William Sawyer, told the jury that Monsanto made glyphosate 50 times more toxic by selling its Roundup formula with polyethoxylated tallow amine — or POEA — which is a surfactant that is banned in Europe. He explained that the surfactants allow glyphosate to easily penetrate the skin.
Once inside, he said, the body stores it under the skin for days and delivers glyphosate doses to the bones, where lymphoma originates. Sawyer also accused Monsanto of manipulating its absorption studies by heating and then freezing skin samples before they were tested, leading to skewed results.
Other experts called by the Pilliods testified that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved Roundup in the 1970s based on fraudulent studies done by Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories. They said the company kept selling the product, even after the fraud was exposed, and refused for decades to conduct certain studies of its Roundup formula, despite requests from the EPA and its own toxicologist.
During closings, the Pilliods' counsel, Brent Wisner of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman PC, argued that Monsanto spent decades suppressing science linking its products to cancer by ghostwriting academic articles and feeding the EPA "bad science." He asked the jury to "punish" Monsanto with a $1 billion punitive damages award.
However, Monsanto's experts argued that the epidemiological data put forward by the decadeslong Agricultural Health Study shows that glyphosate doesn't pose a cancer risk and that multiple regulatory agencies around the world, including Health Canada, the EPA and the Australian government, have repeatedly concluded that Roundup doesn't pose a cancer risk. They also noted that the rate of non-Hodgkin lymphoma has plateaued over the past two decades, while the use of Roundup has increased significantly.
On Monday the jury sided with the Pilliods and found Monsanto liable for failure to warn claims, design defect claims, negligence claims and negligent failure to warn claims. They awarded the Pilliods' $52 million in noneconomic damages and $3.2 million in economic damages, along with a combined $2 billion in punitive damages.
The Pilliods' trial began on March 28, a day after a separate California federal jury handed down an $80 million verdict against Monsanto in favor of Ed Hardeman. The first trial culminated in August, when a state jury in San Francisco awarded former school groundskeeper DeWayne "Lee" Johnson a win and hit Monsanto with a $289 million verdict. Over multiple objections by the jurors, a state judge later slashed the verdict to $78 million, which Monsanto has since appealed.
The Pilliods are represented by Michael Miller of The Miller Firm, Brent Wisner and Pedram Esfandiary of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman PC and Steven J. Brady of the Brady Law Group.
Monsanto is represented by Kelly A. Evans of Evans Fears & Schuttert LLP, Tarek Ismail of Goldman Ismail Tomaselli Brennan & Baum LLP and Eugene Brown Jr. of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP.
The case is Pilliod v. Monsanto Co., case number RG17862702, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Alameda.
Monsanto Expert 'Micro-Analyzed' By Atty At Roundup Trial
Law360, Oakland, Calif. (April 29, 2019, 10:45 PM EDT) — A hematologist-oncologist hired by Monsanto defended her expertise Monday while testifying against claims the weedkiller Roundup caused a couple's cancer, noting that it's her first time testifying as an expert witness and she hadn't realized "every single word" of her deposition "would be micro-analyzed" by attorneys.
Dr. Celeste Bello, who works at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, was the first witness the Bayer AG unit called to testify in a trial that kicked off March 28. An attorney representing Alva and Alberta Pilliod attempted to discredit Bello by pointing out apparent contradictions in her testimony and holes in her expertise.
Brent Wisner of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman PC noted that Bello initially said under oath that some pesticides, like DDT, are known causes of cancer. Bello replied that she had misspoken — she said actually thinks that exposure to those chemicals are cancer risk factors, but not known causes of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
"I didn't know every single word would be micro-analyzed," she said.
The case was brought by Alva, 76, and Alberta, 74, who claim that decades of spraying the weedkiller on their four properties gave them both aggressive cancer. The Pilliod trial is the third case to go to trial out of approximately 11,200 lawsuits pending that allege Roundup causes cancer.
At the start of trial Monday, Wisner objected to Bello offering testimony on Roundup, arguing that she spends most of her time treating patients and she's not an expert on chemicals that cause cancer. He also objected to Bello testifying on Roundup's genotoxicity, or ability to damage DNA, because, he argued, her opinion wasn't disclosed before trial. But Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith overruled both objections.
During her direct examination, Bello said she reviewed Alberta Pilliod's medical records and depositions and concluded that Roundup was not a significant contributing factor to her non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Bello explained that there are only two known causes of the type of cancer Alberta Pilliod developed: HIV and a weakened immune system.
Bello said everything else, like pesticide use, age and weight, are merely risk factors. She added that the cause of 80% to 90% of non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases are unknown. Alberta Pilliod had Hoshimoto's disease, she said, which indicates she had a weak immune system, and additional risk factors, including bladder cancer, diabetes and a smoking history.
Bello also refuted the Pilliods' experts who said earlier in the trial that it is "common sense" that the couple must have gotten cancer from something in their environment, because they both developed it. She said studies show that couples aren't at a higher risk of getting non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
"There's more to it than just living together and being husband and wife," Bello said.
But during her cross-examination, Bello conceded that she is not a pathologist, toxicologist or expert in chemicals that cause cancer. She also said she's only conducted one epidemiology study when she was in graduate school and it didn't involve cancer.
Wisner attempted to further cast doubt on Bello's credentials by pointing out that she changed her testimony on the stand, testifying that she contributed to more than 20 peer-reviewed academic studies, instead of more than 50, which she gave in her deposition. Wisner noted that her resume only lists 25 papers and Bello hasn't published papers linking pesticides to cancer. Bello defended her credentials, saying she doesn't update her resume often and noting that she's excluded from her resume some of her presentations.
Wisner then turned to Bello's opinions, asking her whether being exposed to pesticides, like DDT, at extremely high levels is known to cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Although she wouldn't concede the point, Bello admitted that the "magnitude of the risk drives a causal link."
Bello also acknowledged that until she began working on the case, she wasn't aware of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which concluded in 2015 that Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, is a "probable" carcinogen.
Wisner pointed out that IARC is an arm of the World Health Organization and wrote the publication on tumor classifications that Bello had claimed was "the Bible" and standard in her field. Bello replied that she didn't know if IARC members were, in fact, authors of the tumor classification publication.
Wisner then pointed out that Bello reviewed only three studies to inform her opinion that glyphosate does not cause DNA damage. Bello took issue with Wisner's characterization of her research, noting that she read the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's report, which assessed multiple studies.
Wisner responded that at least one study in the EPA report was implicated in the wake of the IBT scandal in the 1970s and invalidated, which jurors had heard about earlier in trial. Bello replied that she has no reason to question the EPA's statements and she wasn't familiar with IBT.
The trial will continue Tuesday.
The Pilliods are represented by Michael Miller of The Miller Firm, Brent Wisner and Pedram Esfandiary of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman PC, and Steven J. Brady of the Brady Law Group.
Monsanto is represented by Kelly A. Evans of Evans Fears & Schuttert LLP, Tarek Ismail of Goldman Ismail Tomaselli Brennan & Baum LLP, and Eugene Brown Jr. of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP.
Judge Recuses Self Over Views On Insurer's 'Barbaric' Policy
Law360 (April 29, 2019, 5:00 PM EDT) — A Florida federal judge stepped down Monday from a proposed class action claiming UnitedHealthcare improperly classified a certain cancer treatment as experimental to avoid providing coverage, saying his personal opinion prevented him from ruling fairly on what he called "immoral and barbaric" actions.
The suit, recently filed by prominent Miami attorney Richard Cole of Cole Scott & Kissane PA, alleges that up until changing its policy in January, Connecticut-based UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. wrongly categorized proton beam radiation therapy as an "experimental or investigational" treatment for prostate cancer. The insurer, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group Inc., had used this classification despite the 30-year-old procedure's medical advantages and longtime acceptance in the medical community, the suit says.
In a one-page order of recusal, U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. recounted his own experience of being treated for prostate cancer in 2017 and shared a story of a friend who obtained reimbursement for proton radiation from UnitedHealthcare only after paying $150,000 out of pocket and threatening the insurance giant with litigation.
"It is undisputed among legitimate medical experts that proton radiation therapy is not experimental and causes much less collateral damage than traditional radiation," Judge Scola said. "To deny a patient this treatment, if it is available, is immoral and barbaric. The court's opinions in this matter prevent it from deciding this case fairly and impartially."
Judge Scola said in his order that after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in early 2017, he consulted with top medical experts around the country as to the best course of treatment. They all told him that if he opted for radiation treatment, proton radiation "was by far the wiser course of action," he said.
"Although the court opted for surgery, rather than radiation, those opinions [are] still resonant," the order said.
Judge Scola also noted that his friend was diagnosed with cancer in 2015 and opted to have proton radiation therapy in Houston, despite UnitedHealthcare refusing to pay for it. He was fortunate to have the resources to pay the $150,000 cost himself before managing to gain reimbursement after threatening to sue the insurer, the judge said.
The case had been transferred to Judge Scola last Thursday after U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno recused himself, citing his personal friendship with Cole. It will now be assigned to another member of the district's bench.
Cole, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in April 2018, is seeking to represent a class of all participants in UnitedHealthcare plans covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act who were denied coverage for proton radiation to treat prostate cancer based on the insurer's policy prior to January 2019 that asserted it was experimental, according to the complaint.
Cole's complaint says that in May 2018 his cancer doctor recommended proton radiation rather than the more traditional intensity modulated radiotherapy because of a likelihood of better results.
Proton beam radiation therapy, which uses protons to deliver a dose of radiation to cure a tumor, has potential advantages over the traditional method because the protons' energy can be delivered over a smaller area than the photons used in intensity modulated radiotherapy. That allows patients to tolerate higher doses of radiation and reduces harm to healthy tissues and organs, the complaint says.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved proton radiation for prostate cancer treatment in 1986, and it is recommended and used by many of the top cancer centers in the country, according to the complaint. Other insurers, including Medicare, cover the treatment and do not consider it to be experimental, the complaint adds.
Cole alleges that UnitedHealthcare breached its fiduciary duty under ERISA to act "solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries" in providing benefits because it was driven by a desire to avoid paying for the procedure, which the complaint says is significantly more costly than traditional radiation treatments in some parts of the country.
The suit seeks equitable relief, including disgorgement and surcharges, and an order that the insurer must reprocess class members' claims under the insurer's new policy that recognizes proton radiation as a proven, safe and effective treatment.
On Monday, UnitedHealthcare stood by its past actions.
"UnitedHealthcare bases its medical policies and coverage decisions — including for proton beam therapy — on the prevailing published clinical and scientific evidence," the insurer said through a spokeswoman.
Cole is represented by Stephanie A. Casey, Dean Colson and Lazaro Fields of Colson Hicks Eidson.
UnitedHealthcare is represented by Peter Walsh of Hogan Lovells.
The case is Cole v. United Healthcare Insurance Co., case number 1:19-cv-21258, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Monsanto Faces Uphill Fight In Axing Punitives From Trial
Law360, Oakland, Calif. (April 25, 2019, 9:54 PM EDT) — A California judge said Thursday she'll likely allow jurors to consider awarding punitive damages in the third jury trial over claims that Monsanto's popular Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, after the Bayer AG unit argued that there's no evidence its conduct was malicious.
During a hearing in Oakland, Monsanto's counsel, Eugene Brown Jr. of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, argued that allegations Monsanto knew of Roundup's cancer risks in the 1980s are "completely speculative." Brown said that in order for punitive damages to be awarded, a defendant's conduct must be vile and despicable.
"There is absolutely no evidence that its conduct rises to that level," he said.
But the counsel for the plaintiffs, Brent Wisner of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman PC, noted that juries sitting on the two previous trials over claims Roundup causes cancer were asked to decide whether punitive damages were warranted and both juries awarded them. He said in this trial, there's "considerably more evidence" that Monsanto's conduct was malicious, including that Monsanto allegedly ghostwrote academic articles to intentionally mislead the scientific community about Roundup's safety.
After oral arguments, Alameda Superior Judge Winifred Smith said her tentative ruling is that she will likely deny Monsanto's motion to strike punitive damages, but she said she would read all the briefs before deciding.
The arguments came during a hearing without the jury present on jury instructions, the verdict form and Monsanto's motion to strike punitive damages in a trial that kicked off March 28.
The case was brought by plaintiffs Alva and Alberta Pilliod, who are 76 and 74, respectively, and claim that decades of spraying the weedkiller on their four properties gave them both aggressive cancer. The Pilliods rested their case-in-chief on Tuesday, and Bayer will call its first witnesses Monday.
During the hearing Thursday, Brown said the few small studies that suggested Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, might be carcinogenic weren't published until the 1990s, and that there was no evidence that glyphosate could cause cancer until the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded glyphosate is a probable carcinogen in 2015. Therefore, he said, the company couldn't have been reasonably expected to warn consumers about Roundup's potential risks, because it didn't think it was dangerous and "no one else did."
"The science had not evolved to the point to reach the conclusion that exposure to Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma," he said. "At most, it's a probable carcinogen."
But Wisner said there's evidence that Monsanto has repeatedly refused to conduct certain cancer studies on Roundup since 1983 and refused to change its Roundup formula to replace the ingredient polyethoxylated tallow amine, which has been banned in Europe and allegedly makes glyphosate 50 times more toxic.
Monsanto also didn't warn consumers to take extra safety precautions when using the product, Wisner said. Instead, the company continued to advertise Roundup using ads that showed people spraying the product without gloves, while wearing t-shirts and shorts, Wisner said.
Wisner said Monsanto's conduct recklessly put people's lives in danger and constitutes malice under the law. He added that there wouldn't be any lawsuits if the court accepted Bayer's argument that no one knew about glyphosate's cancer link in the 1980s. Wisner said what the company knew about glyphosate's cancer risks and when are being revealed through litigation, and that the process is akin to the Big Tobacco cancer litigation in the 1990s.
"We're seeing that happen, we're living through the history right now," Wisner said.
In addition to the punitive damages arguments, the parties also argued over whether the jury should be instructed using the "but for" causation standard — meaning, a harm would not have happened if not for a party's actions — or the less-demanding "concurrent causation" standard that can hold more than one party liable for causing a disease.
Monsanto's counsel, Tarek Ismail of Goldman Ismail Tomaselli Brennan & Baum LLP, said the court should use the but-for standard, because the Pilliods' experts refused to concede that there could have been other contributing factors that caused the Pilliods' cancer. However, Wisner argued that the tougher standard wasn't warranted and that the other trials used the concurrent causation standard.
Judge Smith said she would look over the case law and decide the issue. She also noted that the verdict form should ask the jury to make separate findings for Alva and Alberta.
"I think it's important that [the jury] understand these are two separate cases being decided together," she said.
The Pilliod trial is the third case to go to trial out of approximately 11,200 lawsuits pending that allege Roundup causes cancer.
The first trial against Monsanto over Roundup's links to cancer was held last summer in state court in San Francisco, and resulted in a $289 million verdict against Monsanto, including $250 million in punitives. A judge later slashed the total award to $78 million. Bayer filed its opening brief appealing the judgment in state appeals court Tuesday. The second trial, Ed Hardeman v. Monsanto, ended last month in federal court with an $80 million verdict, including $75 million in punitive damages, which Bayer has said it will appeal.
At the end of the hearing Thursday, Wisner said Bayer publicly released the names and contact information of jurors who sat on the first trial when the company filed its appeal Tuesday, and asked the judge to prohibit Bayer from releasing the names of the jurors in this case. Monsanto's counsel, Kelly A. Evans of Evans Fears & Schuttert LLP, said he didn't know the details of the appeal, but he said they "certainly agree" they wouldn't release the names of the jurors in this case.
Monsanto Appeals $78.5M Loss In First Roundup Trial
By Emily Field
Law360 (April 24, 2019, 8:12 PM EDT) — Monsanto asked a California appeals court Tuesday to reverse a $78.5 million verdict awarded to a school groundskeeper who claimed Roundup weedkiller caused his lymphoma in the first landmark trial over the herbicide's alleged cancer risks.
The jury's verdict of $289 million, later slashed to $78.5 million, to DeWayne "Lee" Johnson is inconsistent with both the law and sound science, Monsanto said. Although the jury found that Monsanto should have warned that its weedkiller caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the best scholarship available when Johnson was exposed to Roundup unanimously concluded there wasn't enough evidence to link the cancer to the weedkiller's active ingredient, glyphosate, Monsanto said.
Most of the trial hinged on a determination by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015, several months after Johnson's diagnosis, that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic" at some unknown dose, Monsanto said.
But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other regulators worldwide have found otherwise, Monsanto said.
"Given the worldwide consensus among health experts, there is no basis in law for a jury to find Monsanto liable based on the cherry-picked and unreliable evidence that was presented at trial," Bayer AG, which now owns Monsanto, said in a statement.
Thousands of suits over Roundup have been filed in federal and state courts, and Monsanto last month lost the first federal bellwether trial when a jury awarded $80 million to a man who claimed the weedkiller caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
A California state jury in August awarded Johnson $289 million in compensatory and punitive damages, finding that Monsanto's weedkillers weren't safe and were a substantial factor in causing his injury.
San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos in October reduced the $250 million punitive damages award to $39.25 million under the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance Company v. Campbell , which holds that punitive damages are limited by the Fourteenth Amendment.
There is no substantial evidence that Roundup caused Johnson's disease, Monsanto said. At least 80% of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cases have no known cause, and Johnson's experts failed to explain why his case wasn't also idiopathic, Monsanto said.
Monsanto also said it was entitled to a new trial because the lower court excluded as hearsay reports by the EPA and foreign regulators that found glyphosate wasn't carcinogenic, even though it allowed the IARC report to be admitted as evidence.
Johnson's state-law claims are preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, which bars states from imposing different labeling restrictions than those required by the federal law, Monsanto said.
Additionally, Monsanto could not have changed the weedkiller's active ingredient or added a cancer warning without the EPA's approval, and there's clear evidence that the agency would have rejected such a warning, according to the brief.
In a separate filing, Monsanto asked the appellate court to take judicial notice of jurors' emails to the court sent after the trial, local news articles — including one penned by Neil Young and Daryl Hannah — and a full-page newspaper ad called "Dear Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos, What Is A Life Worth?" — which Monsanto said was meant to pressure the judge into rejecting a tentative ruling that she would likely toss the entire punitive damages award.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Michael Miller, an attorney for Johnson, told Law360 on Wednesday. "Monsanto's attempts to argue that a Neil Young editorial persuaded a respected jurist to change course is absurd on its face."
Johnson is represented by Brent Wisner and Pedram Esfandiary of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman PC, Michael Miller, Curtis G. Hoke and Jeffrey A. Travers of The Miller Firm LLC and Mark S. Burton of Audet & Partners.
Monsanto is represented by K. Lee Marshall of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP and David M. Axelrad, Jason R. Litt and Dean A. Bochner of Horvitz & Levy LLP.
The case is Johnson v. Monsanto Co. et al., case numbers A155940 and A156706, in the Court of Appeal of the State of California, First Appellate District, Division One.
FDA Orders Surgical Mesh Products Pulled From US Market
By Danielle Nichole Smith
Law360 (April 16, 2019, 6:52 PM EDT) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday ordered Boston Scientific and Coloplast — the only two remaining manufacturers of surgical mesh meant for the transvaginal repair of pelvic organ prolapse — to stop selling those mesh products in the U.S.
The order stems from the agency's reclassification of the devices as high-risk in 2016, which required their manufacturers to submit premarket approval applications to continue marketing them in the U.S., according to the FDA. The order covers Boston Scientific Corp.'s Uphold Lite Vaginal Support System and Xenform Soft Tissue Repair System, and Coloplast AS' Restorelle DirectFix Anterior Mesh.
The two manufacturers will have 10 days to submit their plan for withdrawing the products from the market, the statement said. All other mesh products meant for the transvaginal repair of pelvic organ prolapse were removed from the market in 2018 when their manufacturers declined to submit premarket approval applications, according to the FDA.
Jeffrey Shuren, the director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said the agency determined Boston Scientific and Coloplast had to show their mesh devices worked better to repair pelvic organ prolapse than surgeries that didn't use mesh in order for those products to stay on the market.
"That evidence was lacking in these premarket applications, and we couldn't assure women that these devices were safe and effective long term," Shuren said in a statement. "Patient safety is our highest priority, and women must have access to safe medical devices that provide relief from symptoms and better management of their medical conditions."
According to the statement, premarket approval applications are the FDA's "most stringent device review pathway." Ultimately, the agency found that the manufacturers didn't give an "adequate assessment" of their devices' long-term safety, or show they had an "acceptable long-term benefit" as compared to native tissue repair, which doesn't use mesh, in their applications.
Boston Scientific said in a statement that the company would "work closely with the agency to understand its direction and determine next steps."
"We are deeply disappointed by the FDA's decision on our premarket approval applications for the Uphold Lite Vaginal Support System and the Xenform Soft Tissue Repair Matrix, and believe the inaccessibility of these products will severely limit treatment options for the 50% of women in the U.S. who will suffer from pelvic organ prolapse during their lives," the company said.
The FDA and Coloplast each declined to comment Tuesday.
Boston Scientific has faced litigation over its manufacturing of other vaginal mesh devices, such as the Pinnacle Pelvic Floor Repair Kit. At the end of January, a federal judge said that the company had paid more than $7 billion to resolve tens of thousands of cases, and the company indicated in an annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it was close to having resolved about 50,000 cases and claims related to its pelvic surgical mesh implants.
Bayer Exec Denies Knowing Of Ghostwriting At Roundup Trial
Law360, Oakland, Calif. (April 16, 2019, 9:44 PM EDT) — Bayer Crop Science's product safety team lead repeatedly said in a video deposition played for a California jury Tuesday that he "has no idea" whether Monsanto toxicologists ghostwrote multiple academic studies assessing Roundup's cancer risks, but he conceded that it's inappropriate if they wrote entire articles without attribution.
Bayer's Michael Koch was the latest witness in a months long trial in Oakland, California, over claims by plaintiffs Alva and Alberta Pilliod against the Bayer unit that decades of using Monsanto's popular Roundup weedkiller gave them both aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
During Koch's examination, the Pilliods' counsel pointed out internal Monsanto emails between Koch, Monsanto toxicologist Donna Farmer and William Heydens, who has held lead roles in Monsanto toxicology and product safety groups. The emails were sent around the time the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer was assessing whether Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer in 2015.
In the emails, Heydens wrote "this is getting huge" and suggested that the company "ghostwrite" papers and get authors to "just edit and sign their names," which is what Heydens said the company did with glyphosate studies in 1999 and the early 2000s.
But Koch repeatedly said he didn't know what Heydens meant by using the word "ghostwrite." Koch said there are multiple definitions of ghostwriting and there is a "huge continuum" of what is considered acceptable. Koch said he's not comfortable with people putting their names on papers they didn't write, but he said he doesn't know if Monsanto's toxicologists did that.
"If that's what indeed happened that would be inappropriate," Koch added.
The Pilliods' counsel, Brent Wisner of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman PC, also pointed out that after IARC concluded in 2015 that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, Monsanto had paid experts from the consulting firm Intertek Group $27,400. Those Intertek experts then contributed to a September 2016 paper published in the "Critical Reviews In Toxicology" peer-reviewed medical journal on long-term, glyphosate rodent studies, Wisner said. In the paper, the panel contradicted IARC's findings and concluded the studies don't show glyphosate poses a cancer risk, he said.
Wisner noted that when the paper was published, it said Monsanto wasn't involved in its conclusions, but the journal later issued an apology and explained some Intertek experts had been paid by Monsanto. The journal also said it had not been given an adequate explanation for why Intertek's relationship with Monsanto wasn't initially disclosed, according to Wisner.
However, in his examination, Koch said it's impossible to determine whether Heyden's 2015 emails about ghostwriting were the "genesis" of the Intertek panel.
"That phrase is in [Heyden's email], but I took that to mean a variety of things," Koch said.
Aside from Koch's deposition, the jury also heard from environmental scientist William S. Pease, who took the stand Tuesday to testify on the state's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, or Proposition 65, which he helped get passed as a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley.
Please explained that when Proposition 65 was initially drafted, lawmakers incorporated IARC's findings into the labor code, because IARC was considered the best source on carcinogenicity at the time, and it was the only organization with a "good and extensive track record" of assessing whether chemicals were carcinogenic. As a result of IARC's 2015 finding, the state's Environmental Protect Agency added glyphosate to its list of known carcinogens in July 2017, Pease said.
On cross, Please conceded that there are approximately 1,000 substances on the Proposition 65 list and that IARC is not a regulatory body. He also admitted that the state labor code doesn't consider findings by other regulatory bodies like Health Canada, the European Chemicals Agency or the Australian government, which has each found glyphosate doesn't pose a cancer risk. However, Pease said IARC's "sole purpose" is to identify carcinogenic substances and to accelerate the process of carcinogenicity identification. Therefore, it doesn't consider whether all regulatory bodies agree or have even assessed the chemical's carcinogenicity, Pease said.
"IARC is basically the gold standard, because of its processes," he said.
Trial will continue Wednesday.


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Childhood Memories - Just Like I Remembered!
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I am old enough to remember when you could go to a grocery store and there would be bins of wrapped Brach's candy to select and buy by the pound. These nougats were always one of my favorites. Have now purchased three packages online to treat myself. They are soft, easy to chew, not overly sweet and with them being individually wrapped I can just take a few pieces and know the rest will stay fresh.
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text:
<?php

namespace AitchKay\ISchema\Support;

/**
 * Class Str extracted from Laravel's Str Class;
 * @package AitchKay\ISchema\Support
 */
class Str
{
    /**
     * The cache of snake-cased words.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected static $snakeCache = [];

    /**
     * Convert a string to snake case.
     * Taken from
     * @param  string $value
     * @param  string $delimiter
     * @return string
     */
    public static function snake($value, $delimiter = '_')
    {
        $key = $value . $delimiter;

        if (isset(static::$snakeCache[$key])) {
            return static::$snakeCache[$key];
        }

        if (!ctype_lower($value)) {
            $value = preg_replace('/\s+/u', '', $value);

            $value = static::lower(preg_replace('/(.)(?=[A-Z])/u', '$1' . $delimiter, $value));
        }

        return static::$snakeCache[$key] = $value;
    }

    /**
     * Convert the given string to lower-case.
     *
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     */
    public static function lower($value)
    {
        return mb_strtolower($value, 'UTF-8');
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Matrix representation of a coordinate basis A transformation $T : P_2 \to P_2$ is defined by $T(p(x)) = p(x+1)$.
Find $[T]^{a}_{a}$ if $a = \{1,x,x^2\}$
I have no clear direction on how to start the problem but the part where it's messing me up is the $p(x)$ inside the $T$, usually it's just $T(p)$.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
January 11, 2022 estine2
Join Emily as she walks through the topics covered over the season to close out the program.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
0:20 Emily: Hi everyone, and welcome to the final episode of Farm Sci-Ed, the show where we go into the science and education behind farming. I'm Dr. Emily Stine, and today, you heard it right, this is the last episode. Over the course of the last year, we've talked to three researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Scottsbluff, Nebraska about their projects looking at integrated pest management and crops grown out here.
We've talked to Dr. Jeff Bradshaw about the wheat and dry edible bean relay study looking at entomology and the impacts different cropping systems have on the biological controls within the field. We've talked to Dr. Nevin Lawrence about palmer amaranth and the impact it has on dry edible bean yield. And we've talked to Dr. Bob Harveson about cercospora and sugar beets and the impact it has on sugar beet production.
Over the course of all three of these projects, we've discussed integrated pest management tactics ranging from biological control in the entomology study to chemical control and mechanical control in the palmer amaranth dry edible bean studies and chemical and cultural control with cercospora in sugar beets. We checked in with each of these researchers over the course of the year, multiple times, seeing how things like elevated temperatures, strange weather patterns, and sometimes equipment failure impacted their research projects.
We wrapped this season up talking to all three of them about integrated pest management and what it means to each of their disciplines and how each of their disciplines collaborate together in integrated pest management practices. Finally we discuss whether or not integrated pest management is sustainable, which is a complicated topic to discuss and started thinking about the ways that we can make integrated pest management more likely to be used in the future.
We hope you've enjoyed this season, and if you'd like to see more from us in the future, well who knows? There's the possibility we may come back another year. Until then, sit back, relax, and keep learning. Have a good one!
Join Emily as she checks in with Jeff, Nevin, and Bob to see how their seasons wrapped up and what they're noticing from their observations.
0:21 Emily: Hi everyone and welcome to Farm Sci-Ed, the show where we go into the science and education behind farming. I'm Emily Stine and today we're checking in with Jeff, Nevin, and Bob at the conclusion of their seasons to see how things went and where they're at. So sit back, relax, and let's go find out what they've been up to.
0:42 So Jeff, how did harvest in the end of your season go?
Jeff: uh It was a rough season. We did finish harvest without too many hiccups, and we see the same challenges um that we've generally seen before with a reduction in dry bean yield in the in the wheat bean relay.
Emily: Can you make any preliminary statements about your observations this year?
Jeff: So some of the trends from this year: one of the challenges we've seen I should say, this year is what we've mentioned before. Because of the hot summer that we had, we had some challenges in using herbicide management for for weeds. This would have been a really good year to be able to cultivate the dry bean crop obviously if in the winter wheat dry bean relay cultivation isn't an option so without that tool, became a bit more challenging this year particularly again because of the hot summer to manage weeds really well and that clearly had an impact on on dry bean yield particularly in all the crops that had in the treatment plots that had the wheat relay treatment present. General trends that we've seen even in years like last year that didn't have the same herbicide management struggles that we had this year, we saw a reduction in in dry bean yields in the wheat bean relay so we continue to look to the future to find ways to modify that treatment, motivate modify that strategy for to improve being yield. That said, we have seen a trend in improved seed quality in the wheat bean relay and what I mean by that is in in the dry beans in the wheat bean relay treatment we see a reduction of western bean cutworm damage. So that adds clear value to that treatment but again we're still suffering from this yield drag um in that in the particular arrangement that we have in our wheat bean relay.
Emily: What are your next steps going forward?
Jeff: So right now with the project we've got a an ocean of samples that we're going through we're making progress on going through this year's sub-samples of dry beans, scoring both the pods and the beans for western bean cutworm damage again to assess that important bean quality characteristic, as well as taking yields on those plots and sub samples and 100 seed weights to evaluate that. And then we still have quite a few samples although they're sorted, we have a lot of insect samples from our various sampling techniques from sticky cards to pitfall traps to sweep samples and vacuum samples. They're all sorted but we're working on identifying individual species and doing counts again to ultimately come back to say whether or not these different treatments varied in the number of pests or the number of beneficial insects that are present. So we anticipate being through those samples probably around toward the end of February, the beginning of March uh before we have all of those data from from this field season uh fully uh fully sorted through and calculated and analyzed.
4:09 Emily: And Nevin, how is the end of your season progressing?
Nevin: uh Well the season's still ending, we've got most of our crops harvested. So our potatoes, dry beans, soybeans, sugar beets, sunflowers, alfalfa, even corn, corn still to go uh but for for dry edible beans, which we're talking about today, uh that that was harvested uh about a month ago – no um maybe a little less than that. And so we have to pull those crops off the ground and then we usually dry for a couple days or until the moisture gets ready to thresh and then we we use a combine but rather than actually combine in the field we just kind of have it running on on a cement pad and we throw a bunch of beans in there at a time from each plot and use it more of a stationary thresher. But it, that's gone well we just have our corn to do and that's not too big of a rush because it's a crop that has a little bit of wiggle room for when you can when you harvest it.
Emily: Are you analyzing any data yet?
Nevin: Yeah, we've got most of our data analyzed. uh Well I should say the royal "we" has most data analyzed. So uh a number of the projects that we have in dry edible beans beans I still need to go through there kind of with the the fine-tooth comb we call statistics, uh but for the the ones the projects I've been talking about most this year has been graduate work from Joshua Miranda and he needs to graduate this semester, so he's already got everything analyzed. So that's been good with with several of those studies, so we have the results ready to go and that's good to go.
Emily: Can you share some of those results with us?
Nevin: They're not even preliminary, yeah we're we're starting to prepare them actually for publication right now. uh so um But they're they're looking good yeah uh this
dry edible bean palmer amaranth interference work kind of – as we expected – the more palmer you have, the more the dry edible bean yield goes down. We've found that dry edible beans are more susceptible to palmer interference than most other crops, so this sort of palmer interference work is a pretty standard type of research that occurs and it's it's happened in a number of different types of crops: corn, soybeans, cotton, sweet potatoes, you know you name it it's been done already. It hasn't been done in dry beans and dry beans appear to be more susceptible than other crops are to the palmer interference and so that's been that's been nice to have that in there that kind of gives farmers sort of a metric for what they can expect if they if they aren't able to control palmer amaranth what their yield impacts can be and just to kind of put that in perspective I think we've seen four plants in about a thousand square yards, which is kind of a weird way of of describing that, but that that's enough to cause a noticeable yield impact on your dry edible bean production. So not a lot of palmer to reduce dry bean yield and those plants you know each one at that low of density, each each palmer plant is going to be producing – if they're a female, so about half of those would be female so you're looking at about 300,000 seeds per female at that at that level of density.
So that that works been done um the other work that that we have analyzed that Josh was working on is is looking at using Outlook which is currently the only chloroacetamide or group 15 herbicide labeled in dry beans for post-emergent application. He's been looking at using that in a sequential pre-post program where you apply it pre-emergent with Prowl usually and then before the herbicide wears off, you try to put out a second application to extend that uh period of weed suppression from from the soil soil active herbicide and we've been looking at two different timings sort of: a really early application, and then one that's more in tune when growers will generally put out their post emergence herbicide and one out of three years, the data we needed to have that earlier application but the the other two years uh the timing wasn't a factor. And what we found is having that Outlook put out as a post and even the only post herbicide or as a lay by in this case we're getting equivalent we uh palmer amaranth control as if we were to use the herbicide Reflex or fomosaphen which is labeled in our area it's great on palmer it's the best palmer herbicide we have in dry beans but because of rotation restrictions, most growers in our area cannot use it so the um use of outlook seem to be equivalent and that's good news. That's going to be the best recommendation moving forward for growers is if they're concerned about palmer is to use Outlook in their their post-emergent herbicide techniques.
um The third study that Joshua finished up is although Outlook is the only group 15 herbicide, the very long chain fatty acid inhibiting herbicides labeled for post-emergent application in dry edible beans, that that may change in the future so Dual Magnum is another one that Syngenta may be expanding the label on to allow applications and another one that BASF is looking into is uh Zidua or peroxisulfone and so in addition to looking at Outlook we also screened both of those herbicides to see if they provided as good control of Outlook or even better or worse, and then we threw in Warrant as well which is probably not going to be labeled in dry edible beans but we wanted to see uh if it could be and what we found is Zidua, Dual Magnum, all provided equivalent control of palmer amaranth as a in a sequential pre-post system as Outlook and that was as good as using a Reflex post-emergence. the the Warrant or acetylchloride was a bit worse but that probably wouldn't be the best fit for the system anyways. And for both the Outlook and Dual Magnum, you could use those um uh pre-emergent and post emergent uh if the future label allows that in Dual where you could have uh use the same herbicide for both applications while the peroxisophone residual, that's likely going to be a post only option. It's not going to have a pre-emergent label because we did see some injury when applied pre, but you could easily just throw that in after Outlook or Dual.
11:03 Emily: Bob, how has your season progressed?
Bob: Overall I guess it it we haven't got the results back from the sugar beets
you know the tonnage in in pounds per sugar and all pounds of sugar per acre that sort of thing yet.
But overall it was very hot and very dry and so we had trouble kind of keeping them keeping them wet. I think the yields are still going to be very good, we haven't seen that yet but at the same time, there just was not any or very much cercospora. We did see it some in the plots, but based on our different methods of like the alert system, the spornado thing, we just didn't see any need to make any applications. We went ahead and did just so we could say we did something about it but we never in our plots never did see the values that are required for making applications. Emily: Did you hear much about cercospora being an issue this season?
Bob: I did not, no. I mean I didn't – nobody contacted us about it, and I didn't hear through the grapevine. I'm sure it was there in some you know localized spots but it just it it just was not as problematic this year as it often is and I think that is just due to the to the heat. A lot of it is is due to uh requirements for it is at night, say from midnight to seven and I could, you know tell you that it was still up in the 80s in in our house uh you know at midnight and so that is part of the reason why it just wasn't as problematic problem – is that you know we weren't able to evaluate the different treatments that we were trying to use and then so there's that's kind of a wash this year in terms of that.
Emily: So do you plan on repeating this study again next year?
Bob: I will plan on it, but it also will depend on Western Sugar and their desire to do it. But I am going to propose to try to do something at least something similar to this again using the alert system and using that spornado sport catching device. I want it to go well for the growers but we still need to try to do a little bit better job maybe of producing disease in our plots so we can evaluate the treatments properly.
13:17 Emily: Well folks, there you have it. With all three research projects wrapped up for the year, the researchers are on to their data crunching. We got to see some of the preliminary thoughts that they're having but for the most part it's wait and see until after all the data comes in. Be sure to like this video and subscribe to our channel for more episodes. Find us on twitter @TheFarmSciEd and visit our website at farmsci-ed.com for transcripts and more information. Have a good one!
Jeff, Nevin, and Bob continue their conversation about Integrated Pest Management and whether or not it is sustainable long-term.
0:20 Emily: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Farm Sci-Ed,
the show where we go into the science and education behind farming. I'm Emily Stine, and today we're continuing our discussion about integrated pest management within entomology, weed science, and plant pathology. And today Jeff, Nevin, and Bob are answering the question of "Is IPM sustainable?"
0:39 Bob: I think it has to.
Jeff: I have a short answer, and the answer is yes.
Bob: I think it has to or agriculture will not be.
0:50 Nevin: I think the first thing you do is define sustainability and there's a lot of ways uh you know, you look at economically. Does it uh is it going to keep making money for the farmer? Does it work you know biologically? And then also does it have any negative impacts that over the long term are going to cause problems environmentally or socially? and and so basically will this practice – can we continue using it um in the future indefinitely? um and I think that's uh that's the question and so I'll let I'll let everyone answer whether or not IPM is is something that we can keep on doing.
Jeff: um well you know, there's maybe uh gradations of that depending on the pest species that you're looking at, and how and the system that you're working in, so um you know from its beginning from its origin at least for uh insect integrated pest management you know, the focus has always been on um a lot of the origin was based on biological control and trying to integrate biological control and other control tools, tactics, and strategies and then incorporating economics into that. So you know for certain pests you can you can design management systems that you you might use things like conservation bio control or different strategies you might use in the field that result in possibly more land conservation, less fuel use, reduction in pesticide or herbicide in the case of weeds, that would achieve some of those what might be considered environmental sustainable goals. But then also simultaneously achieve you know reduction in input is a reduction in cost um which makes it more sustainable from an economic standpoint. That's not possible for every pest and every weed and every pathogen. um
2:50 So the question is "is IPM sustainable?" It can be, um when optimized, when everything can be optimized and you know also kind of pulling back some of the previous episode comments i had about you know once we do the science, you get the foundations of a pest species, ecologically, biologically, you've got a suite of tools that you can have diverse modes of actions or compile that or add that to different strategies at the same time so integrating all those together.
Bob: Growers do that anyway.
Jeff: so you can do all the research and then ultimately the end of the day, is if the tool, the scouting tool, or uh method of sampling or determining whether or not you have a problem, if it isn't convenient it's not going to be adopted. It's not going to be used
Bob: but every year they decide what which field they're going to use for this, or the which variety they're going to use. To me that's – they are doing integrated pest management that way because of what it works. yes right so yes I think it's sustainable and will continue to be.
4:02 Nevin: Depending on how you define uh IPM for weeds or integrated weed management, um the answer is no. um But it depends and the reason I talked about this in the weed science episode is um so integrated weed management is just doing a bunch of different things to control weeds and classically the definition is to reduce herbicide use. But what that's led to is basically you do a bunch of stuff and then you rely on only a single herbicide or maybe two herbicides and that actually uh narrows the selection pressure for resistance to develop to those uh those those herbicides within the weed populations. And you you end up losing those herbicides and so uh if the goal of IPM is to reduce herbicide usage, I almost would say it's not sustainable. uh The the related concept, which is depending on how you define it, the same thing is something called herbicide resistance management where you do a lot of practices including non-herbicide practices with the goal of not reducing herbicide use, but broadening that selection pressure to reduce the likelihood of future events of herbicide resistance from developing. So it depends what's your goal – as a goal to not use herbicides or reduce number of herbicides then that might not be sustainable. But if your goal is to just have all the tools still be available in 20 years, then it it it likely is um as because it's it's a it's a it's a methodology, it's not a definitive "this is what you do" and so it's hard for a methodology I guess they're good to go out of favor but it really depends on your goal for weeds at least.
5:42 Jeff: and yeah so I think you could say in some aspects, both for – well I think in all of our disciplines – when it comes to resistance management it's a matter of conserving susceptible pest disease and weed traits.
Nevin: yes.
Bob: or the chemicals or the chemicals or whatever you're trying to recover or keep those going too.
Nevin: And one of the – I guess other differences too, because a lot of this has to do with resistance is with um uh I know I – I can't speak for the disciplines, but a lot of times whether or not that resistance trait is going to be a problem indefinitely has to do with fitness cost with it and at least for a lot of weed situations, there's not a fitness cost. So if resistance develops it might be there forever within that population; it's not going away.
Jeff: Yeah, whereas in some insect populations you know fitness – there are fitness costs related to to whether or not they can adapt to a certain um trait.
Bob: And they're always going to be changing you know you can't can't mess with mother nature.
Jeff: yeah resistance happens, it's just a matter of can you slow it down enough?
Bob: Right, right.
6:44 Nevin: In my mind, the whole idea of this this integrated management uh whether it's for you know, reducing your pesticide use or just resistant costs, it's basically just trying to you know from our standpoint we're trying to figure out ways to help a farmer I guess be sustainable or manage that pest or be productive. But you know if if a farmer thinks in the concept of IPM, I think what they're doing is they're just thinking long term, they're thinking more strategically, it's not just decision to decision decision, it's it's trying to broaden out the the longevity of making decisions and I think that's um probably the most beneficial thing.
Jeff: um yeah and I think you could say that really it's more well at least in some cases depending on the commodity it's more than the farmer that needs to have that long-term buy-in for IPM adoption or some of these practices whatever that might be to be executed in the practice you know whether it's the the co-op, the agriculturalists, the farmer that's growing it, um probably less of the consumer but we do make decisions. I mean farmers do have to make decisions depending on the commodity thinking about apples for and some of the diseases in apples and how the the look of an apple can determine its marketability, we're driving – it's driven by consumers
Nevin: or dry edible beans! uh hair uh nightshade can actually stain the beans pink and then you won't buy them because who wants a pink great northern bean uh I'll also say one thing problem with IPM is with each of us, is is we tend to research that in our own silos and so we're only considering the disease of interest or the the pest of interest. And you know, with a farmer it's much more difficult because they're considering everything and so it, you know it's we kind of do research in a silo and that doesn't help farmers unless they're literally managing a pest within a silo you know?
8:41 Jeff: Yeah, I was going to say it's a good thing we have faculty with extension appointments.
Bob: yeah
Jeff: and it gives at least a little bit of playroom between us to share time and space together in terms of talking about different management concepts. At least when I present, I'm presenting with you guys many often
Nevin: yeah it's one of us
Jeff: I do learn a little bit about weed science, maybe sometimes you learn a bit about entomology when we're sharing our presentations together but there are opportunities at least uh in places like ours where we have shared workspaces, to come up with ideas maybe that are a little more integrated than than would otherwise be – break down some silos a little.
9:23 Emily: There's a lot more discussion to be had about IPM and its sustainability. So to jump in on this conversation, subscribe to our channel, find us on twitter @TheFarmSciEd or visit our website at farmsci-ed.com for transcripts and other episodes. Have a good one!
Entomology, Integrated Pest Management, Plant Pathology, Weed Science
January 8, 2022 January 10, 2022 estine2
Join Emily as she talks to Jeff, Nevin, and Bob about how IPM influences their disciplines of study.
0:19 Emily: Hi everyone and welcome to Farm Sci-Ed,
the show where we go into the science and education behind farming. I'm Emily Stine, and today we're talking to Jeff, Nevin, and Bob about IPM and how it interacts between their disciplines.
0:45 This will be a two-part episode, so stay tuned for the next one after this. So Jeff, Nevin and Bob, can you explain the – the core tenets of IPM and how that works within your disciplines and as a whole?
0:57 Jeff: So thinking about integrated pest management and a brief overview from an entomological perspective, that's that's where the original idea of integrated pest management originated was. As we talked about in previous episodes, some of the early work in the late 40s and early 50s by entomologists in California were looking at, trying to find ways to integrate ecological aspects of insect pests, biological aspects of insect pests, and their management together into more of a unified principle, which then eventually evolved into developing economic decisions into those those basic principles of IPM as well that they developed over time. And so as a discipline, generally we use insect numbers as a proxy measure to determine the injury potential of a given crop to a particular insect species, and then we use those numbers to make a decision as to whether or not we should be concerned about resulting injury – that it would be economically damaging or not. As we talked about before, if it's going to reach an economic injury level, or or exceed it and then use those economic parameters that are incorporating insect numbers to make recommendations for producers or land managers.
2:28 Bob: Well a lot of it I think is your your definition of integrated pest management, but for me it's where you're using multiple sources of – like for example – to manage a disease, you're not the uh you're not just just sticking with one particular one, depending on one, you're looking at an integration of multiple different isolates, or multiple different forms of management. One of – one of the examples I guess, would be the combination of genetic resistance and fungicides. Say in in a cercospora leaf spot so that's that's one, one particular uh example of that so it's it's integration of several different methods of management for a disease.
3:18 Nevin: So uh in weed, weed management you can't really – you can like in rangeland situations, or or natural areas or when you have an invasive pest, like you can scout for those, but in an agronomic field you can't really scout for weeds. um They're going to emerge as soon as the crop emerges, and you know generally preceding the crop, you're going to be winter time. So it's very difficult to scout for weeds, so we don't really do a weed scouting system like they would do with an entomology. And the other thing with with weeds is except for extremely rare cases, the number of weeds present in the field is always enough to cause an economic injury. And so there's never going to be a situation where you just don't control the weeds, so we can't really uh scout and we can't really, uh it's very difficult to model um you know should you or should you not do any weed control. So you're definitely gonna be doing weed control. So with integrated weed management, that it really is just using as many uh practices as as possible, or as needed with the goal of reducing herbicide use. So the idea is not to reduce weed control, it's to reduce herbicide use. And that's sort of what defines integrated weed management.
4:30 Jeff: So each of us talked about, well Bob and Nevin talked more about the – basically what we had talked about previously is the pillars of IPM, so we talked about the foundational principles which are eco ecological basis, you know the scientific basis for uh for IPM and then you have these pillars, which are the tools, tactics, and strategies that we use to to manage pests and pathogens or weeds. um You know, Nevin pointed out that, you know, in weed management it's it's pretty specialized, you don't really scout for weeds – um not that you necessarily can't – but if you did, you'd be too late.
Nevin: yeah and so and that's what you when we do, we do scout – and you should absolutely scout – but it's kind of uh it's kind of a post-application scouting, so it's not um you know if you're walking the field before an herbicide application and trying to see like what's up, um you know, you might have already missed the boat at that point. It might be too late. So uh it's usually to see what failed from that that application, not to make it.
5:33 Bob: You've also got to remember that if you're looking at a monocot or a dicot, you have different herbicides that if you mistakenly identify one of them, then using the wrong herbicide is going to cost you even more – You're paying double.
5:47 Nevin: – and that's that's true, I mean good ID is important but for for most farmers, you're going to have four or five peak weeds in that field, and you've been dealing with them for the last 20 years. So you know what's in the field for the most part, let's say new comes up and that's why it's it's more of a "did this work? What went wrong? How can we fix it next year's?" sort of approach to scouting unlike you know for – I think both of you use thresholds for your calculations, for many of them right?
6: 13 Jeff: not in every case you know um for a lot of our
our bt corn traits we don't necessarily scout and make a decision before the season starts as to whether or not we're going to use that that given tool or tactic for its management. And so, from that perspective, for insect management it is very similar to weed management growers making the decision, you know probably the year before and buying the corn as to whether or not they need a corn resistant trait or a lepidopteran trait in the corn and then planting it really just based on field history which actually is pretty similar to weed management.
Nevin: yeah.
Jeff: You make decisions based on field history not necessarily within the season.
6:52 Bob: Well, same thing with us with the root pathogens or soil-borne pathogens. You know, you know those things aren't going anywhere. In certain fields, you may have uh running to run into several different problems that are not going to go away. And so you need to remember that the next time that that field is cropped.
Jeff: But you know, both us and plant pathology you know do have some advantages for those insect pests, where you know we we can determine either through forecasting that you might use for a certain plant disease or as an insect, you know maybe it doesn't develop every year, but you have, it's you know Bob: it's not always, not always too late.
Jeff: Right yeah.
Bob : Sometimes it could be, but it's not like the situation where you 're already too late.
7:37 Jeff: Where you may be able to zoom in at a particular time of the season, where you may not have to treat every year. And in the case, I think with weeds as well timing is important in terms of growth stage and
Nevin: absolutely
Jeff: things that weed scientists think a lot about in terms of the appropriate timing of the application that herbicide relative to the
physiology of the plant.
Nevin: And sometimes, we get tangled up in there. So a lot of dry beans, for example, it might not be the best time to spray an insecticide but it's the right time to put a post-emergent herbicide in so the farmer's going to compromise on one of those and might not be getting all the benefit or even any benefit for controlling one of those pests. And so sometimes we contradict each other as well.
8:19 Jeff: Same goes for some of the, I think – fungicides or bactericides they might tank mix um along with an insecticide, I don't know if that happens so much with herbicides but certainly certainly uh insecticide early insecticide cocktails are not unknown, um and you you see that with seed treatments as well. They'll try to um there are build multiple methods and strategies for you know, coating a seed with an insecticide packaged along with early season fungicide. Again a lot of those decisions I think are based on um most optimistic – most optimistically are based on field history, right, but sometimes they're cultural decisions as well.
9:05 Emily: We'll be continuing this talk in the next episode, asking if IPM is sustainable and their general thoughts on the topic.
Join us next time, as we continue discussing integrated pest management strategies and whether or not we think it can be sustainable. Be sure to subscribe to this channel, follow us on twitter @TheFarmSciEd or visit our website at farmsci-ed.com for transcripts and other episodes. Have a good one!
Integrated Pest Management, Plant Pathology
Join Emily as she and Bob discuss what Integrated Pest Management looks like within the context of plant pathology.
This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.
0:19 Emily: Hi folks, and welcome back to Farm Sci-Ed,
the show where we go into the science and education behind farming. We're continuing on our discussion about integrated pest management. We're talking to Bob today about plant pathology, the disease triangle, and integrated pest management and how all three of those topics intersect.
0:37 So Bob, how does integrated pest management use the disease triangle to make decisions in plant pathology?
Bob: As a review, let's go back to the disease triangle. There are three points on that, and without all three of them moving at the same time, disease will not occur. So that means that there must be a susceptible host, a conducive environment, and then the pathogen to be present all at the same time. And what – the way I look at IPM is it's – it's integrating more than just one particular item for for control. So it it integrates several different ones, multiple ones and then hopefully the combination of all these will be better than any single one.
Present examples of this would be genetic resistance, so this also removes or tries to remove the point with the susceptible host. Another thing that that's done with this is that the fungicides that we use, this is trying to remove the pathogen. But there's always a resistance problem with the pathogen developing resistance so that's why that – you you must also integrate a number of different chemicals with different chemistries. And lastly, the thing that we also try to do is forecasting. Forecasting would predict what the time period was when the environment would be ready for the pathogen to begin. So if we know when that time is, we can predict when it is and then that way we can better monitor the presence of the pathogen. And then you put all these things together, and that's really how we try to implement different types or to integrate different types of control measures.
2:27 E: Can you explain how IPM might be used in systems where cercospora specifically is present?
B: Okay, well, like – like we're saying, if you're going to control this this disease to the best of our abilities, we need to continue to use cultivars that have resistance, rotating different fungicides and then trying to predict the time period when those pathogens would be present. For example, like what we did this year with the spornado: we tried to catch spores to know if they were actually there. One last thing in terms of cultivation is if there are fields that are severely affected, then it would probably be better not to leave that residue on the surface of this – of the soil, because pathogen can overwinter to some degree. And so then, if you plant new crops the next year anywhere near this, then that could serve as a point source for infections later on with the wind blow – wind and water movement.
3:27 E: Are there other examples of cultural control that you could use within the context of IPM?
B: Well, the only thing I can really think of is is trying to – if there was a problem, get rid of that the remains of the uh of the plants because that that that will remove the pathogen from that that location. Something else that you can do late in the season, is reducing the sprinklers again if – unless they really need it. That also keeping the foliage wet, will also enhance the pathogens ability to germinate – regerminate and cause further problems.
4:01 E: So really, integrated pest management practices in plant pathology are pretty self-explanatory?
B: Sure, but it's also very – people may be doing it without even knowing that they're doing it.
4:13 E: Do you find that common?
B: I think so, because people know what what kind of – if they've had a train wreck in the past, and so they don't use that particular variety. They try to select varieties that have resistance to whatever they might be concerned about.
4:28 E: Thanks Bob! Well folks, there you have it. Today we talked to Dr. Bob Harveson about integrated pest management and how it relates to plant pathology decisions. Join us next time as we go into a more in-depth conversation on integrated pest management with all three of our specialists, and continue our exploration into the science and education behind farming. Find us on twitter @TheFarmSciEd and visit our website at thefarmsci-ed.com for transcripts and more details. Have a good one!
Integrated Pest Management, Weed Science
Episode 14: Weed Science IPM
Join Emily and Nevin as they discuss the differences between Integrated Weed Management and Integrated Pest management within Weed Science.
0:19 Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Farm Sci-Ed, the show where we go into the science and education behind farming. I'm Emily Stine, and today we're continuing the conversation in IPM in different disciplines. Today we're talking to Nevin about integrated weed management and how it relates to integrated pest management. Nevin, can you describe the difference between integrated pest management and integrated weed management?
0:38 Nevin: Yeah, integrated pest management is something that is, is something that was invented, conceived at first by entomologists. And the idea in – in IPM for weeds, or integrated weed management as some might call it, is basically trying to use a multitude of approaches to reduce herbicide use. And so is there a way we can create different weed control strategies, uhm – such as cultural, mechanical, uhm and biological control in order to reduce the number of herbicides that we – that we're applying. And the the thought on that is that uh reducing herbicide use may reduce cost, for farmers. uh It reduces exposure of herbicides to the applicator, which sometimes those those can be toxic or carry some sort of health risks. uh There's environmental benefits too, some herbicides are – can leach into groundwater and cause off-target uhm injury to weeds – or uh to plants – desirable plants if applied improperly. And all these things together is a good reason why we should try to reduce herbicide use if we can. But there's also a lot of benefits of herbicides as well. I mean, generally they're gonna be easier to integrate into a system, so if we're looking to uh incorporate tillage or cover crop, that might require farming a different way, uh by buying a new piece of equipment, adjusting some of your farming practices. So it's a bit easier to integrate herbicides into the system. uhm It it it's also could be a cost saving to add approaches other than just using other herbicide practices. So, uh it it's a trade-off, everything in agriculture has a trade-off. But basically, uhm that's what integrated weed management is in a nutshell. It's trying to use diverse uhm management approaches in order to reduce the the usage or the need of different herbicides.
2:46 Emily: You've previously mentioned something you call "the critical period" when it comes to weed management. Can you expand on that concept?
Nevin: Yeah, so this is sort of something that I think kind of – it is the closest thing we have to what would be considered an "economic threshold" or an "economic injury level" in entomology, when they talk about IPM. So in entomology, I think what they're trying to do is figure out at what population threshold a certain insect pest is going to cause enough injury that it's going to be justified to use an insecticide. And if you're insect population never gets above that threshold, then there would be no reason to uhm apply that that insecticide. And so a lot of entomology or – a lot of IPM practices based on entomology are formed on the idea of y'know, you're going to be scouting for the pest, you're going to be tracking the pest throughout the season, you're going to know what these thresholds are, and and then do a lot of research to establish these thresholds and sort of guide these thresholds. uhm And those strategies in a lot of ways just don't work for weed science. And so we uhm – we can't really uhm, scout for a weed, so it's in the soil – the seed's in the soil, and it's going to come up that next year. There are ways to sample the soil, extract that seed uhm, figure out what that seed is, but those are really difficult to do in a timely fashion and is almost always going to be uneconomical. So it it's very difficult to scout for weeds in an agronomic setting, and uh as far as thresholds go, uhm there is always going to be enough weeds present in the soil to cause economic injury. All of the time.
There's never going to be a situation that – I wouldn't say never, I've heard stories of of high-value vegetable producers putting something like a soil sterilant on the ground that kills everything. But that's very expensive and not very practical. But there's rarely going to be instances where there's so few weeds that they won't have an economic injury.
So uhm you can't really scout, and you just should expect that every year there's enough weeds to cause economic injury. So then y'know, how do we sort of model or determine when and when not to control weeds? So this idea was proposed called the "critical period of weed control" which is where you do a series of experiments where you do a series of experiments where sort of half the study you control weeds, maybe for the first uh week, and then the second week, and the third week and the fourth week of the field season. So you're gonna let uh plots be weed-free for a certain number of weeks, and then you stop controlling weeds. So you might have a treatment where you have a one-week weed-free period, and a two week, a three week and a four week. And so the longer those weed-free periods are, the less yield you're going to lose – that's pretty simple, that's pretty easy to understand. On the other end, of that experiment, what you do is you let the weeds appear all season long, and then later on in the season, you start controlling those weeds. And so you're going to start controlling those weeds let's say four weeks after they've established all season and then five weeks and six weeks. And so, on the front end, you have different weed-free periods, and then on the back end you have different periods of weed control. And when you link those two values together, you can model then "okay, to preserve – let's say – 95%, 98% of the yield potential with this crop, you need to control weeds from two weeks from planting until four weeks to harvest and early on in the year, we can let weeds grow and then later in the season we can let weeds grow as well." So that's going to prevent at any economic yield loss. And so that's kind of the methods we can do with yield science as far as modeling when, when not to control weeds and so the threshold really doesn't have to do with the population of weeds, the threshold has to do with the stage of crop production – or, certain stages of crop production that are more susceptible to yield loss.
6:55 Emily: So in your mind, should integrated weed management be focused on preserving yield, or eliminating weeds?
Nevin: That's a good question. And uh, one of the problems with the critical period of weed control is it it's focused on preserving yield; so that's an economic benefit. But you're producing all of those weed seeds, and so those weeds that you decide you can let grow for these periods, especially on the tail end, are going to produce more seeds. And so they will be contributing more weed seeds in the soil, which might create more problems in the future and it also sort of ignores all the other problems with weeds. And so we have direct costs of weeds, which is generally competition and yield loss, but there's also indirect costs of weeds.
So, we have potential for weeds to contaminate: weed seeds to contaminate grain that we're harvesting, or lower quality, and those may not be factored into this equation, so we might say that if you left y'know, weeds until the end of the season, you're not having that much yield loss, but you also might be sucking a bunch of palmer amaranth seed, let's say into your combine, which is then gonna create problems. Weeds can also be hosts for insects and pathogens, and so that model also doesn't really take into account those issues. And so for – although the critical period of weed control is a way to model when or when not to control weeds, in a lot of ways it's a bit too simplistic.
Additionally, this idea of waiting until y'know, two or three weeks into a season to control weeds, uhm while that may work, it ignores how a lot of our herbicides are used. And generally, in weed science, the best time to apply herbicides are going to be before the weeds ever germinate – or at least before they emerge from the soil. And so we can put on soil-active herbicides early in the year, to prevent weeds from emerging from the soil and it's easier, generally to control a weed before they emerge, they're gonna have less yield impact because they never actually come out of the soil, and these models sort of ignore that. And so, for a large part, this critical period idea ignores some of these issues and is simplistic for what farmers actually need to do.
9:01 Emily: So then how does integrated weed management differ from resistance management?
Nevin: So, uh one of – one of the problems with integrated weed management is that the idea is that you're trying to reduce pesticide use – or, herbicide use. So, okay, if you throw in a cover crop, and you do this sort of tillage strategy, and maybe you plant your crop a little earlier or a little later or at a higher density, you can reduce your reliance on herbicides. And what that generally means is that you're going to be using less herbicides. And not less herbicide, but less number of herbicides.
So, a farmer might be using let's say, in a corn field, four to five active ingredients sometimes, so different types of chemicals to control weeds. And so with this integrated weed management does if it's successful at reducing herbicide use, what that means is you're going to reduce it down to two or one herbicide. And a big one that would be reduced, especially since – the the herbicide that would be then the herbicide of choice, especially after the introduction of herbicide resistant crops through transgenic technologies and gene insertion would be glyphosate. And so what you're doing now is you're reducing the need for these other herbicides, and you can just get by with one herbicide, let's say, or two herbicides in large part, that means glyphosate. So what that does then is it puts a tremendous amount of selection pressure on the weeds to evolve resistance to glyphosate. And so, sometimes what integrated weed management does is it makes it – it reduces your number of herbicides you're using so that one herbicide or two herbicides that are left are more likely to get resistance developed. And that's a problem.
And so, in the long term, thinking about all these different strategies, you know, is the goal to reduce herbicide practices, or is the goal to preserve all these different tools? So as soon as we have resistance developed to a certain herbicide, that herbicide might not be able to be used again in that field for a very long time, potentially forever, because of those resistances development. And so, integrated weed management also seems to reflect that as well. And so, resistance management, which is a different idea, is you use whatever tools are available to spread out that selection pressure so it's not just focused on a single herbicide. Or it's going to be focused on several herbicides.
So the idea of herbicide resistance management is you are going to use cover crops, you are going to use y'know, tillage where appropriate, you are gonna use cultural practices, but that's in addition to applying any – as many herbicides that are useful. And trying not to rely on a single chemical or a few chemicals a year, year after year after year. That way, you're spreading off the selection pressure and the idea is, basically, the more diverse your management practices are, the harder it is for a particular weed species to adapt to that and become very difficult to manage year after year after year.
12:05 Emily: Do you think integrated weed management is sustainable?
Nevin: So that really depends on what you mean by "sustainable." And uh that's that's a tricky term. Y'know, I like to think of sustainable meaning "is this practice gonna be something that farmers can keep doing for thirty years?" y'know – "can they keep using that?" And one of the problems, like I said, with integrated weed management, is you tend to narrow the number of herbicides you use and that's going to place a big burden on those weeds to become resistant to that. And so in some points, I would say it's probably not the best strategy. Using herbicide resistance management, where you are using a diversity of herbicides, along with multiple approaches, to really broaden that selection pressure probably is the best management practices for some folks. Although, it's very complicated to implement that, because it's very complex. And how do we take a very diverse herbicide management program, that may be costly because you're using multiple herbicides, multiple cultural approaches, and then you have to add in other practices – your fertility, and disease, insect management, uhm it just gets to be actually quite complicated. But in some ways, I feel like integrated weed management or IPM for weeds; this idea of narrowing down the use of herbicides, over time may not be the best strategy.
13:24 Emily: Well folks, there you have it. Today we talked to Dr. Nevin Lawrence about integrated weed management and how it differs from integrated pest management within weed science. Join us next time as we talk to Bob about how integrated pest management relates to plant pathology, and we continue our exploration into integrated pest management. Find us on twitter @TheFarmSciEd or visit our website at farmsci-ed.com for transcripts and other episodes. Have a good one!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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He started professional activity from 2002. Many albums are released as a trumpeter, composer and producer.
His leader's band "Shima&ShikouDUO"(trumpet,piano), as trumpet & piano DUO , exceptional one, FujiRockFes07 appeared, got No.1 of the Tower Records J-JAZZ chart, released from Major Label(Victor), a heroic achievement was done.
The another project "SilentJazzCase" based on a groove sound , original albums(3 titles) is released. Cover album"Jazzin'R&B" recorded an exceptional long hit by iTunes(Japan) limitation in 2010(2010 year rank No.1 of jazz section).
Album "Meikyoku wo fuku(famous jazzsongs)" , 3 titles are released in Japan,2013. Gigs beyond 100 a year were performed in Japan. The tour in Thailand (Bangkok Chiang Mai) ,it taken up by local media ,and he had great success. "NHK-FM"special program(for 1 hour, summer in 2014), was a big topic. His trumpet-style is famous like a "singing".
He also is superviser of Music label"Todoroki Jazz Records".
Yusuke Shima INTERVIEW 島裕介 0:21'46"
枯葉~強風~(編曲:島裕介) 小山豊 / 島裕介 0:34'45"
Mighty Like The Blues 渋谷毅 0:42'08"
Lady's Blues Happy Hour 0:48'17"


Leonardo DiCaprio is 40 years old today. He's one of the most celebrated and in-demand actors of our generations, yet he's still yet to bag the biggest prize in acting.
He suffered an all-too predictable Oscar heartbreak early this year, missing out on a Best Actor prize to Matthew McConaughey.
Despite rave reviews for his turn in Martin Scorsese's 'Wolf of Wall Street', he was snubbed once again. What does the poor millionaire actor have to do to win an Academy award? Why has he not got one already?
First, lets look at his nominations, and who he lost out to.
Leo has been nominated twice before in the Best Actor category for 'The Aviator' in 2005 and 'Blood Diamond' in 2007.
In those years he lost out to Jamie Foxx in 'Ray' and Forest Whitaker in 'The Last King of Scotland'. Two towering and career-defining performances, much like Tommy Lee Jones' in 'The Fugitive' which denied him earlier in his career when he was nominated for 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape'.
Ditto 2014. Let's be clear, Leo was fantastic as Jordan Belfort in 'The Wolf of Wall Street'. It's a typically intense performance, but it's also one that proves he's got what it takes to do physical comedy too.
However, Matthew McConaughey (who pipped him to the post) is riding the crest of a wave of critical acclaim, in the the biggest year of his acting career. This makes Leo plain unlucky.
Since his breakthrough in 1993 with the double-whammy of 'This Boy's Life' and 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', Leo has consistently made good career moves. His back catalogue is solid, working up from child star, to teen heartthrob, to Hollywood A-lister, taking in a 'Titanic' sized mega-hit in along the way.
He's never really made any major mis-steps along the way (I even rate 'The Beach') so "where's the drama in that?" asks The Academy who love a "story" to go with their Oscar-winners. McConaughey – the comeback kid. Daniel Day-Lewis – the method man. And so on.
In fact, Leo doesn't have a "career-defining" performance yet. Just many, many very good ones.
Aside from his Oscar-nominated turn as the mentally-challenged Arnie in 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', Leo has avoided roles that require physical affections or tics, the sort of thing that brings in Oscars.
McConaughey had his "weight-loss", Colin Firth did the stutter for 'King's Speech', Jamie Foxx went "blind" for 'Ray'… the closest Leo's got is doing a Boston accent for 'The Departed'.
- Are Pixar Films Sexist?
Does Leo need to go full retard (Kirk Lazarus in 'Tropic Thunder's' words not ours!) to bag himself an Academy Award? We'd hope not, but it's got to be worth a shot.
It's hard to define what an "Oscar-worthy" movie is, particularly after 'Gravity' defied convention to scoop a ton of awards this year, but most years the Oscar botherers tend to be worthy films with weighty subject matters. '12 Years A Slave' and 'Dallas Buyers Club' are good examples this year, but these aren't the kinds of films Leo tends to make.
If you look back at some of the biggest films of DiCaprio's career so far - 'Inception', 'Shutter Island', 'Romeo + Juliet' - these are popcorn films (even if they were made by top notch directors).
In fact, it's strange that for most of his most critically acclaimed roles, the aforementioned films, plus 'The Departed', 'Titanic', 'Catch Me if You Can', 'Revolutionary Road', he didn't earn a single nomination.
DiCaprio's name on your poster is like a stamp of quality assurance. If Leo's in it, of course it's going to be good. This allows for actors around him to experiment, to push boundaries, because they're safe in the knowledge that Leo is there to anchor the film around them.
However, this can sometimes lead to their performances stealing the limelight from Leo. He was mesmerising as slave-trader Calvin Candie in Tarantino's 'Django Unchained', but the Academy honoured Christoph Waltz that year instead.
Ditto Daniel Day-Lewis in 'Gangs of New York'. Mark Wahlberg in 'The Departed'. Cate Blanchett in 'The Aviator', Kate Winslet in 'Titanic'. Need we go on?
From 'This Boy's Life' onwards, Leo was touted as a heartthrob, even squeezing in a turn as the ultimate romantic lead in 'Romeo + Juliet' thanks to his boyish, teen idol, good looks. Since the huge success of 'Titanic', he's had to work extra hard to choose difficult, less showy roles to escape from that preconception of just being a pretty face. It's the same problem that Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp face.
He's never gone full fugly though in his line of work, but why would you want him to, with those matinee idol looks? You'd hope that with his natural talent, that he wouldn't have to.
Remember, Paul Newman another actor famed for his looks as much as his natural talent was nominated six times before he won in 1986.
Chin up Leo, your time will come.