Music/v4/c8/7c/e8/c87ce8c8-d74f-7958-b8fc-ef755469f02c/source/1200x630bb.jpg' alt='Not For A Moment' title='Not For A Moment' />Axelrod Trump fails his consoler in chief moment on Hurricane Harvey. Upkar Publication Books For Railway. Story highlights. David Axelrod At hurricane briefing, Trump had hosannas for his team and by extension, himself but left out victims. He says this was Trumps first major test as consoler in chief. We saw another dispiriting display of obtuse self puffery. David Axelrod is a CNN commentator and host of the podcast The Axe Files, now a regularly featured show on CNN. He was senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist for the 2. Obama campaigns. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. CNNArticle Two of the Constitution spells out the official duties of the presidency but not all its responsibilities. One of the essential, unwritten roles of the president has been to act as the consoler in chief in moments of crisis and loss, offering support and encouragement to fellow citizens on behalf of a concerned nation. Collect-mements-not-things.jpg' alt='Not For A Moment' title='Not For A Moment' />Reagan after the Challenger explosion George W. Bush after 91. 1 Clinton in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and Obama after Charleston. Hurricane Harvey was Donald Trumps first major test in that role. Trump flew to Texas on Tuesday to meet with state officials and disaster response coordinators in a moment that called for the empathy and humanity befitting an ongoing, large scale tragedy. Instead, we witnessed another dispiriting display of obtuse self puffery. HL_DDS_984282866Uux2Ka1.png' alt='Not For A Moment' title='Not For A Moment' />EXCLUSIVE WAGS LA Star Nicole Williams Marries Larry English Were Both So Full of Love in This Moment. Not For A Moment' title='Not For A Moment' />The infamous problem of the BodySoul. How much is the soul affected by biology On Vexen Crabtrees Human Truth website. Seated at a table between Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and first lady Melania Trump, the President launched into a monologue about the epic nature of Harvey Nobodys ever seen anything like this with hosannas to his team and by extension, himself for the job theyre doing in meeting it. Turning to FEMA Director Brock Long, Trump gushed, a man whos really become very famous on television over the last couple of days. And in wrapping up his remarks, he started to congratulate the group for their proficient handling of the storm, even as Houston and the surrounding region continued to be pounded by rain and floods. Glimpsing the awkward reaction on the faces around him, the President quickly caught himself, adding, Well congratulate each other when its all finished, but leaving little doubt that mutual congratulations eventually would be due. The President then got a short, pro forma briefing for the benefit of the cameras and the group adjourned. It appears at this juncture that the administration is working well with state authorities to deal with the crisis, at least as much as Harveys magnitude allows. Yet, there is another demand the President completely missed. Startlingly, he did not utter one syllable about those who have lost their lives, their homes or businesses in the floods that are still swelling over southeast Texas, overwhelming the heroic first responders and volunteers who are straining to meet its demands. He had no solace for the tens of thousands of evacuees, some of whom were separated from their families in the storm and are now warehoused in arenas, left to wonder what comes next. Donald Trump swept into Corpus Christi on Air Force One. Never missing an opportunity to sell, he alighted with his trademarked USA cap atop his thatched dome. It was clear he had come to take a bow, not to offer sympathy for the victims or hope to the dispossessed. For the ex reality show star, the scene on TV is everything, and he apparently thought this exercise in praise claiming amid the misery played presidential. Still, we have witnessed over the past few days many scenes of everyday people, risking their own lives to save their neighbors. These Americans have demonstrated a largeness of spirit and selflessness equal to the moment. He just doesnt understand the role. The future of agriculture The Economist. In various guises, information technology is taking over agriculture. ONE way to view farming is as a branch of matrix algebra. A farmer must constantly juggle a set of variables, such as the weather, his soils moisture levels and nutrient content, competition to his crops from weeds, threats to their health from pests and diseases, and the costs of taking action to deal with these things. If he does the algebra correctly, or if it is done on his behalf, he will optimise his yield and maximise his profit. The job of smart farming, then, is twofold. One is to measure the variables going into the matrix as accurately as is cost effective. The other is to relieve the farmer of as much of the burden of processing the matrix as he is comfortable with ceding to a machine. An early example of cost effective precision in farming was the decision made in 2. John Deere, the worlds largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment, to fit its tractors and other mobile machines with global positioning system GPS sensors, so that they could be located to within a few centimetres anywhere on Earth. This made it possible to stop them either covering the same ground twice or missing out patches as they shuttled up and down fields, which had been a frequent problem. Dealing with this both reduced fuel bills by as much as 4. MICROBES, though they have a bad press as agents of disease, also play a beneficial role in agriculture. For example, they fix nitrogen from the air into soluble nitrates that act as natural fertiliser. Understanding and exploiting such organisms for farming is a rapidly developing part of agricultural biotechnology. At the moment, the lead is being taken by a collaboration between Monsanto and Novozymes, a Danish firm. This consortium, called Bio. Ag, began in 2. 01. These include fungicides, insecticides and bugs that liberate nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium compounds from the soil, making them soluble and thus easier for crops to take up. Last year, researchers at the two firms tested a further 2,0. The top performing strains delivered a boost of about 3 for both crops. In November 2. 01. Syngenta and DSM, a Dutch company, formed a similar partnership. And earlier that year, in April, Du. Pont bought Taxon Biosciences, a Californian microbes firm. And hopeful start ups abound. One such is Indigo, in Boston. Its researchers are conducting field tests of some of its library of 4. Another is Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies, of Seattle. The scientists who formed this firm study fungi that live symbiotically within plants. They believe they have found one, whose natural partner is panic grass, a coastal species, which confers salinity resistance when transferred to crops such as rice. The big prize, however, would be to persuade the roots of crops such as wheat to form partnerships with nitrogen fixing soil bacteria. These would be similar to the natural partnerships formed with nitrogen fixing bacteria by legumes such as soyabeans. In legumes, the plants roots grow special nodules that become homes for the bacteria in question. If wheat rhizomes could be persuaded, by genomic breeding or genome editing, to behave likewise, everyone except fertiliser companies would reap enormous benefits. Since then, other techniques have been added. High density soil sampling, carried out every few years to track properties such as mineral content and porosity, can predict the fertility of different parts of a field. Accurate contour mapping helps indicate how water moves around. And detectors planted in the soil can monitor moisture levels at multiple depths. Some detectors are also able to indicate nutrient content and how it changes in response to the application of fertiliser. All of this permits variable rate seeding, meaning the density of plants grown can be tailored to local conditions. And that density itself is under precise control. John Deeres equipment can plant individual seeds to within an accuracy of 3cm. Moreover, when a crop is harvested, the rate at which grains or beans flow into the harvesters tank can be measured from moment to moment. That information, when combined with GPS data, creates a yield map that shows which bits of land were more or less productiveand thus how accurate the soil and sensor based predictions were. This information can then be fed into the following seasons planting pattern. Farmers also gather information by flying planes over their land. Airborne instruments are able to measure the amount of plant cover and to distinguish between crops and weeds. Using a technique called multispectral analysis, which looks at how strongly plants absorb or reflect different wavelengths of sunlight, they can discover which crops are flourishing and which not. Sensors attached to moving machinery can even take measurements on the run. For example, multispectral sensors mounted on a tractors spraying booms can estimate the nitrogen needs of crops about to be sprayed, and adjust the dose accordingly. A modern farm, then, produces data aplenty. But they need interpreting, and for that, information technology is essential. Platform tickets. Over the past few decades large corporations have grown up to supply the needs of commercial farming, especially in the Americas and Europe. Some are equipment makers, such as John Deere. Others sell seeds or agricultural chemicals. These look like getting larger still. Dow and Du. Pont, two American giants, are planning to merge. Monsanto, another big American firm, is the subject of a takeover bid by Bayer, a German one. And Syngenta, a Swiss company, is being bid for by Chem. China, a Chinese one. Business models are changing, too. These firms, no longer content merely to sell machinery, seed or chemicals, are all trying to develop matrix crunching software platforms that will act as farm management systems. These proprietary platforms will collect data from individual farms and process them in the cloud, allowing for the farms history, the known behaviour of individual crops strains and the local weather forecast. They will then make recommendations to the farmer, perhaps pointing him towards some of the firms other products. But whereas making machinery, breeding new crops or manufacturing agrochemicals all have high barriers to entry, a data based farm management system can be put together by any businessman, even without a track record in agriculture. And many are having a go. For example, Trimble Navigation, based in Sunnyvale, at the southern end of Silicon Valley, reckons that as an established geographical information company it is well placed to move into the smart farming market, with a system called Connected Farms. It has bought in outside expertise in the shape of AGRI TREND, a Canadian agricultural consultancy, which it acquired last year. By contrast, Farmobile of Overland Park, Kansas, is a startup. It is aimed at those who value privacy, making a feature of not using clients data to sell other products, as many farm management systems do. Farmers Business Network, of Davenport, Iowa, uses almost the opposite model, acting as a co operative data pool. Data in the pool are anonymised, but everyone who joins is encouraged to add to the pool, and in turn gets to share what is there. The idea is that all participants will benefit from better solutions to the matrix. Some firms focus on market niches.