Posted on 10/06/2018 2:02:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Pentagon research project called "Insect Allies." Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the project involves using gene-editing techniques like CRISPR to infect insects with modified viruses that could help make America's crops more resilient. If a cornfield were hit by an unexpected drought or suddenly exposed to a pathogen, for example, Insect Allies might deploy an army of aphids carrying a genetically modified virus to slow the corn plant's growth rate.
According to the DARPA website, these "targeted therapies" could take effect in a single growing season, potentially protecting the American crop system from food security threats like disease, flooding, frost and even "threats introduced by state or non-state actors.
… Insect Allies, is less concerned. "Anytime you're developing a new and revolutionary technology, there is that potential for [both offensive and defensive] capability," Bextine told The Washington Post. "But that is not what we are doing. We are delivering positive traits to plants… We want to make sure we ensure food security, because food security is national security in our eyes."
Insect Allies is still in the early stages of development, and at least four U.S. colleges (Boyce Thompson Institute, Penn State University, The Ohio State University and the University of Texas at Austin)have received funding to carry out research. Bextine told The Washington Post that the project recently achieved its first milestone — testing whether an aphid could infect a stalk of corn with a designer virus that caused fluorescence. According to the Washington Post, "the corn glowed."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I hope you have a good night and get up tomorrow filled with Vim!
Thank you!
It would be very nice if I could, because I don’t want to wake up Friday and not be able to function!
Ta
I hear ya. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs
GLK appreciates the opportunity to show what it can really do.
Thanks!
Good morning. I woke up at 0014 and was awake for about an hour, doing all the work I have to do tomorrow, but was able to go back to sleep for another hour and a half. Thankfully.
I woke up to find an email from one of my great-nephews on his mission in Peru. His two cousins from across the state of Idaho are also on their missions, one in AZ and one in WA. Brother and sister team, there!
Anyway, as soon as the morphine kicks in, I’ll get busy. Not much left and if I get enough done today, tomorrow will consist in packing up the printer, laptop, and the things that go with it, and putting them in the BB SUV surrounded by pillows. Then the stuff on top of the desk will go into the drawers and we’ll call it good.
The bishop is arranging for loaders, so I’ll have the truck loaded by the time the folks come to do the driving. Then the rest of the uphill is all downhill. It’s about 1,000’ higher than here.
Woo-hoo! Best wishes to the missionaries. Is your great-nephew in the Andes or at the coast?
I finally finished the book about the Utah Pioneers. Your move is in a great tradition ;-).
I don’t know if Elder Mac is in the Andes, but his email stated it was “all about the llamas” now and he has a llama tie. Which made him decide to start a collection of llama stuff. So maybe he’ll inherit the little Peruvian Nativity I got in Little Rock two years ago. (Seems I was packing then...)
This is a strange move and once I get to a spot where I can take a breath (in Hurricane, no doubt) I’ll write it all down before I forget it. I may not endure all the hardships that my Pioneer ancestors did, but I guess for my time, I’ve had about as many “unknowables” as a person can have and still have the desire to keep going.
Progress this morning. The kitchen is ready except for the fridge and taping the freezer lid. The bedroom is ready except for the pillows and the blanket that is drying out from the night sweats, waiting to be packed around the Galileo, the storm glass and the bottle of VGK Merlot that LuDean gave me.
I’m sure I’ll get more done today, just so I don’t have to do anything much tomorrow except load up the BB SUV.
You can buy one for $700 plus tax and shipping from an Amish carpentry shop. Cool mashup of distinctively American religiosity and commercial spirit!
Happy Friday Eve, all.
Yessir! Thank you, I most certainly will! And I’ll check to make sure the BB SUV is tied down tightly, as well. :o]
Wow. I’m sure some of those made by the Amish are sold to LDS members during the annual “Trek”, where they dress in period costumes and re-enact parts of the Pioneer exodus from the US.
They also have the covered wagons, and only the people in charge of security are allowed any electronic debices. They have resurrected recipes and cooked according to what the Pioneers ate.
I always thought that would be fun, but now I’m too old. I like my creature comforts!
Absolutely! Thanks! I thought of that this morning, when I got the last “here’s who’s coming to help and when.” It’s a good feeling to know I can leave the trash behind....
*tagline*
Gosh, he was purty, even in the late 70s.
Flour mixed with water, not even thick enough to make crepes. Unnngh.
I doesn’t look like I imagined. I thought the cargo bed would be larger.
When Silver Dollar City was young, the craftspersons in the Covered Wagon shop would build a covered wagon every season exactly the way it was done in the late 1800s. They would heat a rod to bore through wood instead of drilling holes, etc. The wheels would be carefully carved spoke/rim combos hammered into the hoop that the blacksmith had given them. At the end of each season, they would sell it to whomever.
Today’s craftspeople don’t do that. I always wondered what kinds of comments I might have gotten if I’d parked one of those in my driveway.
Heating a rod to bore a hole in wood requires iron. Boring the hole with a drill requires steel.
Civilizational development makes life easier, and usually consumes less energy for the same results.
G’orning, y’all!
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