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 only had one child like that, but these two avian boarders seem to find perverse pleasure in the simple things — knocking things to the floor and going into a frenzy when my arm goes into the cage to reach the food dish.
Then they sit on their perch and laugh.
Me, too, although without a good downbeat it's hard to keep the band together.
So true.
We’ve done well keeping this UT band together, though we’re not as strong as we used to be. I suspect we’ll just keep hanging in there!
Vlad took his exam to qualify for the state geography bee today. He missed a question about St. Bernard dogs. We’ll find out March 4 whether he had one of the top 100 scores in the state.
I’m hoping Vlad will be in the top 100, as its obvious he likes the subject. :o] I’ll just keep your family in my prayers.
I expect he will be. He knows LOTS of facts.
“Ja’lra rash’nakh h’rai?” -cat
Kilrah avenge me..
Buenas tardes.
Gutten Tag. :)
¡Y a usted también!
The St Bernard Dog:
A very large transport device for a tongue.
Comes in 4 wheel drive, dif-locks as standard.
A leg on each corner and a starting handle at the rear.
The top of the range model also features a drinks cabinet.
LOL! One of our friends in Germany had a St Bernard. That animal was excellent at drooling!
That’s the one. Not at all the thing for apartment-dwellers.
Bob the previously discussed hyper loop is closer than I thought. You are ahead of your time Bob. Experimental speed would be approximately 225 mpg. Know if implemented is not top end mph. What do you think as top end mph would be?
Mpg should be mph
In an open track, top end would be the speed of sound at sea level, moderately slow. But that’s probably a little too fast for the current engineering.
There’s nothing wrong with 250 to 300 mph. If you have further to travel you might want to go higher in the atmosphere, or leave it altogether.
At ground level, the only way to go faster is in an evacuated tunnel. If we combine evacuated tunnels with electromagnetic propulsion, or even simple pneumatics, we could get appreciable speeds between cities. Think of the elevated railway.
The main thing to do with these slower modes is to have a way of sorting the people as they travel, so that each can get to a selected destination with a minimum number of stops or transfers. The same principles apply here as to a really massive high-rise, where local slow elevators take people to an interchange floor where they can move to faster routing for a period, and then get another local to their selected location.
Such elevator systems could integrate with surface transportation to get a traveler from one massive building in one city to another in a different city many miles away in just minutes.
not not
who’s there?
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