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 ...
Snails are cool. Think of them as a sign of spring.
Well..
I’m up running on the notquitefinished project computer. I got the network suitably cobbled together to bypass the gateway machine which at least gives the grumbling crowd internet access but messes up filesharing and access to the NAS device. And most likely printer access. They’ll live.
The patient is reposing on its side on a side table where at the present moment it is supporting a black cat of the T. T. Longcat variety. (Knowing that was a sure happening is why I put the side panel back on the device when I called it quits early in the wee hours before sleeptime.)
I’m not sure what the problem IS but I know what it ISN’T. It isn’t the memory, it isn’t any of the drives, and it isn’t the network card, it isn’t the video card. What hasn’t been eliminated is the mother board or the processor itself. Which puts me at a decision point. Since I have to dig down to the motherboard/processor level and since the machine has been running for a couple of years, and since that makes everything in it obsolete I’m leaning toward doing an update on motherboard/processor that will still allow me to reuse the 32 gig of memory that is in it.
Then I need to choose whether I stay with Win7 (which I like and which Microsoft is going to kill off next January) or bite the bullet and go with Win10 (which I’m not that thrilled about but is way better than Win8 and which I will be forced into next January anyway.)
So I’m off to do some shopping on EBay, NewEgg, and similar places to see how much this will set me back.
One small consolation is that I don’t have to pay me my tech bench fees.. ;-)
We’d never make it without the small consolations. I’m working on music for a bilingual service on March 31. Some of the music can be recycled for a bilingual service on May 11, but other pieces won’t be seasonal in May. Cebu.
I found a cool (and easy!) new song by looking in the table of contents in the hymnal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeKiSVZ1oyo
We don’t have the Andean pipes, unfortunately.
You see snails. The French see escargot on the hoof..
The last time I saw snails on my walk was in Olympia, and they were in search of their shells. These are a little better, but not by much. They still leave slime trails!
There. Fixed it.
He wins.
Such beautiful animals! Thank you!
*tagline*
Thank you for the precious!
Gorgeous kitteh!
Please tell me you waited to make sure they got all the way across safely.
G’daft ernoon, y’all!
30 minutes well spent!
Once upon a time PC World asked me for some suggestions to test computer repair shops. One of the more diabolical suggestions I had was to put a pin through one of the wires in the parallel cable that connected hard drives in those days. I suggested they put the break right next to a connector so it wouldn’t be easy to see. Then see who could fix the computer correctly.
The only one to pass the test is no longer in business. All the rest suggested a new motherboard. Someone wrote to the editor and said that was asking too much. I replied (via the editor) that a parallel cable had broken in my lab and I had done the troubleshooting to determine it was the cable and not the drive or the motherboard. If I could do it, Best Buy should be able to do it.
I share this little tale to remind you to check all the simple stuff before you spend money on the expensive stuff.
You no longer have to worry that you put your memory sticks in alternating slots, do you? Remember when 32-bit computers were new and all the sticks were 16-bit so you had to add them in pairs in alternating slots?
Cute tagline.
Here’s an actual puzzler.
You’re in a boat on a pond and there’s a big and heavy rock in the boat with you. Assume you’re strong enough to lift the rock, and assume you have a water-level measuring debice that is calibrated in very, very small increments.
If you threw the rock from the boat into the pond, would the water level raise or lower?
BTW: Don’t tell AOC that global warming will kill the sponges, which will release the water back into the oceans and raise the levels to the point where people in Hurricane will be flooded out.
She’ll believe you.
Fascinating.
The top of your gunwales will be higher above the waterline than it was.
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