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 bet that although you are humble that when you look in the mirror you get better looking each day. Dang can’t get that song out of my head. It must be a sign
I've had so many treatments lately I can now give X-rays back.
Great song!
So it’s officially your anniversary..
So happy FReeper Anniversary, Bob! You wear it well.
Thanks! What a pretty kitteh! I really missed the kitteh pics while I was on my hiatus.
Good morning. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends today, but if my DD isn’t in, I can get there but not get back home with the gas that’s in the tank. However, I still have several hours before I have to even think about leaving, so I’m good.
Yesterday, Chuck from Hurricane called and said no one is leaving and no one has died, so I need to get those other apps finished and out the door. Staying here is not doing me any good.
I’ve gone beyond hope, and its bordering on fatalistic acceptance, and I’m not sure I like that feeling. I want my things unpacked and around me again. I want my books and my dishes. I want to cook again. :o[
</whine
Good morning. The Offspring are slow today.
I did not realize that All Saint’s Day and All Souls Day were not the same day, until I read my Sesquipedalian Menology Calendar. Also that Devil’s Night and All Hallows Eve are different. Trivia! That’s the ticket!
Just got a text from Zeke. He’s finally got a treatment program lined up from his new oncologist in Oregon, and both the doctor and Zeke seem to be pretty upbeat about the eventual outcome.
And I don't have to share it with Pi Day.
It helps that clever brother is also a lawyer. He knows what he can get away with.
Is that because the airplane was skidding down the runway without landing gear?
Well, I know that for both you and me it’s true that to know me is to love me.
Here.
That’s all I got for today.
I guess it’s better than ‘there’.
Well, if it helps anything, I met Mrs. ArGee when I decided I wasn’t going to meet anyone special and should stop looking.
There is no there there.
That would be encouraging under any other circumstances, but it doesn’t happen that way in the world of housing for seniors and the disabled. Its like I told Chuck, yesterday — they know I want to be there so they’re not going to let me in. Every place I’ve applied to has a wait list of three years or more. But I need to apply, if for no other reason than to keep my sanity.
G’orning. Me, too.
Is ethereal the right word? These recent kittehs have a luminosity about them—same photog?
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