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 ...
LOL!!!
Ok, now you’ve done it!! Nothing like shouting it to the world!
Thanks, Nully!!
XOXO
‘Face
:o])
Thank you for pensive kitteh!
What an incredible shot!
And the world responds with crickets.
Noisy crickets.
.
Happy Birthday, ‘Face.
(Menacing voice on phone from first floor) I am the Viper; I am coming up.
(Menacing voice on phone from second floor) I am the Viper; I am coming up.
(Menacing voice on phone from third floor) I am the Viper; I am coming up.
(Door creaks open) Hallo! I’m the vindow viper!
Sixth-grade sleepover joke.
Happy birthday! Dang, I forgot!
I think there’s a Cub Scouts skit version of this.
“...can it make AOC and AlGore shut up?”
At a beam energy of 1.9GeV, if it got loose, oh Hell yeah.
The ionizing radiation would bore a hole right on through whatever soft tissue was in its way, and death by radiation poisoning would be an absolute, nearly immediate certainty even if you weren’t struck in a vital portion of your anatomy
THE MAIN element of this beast is CONTAINMENT of that energy, and CONTROLLED direction along defined beamlines through very purpose-built equipment. By the time a beam gets to a research station, it typically has to be attenuated down by MANY orders of magnitude to be useful in experimentation.
“It didn’t seem quite so involved and frenetic when Tony Stark built one of those in a cave, out of scrap.”
“Mr. Stank” didn’t have to rely on Congress to release funding.
Was also an old GI Joe cartoon episode.
“... doesn’t the earth’s crust rearrange itself in CA somewhat frequently, and how do they compensate for that to keep the platform for the arm level?”
Great observation. Yes. Design for seismic is a big part of what gets engineered into these things.
Interestingly, even the local vibrations of things like HVAC equipment in the building need to be dealt with, and long-term motion of the building — even that which results from natural settling, and seasonal changes in soil moisture content — demands periodic re-surveying of the beamline equipment to compensate.
Thank you very much!! My day has been made much better by these wishes!!
What he said, only quieter.
I didn’t know you and my youngest had birthdays only a day apart. (Hers was yesterday.)
My kind of humor, fer shure.
But would that make AOC and AlGore shut up? That was the question. Killing them isn't the important part.
Also, it sounds like this does more of what he built in his basement when he wanted to create a new element, not what he built in that cave.
British parliament to investigate reality TV shows after death...
I must say I find the very concept of reality TV shows in Heaven disturbing.
That ain't Heaven, it's the other place. It's Reality shows 24/7 down there.
My daughter’s was Monday! :o])
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