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 ...
Lots of cuteness and a big ship!
Especially if something is moaning behind it. Is the coffee still sizzling? That might be bad ... it's possible that the toasters I banished from Pat's bedroom ended up in the Lower Levels.
I thought I saw a toaster cowering as it hid from the coffee. I obviously don't know if it was from Pat's bedroom.
No, you wouldn’t recognize them. I hope we don’t have an electrical fire.
The subtlety of your humor is too often glossed over.
What a sage remark.
talk to your librarian. Have them print out a catalog and if you can get them to isolate British, all the better. Then you can have them pull them for you and have them at the desk.
It should all be computerized.
Also in many states there is interlibrary loan, and you can have them find what you want in all the other libraries in the state.
Thank you, it’s nice to be appreciated.
A half hour in the gym with me would kill most people. Dang near kills me...
Interestingly enough... It works either way. :-)
Really? I can’t imagine why... I have questionable entertainment value. :-)
Well, at least someone was using the forge in my absence...
It's what we call The Socratic Method.
Let’s leave my Socks out of this... They’ve seen enough horror...
The library has an online catalog, else I never would have found them. None of the searches brought up anything. Its not a very easy site to navigate, and maybe that’s deliberate.
This is a county library, so it encompasses the larger towns (what am I saying? ALL the towns) in the county. We’re isolated here, the nearest city being Las Vegas, which is 145 miles to the south and west. *shudder*
The best thing about sagebrush is picking a few leaves and crushing them. The aroma is absolutely wonderful!
Maybe because the watchers here have questionable ideas of entertainment. ;o])
(And with that, I refer you to my tagline.)
They've been pretty quiet recently, but now that they have coffee, it could get ugly.
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