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The Pentagon Wants to Make an Army of Virus-Spreading Insects. Scientists Are Concerned.
.livescience.com ^ | October 5, 2018 12:57pm ET | Brandon Specktor

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 ...


TOPICS: Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: aphids; boycethompson; cornelluniversity; crispr; darpa; hurricaneutah; insectallies; ithaca; molassesmiasma; monkeyfacerules; newyork; nithaca; ohio; ohiostate; pennstate; pennsylvania; texas; undead; undeadthread; undeadthreadhere; uoftexasataustin; workingdogs
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To: Tax-chick

I have to start my day with a phone call to cancel the current PT appointments, and see if I can schedule them beginning the week of the 20th... My pour brane.


5,841 posted on 05/03/2019 5:04:54 AM PDT by Monkey Face (Never be afraid to try new things.Remember: Amateurs built the ark..professionals built the Titanic.)
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To: Tax-chick; Monkey Face; NicknamedBob; NoCmpromiz; null and void; no-to-illegals; Silentgypsy; ...

Happy Friday, eveebuddy!


5,842 posted on 05/03/2019 5:07:14 AM PDT by ArGee (Celebrate diversity! Excellence is out.)
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To: ArGee

It is Friday, indeed. Good morning. Did it rain on your way home, yesterday?


5,843 posted on 05/03/2019 5:27:54 AM PDT by Monkey Face (Never be afraid to try new things.Remember: Amateurs built the ark..professionals built the Titanic.)
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To: Monkey Face

Nope. The fabled thunderstorm kept moving later and later until it just disappeared from the foreguess.

Howesomever, the temps did drop so I wasn’t hot on the way home.


5,844 posted on 05/03/2019 9:44:04 AM PDT by ArGee (Celebrate diversity! Excellence is out.)
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To: ArGee

Well, that’s good!

Have a safe weekend!


5,845 posted on 05/03/2019 11:00:35 AM PDT by Monkey Face (Never be afraid to try new things.Remember: Amateurs built the ark..professionals built the Titanic.)
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To: Monkey Face; ArGee

We have storms guessed for the weekend, but we’ve moved a church event from outdoors to in, so it will probably be beautiful.


5,846 posted on 05/03/2019 12:57:43 PM PDT by Tax-chick ("With joy we keep the paschal feast, for soon or late what's false must fall." ~Samuel I. Davis)
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To: Tax-chick; Monkey Face

Well, we’re supposed to get rain tonight.

Then tomorrow, if the foreguessers are correct, we’ll have rain.

On Sunday there’ll be rain.


5,847 posted on 05/03/2019 1:21:46 PM PDT by ArGee (Celebrate diversity! Excellence is out.)
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It seems that the brainiacs at Mozilla allowed a security certificate to expire at 0:00 UTC on the 4th. Suddenly all (or at least the majority) add-ons/extensions quit working. That included Addblock Plus, No Script, and a weather app that I use.

They say they are aware and are looking into it. In the interim a collection of not-necessarily-kind comments are collecting on several web sites..

You would think someone in the code management cubicle would have some sort of database set up to track such minor things as cert expiration dates. I’ll even slap one together in Paradox for them for a small nominal fee. Of course I’m not sure that Access still supports imports from Paradox.. :-)


5,848 posted on 05/03/2019 9:21:27 PM PDT by NoCmpromiz (John 14:6 is a non-pluralistic comment.)
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To: Tax-chick; ArGee

I have no idea what the weather guessing persons are postulating about the weather, but most of them should go elsewhere because the weather seldom agrees with them.

Some time in the next week, they are guessing rain. I keep telling myself I just have to get through this first year...


5,849 posted on 05/04/2019 2:53:10 AM PDT by Monkey Face (Never be afraid to try new things.Remember: Amateurs built the ark..professionals built the Titanic.)
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To: NoCmpromiz

Well, not being an IT Geek Master, I understood what you said, on a level that would put me in IT Kindergarten, but I couldn’t begin to play with the Toys that you have. I won’t even ask you to share. ;o]

I do hope the problem is resolved soon.


5,850 posted on 05/04/2019 2:58:41 AM PDT by Monkey Face (Never be afraid to try new things.Remember: Amateurs built the ark..professionals built the Titanic.)
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To: Monkey Face; fanfan; ColdOne; Cyber Liberty; null and void; Tax-chick; Anoreth; ...

5,851 posted on 05/04/2019 4:02:07 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("With joy we keep the paschal feast, for soon or late what's false must fall." ~Samuel I. Davis)
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To: Tax-chick

The Morning Floof is singing us the song of her floofy people!

Good morning. I’ve got one letter almost finished, then will gut busy on my shawl. It’s getting very pretty. It’s also good to feel like crocheting something besides winter scarves.

I hope its a sunny day!


5,852 posted on 05/04/2019 4:42:33 AM PDT by Monkey Face (Never be afraid to try new things.Remember: Amateurs built the ark..professionals built the Titanic.)
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To: Monkey Face

Shannon was yowling about Things when I got to bed about 10:30 last night. Then Drama Queen came home at midnight and did laundry. She’s just taken off somewhere, but not with my car.

Jake is outside thinking about killing squirrels.


5,853 posted on 05/04/2019 5:15:40 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("With joy we keep the paschal feast, for soon or late what's false must fall." ~Samuel I. Davis)
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To: Tax-chick

Kitteh sings the blues!


5,854 posted on 05/04/2019 8:00:06 AM PDT by Silentgypsy (Call an addiction hotline and say you're hooked on phonics.)
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To: Silentgypsy

It could be cheerful Spanish hymn.


5,855 posted on 05/04/2019 9:56:51 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("With joy we keep the paschal feast, for soon or late what's false must fall." ~Samuel I. Davis)
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To: Silentgypsy; Monkey Face

A sunny day here, of course, because we moved a church event indoors based on the foreguess.

Frank, the perfect houseguest, is home from his latest outing. He claims he took a shower.


5,856 posted on 05/04/2019 10:42:07 AM PDT by Tax-chick ("With joy we keep the paschal feast, for soon or late what's false must fall." ~Samuel I. Davis)
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To: Tax-chick; null and void; All

Sorry, but I was busy trying to finish the shawl I had to make to replace the one I gave away last week, and I did. So now, its Bedtime for Bonza, and I will take my pills and head for the boudoir.

I’m looking forward to my appointment on the 9th to have my left eye looked at. It’s getting harder and harder to see, and for both computer work and the crafts I’m so fond of, I really do need both eyes, even though I’ve learned how to used just my right eye. If I had a patch it would be much easier.

Anyway, I’ll see you all tomorrow.


5,857 posted on 05/04/2019 12:41:04 PM PDT by Monkey Face (Never be afraid to try new things.Remember: Amateurs built the ark..professionals built the Titanic.)
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To: Monkey Face

Congratulations on your shawl! The Envirothon teams did well. Vlad’s team was 5th (out of about 50), and James’s team was 17th of 52, so in the top 1/3. Better than Tom’s first year, iirc, although that team was handicapped by not realizing they were going to have to do an oral presentation until they got to the state competition!


5,858 posted on 05/04/2019 4:16:30 PM PDT by Tax-chick ("With joy we keep the paschal feast, for soon or late what's false must fall." ~Samuel I. Davis)
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To: NoCmpromiz; ArGee

It actually would have thunderstormed on the church event if we’d held it outside at 6:00 p.m. today. I hope it actually storms tomorrow, too.


5,859 posted on 05/04/2019 5:24:25 PM PDT by Tax-chick ("With joy we keep the paschal feast, for soon or late what's false must fall." ~Samuel I. Davis)
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To: Monkey Face

The interwebs provided a temporary work-around that I had to manually initiate which got ad block and No Script back working. Sometime towards Saturday eve (ET) they seem to have put out a fix because when I turned on my laptop to check if there was still a problem my add-ons came up without my needing to manually futz with them.

When I’m getting ready to call it quits for the night I’ll restart Firefox on this machine (since it has the temp workaround implemented) which will let me know if things are all back to Norman (isn’t that in OK?) or back to Normal (which is in more places like IL, AL, IN, KY, or TN.. ;-)


5,860 posted on 05/04/2019 10:27:45 PM PDT by NoCmpromiz (John 14:6 is a non-pluralistic comment.)
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