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Domain: cipotato.org

Stories and comments across the archive that link to cipotato.org.

Comments · 5

  1. Re:I hate these hype stories by Rei · · Score: 2 · on Study Suggests Potatoes Can Grow On Mars (phys.org)

    Oh, heck, from the look of it the thing's not even in space.

    Yep, check out the timelapse mode on the livestream - there's clearly people walking by outside. For crying out loud...

  2. Rate of evolution - guesstimate by Alain+Williams · · Score: 5, Informative · on Insects Rapidly Becoming Resistant To GM Corn

    To try to get some insight on how many genetic changes there are in insects I churned a few numbers:

    1. * Life cycle time is takes a full year for most insects
    2. * Number of offspring per female 100 - varies a lot
    3. * Number of insects per acre is 10^8 (100 million)
    4. * Number of acres grown under GM crops 3x10^8
    5. * Mutation rate is about 10^-8 per base pair per generation
    6. * The number of genome base pairs 1.4x10^8 (fruit fly)

    Multiply that and you get 10^18 insect offspring per year; a mutation rate of about 1 per individual per generation. So the number of mutations is a very large number. This means a large number of ''natural experiments'' done, one of which may result in an insect a bit more resistant to a GM crop, this will give the insect an advantage and so be able to have more offspring all of which carry the advantageous gene. So advantageous genes spread rapidy, through sexual reproduction are combined with other genes and the best combinations flourish.

    WARNING: very rough calculations, most insects die before they have the chance to reproduce and so most mutations are 'lost'. The numbers that I obtained are very likely wrong - but even if each one is wrong by a factor of 100, it doesn't make a huge dent in a very large number.

  3. Re:Old news by juanfe · · Score: 1 · on Incas Used Binary?

    Ah, but you see, they had fava beans, fish, nuts, alpacas... and well, if the potato is a bad staple, then the scientists at the Inernational Potato Center in Lima have been wasting their time for the last 30-odd years.

  4. World Potato Atlas by kingdon · · Score: 2, Informative · on Mmm ... Purple Disease-Resistant Potatoes

    As people have pointed out, there are a zillion varieties of potato, some of which are purple. Even at the time of the Incas there were thousands of varieties, many/most of which survive to today. Here's the South America page from the World Potato Atlas. And no, until 10 minutes ago I didn't know there was such a thing as a World Potato Atlas, but it has more information than I ever imagined would be on the web about where potatoes are grown, what kind are grown, and so on.

  5. Why you can't have a Beowulf Cluster of potatoes by billstewart · · Score: 2 · on Potato-Powered Web Server
    Beowulf is set in 6th-Century Scandinavia. Potatoes originated in the Andes and were brought to the new world from Peru by the Spanish conquistatdores in the 1500s/1600s. So Beowulf would have been dead about a thousand years before he could get a potato, and probably a while longer before he could get any French Fries...


    Dan Quayle probably couldn't spell Beowulf either...