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1. Why is that viral gene in there?

When you insert a new gene (such as an herbicide resistance gene in Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops) into a plant, you also need to insert a piece of DNA called a promoter that tells the plant to turn the gene on. The scientists who created the GMOs chose to insert the promoter from the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), as it is particularly good at this task and is very well studied. This promoter also happens to include part, but not the entirety, of gene VI from the virus.

* 2. Was it put there by accident or by purpose? * 2(a). If by accident, how, when, what happened? * 2(b). If by purpose, why, and by whom?

As stated above, the fragment of gene VI was placed into the GMOs on purpose. Because fragments of genes are generally inactive, the presence of the gene fragment is not expected to be problematic and showed no evidence of causing problems during the testing of the GMOs. Furthermore, because cauliflower mosaic virus is a naturally occurring virus, the full gene VI can be found in many non-GMO crops (for example, see this 2004 study).

3. How come the American scientists never detected this viral gene? * 3(a). Was it because of incompetence, or was it because the American scientists were not allowed to publish their finding, if they had found it before the Europeans?

These findings were not published before because we already knew that many GMOs contain a fragment of CaMV gene VI. In fact, in the Podevin and du Jardin study, the authors "found" the gene VI fragments by simply querying a database. A more substantial finding would have been if they found evidence that the gene VI fragments are actually made into functional protein (a prerequisite for the gene VI fragment to cause any deleterious effects), but this study did not investigate this issue. Rather, the study simply looked at what proteins might be produced in the worst case scenario and concluded that any possible proteins made from the gene VI fragments are unlikely to be human allergens or toxins. The authors speculate these possible proteins could be harmful to the plant itself, but because many of these GMOs are very productive plants that produce high yields in commercial settings, this possibility seems unlikely.

But how did the other teams that they allude to being very good manage to walk up a wall?

Looks like suction cups were a popular choice.

The mentioned contest is CLAWAR 2004 - MADRID . (See hundreds of pictures if you wish).

It's part of CLAWAR Climbing and Walking Robots. As you can see, the mentioned robot had a very different design from the usual spider-like design.

Fantastic comment, I suggest reading (if you have not already, as this comment seems to hit on his points) . And his followup 22 years later.

Are you high? That would be the memorial of stupidity, that says that we do not learn from our mistakes. If you want NASA to do real exploration you would want them to immediately retire the shuttle, and replace it with launch vehicles that are suited for the work they do.

Read Greg Easterbrook's essays about the shuttle, first the one he wrote 25 years ago before the , and then the one he wrote after the latest http://www.icmm.csic.es/jeiglesias/newsletter/Greg gEasterbrook/GreggEasterbrookShuttle.html (and not the last if the shuttle keeps flying) catastrophe. the second article is a mirror, as the same article at time.com requires payment.

A chunk of ice that big should be easy to save long enough to be examined; they should give a few samples to NOAA, say, and let them inspect it.

Oh my... we poor spaniards don't know how to do a chemical analysis of a block of ice, isn't it? ;)

This is old news to me. Two years ago we had a real "storm" of those ice blocks failing from our skies. The vast majority of those events were... err... jokes (one of the ice blocks had a "peculiar" form, which corresponds to a mineral water bottle sold here ;)). A few of them (the first ones which were found) were determined NOT to be jokes, and were analysed by the CSIC and the INM (National Institute of Meteorology. Dr. Martinez Frias was the head of the CSIC research team. His team came to the conclusion that some unknown atmospheric phenomenon was the origin of the so-called "ice stones"; this point was rebated by the meteorologists, and there was some ugly name-calling between both research groups.

The results of Dr. Frias investigations can be found at this page (it's in spanish, but there is an english version here.

To find the original news reports of the "ice stones" impacts just do a search for "aerolitos hielo" on google. You'll find a lot of references (in spanish), including a HOW-TO build your own ice stone, and some points about the argument between the CSIC and INM teams.

So the Star's article is completely devoid of details - it's a newspaper ! I'll add a few more details so people can get as much information about this topic as they want. First and foremost the latest issue of Nature has an article entitled "Photonics: Opal appeal" specifically about this breakthrough (subscription required). The catch phrase used is a "three-dimensional photonic bandgap material". The team that's accomplished this is a bit more international then indicated so far, consisting of a Spanish team making the opal template, Geoff Ozin's group filling the lattices & then dissolving the template, Henry VanDriel's group performing the laser experiments, and Sajeev John's group providing the theory framework.

For those of you who just want pretty pictures, here are some images of the opals.

Here's the ultimate resource for photonic bandgap materials.

So that should give you more then enough to visit & read. Basically what these materials do is prevent propagation of light of a specific frequency in 3-dimensions. The 'bandgap' of the light can be controlled during the fabrication process allowing these things to block different frequencies. So you could imagine placing one of these materials into an optical fibre & selectively blocking one of the data streams but allowing all others to pass through unimpeded. The current breakthrough is twofold, first these aren't imaginary, they've been made & tested and they aren't decades removed from insertion into optical networks, they're months or years from it, second, this is the first example of a 3D PBG material, previous versions have generally been 2D. One of the neater experiments performed involved putting liquid crystals into the opal holes & then by putting an electric field across the liquid crystals, controlling the transmission through the crystal. A variable transmission photonic bandgap device. Light is fast, electrons are slow, an all optical network would be blazingly fast & these devices bring us a step closer to making that happen.

CJM

So the Star's article is completely devoid of details - it's a newspaper ! I'll add a few more details so people can get as much information about this topic as they want. First and foremost the latest issue of Nature has an article entitled "Photonics: Opal appeal" specifically about this breakthrough (subscription required). The catch phrase used is a "three-dimensional photonic bandgap material". The team that's accomplished this is a bit more international then indicated so far, consisting of a Spanish team making the opal template, Geoff Ozin's group filling the lattices & then dissolving the template, Henry VanDriel's group performing the laser experiments, and Sajeev John's group providing the theory framework.

For those of you who just want pretty pictures, here are some images of the opals.

Here's the ultimate resource for photonic bandgap materials.

So that should give you more then enough to visit & read. Basically what these materials do is prevent propagation of light of a specific frequency in 3-dimensions. The 'bandgap' of the light can be controlled during the fabrication process allowing these things to block different frequencies. So you could imagine placing one of these materials into an optical fibre & selectively blocking one of the data streams but allowing all others to pass through unimpeded. The current breakthrough is twofold, first these aren't imaginary, they've been made & tested and they aren't decades removed from insertion into optical networks, they're months or years from it, second, this is the first example of a 3D PBG material, previous versions have generally been 2D. One of the neater experiments performed involved putting liquid crystals into the opal holes & then by putting an electric field across the liquid crystals, controlling the transmission through the crystal. A variable transmission photonic bandgap device. Light is fast, electrons are slow, an all optical network would be blazingly fast & these devices bring us a step closer to making that happen.

CJM