Slashdot Mirror
The Pioneer Anomaly & Other Breaking Physics News
David Harris, editor-in-chief at Symmetrymagazine.org (a joint publication of Fermilab and SLAC), sends us to his blog covering the American Physical Society meeting now going on in St. Louis. Among the breaking physics news relating to topics we have discussed in the past: results that explain about 1/3 of the Pioneer anomaly by differential heat flow in the spacecraft; an analysis of the Fermilab Tevatron's chances of spotting the Higgs "God particle"; and a hint that an Italian team has replicated their results from the year 2000 pointing to a detection of dark matter.
The same technologies that will let us cure diseases, expand the economy, and overcome everyday inconveniences can theoretically bring about catastrophes. The risk of apocalypse is serious enough for us to relinquish the current pace of technological innovation in three overarching types of technology: Genetic Engineering, Nanotechnology, and Robotics. If we don't put limits on how far we explore into these areas, we could, and most likely will, bring on some form of accidental extinction of the entire human race.
The field of Geneitc Engineering has become a very popularly debated subject over the past few decades. Given its incredible power, it's no surprise that there are significant safety issues in its use; some groups have argued that it is wrong and is "doing the work of God". Today, most of the genetical alterations occer on certain types of plants and crops, in hopes of breeding new strains of food with specificly chosen functions or properties. For example, The first commercially grown genetically modified food crop was the "Flavr Savr" tomato, which was made more resistant to rotting. This was in 1994, and since then other crops such as insect-protected cotton and herbicide tolerant soybeans have been sold to consumers.
However, even with regard to this technology's great potential, concerns have been raised about the introduction of genetically engineered plants and animals into the environment, and the potential dangers of human consumption of these genetically modified foods. It is said that these organisms have the potential to spread their modified genes into native populations, thereby disrupting natural ecosystems. In fact, There has been a farm-scale trial in the United Kingdom comparing the impact of GM crops and conventional crops, some of which claimed that the results showed that these altered crops had a significant negative impact on wildlife.(http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1443004,00.html).
A gene for an allergenic trait was unintentionally transferred from the Brazil nut into genetically engineered soybeans, while intending to improve the nutritional quality for animal feed use. Brazil nuts were already known to produce food allergies in certain people prior to this study, and further investigation of the new soybeans revealed that they produced immunological reactions with people suffering from this Brazil nut allergy. The company who produced these beans discontinued further development and disposed of all material related to them, but if this is happened accidentally, what is stopping a genetic engineer from hypothetically mixing an even more dangerous, and potentially deadly trait into a large number of crops bound for say, human consumption? Nothing, and that is the truth we have to face. There is no law or regulation in either the United States or Canada that requires any company to test for allergenicity or toxicity of genetically altered foods prior to them being licensed to be grown and consumed in their respected countries.
I won't 3oTre you