See subject line.
If anything this underscores the need for continued government investment in R&D. This was a government funded program, and the information is going to be in the public domain. Which makes this one more small check on the power of individual large corporations, and one more victory for public sector improvement of crop germplasm.
The government's biggest contribution to sequencing is probably the Joint Genome Institute (http://www.jgi.doe.gov). Until recently they'd focused more on animals and bacteria, but they are now also turning out a number of plant genomes.
I don't know what genomes of agriculturally important plants you are saying can be found online. The only one in the same range of corn that I know of is rice (which was a huge deal with it came out too.) I'd also disagree with your position that agricultural plants are less interesting because of domestication. If anything I think we can learn even more from them because we can look at the changes to their genomes as the result of 1000's of a years of human selection for the things that make plants more beneficial to us. A good example of this is the work done by a guy named John Doebley (http://teosinte.wisc.edu/) on identifying the mutant alleles of genes that were under strong selective pressure during the domestication of maize from its wild ancestor.
But obviously the genomes of non-domestic plants also hold important secrets. Like the resurrection plants of the american southwest that can survive complete dehydration. Thanks for commenting, it was an enjoyable read.
Yes!
After watching the sequences of things like grape and papaya being announced, it's good that the first draft of the corn genome is finally out there (or will be on Friday.) In terms of the potential benefits I'd put maize as around the third most important genome to go after (the first being humans, and the second being any other mammal to compare to the genome of humans) but as the article mentions, the percentage of repetitive elements, plus the fact that early plant genome funding in the US was aimed at model organisms like arabidopsis rather than agriculturally significantly species slowed it down significantly.
That said I'm obviously very biased. Look at my name if nothing else.
And thank god the information is in the public sector, rather than the proprietary knowledge of a private corporation.
The thing is, a scientifically inclined undergrad realizes that a BS in biology is basically worthless in the job market. That's not because employers have unreasonable standards either, I've seen people come out of ivy league bio programs, and unless they have good research experience independent of their coursework, they don't even know how to hold a pipetteman, let alone more complicated protocols like PCR, or the independent thinking required to become a PI.
I think overall comp sci and engineering programs are doing much better jobs of training students to be productive after four years, the way things are set up in biology getting a PhD and often post docs, are pretty much required to gain the skills required to be more than a technician. In other words, you're lucky if you're only thirty the first time you get a "real" job. Personally I'd a lot of the problems are the result of so many biology programs have been made over into feeder programs for med schools, which require a very different skill set from doing research.
Given that more money has been raised in this presidential election than any other up to this point, I would honestly hope the FEC has better things to do than worry about prosecuting a comedian.
My advice is to relax, and if you can't do that, worry about the people you don't like who might actually get elected president. (Hillary, Romney, Ron Paul, surely anyone can find an ACTUAL candidate to hate).
The article summary is deceptive. Inserting a gene into the current genome of crop is just as permanent a change as added a new mini-chromosome. In either change the changes will be inherited by the offspring of the individual plant.
The main difference between this technology and currect methods on inserting genes is that more than one gene can be added as easily as a single gene, whereas in the previous system "stacking" multiple genes required much more effort than a single gene, since each had to be inserted individually and then combined using conventional breeding.
I for one think this technology is a step in the right direction, as it will make it easier to create artificial species barriers, which require two-five genes to be inserted, but would prevent GM crops from crossbreeding with traditional varieties in the field. THIS IS NOT TERMINATOR TECHNOLOGY! The plants would still be fertile, just only with others carried the added chromosome.
But couldn't they have found someone besides Monsanto to implement it?
Actually the bt cotton is so popular in india that many farmers are buying "pirated" bt cotten seed on the grey market. Which makes me laugh, as I'm in favor of indian farmers not dying from the huge quantities of toxic pesticides (many illegal in the United States) they were previously forced to spray to control pests, and not so much in favor of Monsanto profiting off of that. If you're interested, googling could find you a graph of india's cotton production since bt cotton was introduced in 2002. I could just tell what it'll show, but why believe me when you can check for youself?
Monsato has revenue of over seven billion annually and invests barely 10% of that back into research. Someone elsewere in this discussion called them the Microsoft of the biotech seed world. They're using patents and huge market share (90% of geneticly improved germplasm on the market) to squeeze huge profits out of farmers pockets without continuing to innovate. But just because you hate microsoft's products and business tactics doesn't mean you attack the very idea of an operating system. So don't blame an entire technology because a terrible company controls 90% of the market? Ok?
>We evolved in the same biosphere as insects, so changes to a plant to prevent the insect from being able to eat them may also have effects on us
Great, sounds logical. Until you learn that the CRY proteins expressed by bt crops crystalize into their toxic form only under highly basic conditions. Because we took different evolutionary paths for millions of years, our stomachs are highly acidic while insects stomachs are highly basic. On top of that you've been eating the CRY proteins on organic food for decades, as spraying with bacteria producing those proteins has long been considered an organic form on pest control.
"GMOs are designed for one reason, to make money."
Monsanto's GMOs are designed for one reason, to make money. Fixed that for you.;) I've known a lot of scientists who've spent years and years developing crops with no commercial incentive (either crops that aren't grown in the industrialized world, or adding traits that are only of value to subsistance/small scale farmers). You can talk all you'd like about how starvation is a policy problem, but it's people who paint all genetic engineering with too broad a brush who're holding up the approval of crops like golden rice (4,000 children die of vitamin-A deficency every day) and virus resistant cassava. Its very easy to say there's no need for GMOs when you live in a country where most nutrition problems are caused by too much food rather than too little.
In these debates, average doesn't refer the average needs of linux users, who, like you said, have a wide range of needs and use a wide range of distros optimized for those needs. It means the vast majority of computer users who use their windows boxes for nothing but e-mail, word processing, and surfing porn.
I agree. There is a large distinction between copying files unique to you or your computer, and media files that reside on both your computer and thousands of others.
In all likelyhood, any techie is much more interested in your torrent of Transformers than that essay on neo-colonialism in Sri Lanka that you wrote back in college and never got around to deleting. The only time I can think of when that might not hold true is if you really did have your own home made sex videos, in which case I suggest you follow the first rule of letting other people use your computer:
KEEP YOUR PORN ON REMOVABLE MEDIA!!!
I'm assuming the numbers you are quoting are for spending by the FEDERAL government. The vast majority of money for K-12 education in this country comes from either the individual states or property taxes at the level of individual school districts. In my home state, education makes up more than half the annual budget, and practically nothing on national defense.
So while I agree there is an argument to be made about how much money to spend on the military vs education, quoting numbers solely from the federal budget is going to distort the true relationship between military and education spending.
Which brings us to the question of why a major retailler is using wireless in the first place. I'm personally no more than an interested amatur, but I've read professionals running corperate networks who, if they have to include a wireless component at all, keep it completely seperate from the secure, WIRED, network. You get internet access, but no accessing the company databases from the wireless.
Can anyone come up with a scenario where it would be ESSENTIAL for store operations to be able to send SSNs and drivers license #s over a wireless connection?
Actually, isn't the compulsory license the same idea that allowed allofpm3.com to sell music by licensing it from the local russian right music copyright organization? Because I know the RIAA screamed pretty hard about that, to the point of getting the United States to threaten trade sanctions. It'd be interesting if someone could go back to those stories and see if there are any juicy quotes from the RIAA decrying compulsory licensing.
From the wikipedia article (assuming it hasn't been to horrible vandalized by my fellow slashdotters yet) I'm not sure if I would describe this as a MAJOR political party with maybe one twentieth of the norwegian vote. Still a bigger organization that the Swedish Pirate Party, perhaps this is a positive sign of things to come. Makes me wish we had political parties somewhere between the the wacko fringe (Green, Reform, etc) that no one takes seriously and the big two which both seem to owe too much to the **AA to ever consider taking a position like this one.
I'd argue college students actually represent the RIAAs current consumers. Especially for the sort of high-return pop music where the record labels make most of their money, college students (and high school students) probably make up the majority of the consumer dollars still spent on CDs. I doubt very many record label fat cats are getting rich of the purchasing habits of the population of slashdot.
Maybe the RIAA figures by the time they sue college students they've already spent the majority of the money they'll spend on music in their lifetimes? Or they are trying to avoid the embarrasment of suing old blind women and dead people. Suing college IP addresses probably makes it less likely whoever they finally associate with that address will be as a big public relations disaster. Most people are prefectly willing to believe in the low moral integrity of college students these days.
The 360 is closing in on a year and a half after launch and instead of a price cut, they're going to charge us an extra 80 bucks for a new port and a hard drive big enough not to suck. M$ was making 75 bucks on each console they sold back in November. Guess I'll be stuck in the last generation for a while longer, or at least until it is possible to actually purchase a Wii.
The thing to remember is that the only thing that makes these mosquito's more robust is that they ARE resistant to Malaria. If Malaria adapts to negate that resistance, the mosquitos will be no more fit that the orginial type, so if the malaria adapts after a while human rates return to normal, and mosquitos are no more fit than before the transgene was introduced.
As a genetics student this strikes me as a very elegant idea, since it is based on the introduction of a single gene, the system can fail without causing a disaster, and until it fails, has the potential to save literally hundreds of thousands of human lives every year (given that annual deaths from malaria number in the millions).
But the problem cited in the article was companies donating patents that wouldn't lead to effective business models, basically junk patents. If the tax write-off is tied to the success of the company recieving the patent (I think a percentage, rather than the total revenue generated) then the potential for abuse is much more limited.
Doesn't this end up with us pro-GMO folks trying to prove a negative? Because you've said that even if all tests show that not only is a genetically modified organism is safe, but that it is identical to the unimproved plant, you still wouldn't trust it. How long is long term enough? When is a study TRUELY independant.
This is the same argument creationists make when they talk about how evolution is just a theory.
Do you oppose medical research because the pharmacutical companies aren't going to give the pills away for free? I hope not.
By all means let us try to get the price of GMO seed down, but the way to do that is to increase competition or through government action, not opposing the technology itself.
Since you're so anti-GMO I assume you feel much safer buying organic food. Organic farmers use BT to kill pests on their crops BECAUSE the chemical is safe for human consumption.
http://www.bt.ucsd.edu/organic_farming.html
The only difference is that with bt corn only produces one chemical, whereas the organic method covers your food in
Technically corn does pollinate naturally. (By wind) What you're probably thinking of is that corn is unable to propogate in the wild, but this is because corn kernals stay stuck to the cob and cannot spread outside the field where they grew (or even more than a foot away from the plant itself).
I agree with you that there is a risk (a small one) to the introduction of transgenic crops. But given the number of people in the world dying every day from starvation and malnutrition, rejecting a technology that WILL save tens of thousands of lives in Africa and the rest of the developing world, because we are unwilling to subject ourselves to small risks is both selfish and morally wrong.
Genetic Engineering than produce less water or need less water or to allow farmers to use brackish water too salty for the irrigation of unimproved crops. Allowing crops to be grown in desert land where convential agriculture would be impractical.
http://abc.net.au/news/scitech/2002/11/item2002112 6114642_1.htm
Slashdot Mirror
See subject line. If anything this underscores the need for continued government investment in R&D. This was a government funded program, and the information is going to be in the public domain. Which makes this one more small check on the power of individual large corporations, and one more victory for public sector improvement of crop germplasm.
The government's biggest contribution to sequencing is probably the Joint Genome Institute (http://www.jgi.doe.gov). Until recently they'd focused more on animals and bacteria, but they are now also turning out a number of plant genomes. I don't know what genomes of agriculturally important plants you are saying can be found online. The only one in the same range of corn that I know of is rice (which was a huge deal with it came out too.) I'd also disagree with your position that agricultural plants are less interesting because of domestication. If anything I think we can learn even more from them because we can look at the changes to their genomes as the result of 1000's of a years of human selection for the things that make plants more beneficial to us. A good example of this is the work done by a guy named John Doebley (http://teosinte.wisc.edu/) on identifying the mutant alleles of genes that were under strong selective pressure during the domestication of maize from its wild ancestor. But obviously the genomes of non-domestic plants also hold important secrets. Like the resurrection plants of the american southwest that can survive complete dehydration. Thanks for commenting, it was an enjoyable read.
Yes! After watching the sequences of things like grape and papaya being announced, it's good that the first draft of the corn genome is finally out there (or will be on Friday.) In terms of the potential benefits I'd put maize as around the third most important genome to go after (the first being humans, and the second being any other mammal to compare to the genome of humans) but as the article mentions, the percentage of repetitive elements, plus the fact that early plant genome funding in the US was aimed at model organisms like arabidopsis rather than agriculturally significantly species slowed it down significantly. That said I'm obviously very biased. Look at my name if nothing else. And thank god the information is in the public sector, rather than the proprietary knowledge of a private corporation.
The thing is, a scientifically inclined undergrad realizes that a BS in biology is basically worthless in the job market. That's not because employers have unreasonable standards either, I've seen people come out of ivy league bio programs, and unless they have good research experience independent of their coursework, they don't even know how to hold a pipetteman, let alone more complicated protocols like PCR, or the independent thinking required to become a PI.
I think overall comp sci and engineering programs are doing much better jobs of training students to be productive after four years, the way things are set up in biology getting a PhD and often post docs, are pretty much required to gain the skills required to be more than a technician. In other words, you're lucky if you're only thirty the first time you get a "real" job. Personally I'd a lot of the problems are the result of so many biology programs have been made over into feeder programs for med schools, which require a very different skill set from doing research.
"So what do you do with a BS in biology?"
"Tend bar?"
Given that more money has been raised in this presidential election than any other up to this point, I would honestly hope the FEC has better things to do than worry about prosecuting a comedian.
My advice is to relax, and if you can't do that, worry about the people you don't like who might actually get elected president. (Hillary, Romney, Ron Paul, surely anyone can find an ACTUAL candidate to hate).
The article summary is deceptive. Inserting a gene into the current genome of crop is just as permanent a change as added a new mini-chromosome. In either change the changes will be inherited by the offspring of the individual plant.
The main difference between this technology and currect methods on inserting genes is that more than one gene can be added as easily as a single gene, whereas in the previous system "stacking" multiple genes required much more effort than a single gene, since each had to be inserted individually and then combined using conventional breeding.
I for one think this technology is a step in the right direction, as it will make it easier to create artificial species barriers, which require two-five genes to be inserted, but would prevent GM crops from crossbreeding with traditional varieties in the field. THIS IS NOT TERMINATOR TECHNOLOGY! The plants would still be fertile, just only with others carried the added chromosome.
But couldn't they have found someone besides Monsanto to implement it?
Actually the bt cotton is so popular in india that many farmers are buying "pirated" bt cotten seed on the grey market. Which makes me laugh, as I'm in favor of indian farmers not dying from the huge quantities of toxic pesticides (many illegal in the United States) they were previously forced to spray to control pests, and not so much in favor of Monsanto profiting off of that. If you're interested, googling could find you a graph of india's cotton production since bt cotton was introduced in 2002. I could just tell what it'll show, but why believe me when you can check for youself?
Monsato has revenue of over seven billion annually and invests barely 10% of that back into research. Someone elsewere in this discussion called them the Microsoft of the biotech seed world. They're using patents and huge market share (90% of geneticly improved germplasm on the market) to squeeze huge profits out of farmers pockets without continuing to innovate. But just because you hate microsoft's products and business tactics doesn't mean you attack the very idea of an operating system. So don't blame an entire technology because a terrible company controls 90% of the market? Ok?
>We evolved in the same biosphere as insects, so changes to a plant to prevent the insect from being able to eat them may also have effects on us
;) I've known a lot of scientists who've spent years and years developing crops with no commercial incentive (either crops that aren't grown in the industrialized world, or adding traits that are only of value to subsistance/small scale farmers). You can talk all you'd like about how starvation is a policy problem, but it's people who paint all genetic engineering with too broad a brush who're holding up the approval of crops like golden rice (4,000 children die of vitamin-A deficency every day) and virus resistant cassava. Its very easy to say there's no need for GMOs when you live in a country where most nutrition problems are caused by too much food rather than too little.
Great, sounds logical. Until you learn that the CRY proteins expressed by bt crops crystalize into their toxic form only under highly basic conditions. Because we took different evolutionary paths for millions of years, our stomachs are highly acidic while insects stomachs are highly basic. On top of that you've been eating the CRY proteins on organic food for decades, as spraying with bacteria producing those proteins has long been considered an organic form on pest control.
"GMOs are designed for one reason, to make money."
Monsanto's GMOs are designed for one reason, to make money. Fixed that for you.
In these debates, average doesn't refer the average needs of linux users, who, like you said, have a wide range of needs and use a wide range of distros optimized for those needs. It means the vast majority of computer users who use their windows boxes for nothing but e-mail, word processing, and surfing porn.
I agree. There is a large distinction between copying files unique to you or your computer, and media files that reside on both your computer and thousands of others. In all likelyhood, any techie is much more interested in your torrent of Transformers than that essay on neo-colonialism in Sri Lanka that you wrote back in college and never got around to deleting. The only time I can think of when that might not hold true is if you really did have your own home made sex videos, in which case I suggest you follow the first rule of letting other people use your computer: KEEP YOUR PORN ON REMOVABLE MEDIA!!!
I'm assuming the numbers you are quoting are for spending by the FEDERAL government. The vast majority of money for K-12 education in this country comes from either the individual states or property taxes at the level of individual school districts. In my home state, education makes up more than half the annual budget, and practically nothing on national defense. So while I agree there is an argument to be made about how much money to spend on the military vs education, quoting numbers solely from the federal budget is going to distort the true relationship between military and education spending.
Which brings us to the question of why a major retailler is using wireless in the first place. I'm personally no more than an interested amatur, but I've read professionals running corperate networks who, if they have to include a wireless component at all, keep it completely seperate from the secure, WIRED, network. You get internet access, but no accessing the company databases from the wireless. Can anyone come up with a scenario where it would be ESSENTIAL for store operations to be able to send SSNs and drivers license #s over a wireless connection?
Actually, isn't the compulsory license the same idea that allowed allofpm3.com to sell music by licensing it from the local russian right music copyright organization? Because I know the RIAA screamed pretty hard about that, to the point of getting the United States to threaten trade sanctions. It'd be interesting if someone could go back to those stories and see if there are any juicy quotes from the RIAA decrying compulsory licensing.
From the wikipedia article (assuming it hasn't been to horrible vandalized by my fellow slashdotters yet) I'm not sure if I would describe this as a MAJOR political party with maybe one twentieth of the norwegian vote. Still a bigger organization that the Swedish Pirate Party, perhaps this is a positive sign of things to come. Makes me wish we had political parties somewhere between the the wacko fringe (Green, Reform, etc) that no one takes seriously and the big two which both seem to owe too much to the **AA to ever consider taking a position like this one.
I'd argue college students actually represent the RIAAs current consumers. Especially for the sort of high-return pop music where the record labels make most of their money, college students (and high school students) probably make up the majority of the consumer dollars still spent on CDs. I doubt very many record label fat cats are getting rich of the purchasing habits of the population of slashdot. Maybe the RIAA figures by the time they sue college students they've already spent the majority of the money they'll spend on music in their lifetimes? Or they are trying to avoid the embarrasment of suing old blind women and dead people. Suing college IP addresses probably makes it less likely whoever they finally associate with that address will be as a big public relations disaster. Most people are prefectly willing to believe in the low moral integrity of college students these days.
The 360 is closing in on a year and a half after launch and instead of a price cut, they're going to charge us an extra 80 bucks for a new port and a hard drive big enough not to suck. M$ was making 75 bucks on each console they sold back in November. Guess I'll be stuck in the last generation for a while longer, or at least until it is possible to actually purchase a Wii.
The thing to remember is that the only thing that makes these mosquito's more robust is that they ARE resistant to Malaria. If Malaria adapts to negate that resistance, the mosquitos will be no more fit that the orginial type, so if the malaria adapts after a while human rates return to normal, and mosquitos are no more fit than before the transgene was introduced. As a genetics student this strikes me as a very elegant idea, since it is based on the introduction of a single gene, the system can fail without causing a disaster, and until it fails, has the potential to save literally hundreds of thousands of human lives every year (given that annual deaths from malaria number in the millions).
But the problem cited in the article was companies donating patents that wouldn't lead to effective business models, basically junk patents. If the tax write-off is tied to the success of the company recieving the patent (I think a percentage, rather than the total revenue generated) then the potential for abuse is much more limited.
Doesn't this end up with us pro-GMO folks trying to prove a negative? Because you've said that even if all tests show that not only is a genetically modified organism is safe, but that it is identical to the unimproved plant, you still wouldn't trust it. How long is long term enough? When is a study TRUELY independant. This is the same argument creationists make when they talk about how evolution is just a theory.
Do you oppose medical research because the pharmacutical companies aren't going to give the pills away for free? I hope not. By all means let us try to get the price of GMO seed down, but the way to do that is to increase competition or through government action, not opposing the technology itself.
Since you're so anti-GMO I assume you feel much safer buying organic food. Organic farmers use BT to kill pests on their crops BECAUSE the chemical is safe for human consumption. http://www.bt.ucsd.edu/organic_farming.html The only difference is that with bt corn only produces one chemical, whereas the organic method covers your food in
Technically corn does pollinate naturally. (By wind) What you're probably thinking of is that corn is unable to propogate in the wild, but this is because corn kernals stay stuck to the cob and cannot spread outside the field where they grew (or even more than a foot away from the plant itself).
I agree with you that there is a risk (a small one) to the introduction of transgenic crops. But given the number of people in the world dying every day from starvation and malnutrition, rejecting a technology that WILL save tens of thousands of lives in Africa and the rest of the developing world, because we are unwilling to subject ourselves to small risks is both selfish and morally wrong.
Genetic Engineering than produce less water or need less water or to allow farmers to use brackish water too salty for the irrigation of unimproved crops. Allowing crops to be grown in desert land where convential agriculture would be impractical. http://abc.net.au/news/scitech/2002/11/item2002112 6114642_1.htm