First, the article didn't say the thing was the size of a hornet, it's just has it as a namesake. Since some hornet species are a large as a common house mouse, this thing could be quite large.
Second, why bother with robotics when it is much easier to retrain actual wasps, hornets, and bees two a wide variety of odors. Heck even reletively non-volitile compounds like TNT can be detected. My facts here are based on results from some recent DARPA-funded projects in insect behavior.
I wonder if Future Man has tried his hand at this game. I bet he TOTALLY rocks!!
Seriously, although very simplified, the "controller" is conceptually similar to his Drumitar.
In the article it is clearly described that they rebuilt the virus from a consensus sequence and added certain nucleotides to it such that it would not be able to replicate more than once. They only needed one replication for "proof of concept" and were well aware that it would be very easily contained this way. It is a very good idea to know why and how we carry these nucleotides around with us. It is pretty common place for virologists in the animal and plant world to stick in special nucleotides into their clones to keep tabs on them, track them, or control their expression in some way. My favorite sequence is a gene that codes for herbicide resistance. It allows me to tease some pretty tricky questions out of plants in the lab. To someone who isn't familiar with the system it might seem tricky to guarantee that my herbicide-resistant plant virus doesn't escape and cause all sorts of trouble. In reality it would not compete very well in nature with the wild type because of the fitness cost of all the extra baggage. But I'm extra careful anyway to not let it out.
Somehow I think that plant pathologists have probably noticed this for decades. It a pretty useful lab plant for moving pathogens between plants in interesting ways. Dodder is grown in plant path greenhouses commonly and usually near host plants.
Gene, the following comment is totally off topic but the reply to your reply to a comment that I had made regarding Steven Hawking has expired (and your email is not public so I can't email you directly).
Thanks for your comment and insight regarding your experiences with scientific adventures. Yes, I have been in grad. school 10 years and not because of a woman. Actually, I think my wife would really rather I be done with it since I've been in school for as long as she has known me. lol. Ten years isn't too odd when you consider that includes a master's degree and a doctoral degree during which time some small but meaningful discoveries have been made (e.g., new morphotype of a rare insect described, new fossil insect discoverd/described, new soybean virus strain discovered and being sequenced) and much has been learned. Oh, and when your 1-year old Seagate high-speed hard drive burns out because the read-head decides to do a cha-cha, and your IT guy tells you that "oh, I wasn't backing up that data drive", and your secondary backup is a year old -- that will set you back a little too.;-)
Actually, it seems he doesn't need a graduate student--he needs a post-doctoral student (given the salary, if money=responsibility, and given the need to "deal with the press")!
Of course, I've been in graduate school for 10 years now!
Aside from the obligator Simpson statements...
on
Humanity Gene Found?
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· Score: 1
This is actually a really big deal. There are a lot of genes out there in many organisms that have these really long nucleotide repeats in them just like this one. They are very very very difficult to sequence. The researchers deserve at least a pat on the back for this one.
On an another somewhat related note -- If there truly is one gene that is making us more human than a Bonobo chimp then, the next logical step is... Take this nifty gene and splice it into a chimp genome (easier said than done I'm sure, it's a lot easier with viruses) and see what you get.
So, if that were possible and a humanoid resulted, wouldn't that be interesting. What would Michael Behe say about Darwin's so called "black box" then!? LOL
A more less related thought... How much of the anti-evolution rhetoric is going to push science further and sooner into revealing what the anti-evolution crowd doesn't what to know?
I know, but Iowa production of corn and soybean is twice that of Minnesota and Iowa doesn't even grow things like potato and sugar beats. So, as I said you are mostly veg-land. But don't take my word for it, check for yourself.
Actually, more correct would be to say that herbicides are "needed" on crops that need herbicide to sell them on their particular market. Sure you can sell soybean or corn or wheat without using any herbicide. And you can cultivate the field to reduce the weeds and manage your planting and harvest dates accordingly and all of this will add up to a huge cost to the grower. This translates into a larger cost to the consumer. So, "on the shelf", who buys what? I buy "organic" or "natural" and local produce often, because I can afford it and I like the taste of some of the products. And I don't mind buying apples with black spots on them and such -- but I know that isn't the buying habit of most people in the US anyway.
Well, I still stand by my original point as to why GE crops began. I just don't see any need to invoke conspiracy theories or sheer capitalist greed as reasons (maybe the politics of it, but not the science). I think we'll just have to agree to disagree regarding the need for herbicides. It depends on what your growing and what you are growing it for and what the risks might be for treating or not treating. I think it is prudent to bring up that the long-term risk of "organic" agriculture has not been fully determined. Questions like the affects of nightshade toxins in organic systems in soybean or fungal toxins in corn grain (some of which have known long-term carcinogenic effects) have barely been addressed in organic or conventional systems. Your argument that crops have been grown for many years without the need for herbicides seems to ignore the remarkable pressure that population growth and world trade systems has had on ag. We grow stuff on a much larger scale than we used to and farms are not divided up into small units anymore.
Also your neck of the woods are different than my neck of the woods. Your in mostly vegetable country and for their special markets I think it must be easier to sell them with fewer inputs (i.e., higher price). Iowa is mostly grain land and the market is totally different; mostly the grain demand is driven by other markets like hogs and oil. So it's kind of apples and oranges I guess.
Anyway, call me what you will but I'm gonna sit back and enjoy my bag of "Bearitos" brand "all natural", unsalted corn chips (that I picked up at my local Co-op store yesterday) because I can afford them, I enjoy their flavor not because I'm driven by their philosophy.;-)
And you don't need herbicides if you don't need crops...
Actually, if used when needed, my statement still holds true for herbicides. Well, the rates and the number of sprays required for "weed control" are supposed to be less than what was required before (with the old nasty formulations). Crops were made herbicide resistant so that crop management would be safer and more affordable (which must be true or no one would by the stuff right : ^yield ^money). Obviously, the owners of the gene want to milk as much profit off of it as possible (that's why they exist) and marketing drives this stuff pretty heavy, but it works. You do need herbicide if you want to grow large acres of cropland. For example, weeds are the #1 yield-reducing agent for soybeans. That's why herbicides are used (farm size being another issue). Now, the flip side is that the success of the Roundup herbicide itself has probably caused an increase in herbicide use. But that isn't the same as saying the GE crop causes the use of more herbicide. This is a secondary or indirect problem. My statement was addressing a direct effect and it's true. Look, the investment and R&D into GE crops is the direct result of the Food Quality Protection Act. It mandates a reduction in chemical inputs into food systems. Chemical companies said, "oh crap, we need to invest in another strategy" and so did academia, and so did USDA and so that's where research advanced. There are probably a lot of things that we don't "need", but we do demand food, lots of it, AND we do want it at a high quality. That's why we use pesticides. You want to talk about indirect reasons, how about putting the blame where it is deserved; pesticides are used because of what the majority of us demand. GE crops were invented to meet demand and their affects on human health and the environment are not ironed out for all technologies. But I think the negative hype is blown out of proportion for some.
You are a little misinformed here. The monarch butterfly was never close to being lost. AND the crop wasn't wheat it was corn. I'm an entomologist and at Iowa State we have an entire USDA unit devoted to risk assessment of crops and the environment and the follow-up research regarding the "monarch butterfly issue" detailed that the risk of GE on monarchs was near 0. Want some more, scientifically-based reading to bone up on It might improve the value of your opinion here.;-)
Think about this... Genetically engineered food is in response to a need to reduce the usage of chemical controls on crops. What do you suppose the LD-50 (or an LC-50 for that matter) is for even a mild insecticide like a modern pyrethroid is on a monarch butterfly? Much, much lower than a GE crop I assure you.
All in all the discussion on Slashdot regarding copyright issues and GE crops is probably closer to a real issue of concern now and for the future. However, "GE crops" is a term that applies to a vast array of GE strategies and it's possible that some GE strategies may be of more concern for the environment (take GE modified crops to produce medicine or antibiotics, for example), but those aren't the ones getting most of the media attention -- pretty butterflies and Bt genes do.
It's a bacteriophage. These things target specific bacteria and it is thought that it is very difficult for bacteria to develope resistance against them. So, they are a much better option and probably less environmentally sensitive that most general antibiotics (to which many bacteria have developed resistance). If you don't know what these phages are you should really visit the Wiki link above (they are really wicked looking and interesting).
I had a first generation Nintendo. The game cassettes would sometimes give funky signals (flashing and such) on the screen when put in. So, I would take the cassette out and blow really hard into the cassette and then slam it back into the machine and turn it on. In most cases the game would then boot up normally. I'm sure there is a reason why it worked, but I only cared that it worked and not why.
Actually, you can't generate a circle with 5 pixels; however, you can generate a cross. Ever seen a 1 pixel circle, it's a square. Maybe a low res bar code scanner isn't such a big deal because, since pixels are squares the image only needs to generate uniform stacks of either black or white pixels. However, I would guess the minimum pixel size would still have to be as wide as one of the standard bar-code widths to be accurate?
Slashdot Mirror
Two billionths of a meter thick!? Come on! Just say, 2 nanometers please.
Who says it doesn't?
Johnny 5 is alive!
First, the article didn't say the thing was the size of a hornet, it's just has it as a namesake. Since some hornet species are a large as a common house mouse, this thing could be quite large. Second, why bother with robotics when it is much easier to retrain actual wasps, hornets, and bees two a wide variety of odors. Heck even reletively non-volitile compounds like TNT can be detected. My facts here are based on results from some recent DARPA-funded projects in insect behavior.
... and if your site uses SQL make sure you also disallow the use of SQL in the form fields as well! Or your tables could be tromped on!
I wonder if Future Man has tried his hand at this game. I bet he TOTALLY rocks!! Seriously, although very simplified, the "controller" is conceptually similar to his Drumitar.
In the article it is clearly described that they rebuilt the virus from a consensus sequence and added certain nucleotides to it such that it would not be able to replicate more than once. They only needed one replication for "proof of concept" and were well aware that it would be very easily contained this way. It is a very good idea to know why and how we carry these nucleotides around with us. It is pretty common place for virologists in the animal and plant world to stick in special nucleotides into their clones to keep tabs on them, track them, or control their expression in some way. My favorite sequence is a gene that codes for herbicide resistance. It allows me to tease some pretty tricky questions out of plants in the lab. To someone who isn't familiar with the system it might seem tricky to guarantee that my herbicide-resistant plant virus doesn't escape and cause all sorts of trouble. In reality it would not compete very well in nature with the wild type because of the fitness cost of all the extra baggage. But I'm extra careful anyway to not let it out.
Hot off the press... Reading science.slashdot.org also causes cancer!
Agree. And if the passenger's suit were clear they would split into density gradient fractions with some bones in the way.
Somehow I think that plant pathologists have probably noticed this for decades. It a pretty useful lab plant for moving pathogens between plants in interesting ways. Dodder is grown in plant path greenhouses commonly and usually near host plants.
Gene, the following comment is totally off topic but the reply to your reply to a comment that I had made regarding Steven Hawking has expired (and your email is not public so I can't email you directly). Thanks for your comment and insight regarding your experiences with scientific adventures. Yes, I have been in grad. school 10 years and not because of a woman. Actually, I think my wife would really rather I be done with it since I've been in school for as long as she has known me. lol. Ten years isn't too odd when you consider that includes a master's degree and a doctoral degree during which time some small but meaningful discoveries have been made (e.g., new morphotype of a rare insect described, new fossil insect discoverd/described, new soybean virus strain discovered and being sequenced) and much has been learned. Oh, and when your 1-year old Seagate high-speed hard drive burns out because the read-head decides to do a cha-cha, and your IT guy tells you that "oh, I wasn't backing up that data drive", and your secondary backup is a year old -- that will set you back a little too. ;-)
De do do do de da da da Is all I want to say to you.
Especially when burnt garbage steam has been bubbled through it.
Mmmm Tropicana garbage juice...[Homer voiceover]...
Actually, it seems he doesn't need a graduate student--he needs a post-doctoral student (given the salary, if money=responsibility, and given the need to "deal with the press")!
Of course, I've been in graduate school for 10 years now!
Dude...
This is actually a really big deal. There are a lot of genes out there in many organisms that have these really long nucleotide repeats in them just like this one. They are very very very difficult to sequence. The researchers deserve at least a pat on the back for this one.
On an another somewhat related note -- If there truly is one gene that is making us more human than a Bonobo chimp then, the next logical step is... Take this nifty gene and splice it into a chimp genome (easier said than done I'm sure, it's a lot easier with viruses) and see what you get.
So, if that were possible and a humanoid resulted, wouldn't that be interesting. What would Michael Behe say about Darwin's so called "black box" then!? LOL
A more less related thought... How much of the anti-evolution rhetoric is going to push science further and sooner into revealing what the anti-evolution crowd doesn't what to know?
iSue and iLitigate
I know, but Iowa production of corn and soybean is twice that of Minnesota and Iowa doesn't even grow things like potato and sugar beats. So, as I said you are mostly veg-land. But don't take my word for it, check for yourself.
Actually, more correct would be to say that herbicides are "needed" on crops that need herbicide to sell them on their particular market. Sure you can sell soybean or corn or wheat without using any herbicide. And you can cultivate the field to reduce the weeds and manage your planting and harvest dates accordingly and all of this will add up to a huge cost to the grower. This translates into a larger cost to the consumer. So, "on the shelf", who buys what? I buy "organic" or "natural" and local produce often, because I can afford it and I like the taste of some of the products. And I don't mind buying apples with black spots on them and such -- but I know that isn't the buying habit of most people in the US anyway.
;-)
Well, I still stand by my original point as to why GE crops began. I just don't see any need to invoke conspiracy theories or sheer capitalist greed as reasons (maybe the politics of it, but not the science). I think we'll just have to agree to disagree regarding the need for herbicides. It depends on what your growing and what you are growing it for and what the risks might be for treating or not treating. I think it is prudent to bring up that the long-term risk of "organic" agriculture has not been fully determined. Questions like the affects of nightshade toxins in organic systems in soybean or fungal toxins in corn grain (some of which have known long-term carcinogenic effects) have barely been addressed in organic or conventional systems. Your argument that crops have been grown for many years without the need for herbicides seems to ignore the remarkable pressure that population growth and world trade systems has had on ag. We grow stuff on a much larger scale than we used to and farms are not divided up into small units anymore.
Also your neck of the woods are different than my neck of the woods. Your in mostly vegetable country and for their special markets I think it must be easier to sell them with fewer inputs (i.e., higher price). Iowa is mostly grain land and the market is totally different; mostly the grain demand is driven by other markets like hogs and oil. So it's kind of apples and oranges I guess.
Anyway, call me what you will but I'm gonna sit back and enjoy my bag of "Bearitos" brand "all natural", unsalted corn chips (that I picked up at my local Co-op store yesterday) because I can afford them, I enjoy their flavor not because I'm driven by their philosophy.
And you don't need herbicides if you don't need crops... Actually, if used when needed, my statement still holds true for herbicides. Well, the rates and the number of sprays required for "weed control" are supposed to be less than what was required before (with the old nasty formulations). Crops were made herbicide resistant so that crop management would be safer and more affordable (which must be true or no one would by the stuff right : ^yield ^money). Obviously, the owners of the gene want to milk as much profit off of it as possible (that's why they exist) and marketing drives this stuff pretty heavy, but it works. You do need herbicide if you want to grow large acres of cropland. For example, weeds are the #1 yield-reducing agent for soybeans. That's why herbicides are used (farm size being another issue). Now, the flip side is that the success of the Roundup herbicide itself has probably caused an increase in herbicide use. But that isn't the same as saying the GE crop causes the use of more herbicide. This is a secondary or indirect problem. My statement was addressing a direct effect and it's true. Look, the investment and R&D into GE crops is the direct result of the Food Quality Protection Act. It mandates a reduction in chemical inputs into food systems. Chemical companies said, "oh crap, we need to invest in another strategy" and so did academia, and so did USDA and so that's where research advanced. There are probably a lot of things that we don't "need", but we do demand food, lots of it, AND we do want it at a high quality. That's why we use pesticides. You want to talk about indirect reasons, how about putting the blame where it is deserved; pesticides are used because of what the majority of us demand. GE crops were invented to meet demand and their affects on human health and the environment are not ironed out for all technologies. But I think the negative hype is blown out of proportion for some.
You are a little misinformed here. The monarch butterfly was never close to being lost. AND the crop wasn't wheat it was corn. I'm an entomologist and at Iowa State we have an entire USDA unit devoted to risk assessment of crops and the environment and the follow-up research regarding the "monarch butterfly issue" detailed that the risk of GE on monarchs was near 0. Want some more, scientifically-based reading to bone up on It might improve the value of your opinion here. ;-)
Think about this... Genetically engineered food is in response to a need to reduce the usage of chemical controls on crops. What do you suppose the LD-50 (or an LC-50 for that matter) is for even a mild insecticide like a modern pyrethroid is on a monarch butterfly? Much, much lower than a GE crop I assure you.
All in all the discussion on Slashdot regarding copyright issues and GE crops is probably closer to a real issue of concern now and for the future. However, "GE crops" is a term that applies to a vast array of GE strategies and it's possible that some GE strategies may be of more concern for the environment (take GE modified crops to produce medicine or antibiotics, for example), but those aren't the ones getting most of the media attention -- pretty butterflies and Bt genes do.
It's a bacteriophage. These things target specific bacteria and it is thought that it is very difficult for bacteria to develope resistance against them. So, they are a much better option and probably less environmentally sensitive that most general antibiotics (to which many bacteria have developed resistance). If you don't know what these phages are you should really visit the Wiki link above (they are really wicked looking and interesting).
I had a first generation Nintendo. The game cassettes would sometimes give funky signals (flashing and such) on the screen when put in. So, I would take the cassette out and blow really hard into the cassette and then slam it back into the machine and turn it on. In most cases the game would then boot up normally. I'm sure there is a reason why it worked, but I only cared that it worked and not why.
FTA --Testing security only emboldens the terrorists!
Where, in Soviet Russia!?
Actually, you can't generate a circle with 5 pixels; however, you can generate a cross. Ever seen a 1 pixel circle, it's a square. Maybe a low res bar code scanner isn't such a big deal because, since pixels are squares the image only needs to generate uniform stacks of either black or white pixels. However, I would guess the minimum pixel size would still have to be as wide as one of the standard bar-code widths to be accurate?