James Tynion IV writes a number of titles for DC Comics, but over the past few years hes been crafting a series of fascinating and dark horror stories at BOOM! Studios. Following Memetic and Cognetic, each of which ended the world in a novel and spectacular fashion, Tynion is back with the third and final miniseries of his Apocalyptic Trilogy: Eugenic.

Launching this fall with artist Eryk Donovan, the series involves a plague, genetic engineering and involves what Tynion called one of the strangest things Ive ever written. This three issue miniseries doesnt end the world in a matter of days like his other series, rather each issue takes place roughly two hundred after the previous one.

RELATED: INTERVIEW: Tynion Prepares Batman for War in Detective Comics

CBR: The solicit reads When a plague ravages the world, one scientist discovers the cure and becomes the savior of mankind. Do you want to pick things up from there and explain a little about what Eugenic is?

James Tynion IV: This story is something thats been running around the back of my head for a long, long time. Like the solicits say, in the first issue we start in a world thats been ravaged by this horrific plague that has impacted the entire world population. Even the people who did not directly die from it are carrying it. Beyond that, its affected the reproductive abilities of the human race. The majority of human births for the last 15 years have been stillbirths and humanity has started to die out. We have a character Dr. Cyrus Crane who has started to put together a plan on how to save the world beyond just curing the virus. He has a larger agenda and that larger agenda is really what spurs on Eugenic.

Its hard to talk about the plot of Eugenic because one of the strangest things about the conceit is that each issue takes place a few hundred years after the previous issue. Theyre almost like three science fiction stand alone one shots that build on each other in a snowballing apocalypse. Both of my previous two apocalypses in this cycle have happened in a matter of days. In Memetic it happened in three days. In this one, it takes a bit longer and honestly its one of the strangest things Ive ever written. Thats part of what makes it so exciting for me.

Eugenic is the third miniseries of your Apocalyptic Trilogy after Memetic and Cognetic. What ties them together for you beyond this notion of the apocalypse?

The genesis is that back in 2012 I was writing the backup stories on Batman, I was writing Talon for DC, but people only knew my work through co-writing with Scott Snyder. I didnt have any of my own original projects out in the world and so I challenged myself to come up with the kinds of stories that I was interested in telling that I didnt really see out there in the world. Ive always been a horror geek. The thing that has always really struck me about horror is its power to really crack the social fears of the moment. All horror is a commentary on a certain moment in history. Even though a lot of horror is backwards looking, I started thinking about what could be forward looking and the first idea that I had was Memetic. I threw all this down into a document where in three pages I laid down what Memetic was and the rough concept of what Cognetic was and then I had a brief blurb about a eugenic apocalypse and the idea of humanity genetically engineering itself to death. It really did all start in one moment.

RELATED: Leyh, Tynion & More Discuss LGBT Characters in All-Ages Media

The thing thats similar in all of them is a fear of sameness. There is a fear that no matter how exceptional and unique you think you are, at the end of the world you all die the same. A lot of our faults are ingrained in us from an external factor. In Memetic its the fact that we all have this drive to share and spread information and if all of a sudden the wrong part of that drive were triggered, we would just immediately march to our own end. In Cognetic its the idea that our individuality might even be a myth. That maybe were meant to be a giant super organism that is trying to come together and thats why society has moved in the way it has and part of the reason were so unsatisfied in this moment. With Eugenic its a flip on it because in both of those its about an external force that reminds us that were not individually special. To live in the horror of that and then destroy the whole world. With Eugenic it is about us triggering that ourselves. If we have this deep fear of sameness, how could we actually engineer our own sameness that would lead to our end. That was the intellectual pathway that led to Eugenic.

When looking at these three books and some of your other work, I keep thinking of David Cronenberg. Is he a big creative influence?

Absolutely. One hundred per cent yes. Down to the fact that I think in talking about all of these stories the thing thats easy for me to gloss over is the fact that all three are body horror. Because at the end of the day, its us being afraid of ourselves. That is always our biggest fear. The fear that were not good enough. The fear that were not smart enough. That were meant to be to something that we dont want to be. In Eugenic its the fear of what you do with that. What do you do when you fear that we might just be wrong and broken?

How much of body horror in general and your fascination with it in particular is simply a fear of getting old and dying?

I think a lot of it. We can intellectualize so many parts of our lives, but no matter how intelligent you are, no matter how much money you have, the arc of a human life is the same. It hits similar beats along the road and then it tends to be nature or fellow man that kills you. You dont escape the raw animal quality of humanity. I think that scares a lot of us because we see ourselves as special. We want to be special. We want to be different than a bug walking down the sidewalk, but how different are we, really? We live our lives in different ways, but we hit all of those same beats in a life cycle.

The folly of intellectualizing it is something that comes to a head in Eugenic. Theres an element of it which is that sense of being a privileged kid in college and being part of a lot of conversations with other kids who think they know how to fix the world. They know if they just did this one thing and if they had full control over the world they would be able to set everything right and just make everything perfect. The fact of the matter is that chaos catches up to you every step of the way. The fact that you want to inflict this singular version of the world upon the world would be horror in and of itself. Thats what Eugenic is all about. This scientist thinks that he can genetically engineer all of humanity at the moment it is at its weakest point to make it a better version of itself. Its not something that the people who were hurt in the previous version of the world wanted, it was just this singular person making a singular decision that everyone else has to live with. The horror of that tearing the world apart. If any one of us had the ability to radically change the world in a single moment, I think a lot of people would take that because they think they know the answers. But at the end of the day, it doesnt matter. The core traits of humanity power through.

The world or genetics or nature or human nature however you want to phrase it, always wins.

Exactly.

I think theres a lot to be taken from Eugenic. I hope there is. Thats always the goal. To make something strange that people enjoy reading because it hits this strange spot in your soul where it feels real despite how strange it is. I think Memetic in particular hit that, where were seeing the end of the world because people cant ever look away from their computers. Why was it that the second we got this tool suddenly the way humans lived changed? And so when the maker at the end of Memetic starts talking about how humans are built for this, it feels right.

BOOM! c
alled this the Apocalyptic Trilogy which implies that these are related but the cycle is over. In part because Eugenic is so different thematically and structurally, do you see it as the end of the something? Or is this the beginning of something else?

I think that for my entire life I will tell stories that scratch the same itch that these stories scratched in me. I think that Eugenic is an ending in terms of the original concept was the horrors of homogeneity served three ways that touch on current the current state of the world. Moving forward these are themes I find deeply interesting and are themes that I think you can and will see in future stories I do. But these are three concepts that started brewing when I was five years younger than I am today and so my fears today have shifted. If I were to build a whole new apocalypse trilogy today, it would be three very different kinds of apocalypses. The end of the world is always fascinating because it feels so close and because its just a matter of scale. What I was saying earlier, the fact that every human life go towards death? Everything on the macro level follows the same rules as something on the micro level. That means that society will die and the world will die and the universe will die. Everything has a life cycle. Seeing that smallness, how do you act. What do you do? Those themes will be in my work forever.

I do see these as three connected but separate stories that are coming to an end here. Im sure Im going to work with my incredible partner on this series, Eryk Donovan. He helped on my Hellblazer run, I worked with him on a webcomic for Thrillbent, I did a short story for an anthology with him and now Ive done three big series with him. Hes one of my closest friends in the world and we have very similar sensibilities. In terms of this format, the three oversized issue apocalypse miniseries. That format shaped the original idea. It is an ending, but there are more stories to come which if you like these takes on the world, Ill do similar things in the future. But I want to do different things that approach these themes from wildly different angles.

Like the first two miniseries, this is three issues, right? When do they come out?

October, November, December.

So people can celebrate the end of the year with an apocalypse?

Exactly!

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EXCLUSIVE: James Tynion IV's Eugenic Triggers an Apocalypse - CBR (blog)

Amber Case, an American cyborg anthropologist, argued in a 2011 TED Talk that every time you look at a computer screen or use one of your cell phone devices, you are, in fact, being a cyborg.

Based on the traditional definition of a cyborg, shes not wrong. A 1960 paper on space travel defined a cyborg as an organism to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments.What is humanitys current environment then? Already, our constant exposure to technological devices and online social platforms puts us a world apart from say, 25 years ago. Navigating this new landscape using exogenous components, which must count our smartphones, laptops and tablets (they are more a part of us now than we may admit), solidifies the standing that we just might be the cyborgs we had read about as children.

While Human 2.0 can already be argued as the average human in a modern city, armed with a smartphone and constantly hooked up to the Internet as the new stream of consciousness, Human 3.0 has already arrived in reality. The new HUMAN+ exhibition at Marina Bay Sands Artscience Museum attempts to shed a little more light on our eventual evolution. Attending the opening weekend of the exhibition was the worlds first officially recognised human cyborg, Neil Harbisson.

The contemporary artist was born with an extreme form of colour blindness that resulted in him seeing only in greyscale. In 2003, he embarked on a project to implant an antenna in his skull that uses audible vibrations to report information to him. Harbisson now hears in colour and paints sounds. In a sense, his antenna (or eye-borg as he calls it) allows him a man-made synaesthesic experience. Harbisson has used his standing as the first cyborg to speak up for the rights of other such humans, who have incorporated technology into their bodies. He founded the Cyborg Foundation alongside fellow artist and collaborator, Moon Ribas (whose online seismic sensor implant lets her feel the vibrations of earthquakes across the world), to represent and fight for the rights of other cyborgs.

It begs the question, of course to what end are humans allowed to upgrade themselves so to speak?

As it stands, many cybernetic implants these days are catered to amputees and the disabled, helping them to live like able-bodied persons on a daily basis aiding them in performing tasks they would otherwise be unable to do. The ethics behind, say, an abled man building an exoskeleton for himself is, however, debatable. For where then does human end and cyborg start? And where does cyborg end and robot start?

As Honor Harger, executive director of ArtScience Museum puts it, Our perception of what it means to be human has been transformed by science and technology. Advances in genetic engineering, biotechnology and nanotechnology that not long ago seemed purely science fiction are now real. Cyborgs, superhumans and clones are alive among us today. What does it mean to be human now? Should we continue to embrace modifications to our minds, bodies and daily lives, or are there boundaries we should never overstep?

With the rapid progress of AI technology and robotics, the gap between human and cyborg is fast diminishing and like any new social norm, should be questioned thoroughly. I, for one, stand on the side of evolution manmade evolution, that is.

HUMAN+ runs at the Artscience Museum till 15 Oct

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Cyborgs Among Us - AUGUSTMAN

The Hindu

Central labs moot 'human first' approach to test malaria vaccine The Hindu The meeting will also discuss testing two vaccine-candidates one that causes falciparum malaria and the milder-but-more-prevalent vivax developed at the New Delhi-based International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

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Central labs moot 'human first' approach to test malaria vaccine - The Hindu

IARPA seeks tech to ID bioengineered life forms

WHAT: A new bio-detection tech development effort to help defend against human engineered biological threats.

WHY: With advances in genetic engineering and gene editing, the intelligence community is concerned about possible threats from chimerical life forms.

The research arm of the intelligence community is hoping new bio-detection technology can be developed to help defend against human engineered biological threats.

That idea might sound a bit familiar to science fiction buffs.

It is reminiscent of the science fiction film "Blade Runner," an adaptation of Philp K. Dicks classic 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" In the story, special futuristic cops are charged with defending human civilization from the depredations of genetically engineered android super-soldiers dubbed replicants.

In a June 19 announcement, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity said it is looking for technology that can detect human engineered changes to natural biological systems.

Emerging genetic editing tools have the potential to aid in the development of new vaccines and pharmaceuticals and to create hardy strains of crops. However, in the wrong hands, these tools could also be used to warp organisms into deliberate weapons or be misused in ways that could "accidentally or deliberately" threaten national health, security or the economy, according to the solicitation.

IARPA said its Finding Engineering-Linked Indicators (FELIX) program looks to develop new tech that can spot genetically engineered changes within biological systems to spur "mitigation responses to unlawful or accidental release of organisms." IARPA said it wants to develop a suite of tools to detect a range of engineered bio-organisms from viruses, bacteria, insects, animals and plants that have been developed from natural organisms "that are either purposefully or accidentally developed and/or released with the potential to cause harm."

IARPA plans a proposers' day on July 27 before it sends out a formal solicitation for the technology.

IARPA said technologies it wants to discuss include novel methods and high throughput techniques in genomics, systems biology, bioinformatics and evolutionary biology.

The tools it's aiming to develop could find genetic signatures that haven't been accessible before with previous technologies, using data from multiple interrogation points, increasing sensitivity, improving the quality of the data and leveraging technologies that can increase throughput and reduce the complexity of sample analysis.

IARPA said it envisions FELIX development as a two-phase program. The first phase, it said, is to develop platforms and technologies that can be made general enough to detect "signatures" that would give away engineered biological systems and develop modeling and analysis of those indicators.

The second phase, IARPA said, will optimize the platform, analysis tools and technologies to detect increasingly complex and sophisticated changes in biological systems and find those engineered changes in a variety of organisms and sample types.

Click here to read the full announcement.

Posted by Mark Rockwell on Jul 05, 2017 at 12:33 PM

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IARPA seeks tech to ID bioengineered life forms - FCW.com (blog)

We long to transcend the human condition

baona/Getty

By Joanna Kavenna

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Here we are discussing transhumanism, defined by evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley in 1957 as the belief that the human species can and should transcend itself by realizing new possibilities of and for human nature. What relevance could the poet John Donne have to such a discussion?

A more recent explanation of transhumanism, by Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, calls it a loosely defined movement that has developed gradually over the past two decades Attention is given to both present technologies, like genetic engineering and information technology, and anticipated future ones, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. This formulation resembles the poetry of English clerics even less than Huxleys did.

But though Bostrom does not express himself in quite the same fashion as Donne, the overarching sentiment is not dissimilar: Death, thou shalt die, or at least thou shalt be postponed as far as possible. Bostrom continues: Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways.

In other words, before death postponed or otherwise, life might be made considerably nicer: less fraught with disease and suffering, and altogether less half-baked. This is a metaphor from cooking, and transhumanist rhetoric is awash with such, at times treacherous, metaphors.

Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have. Bostroms lovely sentiment that the half-baked human must be improved by the responsible use of science has driven humanity for millennia, ever since we began using technologies of flint and fire and so on, and through innumerable and utterly vital developments in medicine and science. So one key question that we must pose and seek to discuss is how, specifically, the transhumanist movement will depart from or further enhance this consistent strain in human history?

Transhumanisms signature ambition, that we may become posthuman, leads us to a baroque and venerable question: what does it mean to be human, anyway? If we want to go beyond something, to transcend it, it is clear we must understand our starting point, the point beyond which we desire to go. The quest to fathom the self, to understand what it means to be human, is fundamental to almost every civilisation known to us. It defines one of the earliest works of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Mesopotamia, in which our protagonist embarks on a quest to understand who on earth he is and what hes meant to do with his mortal span of years. In ancient religious texts such as the Upanishads, all creation begins with the moment of becoming: I am! That is, the world comes from mind itself.

In many global religions, the human self is divided into body and soul, a material and an immaterial part. During the Enlightenment, Descartes famously tried to reconcile this ancient distinction and also placate the church by proposing that the material and immaterial somehow communicated or mingled via the pineal gland.

Skipping boldly through a few centuries of thought, we might arrive (blinking in surprise) at the philosophical novels of Philip K. Dick and his brilliant Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This poses the ancient question again: what does it mean to be human? When is someone/something convincingly human and when are they not? Is your version of being human the same as mine? Or the same as the next humans?

As the Australian philosopher David Chalmers has said, consciousness this mysterious thing that every human possesses or feels they possess remains the hard problem of philosophy. We lack a unified theory of consciousness. We dont understand how consciousness is generated by the brain, or even whether this is the right metaphor to use. We speak of such mysteries in a funny system of squeaks and murmurs that we call language and that swiftly drops into the blackness of prehistory when we seek to trace its origins. We dont know who the first humans were: that fascinating quest likewise drives us straight into a great void of unknowing.

There is nothing wrong with unknowing: it is the ordinary condition of all humanity, so far. Yet, undeterred, we devise bold, elegant theories and advance them in many disciplines of thought. We develop beautiful and exciting almost-human machines and speculate about uploading consciousness. And in so doing, we are consistently rebaking, reheating or refrying the ancient philosophical dilemma: what does it mean to be human?

Pace Bostrom, transhumanism has not developed over the past few decades. Its predilections and concerns have developed over several millennia, and possibly further back, within civilisations we no longer recall. To go back in time to Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. We are still here, and human, with our paradoxical longing to transcend the human condition.

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Who do we think we are? - New Scientist

There's something irresistible about conspiracy theories. For whatever reason, humans seem to have a psychological need to explain troubling phenomena as the end result of meddling by powerful, mysterious forces in the universe -- like the New World Order or Big Pharma.

Naturally, a scary new disease like COVID-19 that emerges several thousand miles away in a foreign country is just too good to pass up for most conspiracy theorists. Here are the best (worst?) ones we've come across:

1) SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is an escaped Chinese biological weapon. This conspiracy theory has been repeated multiple times, even by high-profile individuals like Fox News's Tucker Carlson. The biggest problem with this conspiracy theory is that genetically engineering a virus is a lot easier said than done. To make a virus more lethal or more contagious or both, scientists would need to know how to tweak pre-existing genes -- for instance, by making multiple point mutations at precisely the correct spots in the genome. That is far-fetched, to put it mildly. A genetic analysis in Nature Medicine shows that the simplest explanation is that the virus evolved and "jumped" into humans from an animal.

There is a caveat to this. Wuhan hosts a high-security biological lab, like the CDC, that studies dangerous microorganisms. Is it possible that Chinese scientists were studying a virus isolated from an animal and it accidentally leaked, for example by infecting a lab worker? That can't be ruled out. After all, U.S. labs have mishandled smallpox, anthrax, and influenza.

2) For their part, the Chinese are saying that the U.S. military introduced the virus into Wuhan. Americans aren't the only ones to come up with juicy conspiracy theories!

3) 5G caused the coronavirus. 5G, the latest version of telecommunications technology, has been blamed for a lot of things -- cancer, asthma, memory deficits, autism, diabetes, obesity, impaired sperm function. We can now add coronavirus to the list, according to Dr. (???) Thomas Cowan. This takes a little bit of explaining.

According to Dr. Cowan, we do not get sick because of viruses. First, we get sick, and then our bodies produce viruses in response. How so? Our poisoned cells need to get rid of bad DNA, so they expel the bad DNA. That, in Dr. Cowan's universe, is the origin of the virus.

What causes our cells to become poisoned in the first place? 5G technology, of course.

4) People are dying from fear, not coronavirus. That claim comes from Kelly Brogan, a "holistic psychiatrist" -- whatever that is -- who blogs for Gwyneth Paltrow's snake-oil website Goop. In a video, Brogan says that she does not believe in "germ-based contagion," which is sort of like saying, "I don't believe in the moon." She then says that it's silly to villainize any particular microbe (social justice for microbes?), and that "there is potentially no such thing" as the coronavirus. This cements Gwyneth Paltrow's place as America's #1 scourge on public health, surpassing even Dr. Oz.

5) Vitamin C can cure or prevent the coronavirus. No. The evidence that vitamin C prevents or reduces common colds is scant to non-existent. Some coronaviruses cause the common cold, and because SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus, it can be thought of as a deadly version of the common cold. That means it almost certainly will not respond to vitamin C. However, there is evidence that zinc lozenges reduce the duration of the common cold, so perhaps they could do the same for COVID-19.

6) Coronavirus was released (or is a hoax) to make big profits for Big Pharma. There are several problems with that theory. First, Big Pharma is already wealthy. Second, just like those of nearly every other company, pharmaceutical company stocks took an absolute beating during the recent market collapse. Tanking the economy is not a great way to rake in the riches. Third, pharmaceutical companies can lose a lot of money if they develop a drug or vaccine that ultimately fails in clinical trials. Fourth, if they make too much money, we all know that Big Pharma will get hammered by the public (and certain populist politicians) who always look for new reasons to hate it.

7) Coronavirus was released as a method of population control in China. This one is particularly dumb. The Chinese government did a great job limiting population growth all by itself with its brutal One Child Policy. (Side note: Most of the aborted babies were girls.) Now, China is facing a demographic crisis because there won't be enough people to support the elderly and keep the economy going. Also, see #1.

8) Drinking cow urine and shoving essential oil up your butt will prevent coronavirus. Our fact-checkers rated both as false.

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COVID-19: The Best (Worst?) Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories - American Council on Science and Health

On a hill above the cold waters around Prince Edward Island, technicians painstakingly create fertilized Atlantic salmon eggs that include growth-enhancing DNA from two other fish species. The eggs will be shipped to tanks in the high rainforest of Panama, where they will produce fish that mature far more quickly than normal farmed salmon.

More than 20 years after first seeking approval from the USFood and Drug Administration, AquaBounty Technologies of Maynard, Massachusetts, plans to bring these AquAdvantage fish to the USand Canadian markets next year. And in the small village of Albany, Indiana, workers will soon begin converting a land-based aquaculture facility to produce about 1,300 UStonsof these salmon annually, in the first USfacility to generate GE animals for human consumption.

The company also plans to open a second aquaculture facility at Prince Edward Island if it can can rise above its latest round of legal battles and persuade grocery stores and restaurants to snap up the genetically engineered fish.

Before the FDA cleared the salmon for consumption in 2015, in its first approval of GE animal protein as human food, it received 1.8 million messages opposing these fish. Perhaps more substantively, many outside researchers remain concerned about AquaBountys plans.

Aquaculture specialists generally arent skeptical about whether the fish will be healthy to eat, although thats one issue hinted at in a lawsuit multiple organizations, including Friends of the Earth, have filed against the FDA.

Dana Perls, senior food and technology campaigner with Friends of the Earth in Berkeley, California, says the FDA didnt fully examine questions about eating the salmon initially raised by Health Canada, that countrys public health department including susceptibility to disease and potential allergic reactions.

This is a poorly studied, risky and unlabeled genetically engineered fish, she says, adding that more than 80 USgrocery chains havecommitted not to buy it.

However, Health Canada eventually concluded that fillets derived from AquAdvantage salmon are as safe and nutritious as fillets from current available farmed Atlantic salmon, and approved the fish for consumption in 2016.

Theres no reason to suspect these fish from a food safety perspective, says Cyr Couturier, chair of aquaculture programs at Memorial Universitys Marine Institute in St. Johns, Newfoundland. They have no unnatural products that humans wouldnt otherwise consume.

Similar transgenic salmon created by a decades-long Fisheries and Oceans Canada research program tested well within normal salmon variations, adds Robert Devlin, engineering research scientist at the agency in North Vancouver, British Columbia.

But critics do raise two other main concerns about AquaBountys quest: the economic sustainability of the land-based approach, and the environmental risk to ecosystems if the fish escape.

AquaBounty will raise its GE fish in land-based recirculating aquaculture systems, known as RAS basically huge aquaria designed to minimize water use, maximize resources and accommodate high stocking densities.

While farming salmon in sea cages is less expensive and less technologically complex than a land-based farm, the companys website points out, sea cages are susceptible to a number of hazards such as violent storms, predators, harmful algal blooms, jellyfish attacks, fish escapes, and the transmission of pathogens and parasites from wild fish populations.

Given the potential opportunity to achieve greater production control and avoid some of the environmental concerns of sea farms, many RAS projects have launched around the world in the past decade. However, most of these projects are small, and many have failed or are struggling.

The big problem is cost. RAS facilities need much more capital than ocean farms with similar production rates, and theyre expensive to operate.

Land-based systems use a lot of freshwater, even though its recirculated, and a lot of electricity, notes Couturier. Such systems operate at an economic disadvantage because much of their cost goes toward creating growing conditions occurring naturally within the ocean, summed up one 2014 report that found producing Atlantic salmon in Nova Scotia would not be economically feasible.

AquaBounty, which is buying its Indiana plant from a collapsed RAS venture, expects to beat these odds mainly because its GE salmon reach market size in about half the time of normal farmed salmon in 1618 months rather than 2836 months, the company says. Ravenous as they are, with their growth hormones continually wired on, the fish still require about a quarter less feed than normal fish. (Although farmed salmon are very efficient at converting food to flesh a pound of feed converts to close to a pound of flesh feed remains a major expense.)

The company also says that salmon in its RAS facilities wont need vaccines or antibiotics because it will tightly control conditions. However, they will have some disease issues of course, as will any animal thats reared in high densities, Couturier predicts.

If AquaBounty can compete on cost, there will be some justification for promoting its product as the worlds most sustainable salmon. In addition to requiring less feed, growing fish in Indiana or Prince Edward Island can slash the high carbon costs of flying fish from Norway or Chile, two leading suppliers of farmed salmon in the US.

Still, says Couturier, I wish them all the best, but I think it will be a small-scale niche for at least a decade.

Many aquaculture scientists remain uneasy about the environmental risk to wild ecosystems if transgenic fish slip out of their farms.

Although other agencies will presumably be involved in assessing risk as the projects advance, the FDA has no in-house capacity to evaluate or understand the ecological consequences of transgenics in an aquatic ecosystem, says Conner Bailey, professor emeritus of rural sociology at Auburn University in Alabama. And once you get anything into an aquatic ecosystem, its really hard to control.

AquaBountys protection scheme begins with multiple levels of physical barriers in its RAS facilities. Additionally, the salmon are all female and triploid (their DNA is in three rather than two sets of chromosomes) so they cant reproduce. However, scientists say neither of these measures can be 100 percent effective at preventing transgenic fish from escaping, disrupting local ecosystems and potentially breeding in the wild.

More generally, while AquaBounty is committed to land-based systems, there are concerns that its also creating far more GE eggs than it needs for its own production. Other industry groups, such as the Atlantic Salmon Federation, worry that other producers AquaBounty sells to might not be so careful, or that other companies around the world might move ahead with similar projects but without the same precautions. And all bets on risk are off if GE fish are raised in the ocean, where fish routinely escape, sometimes in large numbers.

Devlins group has extensively modeled the results of accidental releases, studying groups of transgenic and non-transgenic fish in naturalized aquatic test beds that are exposed to variations in conditions, such as food supply. Transgenic fish often behave quite differently, and the results have varied from peaceful coexistence to one experiment in which fully transgenic fish killed off all their competitors.

In the multitude of different environments that exist in nature, the uncertainty is too great to make a reliable prediction of what the impact would be, he says.

Does the fast growth of AquAdvantage salmon justify taking on these unknown risks?

Scientists point out that todays selective breeding research programs, built on genomics and other tools of modern biology, also have turbocharged fish development. Some strains of rainbow trout, which have been selected for fast growth fo
r 150 years, grow incredibly fast compared to wild-type fish, Devlin says. In fact, he says, his lab work across various species suggests that the absolute fastest growth you can achieve either by domestication or by transgenesis seems to be very similar.

Todays farmed salmon have had more than 10 generations of selection applied to them, and they are growing at more than double the rate compared to the 1970s, says Bjarne Gjerde, senior scientist at Nofima in Troms, Norway.

Farmed fish also must excel in many traits besides growth, such as disease resistance and food quality, he emphasizes. Most of the traits we are breeding for are governed by many, many genes with small effects, he says. Thats a real challenge if you just want to take short cuts with genetic engineering.

When and if AquaBounty rises above all its challenges into a groundbreaking success in North America, the firm will send a signal around the world to unleash efforts for commercializing GE fish, observers say.

Friends of the Earths Perls remains hopeful that legal barriers and consumer boycotts will stop AquaBounty in its tracks. If not, GE salmon could set a precedent to the approval of other GE animals in the pipeline, from fish to chickens, pigs and cows, she says. It is critical that we dont approve other GE animals without robust regulations and full environmental reviews to ensure that were prioritizing human and environmental safety over profit.

Fish are probably where transgenic animals will emerge, because its much cheaper to maintain a herd of catfish or salmon than cattle or sheep or pigs, says Bailey.

This story was first published by Ensia, an environmental news magazine from the University of Minnesota.

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After decades of work, Americans may soon be eating genetically engineered salmon - PRI

Casey Atkins for Nature

Aviv Regev likes to work at the edge of what is possible. In 2011, the computational biologist was collaborating with molecular geneticist Joshua Levin to test a handful of methods for sequencing RNA. The scientists were aiming to push the technologies to the brink of failure and see which performed the best. They processed samples with degraded RNA or vanishingly small amounts of the molecule. Eventually, Levin pointed out that they were sequencing less RNA than appears in a single cell.

To Regev, that sounded like an opportunity. The cell is the basic unit of life and she had long been looking for ways to explore how complex networks of genes operate in individual cells, how those networks can differ and, ultimately, how diverse cell populations work together. The answers to such questions would reveal, in essence, how complex organisms such as humans are built. So, we're like, 'OK, time to give it a try', she says. Regev and Levin, who both work at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sequenced the RNA of 18 seemingly identical immune cells from mouse bone marrow, and found that some produced starkly different patterns of gene expression from the rest1. They were acting like two different cell subtypes.

That made Regev want to push even further: to use single-cell sequencing to understand how many different cell types there are in the human body, where they reside and what they do. Her lab has gone from looking at 18 cells at a time to sequencing RNA from hundreds of thousands and combining single-cell analyses with genome editing to see what happens when key regulatory genes are shut down.

The results are already widening the spectrum of known cell types identifying, for example, two new forms of retinal neuron2 and Regev is eager to find more. In late 2016, she helped to launch the International Human Cell Atlas, an ambitious effort to classify and map all of the estimated 37 trillion cells in the human body (see 'To build an atlas'). It is part of a growing interest in characterizing individual cells in many different ways, says Mathias Uhln, a microbiologist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm: I actually think it's one of the most important life-science projects in history, probably more important than the human genome.

Such broad involvement in ambitious projects is the norm for Regev, says Dana Pe'er, a computational biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, who has known Regev for 18 years. One of the things that makes Aviv special is her enormous bandwidth. I've never met a scientist who thinks so deeply and so innovatively on so many things.

When Regev was an undergraduate at Tel Aviv University in Israel, students had to pick a subject before beginning their studies. But she didn't want to decide. Too many things were interesting, she says. Instead, she chose an advanced interdisciplinary programme that would let her look at lots of subjects and skip a bachelor's degree, going straight to a master's.

A turning point in her undergraduate years came under the tutelage of evolutionary biologist Eva Jablonka. Jablonka has pushed a controversial view of evolution that involves epigenetic inheritance, and Regev says she admired her courage and integrity in the face of criticism. There are many easy paths that you can take, and it's always impressive to see people who choose alternative roads.

Jablonka's class involved solving complicated genetics problems, which Regev loved. She was drawn to the way in which genetics relies on abstract reasoning to reach fundamental scientific conclusions. I got hooked on biology very deeply as a result, she says. Genes became fascinating, but more so how they work with each other. And the first vehicle in which they work with each other is the cell.

Regev did a PhD in computational biology under Ehud Shapiro from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. In 2003 she moved to Harvard University's Bauer Center for Genomics Research in Cambridge, through a unique programme that allows researchers to leapfrog the traditional postdoctoral fellowship and start their own lab. I had my own small group and was completely independent, she says. That allowed her to define her own research questions, and she focused on picking apart genetic networks by looking at the RNA molecules produced by genes in cells. In 2004, she applied this technique to tumours and found gene-expression patterns that were shared across wildly different types of cancer, as well as some that were more specific, such as a group of genes related to growth inhibition that is suppressed in acute lymphoblastic leukaemias3. By 2006, at the age of 35, she had established her lab at the Broad Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

At Broad, Regev continued working on how to tease complex information out of RNA sequencing data. In 2009, she published a paper on a type of mouse immune cell called dendritic cells, revealing the gene networks that control how they respond to pathogens4. In 2011, she developed a method that could assemble a complete transcriptome5 all the RNA being transcribed from the genes in a sample without using a reference genome, important when an organism's genome has not been sequenced in any great depth.

It was around this time that Levin mentioned the prospect of sequencing the RNA inside a single cell. Up to that point, single-cell genomics had been almost impossible, because techniques weren't sensitive enough to detect the tiny amount of RNA or DNA inside just one cell. But that began to change around 2011.

The study with the 18 immune cells also dendritic cells was meant to test the method. I had kind of insisted that we do an experiment to prove that when we put the same cell types in, everything comes out the same, says Rahul Satija, Regev's postdoc at the time, who is now at the New York Genome Center in New York City. Instead, he found two very different groups of cell subtypes. Even within one of the groups, individual cells varied surprisingly in their expression of regulatory and immune genes. We saw so much in this one little snapshot, Regev recalls.

I think even right then, Aviv knew, says Satija. When we saw those results, they pointed the way forward to where all this was going to go. They could use the diversity revealed by single-cell genomics to uncover the true range of cell types in an organism, and find out how they were interacting with each other.

In standard genetic sequencing, DNA or RNA is extracted from a blend of many cells to produce an average read-out for the entire population. Regev compares this approach to a fruit smoothie. The colour and taste hint at what is in it, but a single blueberry, or even a dozen, can be easily masked by a carton of strawberries.

By contrast, single-cell-resolved data is like a fruit salad, Regev says. You can distinguish your blueberries from your blackberries from your raspberries from your pineapples and so on. That promised to expose a range of overlooked cellular variation. Using single-cell genomics to sequence a tumour, biologists could determine which genes were being expressed by malignant cells, which by non-malignant cells and which by blood vessels or immune cells potentially pointing to better ways to attack the cancer.

The technique holds promise for drug development in many diseases. Knowing which genes a potential drug affects is more useful if there's a way to comprehensively check which cells are actively expressing the gene.

Regev was not the only one becoming enamoured with single-cell analyses on a grand scale. Since at least 2012, scientists have been toying with the idea of mapping all human cell types using these techniques. The idea independently arose in several areas of the world at the same time, says Stephen Quake, a bioengineer at Stanford University in California who co-leads the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. The Biohub, which
has been funding various biomedical research projects since September 2016, includes its own cell-atlas project.

Around 2014, Regev started giving talks and workshops on cell mapping. Sarah Teichmann, head of cellular genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, heard about Regev's interest and last year asked her whether she would like to collaborate on building an international human cell atlas project. It would include not just genomics researchers, but also experts in the physiology of various tissues and organ systems.

I would get stressed out of this world, but she doesn't.

Regev leapt at the chance, and she and Teichmann are now co-leaders of the Human Cell Atlas. The idea is to sequence the RNA of every kind of cell in the body, to use those gene-expression profiles to classify cells into types and identify new ones, and to map how all those cells and their molecules are spatially organized.

The project also aims to discover and characterize all the possible cell states in the human body mature and immature, exhausted and fully functioning which will require much more sequencing. Scientists have assumed that there are about 300 major cell types, but Regev suspects that there are many more states and subtypes to explore. The retina alone seems to contain more than 100 subtypes of neuron, Regev says. Currently, consortium members whose labs are already working on immune cells, liver and tumours are coming together to coordinate efforts on these tissues and organs. This is really early days, says Teichmann.

In co-coordinating the Human Cell Atlas project, Regev has wrangled a committee of 28 people from 5 continents and helped to organize meetings for more than 500 scientists. I would get stressed out of this world, but she doesn't, Jablonka says. It's fun to have a vision that's shared with others, Regev says, simply.

It has been unclear how the project would find funding for all its ambitions. But in June, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative the philanthropic organization in Palo Alto, California, that funds the Biohub contributed an undisclosed amount of money and software-engineering support to the Human Cell Atlas data platform, which will be used to store, analyse and browse project data. Teichmann sees the need for data curation as a key reason to focus on a large, centralized effort instead of many smaller ones. The computational part is at the heart of the project, she says. Uniform data processing, data browsing and so on: that's a clear benefit.

In April, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative had also accepted applications for one-year pilot projects to test and develop technologies and experimental procedures for the Human Cell Atlas; it is expected to announce which projects it has selected for funding some time soon. The applications were open to everyone, not just scientists who have participated in planning meetings.

Some scientists worry that the atlas will drain both funding and effort from other creative endeavours a critique aimed at many such international big-science projects. There's this tension, says Atray Dixit, a PhD student in Regev's lab. We know they're going to give us something, and they're kind of low-risk in that sense. But they're really expensive. How do we balance that?

Developmental biologist Azim Surani at the University of Cambridge, UK, is not sure that the project will adeptly balance quantity and depth of information. With the Human Cell Atlas, you would have a broad picture rather than a deeper understanding of what the different cell types are and the relationships between them, he says. What is the pain-to-gain ratio here?

Surani also wonders whether single-cell genomics is ready to converge on one big project. Has the technology reached maturity so that you're making the best use of it? he asks. For example, tissue desegregation extracting single cells from tissue without getting a biased sample or damaging the RNA inside is still very difficult, and it might be better for the field, some say, if many groups were to go off in their own directions to find the best solution to this and other technical challenges.

And there are concerns that the project is practically limitless in scope. The definition of a cell type is not very clear, says Uhln, who is director of the Human Protein Atlas an effort to catalogue proteins in normal and cancerous human cells that has been running since 2003. There may be a nearly infinite number of cell types to characterize. Uhln says that the Human Cell Atlas is important and exciting, but adds: We need to be very clear, what is the endpoint?

Regev argues that completion is not the only goal. It's modular: you can break this to pieces, she says. Even if you solve a part of a problem, it's still a meaningful solution. Even if the project just catalogues all the cells in the retina, for example, that's still useful for drug development, she argues. It lends itself to something that can unfold over time.

Regev's focus on the Human Cell Atlas has not distracted her from her more detailed studies of specific cell types. Last December, her group was one of three to publish papers6, 7, 8 in which they used the precision gene-editing tool CRISPRCas9 to turn off transcription factors and other regulatory genes in large batches of cells, and then used single-cell RNA sequencing to observe the effects. Regev's lab calls its technique Perturb-seq6.

The aim is to unpick genetic pathways very precisely, on a much larger scale than has been possible before, by switching off one or more genes in each cell, then assaying how they influence every other gene. This was possible before, for a handful of genes at a time, but Perturb-seq can work on 1,000 or even 10,000 genes at once. The results can reveal how genes regulate each other; they can also show the combined effects of activating or deactivating multiple genes at once, which can't be predicted from each of the genes alone.

Dixit, a co-first author on the paper, says Regev is indefatigable. She held daily project meetings at 6 a.m. in the weeks leading up to the submission. I put in this joke sentence at the end of the supplementary methods a bunch of alliteration just to see if anyone would read that far. She found it, Dixit says. It was 3 a.m. the night before we submitted.

Regev's intensity and focus is accompanied by relentless positivity. I'm one of the fortunate people who love what they do, she says. And she still loves cells. No matter how you look at them, they're just absolutely amazing things.

Read the original:
How to build a human cell atlas - Nature.com

The world is watching with alarm as China struggles to contain a dangerous new virus, now being called SARS-CoV-2. It has quarantined entire cities, and the US has put a blanket ban on travellers whove been there. Health officials are scrambling to understand how the virus is transmitted and how to treat patients.

But in one University of North Carolina lab, theres a different race. Researchers are trying to create a copy of the virus. From scratch.

Led by Ralph Baric, an expert in coronaviruseswhich get their name from the crown-shaped spike they use to enter human cellsthe North Carolina team expects to recreate the virus starting only from computer readouts of its genetic sequence posted online by Chinese labs last month.

The remarkable ability to boot up viruses from genetic instructions is made possible by companies that manufacture custom DNA molecules, such as Integrated DNA Technology, Twist Bioscience, and Atum. By ordering the right genes, which cost a few thousand dollars, and then stitching them together to create a copy of the coronavirus genome, its possible to inject the genetic material into cells and jump-start the virus to life.

The ability to make a lethal virus from mail-order DNA was first demonstrated 20 years ago. Its enough of a bioterrorism concern that companies carefully monitor who is ordering which genes. But its also an important way to respond to a sudden outbreak, since synthetic virus recipes give researchers powerful ways to study treatments, vaccines, and how mutations could make it more dangerous.

When a synthetic virus is better than the real thing

Barics North Carolina lab, which specializes in engineering viruses, has previously butted heads with Washington agencies over the work, which has included synthesizing new, never before seen coronaviruses that can infect mice. In 2014, the National Institutes of Health froze funding to several labs, including Barics, over concerns that such research was too risky. The funding was later reinstated.

For the China virus, Baric said in a telephone interview, his team placed an order for matching DNA from a manufacturer last month. Their first step was to go online and look at genetic sequences of the virus. They then compared several available sequences, which differ slightly, and picked a consensus version to have manufactured.

Once Baric gets his DNA, something that could take a month, he plans to inject the genetic instructions into cells. If things go as planned, the cells should begin making actual infectious viral particles.

CDC

By rolling their own germs, scientists can get hold of viruses even if they cant obtain them directly from a country, especially one thats in the grip of an epidemic. Baric says so far samples of the live virus from patients have not been made widely available from China. This is the future in terms of how the medical research community responds to a new threat, says Baric.

The real virus and the synthetic one should be basically identical. But with the synthetic one, we have a DNA copy that we can go back to over and over and over again, to make genetically identical viruses, says Timothy Sheahan, a researcher at UNC who works with Baric. Starting from these copies, scientists can remove genes, add others, and figure out things like what makes the germ spread and how it gains access to human cells. Sheahan wants to try infecting mice with the virus and giving them various drugs to see what stops it.

Artificial copies may also help scientists keep up with the outbreaks unpredictable path. I worry this virus is going to mutate in the course of the epidemic, and this would allow me to study what effects those mutations have, says Stanley Perlman, a microbiologist who works on coronaviruses at the University of Iowa. The synthetic virus is just a substitute for the actual virus, but with the DNA clone you can manipulate it and find the weak points and develop a therapy.

During past outbreaks, scientists would have had to wait months or years to get a look at the germ behind an outbreak. But with SARS-CoV-2 it took only weeks until its genetic sequence was posted online. Immediately, some scientists began analyzing the genetic data, comparing it to viruses from bats, snakes and pangolins; they concluded it could have begun circulating last November.

Biotech companies, governments, and universities also quickly started ordering physical copies of particular genes found in the virus. DNA manufacturers say they have been deluged with orders for virus parts, including those useful for verifying diagnostic tests and others needed to make potential vaccines.

Its been a pretty dramatic uptick, starting with the publication of the genome, says Adam Clore, technical director of synthetic biology at IDT, based in Iowa, and one of the worlds largest sellers of DNA. Its high priority. There are a number of institutions that are devoting nearly all their energy working on detection or vaccines.

Still, most researchers need only one or two genes from the virus to carry forward work on tests and vaccines. Barics lab in North Carolina is the only one in the US known to be trying to re-create the virus completely from ordered DNA parts.

How to keep deadly viruses out of the wrong hands

It was in the early 2000s that scientists first showed that synthetic DNA strands could be used to resurrect viruses just from their genetic code. A team in New York State did it with polio, producing infectious material from DNA they ordered online.

The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. What if terrorists used the technique to resurrect smallpox? That hasnt happened, but it does mean that scourges like polio, smallpoxand now the Chinese coronaviruscannot now ever be truly wiped out. Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918-1919.

To keep the technology out of the hands of evil-doers, companies that manufacture DNA banded together a few years ago to limit access to dangerous genes. The big US players have all agreed to compare incoming DNA orders to a database of about 60 lethal germs and toxins called select agents so that only authorized labs can ever obtain the DNA needed to resurrect them.

CDC

At our request, Battelle, a scientific R&D company whose software ThreatSEQ can make those comparisons, ran the scenario of someone trying to order a copy of SARS-CoV-2. According to Craig Bartling, a senior research scientist at Battelle, the software flagged both the entire virus, and most of its genes individually, at the highest threat level. Bartling says the alerts went off because the virus is highly similar to the original SARS, a related virus that sparked a global outbreak starting in 2002.

Research into the new virus is seen as risky enough that manufacturers of DNA hurried last week to meet and formulate a policy about who should be able buy complete versions of the new germs genome. In a statement released on February 11, the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, a trade group, struck a cautious position. It said it would treat the new Chinese virus as if it were SARS, a germ added to the select agent list in 2012 and whose possession is tightly monitored by the US government.

That means anyone who wants a complete synthetic copy of SARS-CoV-2 would need to undergo specific and detailed vetting and prove they are already registered by the CDC to work with SARS, as the North Carolina researchers are.

However, companies that manufacture DNA still have discretion over what they sell and to whom, and not all of them think they should make the whole genome of this virus. Claes Gustaffson, founder and chief commercial officer of Atum, a DNA supplier in California, says hes gotten orders from eight companies for parts of the virus genome and has personally approved a request by a US government agency to make 90% of its geneslikely
to create an attenuated (i.e., harmless) version of it.

They probably want to figure out how to make a vaccine as quickly as possible, says Gustaffson. But if someone wanted the whole thing, I wouldnt make it. Some things, like polio, you dont want to make, no matter who is asking.

UNC Gillings School of Public Health

Not everyone thinks synthesizing the new coronavirus is particularly dangerous. I dont really see a huge amount of risk, says Nicholas G. Evans, who studies biothreats at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Right now, a lot of people are spending a lot of time on how this coronavirus works. I think the risks are outweighed by the benefits.

The outbreak, which appears to have begun in a live animal market in the city of Wuhan, had caused more than 64,000 cases and 1,350 deaths in China by February 14, so its even worse than SARS, which killed 774 people.

Still, the US has not yet declared the new virus to be a select agent. According to Baric, the decision to add a new virus to the most-dangerous list is not made in the expanding outbreak, because it slows down research.

Scaring people

For now, only a very few sophisticated centers can actually re-boot a virus; theres no chance a nut working from a garage could do it. We are at the point where the best of the best can start to synthesize this new virus contemporaneously with the outbreak. But that is just a few labs, says Evans. Fortunately, we are still far from the point when lots of people can synthesize anything.

The advanced state of synthetic virus research, and the ability to genetically engineer germs, inevitably feeds fears, and conspiracy theories. Social media and some blog sites have been full of groundless speculation that the new virus was accidentally released from a Chinese bioweapon lab located outside of Wuhan. Theres no evidence that is the case, and substantial evidence it is not, but the rumor caused a diplomatic breach with China after it was repeated in the US Congress by a senator, Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

Baric says he doesnt see a particular danger to synthesizing the new virus at this stage of the outbreak, especially because the virus is still circulating in the wild. The important thing is to figure out what it does and stop it. Whether you get it from a cell or synthesize it, it ends up the same thing, says Baric.

Original post:
Biologists rush to re-create the China coronavirus from its DNA code - MIT Technology Review

UPDATE: Netflix has agreed to reduce the quality of its streaming content in Europe to help reduce the strain on networks in the region. Following the discussions between Commissioner Thierry Breton and Reed Hastings and given the extraordinary challenges raised by the coronavirus Netflix has decided to begin reducing bit rates across all our streams in Europe for 30 days, a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement.

EARLIER: Governments around the world have been declaring national emergencies and instituting various types of measures meant to enforce social distancing because medical systems need time to deal with the potentially massive influx of COVID-19 patients. Treatment is possible but might require intensive care for some patients, including access to ventilators to help with breathing. It turns out that having too many people isolating themselves at home may have an unexpected side effect, at least in the European Union. Authorities have already asked Netflix to reduce movie streaming quality because networks are under increased strain. While you may be annoyed to see your 4K or Full HD streams downgraded to SD quality, the EUs request has a silver lining in it that might not be immediately obvious.

European Commissioner for the internal market Thierry Breton said on Twitter that he had discussions with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about slowing Netflix streams in the region.

He reminded people that beating COVID-19 requires isolation and that teleworking and streaming can help a lot. However, he added that infrastructures might be strained as more people stay at home for more extended periods. Switching to SD makes sense, as it could free up bandwidth in areas where communities lack access to fast data speeds.

Commissioner Breton is right to highlight the importance of ensuring that the internet continues to run smoothly during this critical time, a Netflix spokesperson told CNN Business. Weve been focused on network efficiency for many years, including providing our open connect service for free to telecommunications companies.

Netflix isnt the only company thats seeing spikes in traffic during this period. Facebook on Wednesday confirmed the pandemic is delivering big surges of traffic to some of its services. Mark Zuckerberg told reporters that the increase in demand is well beyond even the big annual spike seen on New Years Eve. Voice and video calls on WhatsApp and Messenger are more than double the normal levels.

Separately, Vodafone reported internet usage is surging by up to 50% in some countries following various anti-coronavirus measures in EU countries. The European Commission on Thursday advised telecom providers not to discriminate against content providers during this crisis:

Operators are authorized to apply exceptional traffic management measures, inter alia, to prevent impending network congestion and to mitigate the effects of exceptional or temporary network congestion. This must be done without discriminating individual content providers.

As I said before, theres a positive sign in all of this. If internet service providers and other companies are seeing all this additional traffic, then it means more and more people are staying home as advised in Europe, a region thats now at the center of the pandemic. The more people stay at home, the easier it will be for hospitals to beat the coronavirus and the sooner life might return to normal.

To put it differently, whether youre in Europe or anywhere else, you might want to consider streaming shows in SD even if youre paying for better quality.

Image Source: wutzkohphoto/Shutterstock

Chris Smith started writing about gadgets as a hobby, and before he knew it he was sharing his views on tech stuff with readers around the world. Whenever he's not writing about gadgets he miserably fails to stay away from them, although he desperately tries. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

More:
EU wants Netflix to downgrade its streaming quality, and thats fantastic news - BGR

What we already know is genome modification of the somatic (vegetative or non-reproductive cells) has begun. The approach is now taking a new turn and further proceeding towards clinical applications. Recent studies suggest that germline genome modification is also taking place. Genetics has further enabled us to turn the tide away from humans suffering from diseases.

As a matter of fact, Genetic Engineering is now allowing us to inculcate desirable traits into human cells, which shall soon become the future of humankind. But, the matter of discussion here is what are the limitations that are needed to be exercised on this genetic evolution aligned with technology? Here, we have managed to come up with almost all the information that has been discovered about genetically engineered human beings. Read on to have an in-depth view of the future of the Homo sapiens.

What do you understand by Genetic Modification?

The process of making changes in the gene make up of an organism is referred to as genetic modification. Gene modification has been taking place in the form of evolution from thousands of years now. And it has so because of selective or controlled breeding of the plants and as well as of the animals. However, with the introduction of biotechnology, this process has fastened up a lot more than we can imagine. Through genetic engineering now we can target specific genes for precise results.

Genetically modified babies:

We are all aware of the fact that livestock is being bred in a certain way that results in improved growth and increased muscle mass. Also, this livestock is specifically resistant against diseases. For instance, we could consider the examples of hybrid chickens that have been bred in such a way, that they show 300-per cent faster growth today. For a few years now the scientists have been experimenting on lab animals to determine different approaches of Biotechnology.

According to the information gathered from the National Human Genome Research Institute, the new form of Biotechnology that has been used to develop CRISPR is going to make modifications to the human genes. The researchers are now trying to find out ways in which the Crispr gene shall be able to treat cancer. Basically, the scientists suggest that CRISPR can edit particular genes in human beings, which could be the leading cause of cancer.

Although the reports obtained are highly controversial, the introduction of genetically engineered human beings is not far away. The researchers are claiming that the tested CRISPR technology will work on the human embryos to delete or edit per se to eliminate the DNA, which could lead to certain diseases.

The ethical dilemma:

The technology has been already evolved, and the gene that could bring about changes in the human genetic system has already been discovered. But, the question is whether this genetic modification should be implemented or not. When it comes to the introduction of any new technology, its merits, demerits, and the intention behind its usage must be measured beforehand.

Here is the original post:
Are genetically designed babies the future of humankind? - NewsPatrolling

The drought monitor remains essentially unchanged. The areas of abnormally dry and moderate drought are slowly expanding east through central Kansas and deeper into Northwest Kansas. Barton County remains abnormally dry while all of Stafford and the southern two-thirds of Pawnee are on moderate drought. This is being written on the 26th and hopefully the predicted rainfall happened. This wouldnt eliminate dry conditions but would at least prevent them from deepening as would more seasonal temperatures. Last week focused on major stories in agriculture for 2019. This week, lets peer into the crystal ball for potentially important stories for ag in 2020. This isnt a comprehensive list and isnt in any particular order.

Naturally, weather must be on this list and not just weather in our area but nationally and across the world. The entire planet is experiencing more extremes in temperature and precipitation which are having major impacts on agricultural production worldwide. This is especially true in many parts of Africa and Asia. So far the more developed agricultural producers are coping. The key is so far. And this spills over into more than just feeding people but leads to civil unrest within countries and between countries.

Water issues continue to dominate many regions with some planners predicting that if these climate extremes continue, there could actually be armed conflict over water. Within the U.S. conflict concerns water usage urban areas and industry versus agriculture, and water quality for human consumption agricultural and industrial pollutants.

Trade issues remain front and center with the need for all countries involved to pass the USMCA. Additionally, while Phase One is supposedly in place between the U.S. and China, nothing has been signed and many are skeptical China will impost the dollar amount they are promising. And U.S. producers are facing increasing competition from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and other producers.

The overall farm economy also appears weak. This has resulted in a huge spike in farm bankruptcies. Causes include the trade wars, large surpluses with attendant lower commodity prices, and input costs. This spills into all aspects of farm country where personal income and growth lag far behind more urban areas.

After a bit of a respite, farm consolidation is picking up and we are on track for fewer, large farms. And this consolidation isnt simply with producers but also within all aspects of agriculture from chemical and seed companies to processors.

Help wanted signs will continue to increase as the shortage of skilled necessary labor in all aspects of agriculture continues to worsen. We need tens of thousands of workers from skilled farm and ranch hands to agronomists, crop protection specialists, and in all aspects of input and output of food, fiber, and fuel.

The pace of technological change will continue to accelerate. This includes genetic engineering, drones, and all aspects of precision farming. This is also an area where a lack of skilled educated labor will slow down potential progress and efficiency.

The mental health of those involved in food, fiber, and fuel production will be a major story with the alarming increase in farmer suicides. Private and public agencies are starting to react but the problem still appears to begrowing.

Naturally, there are many others. To all a safe and Happy New Year.

Dr. Victor L. Martin is the agriculture instructor/coordinator for Barton Community College. He can be reached at 620-792-9207, ext. 207.

Continue reading here:
2020 - The Year in Agriculture - Great Bend Tribune

Editors note:Dr. Shedingeris a Professor of Religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He is the author of a recent book critiquing Darwinian triumphalism,The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biologys Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion.

Why should advocates of intelligent design care about a French Jesuit priest who died more than 60 years ago? Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) along with being a Jesuit priest was also a geologist and paleontologist who made several trips to China to participate in geological and paleontological work (he was part of the team that discovered Piltdown Man, later revealed to be a hoax). But Teilhard is best known for his book The Phenomenon of Man, published in French in the 1930s and in English in 1955. In this book Teilhard lays out a vision for the evolutionary process that is at odds with the established scientific view but is consistent with his own religious convictions.

Teilhard argued that the science of his time had a truncated view of evolution. Scientists studied the evolutionary process as if it were a movie playing on a screen in front of them with the scientists themselves as mere passive observers. Teilhard thought that evolution needed to be viewed from the inside, viewing humans not only as observers of evolution but also as its products. As such, Teilhard conceived evolution as occurring on four levels, only two of which were acknowledged by establishment scientists.

The first of these levels he called cosmogenesis, the evolution of the physical universe. The second level he labeled biogenesis, the evolution of life in the physical universe. According to Teilhard, this is where evolutionary biologists had traditionally stopped. But a full accounting of the evolutionary process, he believed, required two additional levels: psychogenesis, the evolution of consciousness in biological organisms, and noogenesis, the evolution of reflective thought, a characteristic unique to humans. With the evolution of humans, Teilhard believed evolution had crossed what he called a threshold of reflection that would fundamentally alter the very course of evolution. Rather than a billion-fold trial and error, evolution would now proceed more intentionally through the exercise of the human mind. We should remember that Teilhard formulated these ideas in the 1930s, long before anyone had conceived of the possibility of genetic engineering. Teilhard was prescient.

Having fully accounted for the evolutionary process, Teilhard went on to articulate his most controversial idea. He argued that over time, human minds would eventually form a web of reflective consciousness enveloping the Earth (what would he think of the Internet?!). He called this the noosphere. In time, the noosphere would reach an omega point where consciousness would completely fuse with the God who created it. Teilhards view of evolution was thus highly teleological. The evolutionary process existed for the purpose of creating beings with the ability of reflective thought so that they could commune with their Creator. No Darwinian contingency here!

Not surprisingly, most Darwinians howled with derision at Teilhard. In response to The Phenomenon of Man, Nobel Laureate Peter Medawar published one of the most devastating book reviews ever written. Medawar called Teilhards book nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself. For Medawar, reading Phenomenon brought on feelings of real distress, even despair. Despite this, many philosophers and theologians found Teilhards book of great interest. But according to arch-Darwinian Daniel Dennett, the esteem with which non-scientists held the book is nothing more than a testimony to their depth of loathing of Darwins dangerous idea, a loathing so great that it will excuse any illogicality and tolerate any opacity in what purports to be an argument. The Darwinian reaction to Teilhards explicit evolutionary theology is of course to be expected. What we dont expect is to find that this disdain was not shared universally within the Darwinian establishment.

Enter Theodosius Dobzhansky, perhaps the most important figure in the history of evolutionary theory after Darwin. In his oft-cited essay Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Dobzhansky unexpectedly calls Teilhard one of the great thinkers of our age. As a man of deep Christian faith himself, Dobzhansky clearly resonated with Teilhards attempt to create a synthesis between evolution and religious thought. In fact, Dobzhansky appears to have been so taken with Teilhards work that he served for a year as president of the North American Teilhard Society (1969). Of course, we will never learn from the textbooks that a figure as central to the modern evolutionary synthesis as Dobzhansky seemed to embrace an explicitly teleological and even theological understanding of evolution. I suppose Dobzhansky was deceived (according to Medawar) or prone to illogicality (according to Dennett)!

Of course, neither Teilhard nor Dobzhansky appears to have made an explicit design argument. They would be better categorized as theistic evolutionists. For Dobzhansky this is confirmed when in his previously cited essay he states, There is, of course, nothing conscious or intentional in the action of natural selection. Here Dobzhansky adheres to the standard Darwinian story. Yet just a few lines later he notes humans ability to make conscious, intentional decisions, and concludes, This is why the species Homo sapiens is the apex of evolution. The incompatibility between these two statements seems not to have occurred to Dobzhansky. Clearly, a process with no direction or larger purpose by definition has no apex. His attempt to hold to both an orthodox Darwinian viewpoint and an orthodox Christian viewpoint simultaneously dissolves into incoherence. Theistic evolutionary schemes seem to be a logical dead end.

While Pierre Teilhard de Chardin may not have been a forerunner of intelligent design thinking per se, the significance of his pointing out the incomplete nature of the evolutionary theory of his day should not be underestimated. As Thomas Nagel would argue today, any theory of evolution that excludes the origin of mind and consciousness from consideration is at best half a theory. Teilhard noticed this weakness of Darwinian evolutionary theory nearly a century ago, and at least one very prominent Darwinian may well have agreed, even if he never admitted it in public.

Photo: Pierre Teilhard de Chardinin 1947, viaArchives des jsuites de France [CC BY-SA].

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Teilhard de Chardin and the Incomplete Nature of Evolutionary Theory - Discovery Institute

We can already edit genes in human embryos. We can even do it in a way to pass the edits down generations, fundamentally changing a familys genetic makeup.

Doing it well, however, is far more difficult.

Its impossible to talk about human germline genome editing without bringing up the CRISPR baby fiasco. Over a year ago, a rogue Chinese scientist performed an edit on fertilized human embryos that, in theory, makes them resistant to HIV infection. Two twin girls were born, and both had multiple unplanned edits in their genome with unknown health consequencesconsequences that may be passed on to their offspring.

The brash attempt at making scientific history clearly shows that, ethics and morality issues aside, when it comes to germline editingthat is, performing gene edits in egg, sperm, or the embryowere simply technologically not there. Make no mistake: CRISPR may one day wipe out devastating genetic diseases throughout entire family lines, or even the human race. But to harness its power responsibly, there are plenty of technical challenges we need to master first.

This week, Rebecca Lea and Dr. Kathy Niakan at the Human Embryo and Stem Cell Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK, laid out those challenges in a sweeping articlein Nature. CRISPR as a gene editor is getting more specific and efficient by the day, they explained. However, for it to gradually move into germline editing, we also need to understand how the tool tangos with cells during early human development.

The data, they argue, will not only let us zoom into the creation of human life. It will also help inform the debate about potential safe and effective clinical uses of this technology, and truly unlock the doors to the human genome for good.

Correcting dangerous genetic mutations is one reason to pursue germline editing, but CRISPRing human embryos can also unveil insights into the very first stages of human embryo development. Research shows that trying to understand how human embryos form by studying mice might not be the best route, especially when it comes to using those results to tackle infertility and other medical problems. With CRISPR, we have insight into these early stages that were previously completely unattainable. We might only solve infertility issues, but perhaps also allow same-sex couples to have genetic children in the future.

Another argument is that couples already screen for life-threatening mutations during IVF, and using CRISPR on top of that is unnecessary. Not true, the authors argued. When both parents carry a similar mutation that robs them of the ability to have a healthy child, CRISPRnot selection during IVFis the answer. Ultimately, providing more options for patients empowers them to make the choice that is best for their family and circumstances, they said.

This is where it gets complicated.

The big one: were still trying to tease out how CRISPR works in cells that form the embryo, in hopes that we can cut down on potential mistakes.

Let me explain: all cells in the body have a cell cycle, somewhat analogous to a persons life cycle. Many checkpoint life events happen along the way. The cell could decide to divide and have kids, so to speak, or temporarily halt its cycle and stop its own aging. During a cycle, the cells DNA dramatically changes in number and packaging in preparation for its next stage in life.

The problem? The way CRISPR works heavily depends on the cell cycle. Although dubbed an editor, CRISPR actually vandalizes the genome, creating breaks in the DNA strands. What we call gene editing is the cells DNA repair system kicking into high gear, trying to patch up the mess CRISPR left behind. Adult cells that cant be repaired stop their own life cycle at a checkpoint for the greater good. In embryos, however, cells arent nearly as altruistic. Their checkpoints arent fully developed, so they might continue to develop even with severe mutations. Zooming back to the full picture, it means that the resulting early-stage embryo may keep accumulating damage, until it fails in the mothers womb.

To get around this, scientists have tried other ways to push an embryo into accepting a healthy DNA template after a CRISPR snip, which in theory would cut down on unwanted mutations. One idea is injecting the CRISPR machinery at a specific time into fertilized eggs, so it catches the early-stage embryo at just the right time to reduce DNA breaks in both strands. While theoretically possible, the process is kind of like a person trying to jump from a high-speed train into a specific cabin on a rapidly rotating Ferris wheel while blindfolded.

But science is making progress. Although we dont have a detailed movie of cell cycles in human embryos yet, multiple labs are beginning to piece one together, with hopes itll eventually help take off the blindfold when injecting CRISPR. Others are looking into adding CRISPR to sperm before fertilization as an alternative.

At the same time, scientists are also trying to characterize the entire scope of mutations caused by CRISPR. Its not just adding, swapping, or deleting specific letters in genes. Rather, the range of mutations is more complex, including large swaths of genetic rearrangements, unintended cuts relatively far from targeted spots, and other dramatic DNA lesions following CRISPR action. Its perhaps not surprising that the edits in CRISPR babies didnt work as intended.

Base editors, which swap one genetic letter for another, might be a better approach compared to the classic hack-and-paste, the authors said. So far, however, the tools havent yet been validated in embryosnot even those from mice.

Finally, for the edit to make a difference to the child, the embryo has to develop normally inside a womb into a baby. But success rates for assisted reproductive technologies are already fairly low. Add in a dose of genetic editing tool that cuts into an already-sensitive genomic landscape, and it becomes incredibly hard to maintain the health of the edited embryo.

Putting it all together, there is simply not enough data at present to understand the capability of early[embryos] to repair DNA, the authors said.

Far from it. Although theres much we dont yet understand, we do have an impressive range of tools to predict and evaluate mutations in human embryos. Exactly how to determine whether a gene-edited embryo is healthy remains up for debatefor example, is five unexpected mutations considered ok? What about 500 or 5,000?

That said, just having tools to diagnose the genetic health of an embryo from a tiny bit of DNA is already extremely useful, especially if we as a society decide to move into germline editing as a treatment.

With machine learning making an ever-larger splash in computational biology, these predictive tools will only become more accurate. Add to that ever-more-effective CRISPR variations, and were on the right trackas long as any potential applications of embryo editing only come after in-depth public and policy discussions and fit a number of strict ethical and safety criteria, the authors said.

In response to the CRISPR baby scandal, multiple governments and the World Health Organization have all drafted new guidelines or legislation to tap on the brakes. The technology isnt mature enough for clinical use, the authors said, and much more work is needednot just to further improve CRISPR tools, but especially for understanding how it works in human embryos.

Ultimately, were talking about potentially engineering the future of the human race. Tiptoeing, rather than stumbling ahead, is the least we can do. One must ensure that the outcome will be the birth of healthy, disease-free children, without any potential long-term complications, the authors concluded.

Image Credit: Image by marian anbu juwan from Pixabay

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How Far Are We from (Accurately and Safely) Editing Human Embryos? - Singularity Hub

Amid growing demand for permitting import of animal feed derived out of Genetically Modified (GM) crops, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), the countrys apex biotechnology regulatory body, is expected to take up a report on the guidelines for import of Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles (DDGS) derived out of GM corn at its meeting scheduled in New Delhi on Monday.

A sub-committee constituted by the GEAC, headed by Lalitha Gowda, a retired scientist from the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) in Mysuru, has already submitted a report on the guidelines for import of DDGS for livestock and aqua feed.

The GEAC meeting to discuss the report assumes significance in light of the severe scarcity of corn, a key source of animal feed for the burgeoning poultry industry in the country, following the failure of maize crop on account of drought and disease. A number of applications from the poultry industry seeking permission to import GM corn and soyabean are pending.

The sub-committee also included representatives from the agriculture and poultry sectors, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, National Dairy Research Institute, and the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. Though its report has been submitted, it up to the GEAC to a take a decision on permitting import.

The report was submitted along with an elaborate background note on DDGS. Corn that is grown in the United States and many other countries is GM corn, which is also used for producing bio-ethanol. After the starch content in the corn is fermented, the remainder is rich in protein and other nutrients and can be used as animal feed. This byproduct, DDGS, is also used as animal feed in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Dismissing the concerns expressed by anti-GM crusaders over the import of animal feed derived out of GM crops into the country, a food scientist ruled out the possibility of GM food entering the food chain when human beings consume livestock fed on a GM diet. Any food that we eat gets digested and broken down into very small molecules or building blocks. So when it gets broken down into the building blocks, it cannot reform again. The body cannot absorb Genetically Modified DNA.

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Report on GM corn-derived animal feed likely to be taken up today - The Hindu

The human body is more than flesh and blood it bears cultural values and tales of morality. Swirling around todays bodies are important discussions about transgender rights, ableism, genetic engineering and body positivity. We can trace how ideal and atypical bodies are shown in advertising, movies and art, helping us understand shifting norms and persistent biases.

A bounteous art exhibition on display through Jan. 26 at the Seattle Art Museum offers powerful visions of how the body was represented and what it conveyed centuries ago in Italy. Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum really does boast masterpieces 39 beautifully crafted Renaissance and Baroque paintings (and one sculpture) by artists who were acknowledged masters in their time: Titian, Raphael, El Greco and many others. Not all of the artists were Italian but they all created work for Italian patrons. SAM curator Chiyo Ishikawa and her collaborators selected these works from the Capodimonte in Naples, the second-largest museum in Italy.

There is one female artist in the show: the incomparable Artemisia Gentileschi, who defied the customs of her day to become a professional artist. She painted several versions of Judith, a Jewish widow, in the act of killing Holofernes, an Assyrian general who besieged Judiths town. This early version is gorgeous and gruesome. Judiths strong arms cut across the canvas much like the sword she works against the generals throat. Someone long ago trimmed the canvas, leaving us with a tightly cropped revelation of female fortitude and righteousness. Gentileschis approach may have been shaped by her own experience the young artist painted this work just a few years after she was raped, in her home, by her art teacher.

Another painting hints at the relationship between gender and power, but with more mystery. Parmigianinos intriguing painting of an unknown woman includes the hallmarks of a marriageable young woman: She is elegantly dressed, revealing a tasteful amount of unblemished skin. This kind of portrait often signaled the acceptance of a suitors gifts (see: the jewelry and textiles shown in the painting), thereby entering a betrothal. But Ishikawa states that this was likely not a specific portrait and, instead, more of a symbolic representation of an ideal woman. I wonder how more typical signs of femininity would have been reconciled with the controlled forcefulness of her look, the bulk of her garments and the fierce teeth of the weasel-like marten, whose fur she wears.

Most of the other female-focused paintings in the exhibition are more conventional for their time, providing visions of maternal or spiritual devotion, sexual availability, chaste beauty or some odd combination thereof.

In Titians Dana, the title figure a mythological Greek princess lies naked on a bed, fully displayed for the viewers pleasure, while the god Zeus visits (in order to impregnate her), disguised as a shower of gold coins. The man who commissioned the work, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, kept the large painting hidden behind a curtain, underscoring the works erotic intentions.

Male bodies, both dressed and naked, are exhibited as well, carrying connotations that range from divinity to gluttony. An altarpiece entitled Piet by Annibale Carracci shows the corpse of Jesus on his mothers lap. The thin, contorted torso, which has clearly suffered, and the lifeless hand, rendered in greenish grays, expose the mortal humanity of this divine figure.

Two stunning works by Jusepe de Ribera also use the male physique strategically. In a huge altarpiece, dramatic lighting calls attention to the sagging, wrinkled skin of St. Jerome, an early Christian ascetic who practiced penitential acts of self-deprivation and self-harm. The artist used feathery brush strokes on top of thicker layers of paint, hinting at how paint covers a canvas like skin, and reminding the faithful of the impermanence of an earthly body.

Riberas Drunken Silenus, on the other hand, is all about excess. Silenus, a companion of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, sprawls across the canvas with a brightly lit, barrel-like belly and a cup raised for a refill. His corpulent body is painted with ruddy and dingy highlights, linking unethical (or at least undisciplined) behavior with an unkempt body. His pose deliberately refers to the reclining-female-nude motif, suggesting his state of unmasculinity or impotence.

A standout painting by Agostino Carracci underscores old biases against bodies that would have been considered atypical. This commissioned portrait depicts members of a sort of entertainment troupe employed by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. A dwarf named Tiny Amon looks toward Hairy Harry, a man with a condition that causes excessive hair growth. Its an almost unthinkable outlook today, but these men were seen as curiosities, collected for the amusement of the court. Their role is accentuated by the loyal dogs, exotic bird and monkeys that surround them.

After gorging on all this bodily symbolism, its a relief to enter the last gallery of the exhibition, with its wonderful still-life paintings. Ishikawa posits that, unlike the still lifes of Northern Europe, which often used food and flowers to hint at the transience of earthly pleasures, these are simply about the abundance of the region. It is true that the bouquets are not wilting and that there arent human skulls or hourglasses inserted into the compositions. And yet, the slashing blood on a goats head and the sharp knife balanced precariously on the edge of a table seem to warn of the vulnerability of the flesh.

Throughout the exhibition, we are reminded of how art much like a pitcher of wine or a human body within the paintings is a vessel for meaning and message. Gender, race, class, age, ability and size play roles in communicating these meanings, in ways that feel historically remote, intimately resonant or disappointingly familiar.

Old tropes continue today. The 2016 Report on the Status of Women and Girls inCaliforniastated that women appear nude (or partially nude) in films three times more frequently than men do. Standards of female beauty and sizing are still mostly based on young, tall and thinner-than-average bodies.

But there is an increasing spectrum of body types and messages in various images these days, mirroring slow shifts in attitudes toward gender, sex and beauty. Change will persevere as the producers of culture artists, actors, directors, writers increasingly emerge from within the diversity of the population. In fits and spurts, in art, entertainment and social media, we may see new forms of how the body is represented, and what it conveys.

_____

Flesh and Blood: Italian Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum, through Jan. 26, 2020; Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave; $29.99 adult, $27.99 senior, $19.99 student, free for SAM members and children 14 and under; first Thursday reduced-ticket prices;seattleartmuseum.org

Gayle Clemans is an art critic, art historian and novelist; connect with her on Twitter and Instagram @gayleclemans.

See the rest here:
SAMs Flesh and Blood exhibit depicts desire, violence and more using the artistic vessel of the human body - Seattle Times

When we hear technology we think of electronic gadgets and a hundred types of software. But the problems of the future are going to be more basic.

Food, water, and shelter are important to talk about. Theyre essential to sustain human life and limited in availability. Moreover, the increasing population and concentration of population in major cities will possibly lead to scarcity unless we take due action.

RELATED: 11 INNOVATIONS THAT COULD BUILD THE FOOD OF THE FUTURE

This is not the first time we are seeing a population surge. Farming methods have evolved over the years to meet these growing demands in the form of farming tools, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, etc.

The earliest known tools were sticks and stones which were later replaced by knives, scythes, and plows. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that modern machines were used in agriculture.

Wheeled harvesters and threshers paved the way for steam-powered tractors. But the introduction of gasoline and diesel engines was the last great invention in agriculture technology.

Similarly, manure was partially replaced by chemical fertilizers such as Ammonium Sulphates and Urea.

The increase in yield due to the adoption of these devices has helped sustain the population growth so far. But society has never been this conscious about health or the environment.

The fact is, if we keep relying on the same methods to increase the yield, it will lead to an environmental catastrophe. Moreover, trends like organic food are also going to impact agricultural practices of the future.

These trends are partially based on research that chemicals used in food get deposited in our bodies over time. The chemicals that go unabsorbed by the plants get washed away and pollute the water bodies.

Apart from these crops, animal husbandry, and farming of cotton and other non-edible plants are also undergoing similar trends and challenges.

This demand is not only affected by the world population but also by the economy and quality of life. People living a prosperous life tend to consume more, both in terms of quantity and variety.

On the other hand, it is projected that the number of farmers is going to decrease further. Growers who are older than 65 already outnumber the younger ones less than 45 years of age.

This shows the extent of urbanization and the receding interest of the youth in farming. At the same time, farming land is also decreasing as the cities are growing and more industries are being set up to feed them.

To address these issues, the field of farm management has emerged and brought forth approaches such as precision farming.

Precision farming is the use of future farm technologies to distribute water, fertilizers, and pesticide in regulated amounts. Each plant gets the precise measure of substances required.

This reduces the cost by reducing excess amounts and increasing yield. It also moderates the use of chemicals, leading to healthier crops and better overall environmental impact.

The emerging research on agriculture technology can be used to achieve this and more.

OpenAg is a project by MIT's Media Lab that uses botany, machine-learning algorithms, and chemistry to optimize farm produce. The remarkable thing is that without using any genetic modification, the team was able to improve the flavor and medicinal qualities of plants such as Basil by simply controlling the environment.

Computer algorithms determine the optimal growing conditions to maximize the volatile compounds, which are primarily responsible for the taste.

The next challenge for OpenAg is to help farmers adapt to climate change. They plan on achieving this by using controlled simulations of the plants in hydroponic containers called food computers.

The use of drones is not a new concept in farming. Drones have seen experimental use in spraying fertilizers and pesticides.

The problem is still at large. A UN estimate suggests that 2040% of global crop yields are destroyed due to pests and diseases.

Some universities and research groups such as Carnegie Mellon are experimenting with a combination of technologies to identify the problem at its inception and eliminate it.

Cameras mounted on drones can be used to survey the field for pests in the morning and suggest or even directly apply the counter-measures. Using cameras also lets us image infrared pictures that can pinpoint a disease before it spreads.

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon are already doing field tests with sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), a staple in many parts of Africa and a potential biofuel.

Agribotix is another example of drones being used in agriculture. Agribotix uses the principles of precision farming by applying pesticides just where it is needed and in the required quantity, reducing pesticide use to 0.1%.

The topsoil is the most important agricultural resource. While there are factors such as soil erosion and moisture loss at play, one avoidable factor is the use of heavy equipment.

Large harvesters damage and compact the soil. Overusing fertilizers has a disastrous long term impact.

Bonirob is set to reduce this by taking the farmer out of the cockpit. As no one is needed to drive the machine, the size is reduced. This leads to a reduction in engine power and consequently, the weight.

What you get then, is a robot that can be used to measure soil quality, weed, harvest, thresh or even interbreed plants to maximize yield without leaving a footprint of its own. Robots such as Bonirob, RIPPA, or Ecorobotix are taking the farms forward to the future.

Another application of farming tech is in animal husbandry. A Glasgow start-up, Silent Herdsman, is manufacturing smart collars based on the concept of smartwatches. The collar monitors fertility and disease by tracking various bodily parameters and activities.

The biggest hurdle to the adoption of such tech is surprisingly not farmers, but big-machinery manufacturers who resist the kind of change it would require in their business models to use this technology.

The other problem is that of intellectual property. Most of these technologies are of great impact and the labs developing them do not want to share their research and findings.

RELATED: IoT AND SMART AGRICULTURE ARE BUILDING OUR FUTURE CITIES TODAY

This is possibly slowing down the development of agritech. Fortunately, some universities, such as MIT, are taking the initiative to make their research publicly available under open source licenses.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Today, we can witness this saying in action as researchers around the world are coming together to solve the problem of world hunger.

Read the rest here:
AgriTech: 3+ Ways We Plan to Feed the Future - Interesting Engineering

Women wait with their malaria-struck babies for treatment in Angola. Will opponents of gene ... [+] engineering deny prevention to families like these?

Mosquitoes are not just obnoxious summer pests they are a serious health threat to most of the world. In fact, the WHO calls mosquitoes one of the deadliest animals in the world.

Why? Mosquitoes carry and spread diseases to humans that cause millions of deaths every year. The biggest threat is malaria: a half a million lives are lost annually, and Africa alone loses $12 billion in health care, productivity, investment, and tourism to the disease. Then theres Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever each carried by mosquitoes, and each extracting their toll in human lives and livelihood.

But now, there is hope that biotechnology can help solve this crisis. The solution lies in genetically modifying a small population of mosquitoes and releasing them into malaria-prone areas. These mosquitoes carry a lethal gene that kills larvae before they reach adulthood and carry malaria to others, just stunting human illness.

Oxitec is a British biotechnology company doing just this. Over the last fifteen years or so the company has introduced Friendly Technology. Oxitecs latest results back up historic successes in Brazil, which saw dengue cases in one area reduced by 91% in a small trial. Their latest study showed a 96% reduction in mosquito numbers, this time using a more effective strategy of targeting the biting, egg-laying females - albeit leaving non-biting males to survive and reproduce. A great success, on the face of it.

The anti-GM backlash

However, Oxitec and others are taking a lot of flak from the anti-GM lobby, which according to the Genetic Literacy Project spent $850 million in the last five years alone opposing everything from the way we label genetically engineered food to fabric thats fermented from sugar.

The backlash was triggered by a paper that, ironically, seems likely to be retracted (or at least highly modified) due to exaggerated predictions of more robust mosquitoes, among others. Though reports of genetic mixing between surviving introduced mosquitoes and local mosquitoes were valid, the lethal gene was not actually present - which was the most likely outcome considering the lethality of the gene in question. A lethal gene will naturally diminish in frequency among a population.

But another consideration is to ask: does it even matter, all things considered, when eradication of disease should be the goal?

The risk of inaction

Mosquitoes are utterly deadly, and even when theyre not they provide among the largest disease burden on the planet. Tuberculosis may kill more people (around 1.3 million per year, compared with around 450,000 for malaria). But malaria infects 20 times that number of people.

Those 219 million annual malaria cases cost low income countries a significant chunk of their GDP up to 1.3% in the worst affected while just a 10% reduction in malaria was associated with a 0.3% growth in a much cited study on the economic burden of malaria. For Uganda, the economic gain from eradicating malaria would total around $50 million USD.

This doesnt take into account emerging diseases such as dengue and Zika virus, among others. In Brazil, the focus of Oxitecs recent trials aiming to reduce numbers of Aedes aegypti, 1.2 million people were infected with dengue in the first six months of 2019 six times more than in 2018 with an associated 388 deaths. Zika virus, carried by the same mosquito, exploded onto the scene in 2015 and has been associated with a range of effects on babies born to infected mothers in 10% of cases.

Yes, there are likely some knock-on ecosystem effects of releasing Oxitec mosquitoes. There might well be reduced prey for fish that eat the larvae, or less food for some of the birds that eat the flying insects. However, mosquitoes are not irreplaceable as far as the wider ecosystem is concerned, especially pests such as Aedes aegypti. There are another 3000 species of mosquito other than the three which primarily cause disease in people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) brands Aedes aegypti mosquitoes as being exquisitely adapted to city life, and that they prefer to breed in artificial containers. Given this information, it makes it even less important that lethal genes might persist among the wider population of these costly pests, less so that they might be eradicated - an opinion seemingly shared by researchers who have looked into the potential environmental costs associated with getting rid of the worst species of disease-bearing mosquitoes.

It all boils down to a cost/benefit analysis. Is the risk of some genetically modified mosquitoes passing on transgenes to wild populations worse than the risk of millions of people being infected with haemorrhagic fever and malaria, or babies being born with abnormally small heads (microcephaly)?

In any case, we will always have to take measures to reduce the burden of disease. What about the alternative forms of pest control and their relatively indiscriminate, off-target effects?

What is natural?

Oxitec, the company responsible for releasing genetically modified mosquitoes, have always known and stated - explicitly so - that some mosquitoes would survive to breed and pass on their genes. They have also taken measures to ensure that populations containing the lethal gene eventually go their predestined way.

In fact, their latest mosquitoes are meant to pass on genes to wild populations, this time to reverse the naturally occurring genetic mechanisms that render mosquitoes resistant to pesticides such as DEET. (Incidentally, multi drug resistance in the malaria parasite itself is also increasing).

To put our collective minds at ease, its worth pointing out that nature is weirder than what Oxitec is doing. mosquitoes perform their own version of enforced sterilisation, whereby male tiger mosquitoes (of the species Aedes albopictus) can mate with, and sterilize, female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

The fact that diseases such as Zika and dengue are present in Brazil in the first place is evidence that we are about as far removed from whatever natural used to mean as we can possibly be. Zika was introduced by a traveller from French Polynesia. The only way it got to Brazil was by aeroplane.

Its not just Zika traversing the globe in such a manner. There are emergent diseases popping up left, right and center, and it is not an easy task to keep them in check. The WHO warned us over ten years ago that infectious diseases are emerging at a rate not seen before. (One example is West Nile Virus, a mosquito-borne disease first described in 1937 in Uganda but discovered in New York in the summer of 1999. It is becoming more prevalent in California and will soon reach Silicon Valley and the San Francisco biotech region.)

It is no wonder. We live in a globally connected world with a rapidly expanding population that is a hotbed for disease-causing agents to emerge, mix, and spread (from viruses and bacteria to malaria parasites), which means that we need highly innovative, modern solutions to control them. Its an evolutionary arms race, and we need all the tools we can muster. If one of them happens to include lethal genes that successfully wipe out local populations of disease-causing mosquitoes, so be it.

Mosquito-borne diseases already threaten half of the global population.And as the climate warms and favors the mosquito, these diseases could spread to a billion more people.

Clearly, our current methods of control havent quite been enough to stop 219 million people becoming afflicted with malaria each year, or an increasing number suffering and dying from dengue and other diseases. Its not genes escaping that is the problem, but the sheer difficulty in eradicating mosquitoes and their diseases at all.

We must proceed carefully with new genetic engineering technologies, but we must also weigh the risks of inaction: each y
ear hundreds of millions of people mostly children needlessly die, get sick, or suffer genetic defects. GMO mosquitoes are something we can do about it.

So what would you rather have: GMO mosquitoes or dying babies?

Acknowledgement: Thank you to Peter Bickerton for additional research and reporting in this post.

Please note: I am the founder ofSynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write about are sponsors of theSynBioBeta conference(click herefor a full list of sponsors).

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British Biotech Company Sees Hope In Reducing Mosquito-Borne Diseases And Deaths With GMOs - Forbes

CORALS ARE comeback creatures. As the world froze and melted and sea levels rose and fell over 30,000 years, Australias Great Barrier Reef, which is roughly the size of Italy, died and revived five times. But now, thanks to human activity, corals face the most complex concoction of conditions they have yet had to deal with. Even these hardy invertebrates may struggle to come through their latest challenge without a bit of help.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a rise in global temperatures of 1.5C relative to pre-industrial times could cause coral reefs to decline by 70-90%. The planet is about 1C hotter than in the 19th century and its seas are becoming warmer, stormier and more acidic. This is already affecting relations between corals and the single-celled algae with which they live symbiotically, and which give them their colour. When waters become unusually warm, corals eject the algae, leaving reefs a ghostly white. This bleaching is happening five times as often as it did in the 1970s. The most recent such event, between 2014 and 2017, affected about three-quarters of the worlds reefs. Meanwhile the changing chemistry of the oceans lowers the abundance of carbonate ions, making it harder for corals to form their skeletons.

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If corals go, divers and marine biologists are not the only people who will miss them. Reefs take up a fraction of a percent of the sea floor, but support a quarter of the planets fish biodiversity. The fish that reefs shelter are especially valuable to their poorest human neighbours, many of whom depend on them as a source of protein. Roughly an eighth of the worlds population lives within 100km of a reef. Corals also protect 150,000km of shoreline in more than 100 countries and territories from the oceans buffeting, as well as generating billions of dollars in tourism revenue. In the Coral Triangle, an area of water stretching across South-East Asia and into the Pacific which is home to three-quarters of known coral species, more than 130m people rely on reefs for food and for their livelihoods in fishing and tourism.

Measures to mitigate climate change are needed regardless of coral, but even if the worlds great powers were to put their shoulder to the problem, global warming would not be brought to a swift halt. Coral systems must adapt if they are to survive, and governments in countries with reefs can help them do so.

Corals need protection from local sources of harm. Their ecosystems suffer from coastal run-off, whether sewage or waste from farms, as well as the sediment dumped from beach-front building sites. Plastic and other debris block sunlight and spread hostile bacteria. Chunks of reef are blown up by blast fishing; algae grow too much whenever fishing is too intensive. Governments need to impose tighter rules on these industries, such as tougher local building codes, and to put more effort into enforcing rules against overfishing.

Setting up marine protected areas could help reefs. Locals who fear for their livelihoods could be given work as rangers with the job of looking after the reserves. Levies on visitors to marine parks, similar to those imposed in parts of the Caribbean, could help pay for such schemes. So too could a special tax on coastal property developers.

Many reefs that have been damaged could benefit from restoration. Corals biodiversity offers hope, because the same coral will grow differently under different conditions. Corals of the western Pacific near Indonesia, for example, can withstand higher temperatures than the same species in the eastern Pacific near Hawaii. Identifying the hardiest types and encouraging them to grow in new spots is a way forward, though an expensive one. A massive project of this sort is under way in Saudi Arabia as part of a tourism drive. Scientists working alongside the Red Sea Development Company want to discover why the areas species seem to thrive in its particularly warm waters.

More drastic intervention to head off the larger threats corals face should also attract more research. Shading reefs using a polymer film as a sunscreen to cool them is under discussion for parts of the Great Barrier Reef. Other schemes to help corals involve genetic engineering, selective breeding and brightening the clouds in the sky above an area of the reef by spraying specks of salt into the lowest ones, so that they deflect more of the suns energy. These measures may sound extreme, but people need to get used to thinking big. Dealing with the problems caused by climate change will call for some radical ideas.

Link:
How to save the worlds coral reefs - The Economist

Genetic Engineering and Animals: A Short Summary of the Legal Terrain and Ethical ImplicationsAndrew B. Perzigian (2003)

With the advent and rapid development of genetic engineering technology, the animal rights movement is currently facing one of its greatest challenges and dilemmas. Proponents of the technology assert that transgenic animals, animals that have been genetically altered through the introduction of another plant's or animal's genes, may one day help solve many of our modern day problems in life, from starvation and ill health, to environmental degradation and the modern extinction crisis. Critics believe that bioengineering poses greater risks than it does benefits. They argue that genetic engineering threatens to increase animal suffering and decrease species integrity, while at the same time creating a potentially devastating impact on the balance and sustainability of the Earth's ecosystem. Regardless, the value judgments we make regarding the direction and scope that this technology should take are sure to have far reaching implications.

Transgenic animals are animals that have, through genetic engineering, genes from other plants and animals. Unlike controlled breeding, which is confined to the genetic material contained in a single species, modern genetic engineering permits an almost limitless scope of modification and introduction of otherwise foreign genetic material. This permits specific traits, and not the host of other traits common from crossbreeding, to be effectively introduced into new, transgenic animal species. Genetic engineering is able to create whole organisms that are not natural to the planet, and whose specific genetic make-up is as much a result of human manipulation as it is natural selection. (For further information on the basics of genetic engineering, see Detailed Discussion ).

With regard to the agricultural industry, transgenic farm animals can be created, that are better able to resist disease, grow faster, and more efficiently reproduce than current species of animals. Transgenic sheep can be created to produce better wool and cows can be engineered to more efficiently convert grain into higher quality milk and meat. Transgenic salmon, salmon that grow larger and at a faster rate than natural varieties, have already been created and farmed. (For further information on thepotential benefits, see Detailed Discussion ).

One of the more controversial uses of this technology is found in recent proposals to engineer farm animals to be non-sentient, without the "stress" genes that cause them great suffering during their lives on industrial factory farms. Since sentience, the ability to feel pain and experience suffering, is the basis upon which much animal rights ideology is based, some argue that these types of transgenic farm animals would help to solve many of the animal welfare issues posed by industrial factory farms. (For more information on the risks, see Detailed Discussion ).

The bio-medical research industry has been equally influenced by genetic engineering technology. Instead of relying on numerous test animals to research modern diseases and appropriate drug therapies, the bio-medical community can now rely on specifically engineered animal research models. Such animals are bred to have an increase susceptibility to modern diseases, like hereditary breast cancer. Transgenic animals have made research of such diseases more accurate, less expensive and faster, while at the same time permitting accurate results with the use of fewer individual animals in any given study.

Also, transgenic animals, like goats, sheep, and cattle, have been engineered to produce large amounts of complex human proteins in their milk, something very useful in the creation of therapeutic drugs. By engineering these animals to release these and other proteins in their milk, the mass production of high quality therapeutic drugs is made less costly, easier to manufacture, and at the expense of fewer animal lives than what was formerly the case. (For more information on the scientific andmedical potential of genetic engineering, see DetailedDiscussion ).

Biotechnology breakthroughs in whole animal cloning have led to many suggestions that such technology could be used to clone endangered species. Cloning provides a great support blanket for the modern extinction crisis and can help to ensure that critical numbers of endangered species will exist for generations to come.

In general, opponents of genetic engineering assert that such technology creates a huge diminution in the standing of animals, leaving them as nothing more than "test tubes with tails," only of benefit for the exploitive practices of factory farming, and drug and organ manufacturing. Creating more efficient agricultural animals threatens weaken the genetic diversity of the herd and thereby make them more susceptible to new strains of infectious disease. Also, if transgenic farm animals ever escape into wild populations, they can have profoundly disturbing effects on the natural environment, including a complete elimination of natural populations and the processes of natural selection.

Animal rights advocates also argue that each species should enjoy an inherent, natural right to be free of genetic manipulation in any form. This is especially the case when genetic engineering is used as a means of depriving animals of their sentience, of exacerbating the cruel, horrific conditions of the modern factory farm and biomedical lab. Although the sheer numbers may decline, the actual suffering experienced by agricultural and research animals may increase.

Cloning endangered species, although useful as a last resort, may unwisely shift our efforts away from protecting the critical habitat necessary to sustain viable endangered species populations. Habitat protection is as important to saving endangered species as is the specific renewal and maintenance of viable numbers within a population. Since limited funds exist, habitat protection, and not expensive cloning technology, should be the focus of our endangered species protection efforts. (For more information on the inherent dangers, see Detailed Discussion ).

Currently, there are few laws, in either the United States or the European Union (EU) regulating animal cloning and the creation of transgenic animals. In the United States, most research and farm animals are excluded from federal protection. While the European Union (EU) ensures that such animals are treated more humanely than is the case in the United States, both the U.S. and the EU extend patent protection to the owners and creators of transgenic animal species. This provides a huge incentive for the biotechnology industry to continually research and develop novel transgenic animal creations. With patents, researchers can now own and monopolize entire animal species, something unheard of prior to modern genetic engineering. The Supreme Court has upheld transgenic animal patents without any review of the potential ethical and environmental risks associated with the technology involved. (For moreon this important decision, click here ).

Most modern legislation regarding genetic engineering and cloning technology ensued following the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first multi-cellular organism cloned from adult cells. The primary objectives of the subsequent United States and EU legislation was to ban human cloning while at the same time ensuring that genetic engineering research continued unimpeded by such legislation. Patent protection effectively promotes genetic engineering research and helps to ensure its speedy development. (For more information on U.S. and European laws concerning biotechnology, see Detailed Discussion ).

There is no doubt that genetic engineering of animals will continue well into the future. Both the United States' and the EU's legal systems have been slow to respond with legislation specifically regulating bio
technology, and each have permitted their patent law to provide a supportive ground for genetic engineering research and development. One thing is for sure, we must not sit complacently by as this technology rapidly changes the fabric of our existence from the inside out. We must not wait and see what the effects are. We must form educated opinions, inspire legislative regulation, and hope that whatever direction that bioengineering takes us, is a positive step towards decreased animal suffering, increased environmental sustainability, and an overall compassionate regard for the earth and its precious life.

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Genetic Engineering and Animals | Animal Legal ...