Lifeboat Foundation

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Three types of potatoes genetically engineered to resist the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine are safe for the environment and safe to eat, federal officials have announced.

The approval by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration late last week gives Idaho-based J.R. Simplot Company permission to plant the potatoes this spring and sell them in the fall.

The company said the potatoes contain only potato genes, and that the resistance to late blight, the disease that caused the Irish potato famine, comes from an Argentine variety of potato that naturally produced a defense.

Continue reading “US approves 3 types of genetically engineered potatoes” »

Colloidal particles, used in a range of technical applications including foods, inks, paints, and cosmetics, can self-assemble into a remarkable variety of densely-packed crystalline structures. For decades, though, researchers have been trying to coax colloidal spheres to arranging themselves into much more sparsely populated lattices in order to unleash potentially valuable optical properties. These structures, called photonic crystals, could increase the efficiency of lasers, further miniaturize optical components, and vastly increase engineers’ ability to control the flow of light.

A team of engineers and scientists from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the NYU Center for Soft Matter Research, and Sungkyunkwan University School of Chemical Engineering in the Republic of Korea report they have found a pathway toward the self-assembly of these elusive photonic crystal structures never assembled before on the sub-micrometer scale (one micrometer is about 100 times smaller than the diameter of a strand of human hair).

The research, which appears in the journal Nature Materials, introduces a new design principle based on preassembled components of the desired superstructure, much as a prefabricated house begins as a collection of pre-built sections. The researchers report they were able to assemble the colloidal spheres into diamond and pyrochlore crystal structures — a particularly difficult challenge because so much space is left unoccupied.

Continue reading “Researchers coax colloidal spheres to self-assemble into photonic crystals” »

Need a new excuse for not working too late and or studying to hard well you have one as it can create brain damage.

The only organ in our body that ‘thinks’ is often the one we think the least about.

Our brain is the single most important organ in our body, controlling everything we do, from breathing, walking, eating, sleeping, etc. It’s the central processor for all our bodily functions, the part that interprets what we see and hear, smell and taste, and even a place where the chemical reaction associated with love occurs.

Continue reading “10 Dangerous Brain-Damaging Habits to Stop Immediately” »

Sorry, you’re way, way too late as that genie is already in the hands to so many (good and bad) if we were going to control this; were over 2 years too late.

Gene editing could create pest-resistant crops, but it could also create new organisms that threaten humans, according to IARPA.

Researchers at Yale University have discovered that the brain is capable of making fructose – a simple sugar, usually found in fruit, vegetables and honey.

Not all sugars are equal. Glucose is a simple sugar that provides energy for the cells in your body. Fructose has a less important physiological role and has been repeatedly linked to the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes. When there is excess glucose the processes that break it down can become saturated, so the body converts glucose into fructose instead, using a process known as the “polyol pathway”, a chemical reaction involved in diabetic complications. The researchers at Yale reported in the journal, JCI Insight, that the brain uses the polyol pathway to produce fructose in the brain.

Now this is what I am talking about when brain stimulation can treat disease and disorders were often better off.

LONDON: A small study in 16 people with severe anorexia has found that implanting stimulation electrodes into the brains of patients could ease their anxiety and help them gain weight.

Researchers found that in extreme cases of the eating disorder, the technique — known as deep brain stimulation (DBS) — swiftly helped many of those studied reduce symptoms of either anxiety or depression, and improved their quality of life.

Continue reading “Scientists test deep brain stimulation as potential anorexia therapy” »

Farmers have numerous sources of technology and data available to use in their operations, but many producers struggle with what kind and how much technology they need, according to an article on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources website.

Understanding which technologies and data sets are important and how to best use them is the focus of Joe Luck’s work as Nebraska Extension precision agriculture engineer.

“To me, precision ag has become a catchall term, but basically it refers to hardware and software systems that improve knowledge and decision support to make farming more manageable, sustainable and profitable,” said Luck, who also is an assistant professor of biological systems engineering.

Continue reading “Precision Agriculture Makes Farming More Sustainable, Profitable” »

(Natural News) KFC makes much of its “secret blend of herbs and spices,” but there’s a much simpler reason that people tend to find the flavor of the restaurant’s chicken so striking and find themselves craving more: All KFC chicken is literally marinated in MSG.

MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is an artificial salt designed to activate the “umami” taste receptors on the tongue that give food a full, savory flavor. Unlike naturally occurring glutamate, which is an amino acid found in foods such as anchovies, tomato paste, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and parmesan cheese, MSG has been connected with various health problems, with some individuals more sensitive than others.

Some of the dangers of MSG might stem from the fact that it is a highly concentrated form of glutamate, which is not only an amino acid but also a neurotransmitter. Such chemicals are known as excitotoxins, meaning that while they are beneficial in low doses, in high doses they can overstimulate neurons literally to death.

Continue reading “KFC menu found to be loaded with MSG ‘excitotoxins’ that can damage neurology” »

How plants are teaching us about TOR proteins and their impacts on the pathways.

The target of Rapamycin (TOR) present in all eukaryotes is a multifunctional protein, regulating growth, development, protein translation, ribosome biogenesis, nutrient, and energy signaling. In the present study, ectopic expression of TOR gene of Arabidopsis thaliana in a widely cultivated indica rice resulted in enhanced plant growth under water-limiting conditions conferring agronomically important water-use efficiency (WUE) trait. The AtTOR high expression lines of rice exhibited profuse tillering, increased panicle length, increased plant height, high photosynthetic efficiency, chlorophyll content and low ∆¹³ C. Δ¹³ C, which is inversely related to high WUE, was as low as 17‰ in two AtTOR high expression lines. These lines were also insensitive to the ABA-mediated inhibition of seed germination. The significant upregulation of 15 stress-specific genes in high expression lines indica tes their contribution to abiotic stress tolerance. The constitutive expression of AtTOR is also associated with significant transcriptional upregulation of putative TOR complex-1 components, Os Raptor and OsLST8. Glucose-mediated transcriptional activation of AtTOR gene enhanced lateral root formation. Taken together, our findings indica te that TOR, in addition to its multiple cellular functions, also plays an important role in response to abiotic stress and potentially enhances WUE and yield related attributes.