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But if robots kill weeds, who will spray Roundup on everything.
AI-powered weed hunters could soon reduce the need for herbicides and genetically modified crops.
How it’s done now: Current farming methods involve spraying large amounts of indiscriminate weed killer over fields full of crops that have been genetically tweaked (usually by the same company that makes the weed killer) to resist the chemicals. The pesticide and seed industry is enormous, worth $100 billion globally. Of that, herbicide sales alone account for $26 billion.
The future: Robots like the one created by ecoRobotix (shown above) will be able to roll through fields, using computer vision to target and spray individual weeds as they go. EcoRobotix claims its robo-brigade will decrease total herbicide use by a factor of 20. You might even be able to get a smaller Roomba-esque version for your home garden.
Unlike other ingestible chips, this new version by MIT contains millions of genetically engineered living cells to act as sensors, designed to light up when they detect bleeding.
It’s the latest advance in a growing field of sensors that can be swallowed or worn to monitor our health.
Pills equipped with cameras, thermometers and acidity gauges already look for disease and track digestion.
At the cellular level, aging and cancer are two sides of the same coin. The mechanism that limits a cell’s lifespan can be slowed down, but that can turn them cancerous, as they divide unchecked. Now, scientists at EPFL have found a way to manipulate that mechanism to effectively turn off cancer’s immortality, letting it die slowly and naturally.
Every time a cell divides, it consults the blueprints contained in the chromosomes, but some genetic information is lost with every division. To protect the important bits, the tips of the chromosomes are covered with repeating sequences of “junk” DNA known as telomeres. Eventually even they erode away, leaving the cell vulnerable to damage – which we recognize as wrinkles, grey hairs, decreased metabolism, and higher chances of disease. In that way, telomere length is inextricably linked to aging.
Check out the internal Google film, “The Selfish Ledger”. This probably wasn’t meant to slip onto a public web server, and so I have embedded a backup copy below. Ping me if it disappears. I will locate a permanent URL.
This 8½ minute video is a lot deeper—and possibly more insipid—than it appears. Nick Foster may be the Anti-Christ, or perhaps the most brilliant sociologist of modern times. It depends on your vantage point, and your belief in the potential of user controls and cat-in-bag containment.
He talks of a species propelling itself toward “desirable goals” by cataloging, data mining, and analyzing the past behavior of peers and ancestors—and then using that data to improve the experience of each user’s future and perhaps even their future generations. But, is he referring to shared goals across cultures, sexes and incomes? Who controls the algorithms and the goal filters?! Is Google the judge, arbiter and God?
Consider these quotes from the video. Do they disturb you? The last one sends a chill down my spine. But, I may be overreacting to what is simply an unexplored frontier. The next generation in AI. I cannot readily determine if it ushers in an era of good or bad:
There’s that odd term again: behavioral sequencing. It suggests that we are mice and that Google can help us to act in unison toward society’s ideal goals.
Today, Fortune Magazine described it this way: “Total and absolute data collection could be used to shape the decisions you make … The ledger would essentially collect everything there is to know about you, your friends, your family, and everything else. It would then try to move you in one direction or another for your or society’s apparent benefit.”
The statements could apply just as easily to the NSA as it does to Google. At least we are entering into a bargain with Google. We hand them data and they had us numerous benefits (the same benefits that many users often overlook). Yet, clearly, this is heavy duty stuff—especially for the company that knows everything about everyone. Watch it a second time. Think carefully about the power that Google wields.
Don’t get me wrong. I may be in the minority, but I generally trust Google. I recognize that I am raw material and not a client. I accept the tradeoff that I make when I use Gmail, web search, navigate to a destination or share documents. I benefit from this bargain as Google matches my behavior with improved filtering of marketing directed at me.
But, in the back of my mind, I hope for the day that Google implements Blind Signaling and Response, so that my data can only be used in ways that were disclosed to me—and that strengthen and defend that bargain, without subjecting my behavior, relationships and predilections to hacking, misuse, or accidental disclosure.
Philip Raymond sits on Lifeboat’s New Money Systems board. He co-chairs CRYPSA, hosts the Bitcoin Event, publishes Wild Duck and is keynote speaker at global Cryptocurrency Conferences. Book a presentation or consulting engagement.
Credit for snagging this video: Vlad Savov @ TheVerge
Recently, roughly 200 eminent scientists assembled in Boston. Their agenda? Creating “superhero” human cells impervious to all viral attacks and possibly other killers—radiation, freezing, aging, or even cancer.
The trick isn’t super-soldier serum. Instead, the team is relying on tools from synthetic biology to read the cell’s genetic blueprint and rewrite large chunks of the genome to unlock these superpowers.
“There is very strong reason to believe that we can produce cells that would be completely resistant to all known viruses,” said Dr. Jef Boeke, a geneticist at New York University and a co-leader of the project. “It should also be possible to engineer other traits, including resistance to prions and cancer.”
May 15 (UPI) — Until now, scientists weren’t sure how gene activation mechanisms avoided nucleosomes, the bodyguards tasked with keeping DNA turned off.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, however, have pinpointed a key factor responsible for unraveling nucleosome structures and allowing genes to be activated.
Geneticists described the newly identified nucleosome destabilizing factor, or NDF, this week in the journal Genes and Development.
