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Genetically modified plants silence pest’s genes

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corn.jpgScientists have already created genetically modified crops that produce proteins that are toxic to the pests that eat them. Now they have gone a step further and created plants that literally rewrite the genetic code of the insects that eat them. The genetically modified crops use a process called RNA interference:

RNA interference occurs naturally in animals ranging from worms to humans. It’s a process whereby double-stranded RNA copies of specific genes prevent cells from translating those genes into proteins. The new genetically modified plants carry genes for double-stranded RNA targeted to particular insect genes…

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Shanghai, made cotton plants that silence a gene that allows cotton bollworms to process the toxin gossypol, which occurs naturally in cotton. Bollworms that eat the genetically engineered cotton can’t make their toxin-processing proteins, and they die. Researchers at Monsanto and Devgen, a Belgian company, made corn plants that silence a gene essential for energy production in corn rootworms; ingestion wipes out the worms within 12 days.

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Free, but not easy – the economics of abundance

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piles of books Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired and the man behind the Long Tail hypothesis, takes a look at Scott "Dilbert" Adams as a case-study in the effects of giving away free content. In a nutshell: you can’t always expect a free e-book to promote sales of the hardcopy version, at least not if you’re already well-known, but the increased profile it brings should get you more income from other work.

This is an issue close to the hearts of many sf authors, which seems to be the one field of literature that is really running with the "free novels" ball. Cory Doctorow’s career certainly hasn’t been harmed by it … but then he started out by giving it away, and it’s still too early in the game to be entirely sure how effective a strategy it will be in the long run for writers with established careers. Will those established careers be undermined by the new turks and their freebies, or will the industry benefit as a whole from an influx of new readers?

One thing’s for sure, the economics of the writing business is changing fast. Witness the Hollywood writer’s strike … which Techdirt suggests may backfire quite badly. [Image by Jessie Barber]

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Peak food is an inevitable consequence of peak oil

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Vertical farming may save the cityCurrently for every 1 calorie of food, some 10 calories of energy are used to make it. As George Monbiot said in the Guardian last week, it is increasingly unclear where future supplies of water and phosphates will come from. After world war two the world population was around 3 Billion. Using newer techniques and fertilisers we have increased the amount of food an acre produces. The population has risen to match. Fertilisers are almost entirely all oil-based on large scale, however. With biofuels taking away land and oil prices rising as well as increased transportation costs, the current system of food from around the world is becoming a danger to supply. If the recent survey of 155 oil experts saying peak oil will come before 2010 turns out to be true, we will have to downscale very quickly indeed.

Two ways to combat this would also reverse many of the social changes of the last thirty or so years. Firstly, the reduction of food miles by producing stuff closer to home will bring down fuel needed to transport the food, often a massive contribution to the energy cost. The second involves fertilisers and other fuel-intensive techniques. As the amount of machinery and fertiliser brought into farms decreases due to prices, manual labour becomes increasingly important again. Eating less meat, particularly red meat, will reduce the amount of calories an acre of land can produce, as well as boosting our health. Large farms currently operating with few employees will need to split into smaller units and introduce nitrogen fixing vegetables between grain crops. On a social level this could increase the number of people making a small living for themselves off a plot of land, selling most of their produce locally. Using more varied crops, utilising the seasons and even vertical farming mean we could have good food even without shipping it in from abroad.

[photo by Chris Jacobs for The Vertical Farm Project]

Note: edited to attribute the photo to Chris Jacobs, who says: ‘For all of you out there…this illustration is NOT how a real vertical farm would be…it would be 100% hydroponic. This was just created to “show” growing food.’ – thanks for keeping us informed Chris!

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DARPA Urban Challenge

Well, by now the DARPA Urban Challenge should be underway.  As of Nov. 2nd, 24 teams had been eliminated, leaving just 11 participants to make the 6-hour, 60-mile (that’s 96km for you metric-lovers out there).  The challenges:  navigating an urban setting without running over any humans (yes, that’s a rough summary, but the rules on the DARPA site are in pdf form, which locks up my computer – thanks, Adobe!)

The ultimate goal is to have a computer system that can run a supply convoy autonomously, merging in and out of traffic and navigating intersections.  Last year, Stanford U.’s team took home the first prize.

(via DailyTech) (image from DARPA website)

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Friday Free Fiction for 2nd November

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A fairly weighty haul of free fiction for you this week. Let’s see what we’ve got …

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We’ve got short stories!

ManyBooks.net: "With No Strings Attached" by Gordon Randall Garrett, "No Great Magic" by Fritz Leiber, "Subversive" by Mack Reynolds, "The Servant Problem" by Robert F. Young (1962) and "The Fourth Invasion" by Henry Josephs (1956).

Project Gutenberg: "The Red Room" by H. G. Wells.

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We have webzines!

Via Nick Mamatas, the latest Clarkesworld Magazine:

Check out Acid and Stoned Reindeer by Rebecca Ore!
And if you’d like to get agitated, why not read our latest commentary The Language of Defeat by Jeff Vandermeer.

I just read Rebecca Ore’s story – that’s quite a piece of work. Go see!

Screaming Dreams has a Halloween issue available as a PDF for you to download, too.

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We have book tasters!

Pyr has posted the first 3 chapters of Killswitch by Joel Shepherd.

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We have entire novels!

In the mailbox from Stefan Pernar:

I published my first science fiction (although I would like to call it science future 😉 ) novel a few days ago – you can find it at www.jame5.com.

From the blurb: "Jame5 is a "Sophie’s World" for futurists and singularitarians in which the author takes his readers trough a hard take off technical singularity with all its philosophical consequences. What is good and what is evil? Where are we coming from and where are we going? What are happiness and the meaning of life? What do prophets have in common with dictators? All of these questions and more are being touched in this novel …"

Sounds interesting. If anyone would like to send us a review, please do so!

Also, transrealist genius Rudy Rucker has released the entirety of his latest novel, Postsingular, as a Creative Commons download. It comes heartily recommended by me, if that’s worth anything to you.

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And it wouldn’t be Friday Free Fiction without the Friday Flash Fictioneers.

There are a few absentees this week; I know some of them are NaNoWriMo-ing, and that’s a reasonable excuse. (I wish I had one as good, but my fiction time this week was spent dealing with yesterday’s Futurismic hardware crisis …)

Justin Pickard is NaNoWriMo-ing too, but instead of ducking out, he’s posting excerpts – here’s "Traitor!".

Other contributors this week: Neil Beynon gives us "Rainbow"; Dan Pawley provides "My School Trip", and FFF’s founder Gareth L Powell donates "Sun Scrying".

We’d be more than pleased to invite new Fictioneers into the gang – drop us a line if you have a short piece you’d like us to include. The only rules are – it has to be under a thousand words, and it has to be published on your own site on a Friday!

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In case there’s not enough here to keep you busy (in which case I envy the amount of free time you have), Free Speculative Fiction Online has once again updated their (far more comprehensive) list with many new additions from writers old and new.

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Happy reading, and have a great weekend!

[tags]free, fiction, stories, online[/tags]

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