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In this age of Genetic Engineering Scientists can do almost anything .........The only problem is what you would call this ??
A Lemange or An Ormon .......(Macro Monday theme this week is CITRUS. )
I've just completed "Goodly Creature" for the Things To Come show, opening 9 September 2010 at Bold Hype Gallery in NYC. (I'll post the show details shortly.)
Acrylic on texts & diagrams (from various antique sources) on canvas, 18x24" total assembled dimensions (6 6x6" canvases).
I'm blogging about the creation of this project in my new process blog, Curious Art Lab.
curiousartlab.blogspot.com/2010/08/some-assembly-required
SOLD
genetic engineering
could create the perfect race
could create an unknown life-force
that could us exterminate
introducing worker clone
as our subordinated slave
his expertise proficiency
will surely dig our grave
it's so tempting
will biologists resist
when he becomes the creator
will he let us exist
bionic man is jumping
through the television set
he's about to materialise
and guess who's coming next
x ray spex - genetic engineering (germ free adolescents, 1978)
An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained, according Wikipedia.
Science fiction:
if the small number unexplained objects were space ships of aliens, it looks like they have a very high technology, far higher than us. Do their high technologies make them immortal? It depends on them how advance and smart they are.
It might be possible to create almost all the capabilities of a human being with advance science and technology, but the problem is the consciousness. How we get consciousness... Computers are already creating the thinking process. Computers can make a proper decision for us, but not for theirselves. Making decision for theirselves with being aware of their existence is consciousness. It looks like, whatever we do, we can not create consciousness. The difference between computers and us is we are alive. A living organism create consciousness. A proper hardware ( human ) is necessary to run a human-software. It has to have senses, feelings, thinking process ( creates commands ) and data saving mechanism. To create a human like creature, we have to make something alive first, so that it has to have fear from dying and defends itself. It has to feel pain too and has to try to ease the pain. The fear and pain are the dominating factors, noting else is really important than to be alive ( without pain ).
We will see what will happen in the future. An electronic living cell might be possible. If we are able to create a hardware similar to a human, some softwares could be available very easily, just hook up to the internet to get the necessary-information.The answers of the following questions might be available at the time when the hardware is ready: Who are the human? How do they function? How are the humans acting at a certain situation? How do they live? Are they aggressive? Do they kill each other? Do they just think to have a good time, don’t care anything else? How is the level of body produced drugs like serotonin and dopamine? Are they just like a sailing small boat on a very rough sea with no land on sight? Are they like a lost space ship in space? What are the flaws in their software and hardware? How do they walk? What is the meaning of their face impressions?
The creature might not be a biological one, important is the one which is alive. It doesn’t matter how it will be cerated. An electronic one could be the best solution. There is more potential at an electronic one than a biological one. Reactions and development could be very fast, software could be very easy to load ( not like biological one, at which it takes years, a lot schooling ) and it could be reloading possibilities if an information was missing. An electronic one could be immortal so long we keep the copy of the software safe for loading of the replacement of old, outdated hardware. The Hardware can be fixed anytime according the original blue print. Transportation will be very easy too, just send the software and blue print anywhere in space to create another one there, a copy.
Conclusions:
What is clear is we want to live longer, and if possible, we wan’t to live forever. Of course there are remedies. We are the product of chemical, physical, biological and phycological processes. There are no magic there, just science, technology and phycology. These processes can be changed under certain conditions to help us. The big problem is that we accept death. Traditionally, medicine has been focused on extending life, but it doesn’t help us to be immortal or to live a lot longer.
There are some institutions around the world they work on this issue, but it is not enough. Governments should very actively involve about it, creating ministry of longevity will be proper.
The most research is needed at cell level. The very important research areas are genetic engineering, stem-cell technology, cancer research, blood vessel clean up ( psychical and chemical ) and organ manufacturing and transplantation.
if the UFO owners were not smarter than us, their very advance computer technology loaded with the information about science, about technology and particularly about chemical, physical, biological and psychological processes of their body might have solved the problem, made them immortal. If they were smarter than us, they might have solved the problem without a very high technology.
It's been a big week for me with the Weekly Flickr episode (www.flickr.com/photos/flickr/15409384236/in/set-721576398...) coming out! Hi to everyone who is following my work, old and new!
Before I get into my most recent topic - GMO’s, I’m excited to mention that this ongoing series won an Honourable Mention in the International Photography Awards. It really has motivated me to keep pushing forward with this and I’m excited for things to come!
So now onto the controversial topic of GMO’s....
If you'd like to read about it you can check out my blog - macmilla31309.c4.cmdwebsites.com/blog/
or go to my facebook page
There was only one way the children were going to keep up with the long dogs running on the beach... forced evolution! I had to get the genetic splicer out, but they can now do 40mph too.
The theme for this final week of 2019 is "Evolution". See you in 2020.
More of the Goodly Creature.
I'm blogging about the creation of this project in my new process blog, Curious Art Lab.
curiousartlab.blogspot.com/2010/08/some-assembly-required...
(It's for the Things to Come show at Bold Hype Gallery in NYC opening on 9 September 2010.)
© Cynthia E. Wood
www.cynthiawoodphoto.com | FoundFolios | facebook | Blurb | Instagram @cynthiaewood
The biopower and biopolitics of the biotechnocracy with its nonexistent bioethics of biotechnology. The vaccine gene therapy, altering DNA, manipulating basic biology with spike protein. We will biohack the proteins and DNA that are central to your biology. Human genetic engineering will lead to artificial intelligence and bioengineering. AI and biotechnology will be the end of the real you. Take the jab, take the biohazard, receive your biopassport. Get your biochip, become a bionerd. Don’t be biosensitive; don’t let the bioink leak from yours eyes as you cry out in joy. We wouldn’t want your embedded biosensors to send out an emergency alert, now would we? Synthetic biology and biological data. 666 and the biosurveillance system. Bio-serfdom: equality for all! Let’s eradicate poverty, let’s make y’all biodigital slaves! If you don’t believe transhumanism is right around the corner, then check out the government website below.
Here is an article on the Canadian government website called: Exploring Biodigital Convergence
horizons.gc.ca/en/2020/02/11/exploring-biodigital-converg...
Here is one for you Americans: In science we trust!
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United Nations, and to the New World Order for which it stands, one post-nation under pseudoscience, divisible, without liberty and justice for all.”
Abort millions of babies…oh wait…now we don’t have enough skilled labour, and who is going to pay taxes to look after our ageing population? We have low birth rates, so let’s bring in large numbers of immigrants. Multiculturalism, let’s make you a melting pot of people. We will erode your culture and values…and who needs borders? The future is tranhumanism! Humans will evolve until there is no race or gender or reproduction…as for culture and borders, they will no longer exist…it’s all part of the plan…divide, conquer, and assimilate into the transhuman revolution. Humans will continue to evolve until they no longer resemble humans. Humans will become extinct. Survival of the fittest! Many will die in this evolution of man and AI, but some will adapt and survive. You will be owned like cattle, and once your purpose is fulfilled, we will get rid of you…like we do to those in the womb today…life isn’t sacred…especially if you aren’t even human…just some sort of parasite. Welcome to the New World Order of transhumanism!
Thankfully we have a Saviour, so things will only go so far. The Mark of the Beast is as far as transhumanism will get. When Jesus returns He will throw all the transhumans into hell. That will be the end of transhumanism. There is no eternal life in transhumanism, except for eternal life in hell.
1 Corinthians 3:18-20 “Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, ‘He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.’ And again, ‘The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise; he knows they are worthless.’”
Left hand page of a double spread. This is what Craig is looking at the the page preceeding this one on flickr. Art: Rob "The Riot" Davis.
Words: Mighty Michael Vance and rascal, R. A. Jones.
More from the GM Foods series... No PS here.
Latest part of the series that will be in an upcoming (local) exhibition :)
The Monsanto Company is an American multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is a leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, which it markets under the Roundup brand. Monsanto is also a leading producer of genetically engineered seed.
As one of pioneering companies in applying biotechnology to agriculture, Monsanto also brought into agriculture the standard biotechnology industry business model, in which patent rights play a key role, as patents allow such companies to recoup the expense of biotech research. Monsanto's application of this business model to agriculture, along with a growing movement to create a global, uniform system of plant breeders' rights in the 1980s, came into direct conflict with customary practices of farmers to save, reuse, share and develop plant varieties. Monsanto's role in these changes in agriculture, has made Monsanto controversial, as have its current and former products, which include genetically engineered seed and bovine growth hormone.
Monsanto is the largest producer of glyphosate herbicides in the United States through its brand Roundup, which is used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with commercial crops. Monsanto's United States patent on glyphosate expired in 2000. While glyphosate has been associated with birth defects in laboratory animals, possibly by affecting retinoic acid signalling, its impact on humans remains unclear. As of 2009, sales of Roundup herbicides represent about 10% of Monsanto's yearly revenue.
In 1926, when environmental policy was generally governed by local governments, Monsanto founded and incorporated the town of Monsanto, later renamed Sauget, Illinois, to provide a more business friendly environment for one of its chemical plants. For years, the Monsanto plant in Sauget was the nation's largest producer of polychlorinated biphenyls(PCBs), a chemical once used as a common electrical insulator. And although PCBs were banned in the 1970s, they remain in the water along Dead Creek in Sauget. EPA officials referred to Sauget as "one of the most polluted communities in the region" and "a soup of different chemicals"
In 2002, The Washington Post carried a front page report on Monsanto's legacy of environmental damage in Anniston, Alabama related to its legal production of PCBs. Plaintiffs in a pending lawsuit provided documentation showing that the local Monsanto factory knowingly discharged both mercury and PCB-laden waste into local creeks for over 40 years. In a story on January 27, The New York Times reported that during 1969 alone Monsanto had dumped 45 tons of PCBs into Snow Creek, a feeder for Choccolocco Creek which supplies much of the area's drinking water. The company also buried millions of pounds of PCB in open-pit landfills located on hillsides above the plant and surrounding neighborhoods. In August 2003, Solutia and Monsanto agreed to pay plaintiffs $700 million to settle claims by over 20,000 Anniston residents related to PCB contamination.
According to an anonymous 2001 document obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, Monsanto has been identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as being a "potentially responsible party" for 56 contaminated sites (Superfund sites) in the United States. Monsanto has been sued, and has settled, multiple times for damaging the health of its employees or residents near its Superfund sites through pollution and poisoning.
A UK government report showed that 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and PCBs exclusively made by Monsanto, are leaking from the Brofiscin quarry, near Groesfaen in Wales, an unlined porous quarry that was not authorized to take chemical wastes. It emerged that the groundwater had been polluted since the 1970s. The government was criticised for failing to publish information about the scale and exact nature of this contamination. The UK Environment Agency estimated that it would cost £100m to clean up the site, called "one of the most contaminated" in the UK.
More info on Monsanto's controversial practices here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
I recently cut open a banana to find this - would you eat it? I did, and I can say that bananalamis (or salaminanas) are very tasty, if a little different....
Happy Easter!
Dried wheat kernels from Sweden. These are about 38 years old! Believe it or not, when I lived on a farm in Sweden I sometimes helped with the harvesting of the wheat by driving a tractor....oh those were days long ago...
INFORMATION ON WHEAT:
Wheat (Triticum spp.), is a worldwide cultivated grass from the Levant region of the Middle East. Globally, after maize, wheat is the second most-produced food among the cereal crops just above rice. Wheat grain is a staple food used to make flour for leavened, flat and steamed breads; cookies, cakes, breakfast cereal, pasta, juice, noodles and couscous; and for fermentation to make beer, alcohol, vodka or biofuel. Wheat is planted to a limited extent as a forage crop for livestock, and the straw can be used as fodder for livestock or as a construction material for roofing thatch. Although wheat supplies much of the world's dietary protein and food supply, as many as one in every 100 to 200 people has Coeliac disease, a condition which results from an immune system response to a protein found in wheat: gluten (based on figures for the United States).
Wheat originated in Southwest Asia in the area known as the Fertile crescent. The genetic relationships between wild and domesticated populations of both einkorn and emmer wheat indicate that the most likely site of domestication is near Diyarbakır in Turkey.
Wild wheats were domesticated as part of the origins of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. Cultivation and repeated harvesting and sowing of the grains of wild grasses led to the domestication of wheat through selection of mutant forms with tough ears that remained intact during harvesting, larger grains, and a tendency for the spikelets to stay on the stalk until harvested. Because of the loss of seed dispersal mechanisms, domesticated wheats have limited capacity to propagate in the wild.
The exact timing of the first appearance of domesticated wheats is currently uncertain, but is either in the PPNA period (9800-8800 cal BC) or the early-mid PPNB (8800-7500 cal BC). Domesticated einkorn and emmer wheat has been identified at three PPNA sites in the northern Levant, Iraq ed-Dubb, Jericho and Tell Aswad, but both the dating and the domesticated status of these cereals is disputed. Domesticated wheats (and other Neolithic founder crops) are unambiguously present at early-mid PPNB sites in the northern Levant, such as Ain Ghazal, Abu Hureyra and Tell Aswad, and in southeast Turkey at Cafer Höyük and Çayönü. As a round figure, it is correct to say that wheats have been domesticated for about 10,000 years.
The cultivation of wheat began to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period, reaching the Aegean by 8500 cal BC and the Indian subcontinent by 6000 cal BC. By 5,000 years ago, wheat had reached Ethiopia, Great Britain, Ireland and Spain. A millennium later it reached China. Claims have been made for independent domestication of wheat outside the fertile crescent, but these lack evidence of the presence of wild wheats or of early domesticated wheat.
Three thousand years ago wheat was grown in the southern Oregon peninsula. Agricultural cultivation with horse-drawn plows increased cereal grain production, as did the use of seed drills to replace broadcast sowing in the 18th century. Yields of wheat continued to increase, as new land came under cultivation and with improved agricultural husbandry involving the use of fertilizers, threshing machines and reaping machines, tractor-drawn cultivators and planters, and varieties adapted to intensive cultivation (see green revolution and Norin 10 wheat).
Raw wheat can be powdered into flour; germinated and dried creating malt; crushed and into cracked wheat; parboiled (or steamed), dried, crushed and de-branned into bulgur; or processed into semolina, pasta, or roux. Wheat is a major ingredient in such foods as bread, porridge, crackers, biscuits, Muesli, pancakes, pies, pastries, cakes & cupcakes, cookies, muffins, rolls, doughnuts, gravy, boza (a fermented beverage), and breakfast cereals (e.g. Wheatena, Cream of Wheat, Shredded Wheat, and Wheaties).
100 grams of hard red winter wheat contain about 12.6 grams of protein, 1.5 grams of total fat, 71 grams of carbohydrate (by difference), 12.2 grams of dietary fiber, and 3.2 mg of iron (17% of the daily requirement); the same weight of hard red spring wheat contains about 15.4 grams of protein, 1.9 grams of total fat, 68 grams of carbohydrate (by difference), 12.2 grams of dietary fiber, and 3.6 mg of iron (20% of the daily requirement). Gluten, a protein found in wheat (and other Triticeae), cannot be tolerated by people with celiac disease (an autoimmune disorder in ~1% of Indo-European populations).
Source: Wikipedia
More from the GM Foods series. No PS here...
was finally able to re-shoot this, with a healthier looking banana -- and a home-made contraption to hold everything at the right height... :)
Possibly will be part of an upcoming (local) exhibition...
'The Perth Gazette' of January 10, 1851 published a letter from James Drummond - indefatigable botanist and naturalist of Western Australia. He'd composed it under some duress on a journey from Dundaragan to Champion Bay and onwards to the lead mine on the Murchison River (1849-1850) 'but I have not as yet got a sheltered spot to write in'.
Drummond's enthusiasm is contagious. He has for the first time seen 'the large scarlet verticordia' which 'is in my opinion the most beautiful of Australian plants'; suitably it later received the specific name: 'grandis'. After describing its growing habits, Drummond continues: 'even de savage inhabitants of the country, cannibals as they are, admire this plant; on one of the days we were travelling from the Irwin to the Greenough, the natives had intelligence of our approach and twenty or thirty of the young men dressed in their best style, with grease and wilgi and their heads ornamemted with the flowers of this splendid plant, came to meet us in a friendly manner'. Drummond, incidentally, had had a terrible run-in caused according to him by the natives earlier in 1845, which had cost the lives of his son Johnston, also an avid botanist, and a native guide called Kabinger: see my posting of July 18, 2010: www.flickr.com/photos/87453322@N00/4804040139/.
Before Drummond's discovery of this Scarlet Featherflower, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1778-1841) had in 1828 named the genus of that plant 'Verticordia', 'Heart-turner'. And indeed the brightness of our 'grandis' does turn the heart!
More than merely beautiful, Verticordia grandis recently has played an important role in genetic engineering. It's a member of the myrtle family to which also belong economically important plants such as the clove and the guava. They are all prone to a debilitating plant condition called hairy-root disease, caused by a soil bacterium, Agrobacterium rhizogenes. In the mid '90s, scientists were able to genetically transform Verticordia grandis so that it no longer has to be susceptible to that bacterium. Thus strides are made forward to the greater economic viability of these myrtles. Possbily insights from this work will also help in the battle against that disease in The Netherlands, where it has been detected in other plants (e.g. cucumber, tomato, aubergine) since about 1999.
This is the central portion of Goodly Creature. As you may already have suspected, he is a creature of multifarious parts. Some are decidedly shroomy.
I'm blogging about the creation of this project in my new process blog, Curious Art Lab.
curiousartlab.blogspot.com/2010/08/some-assembly-required...
(It's for the Things to Come show at Bold Hype Gallery in NYC opening on 9 September.)
This is just one portion of the piece I'm working on right now... more to come soon!
I'm blogging about the creation of this project in my new process blog, Curious Art Lab.
curiousartlab.blogspot.com/2010/08/some-assembly-required...
(It's for the Things to Come show at Bold Hype Gallery in NYC opening on 9 September.)
More from the GM Foods series...
No PS here.
Also, possibly, a shot to go in an upcoming local exhibition (I haven't decided which photos I want to exhibit ! ) to celebrate 30 years of a local photo club. details on the exhibition to follow...
I wonder how long will it be before this will be introduced as a bouquet of roses... I wouldn't be shocked to learn that it already has.
Biomaterials made of natural self-assembling proteins such as spider silk proteins or collagens have extremely interesting properties: For example, they have high tensile strength and elasticity and are at the same time biodegradable. Self-assembling R16 type proteins, pictured here, are able to form spherical structures.
Magnification 5 000 :1 (12cm in width)
Print free of charge. Copyright by BASF.
The spherical spores produced by the fungus Emericella nidulans are coated in a thin layer of the protein hydrophobin. Hydrophobin ensures that water rolls off the spores. Other fungi, such as mushrooms, also have a layer of hydrophobin on their caps. BASF researchers have succeeded in transferring the gene responsible for hydrophobin production to Escherichia coli bacteria.
Magnification 400 :1 (12cm in width)
Print free of charge. Copyright by BASF.
Stu Kauffman just gave a fascinating talk at the Almaden Institute on Complexity.
I would bet that his discussion of cells and genetic signaling networks will also apply to the brain and synaptic networks. The evolution of evolution itself moves up a hierarchy of abstractions to act at the network topology level.
Here are my rough notes from Kauffman’s talk:
Cells are dynamically critical because being critical is the best way to coordinate complex behaviors. (critical meaning the edge between chaos and order)
We have been taught that natural selection is the only source of order. What if there was a law that governs all of biology? It would be profound and would alter our view of biology. There are organizing principles that biology “obeys” because it is selectively useful. It’s like finding one of Newton’s law of motion for cells.
Cells are very complex. Genetic regulatory nets:
Transcriptome in yeast regulates 6500 genes, Humans: 25K
Transcription factor -> promoter or enhancer. Protein signaling cascades.
Transcriptome+protein signaling network is a parallel processing non-linear stochastic dynamical system.
Huge web. Nobody knows structures and dynamics.
Systems biology is trying to look for general laws
10^8000 genome state space.
Percolate: order, all fixed states.
Derrida deconstructionist. Mafia+deconstructionist = make you an offer you can’t understand
Hamming distance. Fan-in of K=2 or less. Take a Random network. Take 60K logic gates at random. Each gate has 2 inputs. The system Behavior is simple. It spontaneously goes to ordered regime. Nearby states converge. Dt = Dt+1 is the critical line.
Being critical is very, very rare. If it exists, it must have been selected for over 3.8B years of evolution.
Why cells should be critical?
Cells must bin past discriminations to future reliable actions
• Order: convergence in state space forgets past distinctions. Info-lossy
• Chaotic: small noise yields divergence in state space trajectories precluding reliable action
• Critical: near parallel flow optimizes capacity to bind past and future
Bacteria: operons for different food and different enzymes
Critical Boolean networks maximize robustness to mutations
Cell types correspond to attractors
Critical networks maximize the probability that such mutations leave all existing attractors intact and occasionally add new attractors.
Thus, critical networks optimize robustness of cell types to mutations and the capacity to evolve new cell types.
Mutual information: correlation between 2 variables. Entropy of variable A + B – joint entropy. Between 0 and 1. 0 = no correlation.
Ways to go from order and chaos. Inputs: order until K=2, peak for criticality.
If k greater than 2, then put lots of 1’s in there. P-bias of .15
Model of floral development shows criticality.
E.Coli: apply random 1500 values on real network; also to Yeast medusa network, 200 regulatory genes in medusa head, rest are regulated 3500 genes (humans 2500 regulating genes in medusa head, 23K regulated). If apply random Boolean functions to the yeast network, why would it be critical? This is about the dynamics of the networks. Cells do thermodynamic work. Work is constrained release of energy in few degrees of freedom, but it takes work to create the constraints. Cells do this, but we don’t have concepts for it in physics.
Hela 48 hourly time point. Affy gene array data. Lempel-Ziv analysis. Cells clearly are not chaotic; they are either ordered or critical (data lie on top of each other)
Avalanche size distribution. Deletion – see how many other genes change. Log-log straight line power law. Slope -1.5 power law (critical branching process). 250 yeast deletions, measure how many alter their activity. Ilya’s work.
NCD: normalized compression distance. Analysis of toll-like receptors on surface of macrophage. Ideal compressor. Take random length n, concatenate 2 of them. Ideal compressor will compress to n. 2 random ones, won’t be able to compress it. The more you can compress, the more similar they are. Regression gives a diagonal line, indicating it is critical. Nature, Dec 2006 Max Planck. Binary and ternary discretization leads to line that is critical. It’s breathtaking.
This is self-organization in nature via natural selection. If this is right, it may be a general law, one of the few laws in biology (e.g., Darwin, a few in ecology and population genetics). We will create life anew in the next 15 years. My bet is that life anywhere in the universe will be critical because it is the best way to coordinate complex behaviors.
Plant samples in the gene bank, part of CIAT's Genetic Resources program, at the institution's headquarters in Colombia.
Credit: ©2010CIAT/NeilPalmer
Please credit accordingly and leave a comment when you use a CIAT photo.
For more info: ciat-comunicaciones@cgiar.org
(BEST SEEN INFAMOUSLY LARGE... "STAND ASIDE, I TAKE LARGE STEPS!")
“To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee”
(Captain Ahab. Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville/ Also quoted by Khan Noonien Singh. in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan)
Actor Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino (born Mexico City, November 25, 1920) died on January 14th, 2009.
His seventy year career in both the United States of America and Mexico spanned radio, television, movies, and theatre. A champion of U.S/Mexican friendship and active in the cause of raising the profile of latino actors. Montalbán often, during his early career in Hollywood at least, played Asian, Arab and Native American characters, as well as "Latin Lovers", particularly in musicals, where he also showcased his talents as a song and dance man. (Khan Singh? Yes. He. Can! The Powers That Be wanted him to change his name to "Ricky Martin"....a bullet he fortunately dodged!)
To science fiction and fantasy fans he was famous for his roles as Star Trek's villainous Khan Noonien Singh and Fantasy Island's Mr Roarke.
Montalbán played the 20th Century genetically engineered 'superman', Khan, twice, in the 1967 episode of classic Trek, "Space Seed" (written by Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber, based on a story by Carey Wilber, and directed by Marc Daniels) and fifteen years later in the second Star Trek movie, "The Wrath Of Khan". (Written by Nicholas Meyer and Jack B. Sowards, Directed by Nicholas Meyer) He was Mr Roarke in the Fantasy Island television series from 1977 to 1984. Ironically, Montalbán was replaced in the revival of Fantasy Island by Malcom McDowell, the actor whose character in the film Star Trek: Generations WOULD infamously succeed where Khan failed in bringing about the death of Captain James T. Kirk.
Genre buffs may also recall that Montalbán played the circus owner in Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (1971) and Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes (1972).
Other movies he acted in included The Saracen Blade, Across The Wide Missouri, The Queen of Babylon, Sayonara, Madame X, The Singing Nun, Fiesta, Santa, La Fuga, The Naked Gun, The Kissing Bandit, Cannonball Run II and of course the Spy Kids series. It was during the filming of the 1951 Western, Across The Wide Missouri that Montalbán was reportedly injured in a riding accident, which left him with back and leg pain that would trouble him for the rest of his life, ultimately resulting in him becoming wheelchair bound after an operation in 1993. His disability does not seem to have slowed his career much, as he was still playing an action hero grandfather in a rocket assisted wheelchair in the 21st Century's Spy Kids series!
Apart from a notable roles in The Colbys and Dynasty he also appeared in person or as a voice actor on television in genre shows like Wonder Woman, Kim Possible, Heaven Help Us, Mission Impossible, Freakazoid!, The Man From Uncle, Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command and Dora The Explorer. One of his final roles was playing a genetically Engineered cow in an episode of Family Guy, where he satirised his Khan character.
I first saw Montalbán in The Saracen Blade, and kept spotting him in both movies and television, finally catching up with his Khan role in Star Trek sometime in the 1970s. It became a favourite episode and I was quite chuffed when the actor reprised his role in the second Star Trek movie. Although I was very much impressed by the first Star trek film's mix of upbeat futurism and spectacular special effects I also welcomed the more traditional space opera approach of the second film in the long running series and thought that Khan was a terrific villain, so effectively played by Montalbán exploiting his commanding voice and physical presence (still serious buff in his sixties...and apparently into his seventies as well!).
I saw both films far more times than I did Star Wars, and those first two movies helped consolidate what I expect will be a lifelong love of Star Trek. Happily, Star Trek was also instrumental in helping to give me an enduring interest in general literature, supplementing my passion for science fiction and fantasy. Captain Kirk was always quoting this or that book, which, with the help of Bjos Trimble's Star Trek Concordance I would then dutifully track down and devour. (Trivia note: Ironically, I would later go on to contribute Khan related illustrations, amongst other artwork, to a later edition of the Concordance.)
The Wrath Of Khan, famously, contains a shuttlecraft full of references, from the copy of A Tale of Two Cities that Spock gives as a birthday gift to Kirk, to the ramshackle bookshelf of titles that Chekov discovered in the cargo containers that Khan and his followers made as their home when marooned on the doomed Ceti Alpha V. (Incidentally, Khan's original spaceship was the S.S Botany Bay, a name guaranteed to make any Aussie sit up and take notice..)
The books were chosen for the film to reflect Khan's vengeful, arrogant mindset, and he quotes extensively from that epic Whale's Tail of obsessive revenge, Moby-Dick. There's also a couple of copies of Milton's "Paradise Lost" (qouted in Space Seed), King Lear, Dante's Inferno and a Bible.
I had copies of most of these books from the 1980s and coupled with some Micromachines Star Trek starships (U.S.S Enterprise and the hijacked U.S.S Reliant) I thought these would make an appropriate setting to display the 6 inch Art Asylum Khan Action Figure. There's a couple of books that I left out, such as what looks to be 'mundane' Federation guide to Statutes Governing Commerce and what may be a Complete Works Of Shakespeare. I've never been religious so it's charitable of me to include the Bible, but it seems to me that Khan, if anything, soaked up all the 'wrathful' content ("An eye for an eye"). Setting them up as monolithic steps seemed to work well, and for the base how could I possibly bypass a length of "Soft Corinthian leather...." (To quote one of R.M's automobile commercials)
Photoshop was my ally for eliminating assorted rigging and providing a suitably dark and stormy spacescape as well as creating firey phaser blasts for Khan to smite poor Enterprise, harpooning his nemesis in best Ahabian tradition...
Ricardo Montalbán was, by all accounts, a remarkably chivalrous and unfailingly polite old school gentleman so it does him something of a disservice to memorialise him by referencing the tyrannical Khan.
Still, what a great role for an actor!
And what a great inspiration for the young Trekker that I was back then. I fondly recall writing a long fan story about Khan's adventures on Ceti Alpha V, where he fought and defeated the survivors of a Klingon shipwreck...collecting an old Klingon proverb or two as a trophy. ("Reveng is a dish best served cold"...is actually Sicilian, but what's an attribution amongst enemies!) Little did I know back then that Greg Cox would expand splendidly on the whole Khan saga in his trilogy "The Rise & Fall Of Khan Noonien Singh" or that the supermen/augments would later feature in Star Trek: Enterprise. Vonda McIntyre also did a wonderful job expanding upon the movie script and Khan's character. amongst others, in her sophisticated novelization.
But it all started with Ricardo, and his masterful turn as Khan.....
And it’s hard to choose just one, but it would have to be Bonnie Bassler’s talk on bacterial communication, which just went online.
I had dinner with Bonnie before her talk and was captivated. So much so that I changed seats to talk with her instead of Paul Allen, Bezos, and some other very interesting folks around the table.
There are 10x as many bacterial cells as human cells in and on your body, and 100x as many bacterial genes as human genes. And you depend on them for survival.
“At best you are 10% human, but closer to 1%, depending on which metrics you like.”
It reminded me of Craig Venter’s observation that the bacteria in each of our lungs is genetically unique, evolving in real time in an adaptive dance with our immune system.
How can some bacteria make us sick? At a fraction of the size of a human cell, “bacteria are too small to have an impact on the environment if they simply act as individuals.”
“All bacteria can talk to each other. They make chemical words, they recognize those words, and they turn on group behaviors that are only successful when all of the cells participate in unison.”
“Bacteria always control pathogenicity with quorum sensing.”
They wait until they are concentrated enough before they launch an attack on their host; otherwise they would be wasting energy when sub-threshold.
And to prevent local hot spots emerging in isolation from their more distant peers, each bacteria has a positive feedback loop, dumping more signaling chemicals into the bath once they cross a threshold (this way, the entire population can switch modes in unison, from growth mode to attack mode for example).
Each bacteria has two separate signaling pathways. One receptor is exquisitely unique to each species, and one general to all bacteria (“bacterial Esperanto”). Bacteria can distinguish self from other and can determine their absolute concentration and their concentration relative to other bacteria.
“This is the invention of multi-cellularity. We think bacteria made the rules for how multi-cellular organization works.”
Jam the receptor. Instead of killing the bacteria, which would engendering evolutionary resistance, “what if we could do ‘behavior modifications’ so they can’t talk and don’t know to launch virulence.”
At dinner, I suggested that artificially induced group behaviors may also be interesting in biofilms used for water purification and other non-medical applications.
I was also reminded of my first course on neural networks (Rummelhardt, PDP). After simulating a number of neuronal circuits, early research concluded that the neuron needs a sigmoid function — some non-linear tipping point in its response curve — for learning to occur. The positive feedback loop in bacterial quorum sensing is just such a sigmoid, and may provide clues to the early development of cellular signaling, initially among nearest neighbors in pre-Cambrian blobs, and then across differentiated body plans with the long-span neuronal cells. I’m not thinking of evolutionary subsumption or endobiosis, but a resonant developmental homology in primitive signaling systems.
“When you learn new things about natural science, whenever you read something miraculous, it was done by a child. Everyone on my research team is between 20 and 30 years old. They are the engine that drives scientific discovery in this country.”
You can see why this was my favorite talk. =)
Plant samples in the gene bank, part of CIAT's Genetic Resources program, at the institution's headquarters in Colombia.
Credit: ©2010CIAT/NeilPalmer
Please credit accordingly and leave a comment when you use a CIAT photo.
For more info: ciat-comunicaciones@cgiar.org
Salesman's box for genetically engineered pets.
Just choose how you like your pet to look like, fill in the order form, and three weeks later you get your very own "Perfect Pet" (life length may vary)
Each genetically modified rice plant in the greenhouses at CropDesign has a barcode and transponder, allowing it to be accurately identified at any time. The rice plants ripen in the greenhouse until they are harvested some of them under ideal conditions. Others are subjected to various stress situations, such as a high salt concentration in the soil or severe drought. Researchers monitor the development of all the plants: they are photographed and measured at regular intervals. The resulting data provide information about the characteristics of the plants and thus about the transported genes. Belgian biotechnology company CropDesign develops Œtraits¹ for the global seed market. A trait is a genetic feature that gives a crop an economically useful characteristic, such as higher yield. Traits are determined by a plant¹s genes. Print free of charge. Copyright by BASF.
he is king of the flowerpot.
and i am going to look under the flowerpot tonight to see if he has produced viable offspring (the last ones died due to the queen of the flowerpot being a lazy mother).
Documenting the impact of improved climbing beans in Rwanda.
Credit: ©2011CIAT/NeilPalmer
Please credit accordingly and leave a comment when you use a CIAT photo.
For more info: ciat-comunicaciones@cgiar.org
People like pumpkins.
People like cats.
People should love Pumpkats™
It's not fair. I spent billions refining the perfect recipe. I planted millions of seeds and...
...only one Pumpkat™ grew.
This makes me less than splendidly happy. I'll never recoup the research costs...
What happened? Why didn't they grow?
*sobs*
Next year... there's always next year...
I know you'd love to:
Interactive stations, works of art, research projects, large-scale projections and laboratories. The Ars Electronica Center invites visitors to exciting and inspiring excursions into the future fields of artificial intelligence and neuroscience, robotics and autonomous mobility, as well as genetic engineering and biotechnology!
Ars Electronica Center Linz
Ars-Electronica-Straße 1
4040 Linz
Austria
Credit: Ars Electronica - Robert Bauernhansl
Documenting the impact of improved climbing beans in Rwanda.
Credit: ©2011CIAT/NeilPalmer
Please credit accordingly and leave a comment when you use a CIAT photo.
For more info: ciat-comunicaciones@cgiar.org
Ringiers farbige Kinderbücher / Kinderbuchserie
> Ringgi + Zofi / Spannende Abenteuer in Genikon
von Robi Reinfrank und Röbu Schnieper
Ringier & Co AG / Zürich 1988
ex libris MTP
Plant samples in the gene bank at CIAT's Genetic Resources Unit, at the institution's headquarters in Colombia.
Credit: ©2010CIAT/NeilPalmer
Please credit accordingly and leave a comment when you use a CIAT photo.
For more info: ciat-comunicaciones@cgiar.org
Plant samples in the gene bank at CIAT's Genetic Resources Unit, at the institution's headquarters in Colombia.
Credit: ©2010CIAT/NeilPalmer
Please credit accordingly and leave a comment when you use a CIAT photo.
For more info: ciat-comunicaciones@cgiar.org
Plant samples in the gene bank at CIAT's Genetic Resources Unit, at the institution's headquarters in Colombia.
Credit: ©2010CIAT/NeilPalmer
Please credit accordingly and leave a comment when you use a CIAT photo.
For more info: ciat-comunicaciones@cgiar.org
From the Monsanto Innovation Forum today:
“To support humanity’s needs, we will have to grow more crops in the next fifty years than in the past 10,000 years combined.”
How?
“In 2030, unattended vehicles will do most of the work, driven by imagery and remote sensing, with new inputs like x-rays of root growth under ground.”
“Corn has doubled its yield twice in history. The first came from the mechanization of farming. Then the move from 75 to 150 bushels/acre came from a new age in the science of seeds and fertility. Both of these advances were on an average basis, with one improved crop for all conditions. The average solution loses a lost of potential value, and the next doubling to 300 bushels/acre will take a systems approach for micro-specialization.”
This all makes sense to me, but I have to take issue with one detail on the 2030 vision — I doubt they will be using a Blackberry phone. =)
Monsanto is the largest seed company and the largest gene sequencer on Earth. They turn over their entire seed product line every three years.
In their molecular breeding program, they sample and sequence each individual corn kernel to detect variation across the cob, with a fleet of ten automated machines, each of which can chip one seed/second to look for 10-100 genetic markers per seed. They test the seeds at 7 million plots at 500 sites in 50 countries. In 2012, they moved from daily data collection to every two hours. It becomes a big data problem. They went from 3 to 8 Petabytes of data in 2012.
This year they will introduce drought-tolerant seeds with a transgene from bacteria. The product has been in development for 12 years with a combination of breeding, biotech and agronomics.
They also have had recent success with spraying naked RNAi (a computer-designed gene silencing technology) on crops to attack beetles and herbicide-resistant weeds. The biologics program is also working on the downstream health of bees.
In March, Monsanto will introduce Field Scripts which takes satellite imagery and soil variation data to drive variable rate planters so planting density and depth will be optimized (e.g., you want plant less densely in poor soil and deeper in times of drought). In their 2012 test, they saw a 5-10 bushel/acre benefit from this optimization algorithm, which would translate to $3-6B of value for the U.S. corn market alone.
They currently use UAVs to count stalks and monitor their health plant-by-plant on their research fields. They are the future of farm equipment as well. “Small autonomous vehicles are a win win. The current oversized combines compacts the soil which reduces yield.”
“Agriculture is set to undergo a series of dramatic changes as IT/Big Data intersects with Robotics, Novel Sensors and Life Science innovations.”
Raisinets.
Maybe it's the soy?
"In 2014, the state of Vermont enacted a law – Act 120 – that required labels on products containing genetically engineered ingredients. This law was effective July 1, 2016. However, on July 29, 2016, President Obama signed Public Law 114-216 which establishes a “National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard” and calls for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to “establish a national mandatory bioengineered food disclosure standard”. This federal law preempts the State of Vermont’s law, and the Vermont law will not be enforced."
Perhaps disclosures of the type shown on this package will disappear?
I have read, "Raisinets are the number one largest selling candy in United States history." I have also read they are the second and third most popular.
Canola refers to a cultivar of either Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) or Field Mustard (Brassica campestris L. or Brassica Rapa var.). Its seeds are used to produce edible oil suitable for consumption by humans and livestock. The oil is also suitable for use as biodiesel.
The name "canola" was derived from "Canadian oil, low acid" in 1978. Although wild rapeseed oil contains significant amounts of erucic acid, a known toxin, the cultivar used to produce commercial, food-grade canola oil was bred to contain less than 2% erucic acid.
A genetically engineered rapeseed that is tolerant to herbicide was first introduced to Canada in 1995, and since then, genetically modified rapeseed, canola, has become a point of controversy and contentious legal battles.
The introduction of the genetically modified crop to Australia is generating considerable controversy. Canola is Australia's major oilseed crop, and also Australia’s third biggest crop, and is used often by wheat farmers as a break crop to improve soil quality. In 2003, Australia's gene technology regulator approved the release of canola altered to make it resistant to the herbicide Glufosinate ammonium (Zero or Roundup). This can encourage the evolution of weeds also resistant to existing herbicides, so farmers will be forced to use more powerful herbicides.
The Australian Oilseeds Federation gives a glowing report of the benefits of all Australian oils on its website www.australianoilseeds.com/australian_oils_natures_finest The website mentions nothing about genetic engineering.