tag > Biotech
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Blackstone to acquire Ancestry.com for $4.7 billion
The Trump-supporting company that owns Motel 6, a chain that illegally sold its guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without a warrant, just bought our DNA.
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These ancient seafloor microbes woke up after over 100 million years
Even after 100 million years buried in the seafloor, some microbes can wake up. And they’re hungry. An analysis of seafloor sediments dating from 13 million to nearly 102 million years ago found that nearly all of the microbes in the sediments were only dormant, not dead. When given food, even the most ancient microbes revived themselves and multiplied, researchers report July 28 in Nature.
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Scientists Hack Mouse Brains to "Erase" Opioid Addiction
One of the hardest parts of treating addiction is keeping patients from relapsing. Now, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences say that they’ve “interrupted the brain pathway responsible for morphine-associated memories in mice, that is, ‘erasing’ the drug-associated memory from the brain.” To treat the mice, the team gave them brain implants: a fiber optic that shined light onto a region called the paraventricular thalamus and blocked withdrawal symptoms. A day later, the mice no longer sought out morphine and relapse — or at least do the lab mouse version of relapsing — even after two weeks.
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Robotic lab assistant is 1,000 times faster at conducting research
Researchers have developed what they say is a breakthrough robotic lab assistant, able to move around a laboratory and conduct scientific experiments just like a human.
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UN expert Jean Ziegler describes bio-fuels as “crime against humanity”
A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce bio-fuels as a replacement for gasoline as a crime against humanity. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared bio-fuels would bring more hunger.
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The Heroin trade is colossal: one gram of pure heroin selling at $902 is equivalent to almost a million US dollars a kilo ($902,000) (via)
Since 2001, according to UNODC, the production of opium has increased 50 times, (compared to 185 ton in 2001) reaching 9000 metric tons in 2017. It has almost tripled in relation to its historical levels.
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The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's World Drug Report 2005 estimates the size of the global illicit drug market at US$321.6 billion in 2003 alone. With a world GDP of US$36 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally.
#Comment: The "Illegal drug trade estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade" is a bad joke - and the real numbers are likely pure dark comedy.
Drug trafficking networks in the world-economy
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Led By Asia, Global Plant-Based Meat Market To Hit US$21 Billion By 2025
A new report says that the global vegan meat market will grow to US$21 billion by as soon as 2025. The study finds that the majority of the growth will come from the Asian market, citing preference for tofu and tempeh plant proteins as a key reason, as well as the steadily increasing demand for environmentally friendly alternatives.
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FEMA Tells States to Hand Public Health Data Over to Palantir
"If their AI learns to infer and predict patterns of the disease from our public data, then that becomes a hugely lucrative advantage for Palantir, especially now when every business sector wants to know where COVID is going and how hard it’s going to hit"
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The end of plastic? New plant-based bottles will degrade in a year (Guardian)
Beer and soft drinks could soon be sipped from “all-plant” bottles under new plans to turn sustainably grown crops into plastic in partnership with major beverage makers. The project has the backing of Carlsberg, Coca-Cola and Danone, which hope to secure the future of their bottled products by tackling the environmental damage caused by plastic pollution and a reliance on fossil fuels.
In time, Avantium plans to use plant sugars from sustainable sourced biowaste so that the rise of plant plastic does not affect the global food supply chain. -
Use of genetically modified viruses and genetically engineered virus-vector vaccines: environmental effects (2006)
DNA and mRNA vaccines involve the introduction of foreign and engineered genetic material into a person’s cells and past studies have found that such vaccines ‘possess significant unpredictability and a number of inherent harmful potential hazards’ and that ‘there is inadequate knowledge to define either the probability of unintended events or the consequences of genetic modifications.’”
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America's Government Approves Release of Genetically-Engineered Mosquitoes (bloomberg)
The EPA on Friday granted permission for genetically engineered mosquitoes to be released into the Florida Keys and around Houston to see if they can help limit the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses. British biotech company Oxitec Ltd was granted an experimental use permit to release a genetically engineered type of the mosquito species Aedes aegypti, which is a known vector of Zika virus and viruses that cause yellow fever and dengue fever, the Environmental Protection Agency office of Chemical Safety and Pollution announced.
#Biotech #Biology #FFHCI #ALife
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Scientists Create Glowing Plants Using Mushroom Genes (Guardian)
Emitting an eerie green glow, they look like foliage from a retro computer game, but in fact they are light-emitting plants produced in a laboratory. Researchers say the glowing greenery could not only add an unusual dimension to home decor but also open up a fresh way for scientists to explore the inner workings of plants.
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UK government using confidential patient data in coronavirus response (Guardian)
"Technology firms are processing large volumes of confidential UK patient information in a data-mining operation as part of the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak"
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In summary: Bill Gates talks about creating a vaccine with low side effects so it can be given to 7 billion people. He says he wants to use his vaccine to vaccinate the entire population. He also says he’ll need indemnification to be protected from all lawsuits.
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A Google Plan to Wipe Out Mosquitoes Appears to Be Working (Bloomberg)
Alphabet unit Verily, which is also running coronavirus test sites, reports major progress in Debug project.
