Decoding of wheat genome completed
Eurekalert: 26 August 2010
How Fast Can Microbes Clean Up the Gulf Oil Spill?
Scientific American 24 August 2010
Don't stand in the way of genomes for all
New Scientist opinion 21 August 2010
How DNA evidence creates victims of chance
New Scientist 21 August 2010
One for teachers and CSI fans. The fallability of DNA evidence and how you can prove anything with statistics
Would you like gene tech with that? The Tweet Twopics
By Jason
TechNyou
Running parallel to the discussion happening inside the Science Exchange last week was a Twitter blow-by-blow account and series of alternative discussions taking different tangents to those in the physical space. Apart from TechNyou there were nine in the Twitter discussion – Full discussion found here
Some of the key points raised and being tossed around in the Tweet-a-sphere were the following:
1. Is GM all that different to traditional plant breeding? as traditional breeding still involved gene manipulation its just not technical.
2. GM is proposed as a way to help feed developing nations, but how do they access the crops or the produce, is it better for it the grown in situ or distributed?
3. Does the aim of GM make a difference as to whether its acceptable? for example the audience appeared to be far more accepting of the idea of drough tolerant wheat a opposed to rice enriched with vitamin A. which leads onto the question is this a wealthy western issue, we can afford to be disciminatory but many people can’t.
4. Why does GM present such a problem when people quite happily eat artificial products, like sweetners and flavouring. Why are GM product such a concern when artificial products aren’t?
5. What concerns people more, GM meat or GM plants?
6. The importance of labelling, who is responsible, how much disclosure is required.
Online forum happening now
Some of these discussion points will appear on the event online forum happening now
Plant world’s blueprint for surviving drought revealed
eCALS – College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: 23 August 2010