Illumination 2.0

While Australian farmers have adopted GE crops with great economic and environmental success, the government of the state of South Australia has imposed a moratorium on their use.  The ban has been in place since 2005, and farmers in the region need to rely on more intensive methods of weed control and experience lower yields.  Recent political changes sought to reverse the ban.  Today's podcast features Caroline Rhodes, the CEO of Grain Producers South Australia, and discusses the unfair and burdensome rules that harm the state's producers.  Listen to this episode here. 

Massive repositories of biological data have been generated over the last two decades. While humans can target certain goals to derive from the data, computational tools can oftentimes find what humans cannot, and do so without the inherent bias of the human brain. Dr. Gabe Musso from BioSymmetrics expertly describes artificial intelligence and machine learning, its limitations and misconceptions.  Listen to this episode here. 

New laying chickens are constantly produced to satisfy the demand for eggs. Unfortunately, males and females hatch, only the females are needed for egg production.  The males are destroyed shortly after birth, which leads to ethical and practical questions. Dr. Nigel Urwin describes efforts to use biotechnology to allow separation of eggs containing male or female embryos. The technology may change perceptions of genetic engineering and egg production. This episode may be heard here.  

Michele Payn is  a much sought after keynote speaker and writer, and a strong advocate for agriculture.  She has completed the third book, this one dedicated to the pervasive problem of shaming and criticism around our personal food choices.  Listen to the whole story here.  

This week's podcast is pure gold, a great interview with Dr. Joe Fraietta from University of Pennsylvania.  Dr. Fraietta discusses CAR-T cells, human immune cells genetically engineered to attack specific cancers.  It is a great primer on a new therapy that is changing cancer treatment.  Listen to the Podcast Here.

This week's podcast covers plant-based meats and biotechnology used to create them, with Fueled by Science founder Dr. Chana Davis.  Listen here!  

My heart goes out to UC Berkeley researchers that literally had the plug pulled on their research.  Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has initiated a series of power shut-downs to curtail  potential wildfires sparked by their power lines in the Bay Area.  A few years ago their equipment led to a massive wildfire where they were found liable, so this move attempts to limit their exposure-- by cutting off power to 2.5 million people for up to 6 days .  This causes unbelievably hard problems for folks in need of power to run medical electrical equipment etc, so it there are significant issues here that reach beyond inconvenience.  That said, this is an important note to faculty (and postdocs and students) about the limits of a university to help with a major crisis-- no matter how good the facilities people are, you can't count on the system to save you.  That reality as researchers proactively took charge to save their critical resources. I have a funn...