Obtaining medical substances isn’t always an easy task. In the early days of history, the only available sources were from plants and fungi, whereby substances were derived from them in various manners. This wasn’t a very controlled or even effective method, resulting in variable dosages and just not a lot of worthwhile ingredients obtained overall. […]
Evolution isn’t perfect. It is not a controlled or directed system, but instead just a result of adaptation to one’s environment through trial and error. Over a long period of time and generations, this trends toward organisms with better traits suited for their environment, because those with less suited traits from random mutations when born […]
Rubber is one of those unusual substances that isn’t thought about much, but is used in practically everything. From the simple and direct usage in tires for vehicles to any kind of hose or machinery belt or insulation in tiled flooring. There is also the rubber that is used to create latex, which is so […]
A Historical Viewpoint The Explosion Onto The Public Stage For those focused on how history will favor the uncovering of CRISPR and the miraculous developments that have and will spawn from it, the first thing to note is that the idea and research into the technology started several years prior to its explosion into the […]
Plants aren’t all that different than animals, when it comes down to it. While they can photosynthesize their needs from the sun, for the most part, they still require the same general nutrients and access to water that we do. And one other critical component that they need to survive is the ability to breathe. […]
Food poisoning is an ongoing problem in the food supply line around the world. Even in the cleanest and most stringent of countries, outbreaks of illness still occur every now and then from some contaminated food source. This isn’t surprising, though, as there are so many parts of the food processing pipeline, from farm to […]
We’ve discussed the creation of electronic plants recently and the idea of using plants as electrical storage and transferring devices, allowing an electric connection from, say, one end of a garden or field to another. But plants can transfer far more than just electricity. They are already masters at transferring necessary nutrients from the soil […]
It is a simple fact of science that over evolutionary time, such as thousands or even millions of years, an organism’s diet can influence and alter its genetics to make it more adapted toward the food it eats. The Effects of Agriculture There is a natural assumption that the same is true for humans, as […]
The fight against Potyviruses is seemingly neverending in agriculture. Say Hello To Another Terrible Potyvirus As past discussions have shown, they are some of the most deadly plant viruses out there, causing huge swaths of crop death and harvest losses. Additionally, moving up a level to the family of Potyviridae shows that 30% of all […]
In studies of how to survive in space and in hostile environments, there is often no better a scientific specimen than the tardigrade, the so-called water bear. This is due to its capability to survive in such scenarios and far more besides. Even exposure to the vacuum of space doesn’t do much to deter it. […]
