technologyreview.com — Researchers at Duke University are hoping to develop methods to reversibly turn off harmful or unwanted genes in bacteria. If they succeed, gene silencing could be used to treat persistent infections by turning off antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria and in environmental and industrial applications
Jun 12, 2008 View in Crawl 4
gn0stikJun 12, 2008
Two great points there. Not to mention, in most cases of ethanol from corn, we can easily sell the corn as food, and process the bulk of the biomass, plant stocks, and bad cobs to fuel. Win-win. Biofuels as with any topic is not simply black and white. There are different types of biofuels for different types of vehicles, and it can be made from a number of sources. 50% of the refuse in our landfills is biomass that can be converted. Restaurants and hotels being a major contributor. Another reason that biofuels from agricultural sources is a good idea is that if it increases farm subsidies and ag output, we've got that much more land converting CO2 rather than creating it. If it's more profitable to farmers than beef, all the better, we begin to work on the methane problem too.All we have to do is want it bad enough.
thuornJun 13, 2008
Oh, I understand that. Forgive me, in my rush I should have been more specific. My issue stems from the use of grains specifically. I agree converting organic waste into fuel we can use again is ideal for solving several problems. Thank you for pointing out my discrepancy.
nanostuffJun 13, 2008
"making an ever increasing amount of our fuel production disappear down the food hole is a crime."So it's ok to use the same amount of land for non-food production as long as what is being produced could not have been theoretically eaten?Don't make me explain to you how f**king stupid that is. If it's not going to be eaten anyways it doesn't matter whether it's produced from food sources or not.