Tag Archives: synthetic biology

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Is Progress Outpacing Precaution? Experts Weigh In

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Illustration by An Arres.

No one expects the machinery of progress to roll backwards, but sometimes it seems that no one is watching the speedometer (or manning the brakes, assuming any exist).  Is this a fair assessment? If so, should we be worried — and what can we do about it?

In this feature, experts on technology, risk, science, policy and neuroscience discuss risk, innovation and how our values affect our conceptions of both.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
ASU Experts Weigh the Risks of Innovation

Biochemistry, Chemistry, Consumer, Genetics, Green, Science, Technology, Weird

Driving by Larch Light

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Photo courtesy Glowing Plant.

Would you want to live in a world that looks like a Pandora knockoff, or blares like the wall decorations of a stoner crash pad? What if you couldn’t turn it off?

Such were the questions raised when a Kickstarter campaign launched to “create real glowing plants in a do-it-yourself biolab in California.” At first, observers merely wondered if the technology could work. But as time passed, their questions moved on to more troubling concerns regarding the unregulated spreading of genetically modified seeds…

Could glow-in-the-dark plants replace streetlights?