Gene Therapy – Potential, Pros, Cons and Ethics

Genetic technology poses risks along with its rewards, just as any technology has in the past. To stop its development and forfeit the benefits gene therapy could offer would be a far greater mistake than forging ahead could ever be. People must always try to be responsible with their new technology, but gene therapy has the potential to be the future of medicine and its possibilities must be explored

A latent class approach to investigating consumer demand for genetically modified staple food in a developing country: The case of GM bananas in Uganda

genetically modified bananas, Consumers, Choice experiment, latent class model, preference heterogeneity, Science and technology, Genetic resources, Genetically engineered crops, Genetically modified crops,

Enclosing the Global Plant Genetic Commons

Looks at policies related to the development, use, and control of plant genetic resources, with a focus on property rights in relation to changing technology and its impact on food security in developing countries

Multiobjective genetic algorithm strategies for electricity production from generation IV nuclear technology

Development of a technico-economic optimization strategy of cogeneration systems of electricity/hydrogen, consists in finding an optimal efficiency of the generating cycle and heat delivery system, maximizing the energy production and minimizing the production costs. The first part of the paper is related to the development of a multiobjective optimization library (MULTIGEN) to tackle all types of problems arising from cogeneration. After a literature review for identifying the most efficient methods, the MULTIGEN library is described, and the innovative points are listed. A new stopping criterion, based on the stagnation of the Pareto front, may lead to significant decrease of computational times, particularly in the case of problems involving only integer variables. Two practical examples are presented in the last section. The former is devoted to a bicriteria optimization of both exergy destruction and total cost of the plant, for a generating cycle coupled with a Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR). The second example consists in designing the heat exchanger of the generating turbomachine. Three criteria are optimized: the exchange surface, the exergy destruction and the number of exchange modules

Unstandard Standardization: The Case of Biology

How applicable are the approaches adopted by information and communication technology standards-setting organizations to biological standards? Most engineering-based industries construct products from standard, well understood components. By contrast, despite the early attachment of the moniker “genetic engineering” to biotechnology, standardization in the biological sciences has been relatively rare

IP provisions of the EU-Central America Association Agreement and development issues

The recent Association Agreement signed between the European Union and Central American countries contains important intellectual property provisions. Some of these provisions have been inserted in the treaty to meet Central American states' needs, especially with reference to technology transfer issues, the protection of public health and the protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge

How to distinguish between a block cipher and a random permutation by lowering the input entropy

IEEE 35th International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology. Londres, 16-19 October 2001A novel cryptanalysis technique is presented, and its suitability for distinguishing a block cipher algorithm or a hash function from a random permutation is explained. Additionally, we propose a genetic algorithm based implementation and show some preliminary results of these ideas on reduced rounds versions of the block cipher TEA

Modeling viral infectious diseases and development of antiviral therapies using human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived systems

The recent biotechnology breakthrough of cell reprogramming and generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which has revolutionized the approaches to study the mechanisms of human diseases and to test new drugs, can be exploited to generate patient-specific models for the investigation of host-pathogen interactions and to develop new antimicrobial and antiviral therapies. Applications of iPSC technology to the study of viral infections in humans have included in vitro modeling of viral infections of neural, liver, and cardiac cells; modeling of human genetic susceptibility to severe viral infectious diseases, such as encephalitis and severe influenza; genetic engineering and genome editing of patient-specific iPSC-derived cells to confer antiviral resistance

The Failure of Federal Biotechnology Regulation

The recent court case and state ballot measures regarding mandatory labels for Genetically Modified Organisms (“GMOs”) suggest the need for a deeper conversation about the federal framework for regulating biotechnology. What is it about GMOs that consumers feel they have the “right to know?” Why has a generation of federal biotechnology regulation failed to satisfy consumer concerns? Are those concerns irrational, or is the regulatory structure inadequate? This Article argues that many consumer concerns underlying the labeling movement raise important scientific and extra- scientific questions that have been apparent since the advent of the technology in the 1980s. Moreover, these concerns persist because the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology has failed to respond to them effectively. The Coordinated Framework was based on statutes that pre-existed the technology and thus poorly fit the unique risks of genetic engineering. Today, genetic engineering is on the verge of a radical shift in technology, a shift that has already begun to burst the seams of those old statutes, leaving agencies with no regulatory authority at all over new products. This Article reviews the evidence behind persistent concerns about GMOs, considers the failures of the Coordinated Framework to address the most valid of those concerns, and canvasses policy questions that Congress must consider to more effectively tailor agency authority to address the risks and to enhance the potential of this rapidly-changing field of technology