T minus zero to a private space industry

Wow, we're closer than I thought.

Virgin's ready to start testing their spaceship this year, and expects to break even by 2014!

Signing away my copyrights

I completed the final step today to publish my first peer-reviewed, first-author paper. It's very much a minor paper, but it's kinda cool to go through the whole peer-review experience for the first time. After I okay'd the proofs, the last task was to fill out and fax off the copyright transfer agreement.

It's funny to think i have something worth copyrighting to give away.

Genetic engineering taking off

Most commercial releases of GMOs so far have been more or less simple plug and play transgene additions, e.g. herbicide resistance. A new soybean cultivar, on track for release in 2009, appears to involve more sophisticated metabolic engineering. Most vegetable oils have to be modified by hydrogenation in order to make them stable against chemical breakdown, with negative health side effects (the production of trans fats). This new soybean cultivar has oils that are already stable and won't require hydrogenation. I expect we'll see increasingly complex biochemical engineering in the near future.

Just in time to adapt to global warming! or cooling... or whatever...