Don't jump to conclusions. Every attempt I've ever heard of at cultured meat, or any other tissue for that matter, has been highly dependent upon nutrient solutions derived from living animals. Many are based on animal blood, some on liver or other tissue. I'd bet far FAR more animals went into this over prices burger than would have been necessary for the McDonalds my family had for lunch yesterday.

If you'd like an explanation, from University experts in the field as to WHY, check out this webinar I attended a few weeks ago. It was sponsored by the Federation of Animal Science Societies as part of their series of Science Policy Webinars.

For the tl;dw crowd... If you can't be bothered to spend 80 min learning about the why of a policy from the most qualified scientists in the field, then please shut up and stop pretending your objections are anything other than religious in nature.

As Astaines pointed out, this is still very early work. I'm sure that one of the goals is to get the blood glucose levels down to a more normal range. However, the fact that it appeared to control glucose at all is impressive.

Even if a diabetic is fitted with a pump (3 of my friends have them), you still get abnormal spikes and dips in your blood glucose level over time. Based on some epidemiological data (of which I'm always sceptical to be sure) it appears as though these large swings in blood glucose concentration may take years off of a diabetics life. If this technology can counter some of that, then it could very well be work it. Too early to tell.

As a counter to your "pheromone" argument, which I don't really buy because the only human pheromone receptors to have been discovered are non-functioning, I'd suggest an argument based on hormones.

Mothers are producing tons of prolactin which has been shown to trigger parenting instincts in people. Even fathers produce prolactin after the birth of a child. Lactating women continue to produce prolactin (sharing the same root word with lactation for a reason) until the child weans, but fathers prolactin levels drop lower (not completely though) after a few weeks. Based on this, I'd recommend giving fathers more time so that they can develop a much stronger bond with their new child since they are at a biological disadvantage here.

This is purely speculation on my part, but it might help with the absentee or emotionally distant fathers we tend to see. The more contact a man has with their child early on, the longer the high levels of prolactin will persist, and the deeper the man will bond with the newborn... Or so my theory goes.

Interesting...

Now that I think about it, I was making a recommendation to a friend about which iPad to get and I told him that either of the last two models would be fine for his needs, as would the mini. Never occurred to me that this could be a limiting factor on the ultimate size of the annual market once it is close to fully saturated. Phones, at

I could be wrong, but I believe that is their point. OTA TV is funded by commercials. Commercial rates are based on viewership, and the assumption that those viewers (or some percentage of them) are actually watching the commercials. I believe the objection comes from the ability to skip commercials via Aereo's restreaming technology. They get a different rate from cable companies, which I believe includes some compensation for the DVRs that the cable company rents out to customers. Since the courts have already determined that time shifting is legal, and they now have classified Aereo's approach as time shifting and not rebroadcasting, the broadcasters fear that they will lose money unless they find a way to neutralize OTA time shifting.

Not saying they are going about it the right way. Just my impression of their perspective.

I agree with your criticism of the unemployment calculation. However, the issue that you are missing with regard to the inverse relationship between unemployment and minimum wage is that not every potential employees time is worth the same amount to an employer.

If the minimum is $8/hr, but my labor is only worth $6/hr, then I will be unemployed. My labor might not be worth that extra $2/hr because of my poor education, work ethic, language skills, personality, etc. However that doesn't change the fact that a company would lose money by hiring me.

Also, because of other costs like insurance, retirement benefits, and human resources costs that many governments require you to pay on behalf full-time employees, but not part time employees, you can frequently hire 3 or more $4/hr employees in place of a single $8/hr employee and for less in total cost. Fringe, the HR term for employee costs in addition to salary, can be anywhere from 30-60% of base salary for a full time employee.

I am speaking from 1st hand experience. The research lab I worked in hired 2 temporary workers for less than the cost of a single permanent employee for basic tasks. I wanted to make one of the temporary employees permanent, but we just could not afford it

That 70% for livestock may have been accurate a decade or so ago, but not anymore. Last year I had to give a presentation for a job interview, and the use of corn in the US was a component of my talk. Turns out that in more recent years, half of domestic corn production went to ethanol, at the expense of foreign exports mostly. Tones of corn used for livestock has remained mostly flat for the last 5 years or so. This is the first non-record braking year for US corn production in 4 or 5 years, and goes a long way toward explaining the current corn prices. Ethanol drove demand up and the base price up, causing fewer exports, and reduced the margin between domestic capacity to use corn, and domestic capacity to produce it.

Ethanol has some potential for the desired energy independence, and for being carbon neutral. However, NOT from corn. The energy cost vs yield is too poor. South American ethanol from sugar cane is a net positive, and cellulosic (perpetually 10 years away) are the only fermentation substrates where the math comes out to a net gain of energy. Unfortunately the US is not well situated for sugar cane production (wrong climate) and cellulosic is not yet (ever in my lifetime?) cost effective.

It is not the FDA's bailiwick to consider the legal framework under which these fish might be marketed. They can only comment and decide based on the biology. Therefore, it IS FUD, since the only concerns raised relate to policy outside of their preview or their control.

Furthermore, despite all of the hand-wringing by /. and others not directly connected to large scale agriculture, farmers have the choice of which seed to buy every year. They consistently vote with their wallets FOR Monsanto's seeds. There are alternatives, my parent company has a seed division, and Monsanto is the clear market leader because their customers (farmers) believe that Monsanto creates more value for them at the end of the year than the competition.

As I've pointed out many times before. The farmer in this case intentionally collected seeds only from the field closest to and down wind from a neighbor that he knew for certain had planted Monsanto corn. He is not as innocent as commonly portrayed. That being said, I am in full agreement that the patent system needs revision on the point. Doesn't change the fact that the OP is FUD.

I realize that it is very stylish on /. to be cunical about both big business and the government, and to some extent i agree on both counts. However, when it comes to regulatory filings, neither side wants to be liable for anything going wrong for obvious reasons. As I said, I'm involved in several regulatory filings at the moment, and I can assure you that bribery isn't in it. If it were, then they wouldn't need me. Or my more expensive coleagues (PhD biochemists carrying law degrees are not exacly a dime a dozen) The high cost of regulatory filings is due to the close scrutiny, bureaucrats fear of blame if things go wrong, and the high cost of research used in assuaging their fears.

How, pray tell, do you prove a negative? I.e. how do you prove that "GM salmon will never cause harm". If you set the bar impossibly high, then progress will never be made.

As to the labeling, the USDA guidelines for food labeling are designed to keep people honest about the differences in what are essentially commodities. If the USDA believed that there was a significant difference between GM crops and Conventional crops, then they would approve of a labeling initiative. However, one of the requirements for regulatory approval, is demonstrating that the GM crop is substantially similar to the conventional. Therefore, there is no need for a label, unless the label also makes it clear that the implied difference is insignificant. For example, Milk in the US frequently has a label indicating that no rBST was used in its production, but at the bottom of the label is a footnote indicating that their is no difference between milk produced with or without rBST. It is about battling FUD.

I'm currently involved in some FDA filings, and the hurdles for getting a new use approved for something already on the market and GRAS are prodigious, I can only imagine the hurdles that they've forced these GM salmon to jump through to show that the salmon do not appear likely to pose a threat.

FUD

I'm fairly certain their are FUD and Ethics issues with stem cells since most of what I've read indicates a preference for embryonic stem cells. This neatly dodges some FUD and Ethics issues, in favor of some that are potentially less difficult to get around.

Can't do much in science these days without confronting FUD and ethics issues, and the risk of viral contagion are pretty low, since this kind of viral manipulation has been going on in labs for a while now without incident.

The First problem with predictions about "Peak Oil", or peak anything for that matter, is that it assumes the current known reservers are all that exist. The Second problem with these predictions are that they don't take into account the ability of price and new technology to change what known quantities of a natural resource even get counted in the reserves.

The known reserves of Oil is higher today than it was during the oil shortages of the 1970's here in the US. This is becuase exploration continues to find new reserves. Furthermore, the Candian oil sands were known about in the 1970's, but excluded from the estimates of global reserves becuase, at 1970's prices and using 1970's technology, it was not possible to extract the oil and sell it for a profit. Both prices and technology changed, and now the Canadian oil sands are included in global reserves calculations. Also, wells are not pumped dry. They are frequently shut off when the costs associated with extraction are greater thant he price the oil can be sold for. As prices go down, producing fields are capped until prices go back up and the field can be operated without a loss. Steam injection and other techniques have made it possible to get more oil out of a well at a lower cost than was possible 40 years ago, and I see no reason to believe that this advance of technology is going to reach it's apex with current technology. The financial incentives to come up with new technologies are just too great.

This is all very clearly discussed in "Basic Economics, 4th edition" by Thomas Sowell. I'm currently listening to the Audiobook during my weekday commute and it is very understandable and quite convincing.

Now, this doesn't address the AGW issues associated with use of fossile fuels directly. However, by using up the cheap easily-accessible oil we will create an economic situation where alternatives that are currently not cost effective (with or without government intervention) will become cost effective at somepoint without increasing their cost per unit of energy. Furthermore, as each alternative technology gets closer to cost effective, investement capital will be injected into R&D to try and be the first to hit the market in a cost effective manner and reap the benefits that come from being first and getting the lions share of the market to start.