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Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#121

Post by vinceguidry »

beat wrote: post #59
Protostome wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would first want to see people accept GMO crops. Then I'll be willing to think of people going to the doctor to change their eye color.

The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…

> But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can grow plenty of food, and cheaply.

We can. The rest of the developing world has a lot of trouble keeping people fed. There's only so much aid can do, but if we can find ways for small-time farmers to produce more, and also to transport those goods, then the rest of the world could feed itself, something small-time agriculture has historically had a lot of trouble doing.

Better, hardier crop strains aren't just a profit-making scheme, they're absolutely critical in the fight against world hunger.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#122

Post by sampo »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #109
sampo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants." Hybrid seeds already did that 50 years ago.

Are hybrid seeds designed to be one use only like terminator seeds? How is the vendor lock-in structured?

"Are hybrid seeds designed to be one use only like terminator seeds? How is the vendor lock-in structured?"

Plant breeding 101:

Every individual has two copies of each gene: one comes form the father, on from the mother. It has been observed that individuals who mostly have different maternal and paternal versions, are more vigorous. This is called heterosis, or hybrid vigor [1].

Now, just to produce children with a high number of genes that have different paternal and maternal copies, it would be enough to have a father and a mother who mostly do not have same copies. But if father has versions G1 and G2, and mother has versions G3 and G4, the child can have any of (G1,G3), (G1,G4), (G2,G3), (G2,G4). So the features of the children are not predictable.

So plant breeders have invented this method, to use inbreeding to produce highly homozygous [2] lines first. Suppose (G1,G3) is the type you want. So first breed line A of plants which always have (G1,G1) and similarly for other genes. And breed line B which consistently have (G3,G3).

Now use A as father and B as mother, and voila, you can produce offspring that consistently have (G1,G3). So the offspring exhibit hybrid vigor, but are also predictable and similar to each other. Quality and consistency!

Now sell these seeds, everyone wants to buy highly productive consistent quality seeds. Profit!

But as long and you are the only possessor of the parent lines A and B, you are the only one who can produce this particular type of hybrid offspring. The customers only get the offspring, and you keep the lines A and B safe and secret.

If the customer tries to mate those (G1,G3) individuals with each other, they will get a mix of (G1,G1), (G1,G3) and (G3,G3), so the next generation will not be nearly as productive crop as the pure hybrid seed was.

So, the "vendor lock-in" is structured by not giving anyone else access to the parent lines A and B.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygosity

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#123

Post by danbruc »

vinceguidry wrote: post #121
beat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…

> But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can grow plenty of food, and cheaply. We can. The rest of the developing world has a lot of trouble keeping people fed. There's only so much aid can do, but if we can find ways for small-time farmers to produce more, and also to transport those goods, then the rest of the world could feed itself, something small-time agriculture has historically had a lot of…

The problems in the developing countries are at least partially caused by things not directly related to agriculture, for example speculation with food and subsidies in developed countries making local agriculture unprofitable.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#124

Post by [deleted] »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #109
sampo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants." Hybrid seeds already did that 50 years ago.

Are hybrid seeds designed to be one use only like terminator seeds? How is the vendor lock-in structured?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#125

Post by colechristensen »

DanBC wrote: post #110
ZenoArrow wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are hybrid seeds designed to be one use only like terminator seeds? How is the vendor lock-in structured?

Yes, many hybrid seeds are one use only. Farmers cannot save and resow the seed. They need to buy the seed each year. The seeds might not be sterile, but even then the seed would produce unreliable plants. http://www.granny-miller.com/the-difference-between-hybrid-n...

This is true for many flowers and garden crops, it is not true for corn, soybeans, & similar.

The viability of hybrid offspring depends on the closeness of the parents. Lots of flowers can be bread from very diverse stock and the offspring are sterile, cash crop hybrids are not made from such diversity and are generally re-plantable.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#126

Post by JoeAltmaier »

colechristensen wrote: post #125
DanBC wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, many hybrid seeds are one use only. Farmers cannot save and resow the seed. They need to buy the seed each year. The seeds might not be sterile, but even then the seed would produce unreliable plants. http://www.granny-miller.com/the-difference-between-hybrid-n...

This is true for many flowers and garden crops, it is not true for corn, soybeans, & similar. The viability of hybrid offspring depends on the closeness of the parents. Lots of flowers can be bread from very diverse stock and the offspring are sterile, cash crop hybrids are not made from such diversity and are generally re-plantable.

Corn is generally carefully crossed as a last step in hybridization. The next generation will grow a plant almost completely dissimilar from the one being sold.

Its an issue trying to support farmers in developing countries. Our Romanian sister church didn't accept our corn hybrids. They had their own 'land race' seed they've been creating for generations, which works well on their difficult soil. If we sent them hybrids, they'd work for one season. And then they would be dependent on us for continuous shipments of seed each spring. We left them with their self-sufficient seed.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#127

Post by discardorama »

brockers wrote: post #43
PaulRobinson wrote: post #7

I'd say that in terms of what we are able to do next, Graphene wins by a long way. Graphene is remarkable stuff, literally. I'd say in terms of impact on philosophy, religion and way of life, the large number of planets we're discovering.

I fear the graphene will fall by the wayside due to legal and social pressure. News sources have already pointed out that it is significantly more dangerous, if inhaled, than asbestos; another material this is insanely useful for a number of applications but is effectively blackballed as a engineer-able material. Another example is nuclear energy. Clean, abundant, and extremely safe. The fear of radiation exposer has…

> Another example is nuclear energy. Clean, abundant, and extremely safe.

Yeah, but what do you do about the waste? The US has tons of waste sitting around. The grand plan of using Yucca Mountain to store the waste fizzled. We have just postponed the cost to a future generation who'll have to deal with the waste we're producing today.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#128

Post by dimino »

brockers wrote: post #43
PaulRobinson wrote: post #7

I'd say that in terms of what we are able to do next, Graphene wins by a long way. Graphene is remarkable stuff, literally. I'd say in terms of impact on philosophy, religion and way of life, the large number of planets we're discovering.

I fear the graphene will fall by the wayside due to legal and social pressure. News sources have already pointed out that it is significantly more dangerous, if inhaled, than asbestos; another material this is insanely useful for a number of applications but is effectively blackballed as a engineer-able material. Another example is nuclear energy. Clean, abundant, and extremely safe. The fear of radiation exposer has…

I just want to be able to build huge buildings. I want that landscape in the Star Trek reboot at the beginning when the mountainous building is in the background of the Iowa landscape.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#129

Post by jbrooksuk »

chriswarbo wrote: post #44
jbrooksuk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it literally remarkable stuff?

Graphene is a single layer of graphite. Graphite is used in pencils. Pencils can make marks, which are erasable, and hence re-markable. ;)

Up voted. Well played.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#130

Post by makeset »

pcx wrote: post #15
[deleted] wrote: post #14

[deleted]

Deep learning is pretty old. People like Hinton, LeCun and Bengio have been working in the field for decades. From what I've read, Deep Learning has become popular because there is finally enough computing power to get it done.

It has become popular because they found a better way to initialize deep networks (by incrementally fitting auto-encoder layers), where simple gradient-based optimizations of yesteryear would not converge from scratch.
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