Word: cottoning
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...Monday and she's starting as a linen attendant in December. "I enjoy the textiles and knowing the difference between a nice spun polyester and a full-cotton product or Egyptian cotton. I'm so excited. I don't know what to do. When does December get here...
...generation has escaped it—one morning, your skill with the eight-track or the record player or the cotton gin suddenly ceases to impress. It’s just one of those inevitable disappointments that come with growing up, like the realization that Santa doesn’t exist or the way that music always takes a turn for the worse after you turn 30. But for our generation, the pain will be especially acute. We’ve grown up on social networks. They’re how we communicate, how we notify acquaintances of our relationships...
...true in today's world as it was in the antebellum South: cotton is king. The plant has been cultivated for its fiber for over 7,000 years, and today it's grown by more than 20 million farmers in some 80 countries. But while cotton accounts for nearly 40% of the fiber used worldwide to make clothing, there's one thing the plant has never been able to do well: feed people. Cottonseeds are a rich source of protein--the current cotton crop produces enough seeds to meet the daily requirements of half a billion people a year...
Remove the gossypol, however, and you'd have a cheap and abundant form of protein for everyone. But get rid of all the gossypol, as plant breeders did in the 1950s, and insects will devour the defenseless cotton. Enter Keerti Rathore, a professor at Texas A&M University, who found a way around the problem through genetic engineering. In new field-trial data, Rathore's team demonstrated that it can turn off the genes that stimulate the production of gossypol in the cottonseeds while the rest of the plant keeps its natural defenses. "This research potentially opens the door...
Rathore used a new technique, called RNA interference, to construct a genetic sequence that blocked the gossypol-producing enzyme in the seeds only. After succeeding in the lab, he began a test in a greenhouse to see if the genetically modified cotton plant would survive and pass on its new trait. Rathore's just-compiled data show that the modified cotton appears to be normal in every way other than the fact that it has instantly edible seeds. "What works in the greenhouse should hold true in the fields," he says...