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Amid PFAS pollution lawsuits, Perdue wants to increase its discharges. Residents are skeptical

11 September 2026 at 11:58


For years, Perdue Agribusiness has been embroiled lawsuits over claims it polluted local groundwater with PFAS, the cancer-causing "forever chemical." So neighbors were skeptical when Perdue asked to increase the treated wastewater it pours in a local stream.

EPA coordinated with Bayer on reapproval for controversial herbicide dicamba

11 September 2026 at 11:34


The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) worked directly with pesticide maker Bayer in approving the controversial herbicide dicamba earlier this year, presenting the company with different options for how to reduce drift and runoff and then aligning on those options in the final decision, according to internal agency records.Β Β 

Industry interests spent big money to stop California from banning PFAS pesticides

10 September 2026 at 13:20


An ambitious bill to keep toxic β€œforever chemicals” off California produce lost its teeth after the chemical and agricultural industries spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against it.

Green Rules Mean Britain Can’t Even Recycle a Fridge

10 September 2026 at 07:00

Fridges are piling up in laybys across the country as recycling centres refuse to take anymore. It's the backfiring result, in part, of pettifogging green waste disposal regulation, says Ben Pile.

The post Green Rules Mean Britain Can’t Even Recycle a Fridge appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Google's AI genome system evaluates every possible one-base change

9 September 2026 at 17:34

On Tuesday, Google announced AlphaGenome Atlas, a resource that attempts to predict the consequences of every possible single-base variant in the human genome. The human genome is about 3 billion bases long, so trying the other three DNA bases that don't appear in our reference genome means sending a total of 9 billion bases through AlphaGenome software.

AlphaGenome is designed to identify potential functions of non-coding DNA, which does not encode proteins but makes up the vast majority of the human genome. Some of this non-coding DNA is essential for controlling the activity of the protein-coding portionβ€”it tells the cell where and when to make messenger RNAs, how to process them into mature protein-coding forms, and so on. But much of it appears to be little more than the remains of viruses and other molecular parasites.

Being able to identify the functional portion is very useful, as is having all the analysis done by a single software package. But until biologists start to use it heavily (assuming they do), it won't be clear what AlphaGenome offers beyond what we could have gotten out of its training data.

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Β© Vertigo3D

Google's AI genome system evaluates every possible one-base change

9 September 2026 at 17:34

On Tuesday, Google announced AlphaGenome Atlas, a resource that attempts to predict the consequences of every possible single-base variant in the human genome. The human genome is about 3 billion bases long, so trying the other three DNA bases that don't appear in our reference genome means sending a total of 9 billion bases through AlphaGenome software.

AlphaGenome is designed to identify potential functions of non-coding DNA, which does not encode proteins but makes up the vast majority of the human genome. Some of this non-coding DNA is essential for controlling the activity of the protein-coding portionβ€”it tells the cell where and when to make messenger RNAs, how to process them into mature protein-coding forms, and so on. But much of it appears to be little more than the remains of viruses and other molecular parasites.

Being able to identify the functional portion is very useful, as is having all the analysis done by a single software package. But until biologists start to use it heavily (assuming they do), it won't be clear what AlphaGenome offers beyond what we could have gotten out of its training data.

Read full article

Comments

Β© Vertigo3D

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