believe it or not:the 1K yr old seed grows

[Gingerale]

If I'm in public I usually wear shorts over my swimsuit

[Kyndreth]

yeaaaah, I just don't swim in public, but i might wearing a shirt and shorts

[Lemon Cheesecake]

actually there are some cute swimming trunks and shirts that people wear around here - mainly against sun protection or for paddle boarding etc

[Kyndreth]

Hmmmm, might look into that then

[Lemon Cheesecake]

Drones Bees to the Rescue?

[+] SPOILER

Eijiro Myiako, a researcher at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, thinks there may be a technological fix. He and his colleagues have developed an insect-sized drone capable of artificially pollinating flowering plants.

Recently, Miyako's team loosed the tiny quad-copter on a wild lily. When it bumped into the male part of the flower, it picked up pollen — the plant's genetic material — and then transferred that pollen to the female part of another flower.

Some not so sure -

[+] SPOILER

One problem is that there are more than 20,000 species of bees in the world, each of which has evolved to pollinate a particular plant or plants. Bumble bees are great at pollinating tomatoes. Honeybees are great pollinators for blueberries. And alfalfa leafcutter bees are great pollinators for, well, alfalfa.

"The idea that we can mechanize that is not really likely," Grozinger says. Even given plenty of time to fully develop a technological fix for the loss of bees, she doesn't think drones or another bee substitute would be capable of pollinating most plants. Nature is simply too complicated. "Nor should we want to," she says. "If we really do get rid of the pollinators then that means that our whole ecosystem is probably in trouble."

http://www.nbcnews.com/mach/environment ... em-n737796

[Gingerale]

If drone bees wouldn't bite I'd like that. But could drones make honey?

[Kyndreth]

Hooh, drone bees. I prefer real bees. Usually bees don't bother you so long as you dont bother them.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

Look! There are robot earthworms too!

[+] SPOILER

Taro Nakamura develops robots based on imaginative imitation of living organisms. His expertise is in great demand from numerous firms and government funded research programs thirsty for innovation, and he currently has over 20 individual projects in progress. We focus on his development of an earthworm robot, the first of its kind, designed to traverse the narrow, twisting tunnels of Japan's aging water infrastructure, and other projects including robots with man-made muscle fibers.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/r ... 701120600/

[Kyndreth]

Uh.... woow....

[galled]

It makes me sad that our bee populations are dwindling and the scientists still can't agree on what's causing it. While the drone idea is a nice one, I don't think it'll be possible to completely replace bees. We'd have a global disaster if bees went extinct. Many species would follow if that happened. It's actually scarier than climate change.

[Kyndreth]

Hm... wasn't it stuff like pollution and pesticides?

[galled]

Some say that, but it's been proven that other bees are not affected by that. Something else is killing those.

[Kyndreth]

Eh.... really? Huh... then what is killing the bees?

[Lemon Cheesecake]

wasn't there a animated Bee movie about what would happen if bees weren't around?

[Kyndreth]

Was there? Idunno