Promoting Peace in a Turbulent World: Strategies to Resolve Political Conflicts In today’s world, political conflicts are rampant, causing immense human suffering and destabilizing entire regions. From the ongoing war in Ukraine to the enduring Israel-Palestine conflict, the need for effective conflict resolution strategies has never been more urgent. This essay explores various approaches to mitigate and ultimately resolve political conflicts, emphasizing diplomacy, economic development, and international cooperation. Diplomacy and Dialogue Diplomacy remains one of the most potent tools for conflict resolution. Engaging in open, honest dialogue allows conflicting parties to understand each other’s perspectives and grievances. The United Nations (UN) plays a crucial role in facilitating such dialogues. The UN Security Council, for instance, can call upon parties to settle disputes through peaceful means and recommend methods of adjustment or terms of settlement 1 . Additional
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Scientists are trying to get cows pregnant
with synthetic embryos
About a decade
ago, biologists started to observe that stem cells, left alone in a walled
plastic container, will spontaneously self-assemble and try to make an embryo.
These structures, sometimes called “embryo models” or embryoids, have gradually
become increasingly realistic.
The University of Florida is trying to create a large animal starting only from
stem cells—no egg, no sperm, and no conception. They’ve transferred “synthetic
embryos,” artificial structures created in a lab, to the uteruses of eight cows
in the hope that some might take.
At the Florida centre,
researchers are now attempting to go all the way. They want to make a live
animal. If they do, it wouldn’t just be a totally new way to breed cattle. It
could shake our notion of what life even is.
by—Antonio Regalado
It was a cool morning
at the beef teaching unit in Gainesville, Florida, and cow number #307 was
bucking in her metal cradle as the arm of a student perched on a stool
disappeared into her cervix. The arm held a squirt bottle of water.
Seven
other animals stood nearby behind a railing; it would be their turn next to get
their uterus flushed out. As soon as the contents of #307’s womb spilled into a
bucket, a worker rushed it to a small laboratory set up under the barn’s
corrugated gables.
“It’s
something!” said a postdoc named Hao Ming, dressed in blue overalls and muck
boots, corralling a pink wisp of tissue under the lens of a microscope. But
then he stepped back, not as sure. “It’s hard to tell.”
The
experiment, at the University of Florida, is an attempt to create a large
animal starting only from stem cells—no egg, no sperm, and no conception. A
week earlier, “synthetic embryos,”
Embryos
hold the secrets of regeneration, reproduction, and maybe even human
immortality.
About
a decade ago, biologists started to observe that stem cells, left alone in a
walled plastic container, will spontaneously self-assemble and try to make an embryo.
These structures, sometimes called “embryo models” or embryoids, have gradually
become increasingly realistic. In 2022, a lab in Israel grew the mouse version
in a jar until cranial folds and a beating heart appeared.
At
the Florida center, researchers are now attempting to go all the way. They want
to make a live animal. If they do, it wouldn’t just be a totally new way to
breed cattle. It could shake our notion of what life even is. “There has never
been a birth without an egg,” says Zongliang “Carl” Jiang, the reproductive
biologist heading the project. “Everyone says it is so cool, so important, but
show me more data—show me it can go into a pregnancy. So that is our goal.”
For
now, success isn’t certain, mostly because lab-made embryos generated from stem
cells still aren’t exactly like the real thing. They’re more like an embryo
seen through a fun-house mirror; the right parts, but in the wrong proportions. That’s why these are
being flushed out after just a week—so the researchers can check how far
they’ve grown and to learn how to make better ones.
“The
stem cells are so smart they know what their fate is,” says Jiang. “But they
also need help.”
So
far, most research on synthetic embryos has involved mouse or human cells, and
it’s stayed in the lab. But last year Jiang, along with researchers in Texas, published a
recipe for making a bovine version, which they called “cattle blastoids” for
their resemblance to blastocysts, the stage of the embryo suitable for IVF
procedures.
Some
researchers think that stem-cell animals could be as big a deal as Dolly the
sheep, whose birth in 1996 brought cloning technology to barnyards. Cloning, in
which an adult cell is placed in an egg, has allowed scientists to copy mice,
cattle, pet dogs, and even polo ponies. The players on one Argentine team all ride clones of the same
champion mare, named Dolfina.
Synthetic
embryos are clones, too—of the starting cells you grow them from. But they’re
made without the need for eggs and can be created in far larger numbers—in
theory, by the tens of thousands. And that’s what could revolutionize cattle
breeding. Imagine that each year’s calves were all copies of the most muscled
steer in the world, perfectly designed to turn grass into steak.
“I
would love to see this become cloning 2.0,” says Carlos Pinzón-Arteaga,
the veterinarian who spearheaded the laboratory work in Texas. “It’s like Star Wars with cows.”
Endangered species
Industry
has started to circle around. A company called Genus PLC, which specializes in
assisted reproduction of “genetically superior” pigs and cattle, has begun
buying patents on synthetic embryos. This year it started funding Jiang’s lab
to support his effort, locking up a commercial option to any discoveries he
might make.
Zoos
are interested too. With many endangered animals, assisted reproduction is
difficult. And with recently extinct ones, it’s impossible. All that remains is
some tissue in a freezer. But this technology could, theoretically, blow life
back into these specimens—turning them into embryos, which could be brought to
term in a surrogate of a sister species.
But
there’s an even bigger—and stranger—reason to pay attention to Jiang’s effort
to make a calf: several labs are creating super-realistic synthetic human
embryos as well. It’s an ethically charged arena, particularly
given recent changes in US abortion laws. Although these human embryoids are
considered nonviable—mere “models” that are fair-game for research—all that
could all change quickly if the Florida project succeeds.
“If
it can work in an animal, it can work in a human,” says Pinzón-Arteaga, who is
now working at Harvard Medical School. “And that’s the Black Mirror episode.”
Industrial embryos
Three
weeks before cow #307 stood in the dock, she and seven other heifers had been
given stimulating hormones, to trick their bodies into thinking they were
pregnant. After that, Jiang’s students had loaded blastoids into a straw they
used like a popgun to shoot them towards each animal’s oviducts.
Many
researchers think that if a stem-cell animal is born, the first one is likely
to be a mouse. Mice are cheap to work with and reproduce fast. And one team has
already grown a synthetic mouse embryo for eight days in an artificial womb—a
big step, since a mouse pregnancy lasts only three weeks.
But
bovines may not be far behind. There’s a large assisted-reproduction industry
in cattle, with more than a million IVF
attempts a year, half of them in North America. Many other beef
and dairy cattle are artificially inseminated with semen from top-rated bulls.
“Cattle is harder,” says Jiang. “But we have all the technology.”
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