Investigations continued this week into how unauthorised genetically modified wheat ended up on a farm in Oregon.
No varieties of GM wheat have been cleared for commercial use anywhere in the world. The wheat plants in question are believed to be the legacy of a research programme that was abandoned nine years ago. How and why they have resurfaced is unclear.
The discovery last week triggered an international reaction, with both South Korea and Japan temporarily suspending imports of US wheat. South Korea has also begun testing existing wheat imports from the US for signs of GM wheat, with no positive results so far.
Sixty-five million sound like a big deal by any standard. That’s the size of the improvement that an online army of collaborating mathematicians has already made to a groundbreaking proof involving pairs of prime number, which was first announced just a few weeks ago.
Though the improvement is big, mathematically speaking it amounts to a technicality. Still, the achievement showcases a new way of doing mathematics online, Since the proof appeared, mathematicians from across the world have been locked in an addictive race to tighten it up.
The work relates to a lonstanding problem called the twin prime conjecture, A prime number can only be divided by 1 and itself, and twin primes are those just two numbers apart, like 3 and 5, or 29 and 31. The conjecture, put forward in 1849, says there are an infinite number of these pairs, but no one has managed to prove or disprove it.