Souped-up hybrid crops, such as maize, bred through conventional techniques rather than high-tech genetic engineering, do not keep their desired properties from one generation to the next because of natural genetic shuffling.

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Within the technology sector I expect more interest in IBM and Microsoft, obviously multinationals, but very inexpensive properties with innate capacity for financial engineering, namely stock buybacks, rising dividends and fill-in acquisitions.

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Over the longer term, nanoscale engineering may replace some rare earths by emulating their properties, or at least reduce the amount needed per magnet, LED, hybrid, or computer.

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Because a field trial with a genetically engineered plant may be 10 to 20 times more expensive than the same experiment performed with a plant that has identical properties but that was modified with less precise genetic techniques, genetic engineering with the best techniques has been vastly under-used for the past 25 years.

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