Ambulatory plants that simply walk over to the nearest sunny spot would outcomplete regular plants, eventually becoming rulers of the plant kingdom. Unfortunately, it all seems a bit unlikely. Except for some interesting exceptions like species of Tillandsia (the so-called “air plants,” which are discussed below), plants need their roots. And roots are, well, rooted in place. However, while the vast majority of plants do need roots, they don’t need them every minute. As everyone who has experienced the concept of cut flowers in a vase of water knows, plants can go for quite some time without roots. And roots can do fine without the rest of the plant for a considerable time as well – just check your fridge, pantry, or grocery store for an assortment of potatos, carrots, etc., which do just that. In nature, in fact, many plants over-winter with just the underground roots alive all winter long, then grow new above-ground parts come Spring. The trick, then, is to build a plant that can separate temporarily at the base. The above-ground part then wanders off in search of maximum sunlight. As evening approaches, the plant literally returns to its roots, reattaches, and spends the night with its above-ground and below-ground sections in metabolic union.

It is unclear if such a plant variety would ever evolve spontaneously. However, genetic engineering should be able to do it at some point. Moving short distances would be feasible for plants based on their current capabilities – many plants can and do change in shape fast enough over the course of a day already. Flowers open and close, leaves move around, etc. For example the immature flower heads of the sunflower face the sun, tracking it as it crosses the sky over the course of the day. Engineering a plant that can detach at the base, walk off looking for sun, return in the evening and reattach until morning presents a number of varied challenges, all of which must be solved before it can work, including a detachment and reattachment mechanism, a slow but real walking capability, and the sensory capacity to find its way back to its roots. Yet there seems no fundamental reason why it could not be done.

Once such plants are on the march, additional genetic changes will be possible. Plants need not return to their own roots, but could instead return to the roots of another plant, perhaps even of a different species. Animals looking for a nutritious drink might try to suck juice from the exposed detachment point of the roots after the top of the plant has wandered off for the day in search of sun. Plants could evolve or be further engineered to allow animals to suck for juice only if they fertilize the plant as a down payment, by urinating at the base! Plants that can walk around would be strongly motivated (in an evolutionary sense) to develop better sensory systems and faster movements to compete with other plants. Such capabilities are normally associated with animals, not plants, so these plants of the future, as they evolve, would tend to increasingly blur the line between plants and animals. A world with walking plants would be different indeed!

Another strategy for adding walking plants to the biosphere would start with plants like Tillandsia, the air plants, which either do not have roots at all or have small ones used only to hold them in place. The genetic engineering complexities of a detachment/reattachment mechanism and a homing mechanism for finding roots earlier left behind would be unnecessary, simplifying the problem greatly. However as for soil-rooted plants. creating the capacity for locomotion would still be a challenge. Tillandsia plants absorb water and nutrients through their leaves, so an ambulatory version would have considerable advantages. They could walk around (and climb around, since they typically live on trees), looking for sun, taking a dip when thirsty, and loading up on compost (or, predator-like, trimming leaves off of other plants) to absorb nutrients from. Perhaps ambulatory descendants of the Tillandsia genus will one day rule the Earth.

Next time: Plants with Mirror Molecules

If properly endowed by natural evolution or genetic engineering, plants could turn the concept of alternamorphism to their advantage in many interesting ways. For example, consider the humble corn (zea mays) plant. It is a staple of the world food supply but is not particularly easy to grow successfully in one’s garden, as many an inexperienced gardener can attest. Now imagine a new kind of corn plant that, after bearing its ear of corn, alternamorphically either dies or sinks a taproot that lasts the winter and then, in its second spring, sends up a new shoot that grows more slowly than before, but more sturdily. That grows, in fact, without producing any ear of corn that year but rather is built to last the following winter, so that it can build on that growth with further development in its third spring – eventually turning into a large corn tree that produces dozens of ears every year, and with far less work than farming an equivalently productive corn patch.

But what would determine which alternative the corn plant chooses, dying off as happens now, or beginning the process of turning into a corn tree? A reasonable genetic code for this would be to opt for the tree strategy if the ear is destroyed early in its development or fails to develop properly for whatever reason. In that case it makes sense for the corn plant to devote its energy to something else, such as trying to grow into a tree. Indeed, any excess of vitality would be a good reason to pursue the tree strategy, even if the initial ear is growing well. Perhaps the corn plant is simply experiencing highly favorable growth conditions and has the werewithal to both produce an ear, and grow the required large taproot. Similarly, any annual crop or other plant could potentially alternamorphically become a tree. Farmers and gardeners would be delighted. On the other hand, hundred foot ragweed trees would be bad news for many an allergy sufferer. Alternamorphic trees are just a start. The reader may enjoy dreaming up other kinds of alternamorphisms. In a number of years it may be possible to actually create these in a do-it-yourself basement bio lab.

If black plants would be better, then what are the prospects for mountains, plains, and rolling hills of deep black instead of striking green? Plants absorb light using special pigments which begin the solar energy harvesting process. Well-known and prevalent pigments are chlorophyll, of which there are several varieties named chlorophyll a, b, c, c1, c2, and others. Different chlorophylls (chloro- from a Greek word for green, -phyll from the Greek for leaf) are of varying shade depending on the type. However there are also other pigments useful for photosynthesis. Various xanthophylls (xantho- from the Greek for yellow) are also used. Carotenes, which make carrots orange, are another. There are hundreds of them. Opsins (ops- from the Greek for sight, as in ‘optical,’ and -in which indicates a biochemical substance) are not only used for sight in the human eye (namely rhodopsin, rhodo- for rose-colored, also named “visual purple”), but for photosynthesis (using bacteriorhodopsin, a misnomer since the organisms using it are archaea, not bacteria). Bacteriorhodopsin preferentially absorbs green light and reflects red and blue, thus appearing reddish-blue (that is, “purple”). Bacteriochlorophylls are related to chlorophylls and can be greenish or purplish. Phycobilins are used in photosynthesis in certain microorganisms and come in a variety of colors, from red to blue. Phycocyanins are another category of pigment used in photosynthesis (cyan meaning blue-green). Phycoerythrins too, which are red (-eryth from Greek and meaning red, as in erythrocytes – red blood cells).

Even invisible light is important. The water-dwelling microorganism Acaryochloris marina contains chlorophyll d, which is particularly good at absorbing infrared light for photosynthesis. On the other hand, some plants reflect infrared light. But they could reflect more, enough to actually change the world’s climate significantly. It seems that leaf hairs can help reflect infrared while allowing visible light through for photosynthesis. By breeding plants with leaves that are quite hairy, more infrared could be reflected back into space, with a cooling effect on the climate. Extra hairy soy varieties have already been bred such that if they and other crops similarly bred were grown extensively enough in temperate regions, the average temperature of those regions would decrease by about 2 degrees F. It is a tough call which would be better, crops with pigments that use infrared light for photosynthesis, or crops that reflect as much of it as possible away from the Earth.

Be that as it may, a plethora of pigments exist to support photosynthesis and there seems no intrinsic reason why a plant could not eventually evolve naturally or be genetically engineered to mix and match the pigments so as to absorb and use nearly all light. Such plants would potentially have an evolutionary advantage over other plants that waste resources by taking the trouble to grow leaves and then not use all the light that falls upon them. Thus future plants that solve this problem would tend to take over, both in nature and in agriculture. Though the real action would be at the biomolecular level, visually such plants would be near-black, not green. Would black salad taste better than green? Only a future taste test will resolve this important question!

Next time: Alternamorphs: plants with options.

References

“Perhaps weirdly, it now appears that photosynthesis…uses the esoteric physics phenomenon known as quantum entanglement to do its work.” M. Sarovar, A. Ishizaki, G. R. Fleming and K. B. Whaley, Quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes, Nature Physics, vol. 6, pp. 462-467, 2010, executive summary at http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/05/10/untangl.....anglement/.

“Acaryochloris marina uses chlorophyll d, which absorbs infrared light for photosynthesis”: R. Mohr, B. Vosz, M. Schliep, T. Kurz, I. Maldener, D. G. Adams, A. D. Larkum, M. Chen, and W. R. Hess, A new chlorophyll d-containing cyanobacterium: evidence for niche adaptation in the genus Acaryochloris, The ISME Journal (27 May 2010), http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2010.67.

“Extra hairy soy varieties have already been bred such that…the average temperature of those regions would decrease by about 2 degrees F.” C. E. Doughty, A. McMillan and M. Goulden, Climate Management Through Agricultural Albedo Manipulation, Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (2007), vol. 88, no. 52, Fall Meeting Supplement, Abstract GC52A-10, http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/fm07-sessions/fm07_GC52A.html. See also: Super-hairy plants could battle global warming, New Scientist, issue 2637, Jan. 9, 2008, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726370.700-superhair.....rming.html.

Over the millennia humans and the rest of nature have coexisted in various relationships. However the intimate and interdependent nature of our relationship with other beings on the planet has been recently brought to light by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This ongoing environmental disaster is a prime example of “profit over principle” regarding non-human life. This spill threatens not only the reproductive viability of all flora and fauna in the affected ecosystems but also complex and sensitive non-human cultures like those we now recognize in dolphins and whales.

Although science has, for decades, documented the links and interdependence of ecosystems and species, the ethical dilemma now facing humans is at a critical level. For too long have we not recognized the true cost of our life styles and priorities of profit over the health of the planet and the nonhuman beings we share it with. If ever the time, this is a wake up call for humanity and a call to action. If humanity is to survive we need to make an urgent and long-term commitment to the health of the planet. The oceans, our food sources and the very oxygen we breathe may be dependent on our choices in the next 10 years.

And humanity’s survival is inextricably linked to that of the other beings we share this planet with. We need a new ethic.

Many oceanographers and marine biologist have, for a decade, sent out the message that the oceans are in trouble. Human impacts of over-fishing, pollution, and habitat destruction are threatening the very cycles of our existence. In the recent catastrophe in the Gulf, one corporation’s neglectful oversight and push for profit has set the stage for a century of clean up and impact, the implications of which we can only begin to imagine.

Current and reported estimates of stranded dolphins are at fifty-five. However, these are dolphins visibly stranded on beaches. Recent aerial footage, on YouTube, by John Wathen shows a much greater and serious threat. Offshore, in the “no fly zone” hundreds of dolphins and whales have been observed in the oil slick. Some floating belly up and dead, others struggling to breathe in the toxic fumes. Others exhibit “drunken dolphin syndrome” characterized by floating in an almost stupefied state on the surface of the water. These highly visible effects are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the spill’s impact on the long term health and viability of the Gulf’s dolphin and whale populations, not to mention the suffering incurred by each individual dolphin as he or she tries to cope with this crisis.

Known direct and indirect effects of oil spills on dolphins and whales depend on the species but include, toxicity that can cause organ dysfunction and neurological impairment, damaged airways and lungs, gastrointestinal ulceration and hemorrhaging, eye and skin lesions, decreased body mass due to limited prey, and, the pervasive long term behavioral, immunological, and metabolic impacts of stress. Recent reports substantiate that many dolphins and whales in the Gulf are undergoing tremendous stress, shock and suffering from many of the above effects. The impact to newborns and young calves is clearly devastating.

After the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound in 1989 two pods of orcas (killer whales) were tracked. It was found that one third of the whales in one pod and 40 percent of the whales in the other pod had disappeared, with one pod never recovering its numbers. There is still some debate about the number of missing whales directly impacted by the oil though it is fair to say that losses of this magnitude are uncommon and do serious damage to orca societies.

Yes, orca societies. Years of field research has led to the conclusion by a growing number of scientists that many dolphin and whale species, including sperm whales, humpback whales, orcas, and bottlenose dolphins possess sophisticated cultures, that is, learned behavioral traditions passed on from one generation to the next. These cultures are not only unique to each group but are critically important for survival. Therefore, not only do environmental catastrophes such as the Gulf oil spill result in individual suffering and loss of life but they contribute to the permanent destruction of entire oceanic cultures. These complex learned traditions cannot be replicated after they are gone and this makes them invaluable.

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which acknowledges basic rights to life, liberty, and freedom of cultural expression. We recognize these foundational rights for humans as we are sentient, complex beings. It is abundantly clear that our actions have violated these same rights for other sentient, complex and cultural beings in the oceans – the dolphins and whales. We should use this tragedy as an opportunity to formally recognize societal and legal rights for them so that their lives and their unique cultures are better protected in the future.

Recently, there was a meeting of scientists, philosophers, legal experts and dolphin and whale advocates in Helsinki, Finland, who drafted a Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans a global call for basic rights for dolphins and whales. You can read more about this effort and become a signatory here: http://cetaceanconservation.com.au/cetaceanrights/. Given the destruction of dolphin and whale lives and cultures caused by the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf, we think this is one of the ways we can commit ourselves to working towards a future that will be a lifeboat for humans, dolphins and whales, and the rest of nature.

Fruits form a ready target for genetic engineers. Fruit is healthy and has near-universal appeal. Even people who have never eaten fruit in their lives rapidly develop a taste for it (who are these people, you ask? “Babies are puzzled by fruit… . But within a day or two practically all of them decide they love it.” – Baby and child care icon Dr. Spock). To plant the seeds of some ideas for such babies and others who will become the next generation of genetic engineers, consider the following possibilities.

• Fruit transgenic hybrids that taste like apple and pear at the same time (pearapples?), or perhaps peach and cherry (peacherries?) together instead. Watermelons that taste like nectarines (nectarmelons). And so on and so forth. If you can dream up the flavor, size and texture, it will be possible.
• Fruit with calorie-free sweetness, instead of high sugar content. They could be engineered to contain aspartame (“Nutrasweet”), sucralose (“Splenda”), cyclamate, or benzoic sulfimide (saccharin) instead (or all four). This would taste good while lowering the caloric content of the fruit (and thus the metabolic cost to the plant of growing the fruit, so it could afford to grow more or bigger fruits).
• Fruit with a high alcohol content, enough to enhance the taste but not intoxicate those eating it. Fruit with M&M-sized lumps of chocolate in them. Fruit containing a little brandy and a chocolate lump or two, and at a price anyone could afford (or grow).
• Fruit that tastes like ice cream…whoops, not necessary, it already exists! Some varieties of durian fruit are likened to  ice cream or custard. Others are quite strong in odor. Banned from the premises of some hotels, it is reputed to be the only fruit that tigers eat. Surely if nature can conjure something as remarkable as this heavy fruit, covered with spikes, genetic engineers could cook up the things in this list.
• Fruit with intense flavor. People love flavorful foods and some fruits are mild, currently, though some are quite strong (citrus, for example).

Next time: Black Salad Grows Better, Looks Funny

References

“Babies are puzzled by fruit…the first time they have it. But within a day or two practically all of them decide they love it”: B. Spock and M. B. Rothenberg, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, revised edition, 1985, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-73965-4.

INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE ANNOUNCES BODYSHOCK:
CALL FOR ENTRIES ON IDEAS TO TRANSFORM LIFESTYLES AND THE HUMAN BODY TO IMPROVE HEALTH IN THE NEXT DECADE

“What can YOU envision to improve and reinvent health and well-being for the future?” Anyone can enter, anyone can vote, anyone can change the future of global health.

With obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease rampaging populations around the world, Institute for the Future (IFTF) is turning up the volume on global well-being. Launching today, IFTF’s BodyShock is the first annual competition with an urgent challenge to recruit crowdsourced designs and solutions for better health–to remake the future by rebooting the present.

BodyShock calls upon the public to consider innovative ways to improve individual and collective health over the next 3-10 years by transforming our bodies and lifestyles. Video or graphical entries illustrating new ideas, designs, products, technologies, and concepts, will be accepted from people around the world until September 1, 2010. Up to five winners will be flown to Palo Alto, California on October 8 to present their ideas and be connected to other innovative thinkers to help bring these ideas to life. The grand prize winner will receive the IFTF Roy Amara Prize of $3,000.

“Health doesn’t happen all at once; it’s a consequence of years of choices for our bodies and lifestyles–some large and some small. BodyShock is intended to spark new ideas to help us find our way back to health,” said Thomas Goetz, executive editor of Wired, author of The Decision Tree, and a member of the Health Advisory Board that will be judging the BodyShock contest in addition to votes from the public.

“BodyShock is a fantastic initiative. Global collaboration and participation from all voices can produce a true revolution,” said Linda Avey, founder of Brainstorm Research Foundation and another Advisor to BodyShock.

Entries may come from anyone anywhere and can include, but are not limited to, the following: Life extension, DIY Bio, Diabetic teenagers, Developing countries, Green health, Augmented reality, Self-tracking, and Pervasive games. Participants are challenged to use IFTF’s Health Horizons forecasts for the next decade of health and health care as inspiration, and design a solution for a problem that will be widespread in 3-10 years, using technologies that will become mainstream.

“Think ‘artifacts from the future’–simple, non-obvious, high-impact solutions that don’t exist yet, will be among the concepts we’re looking to the public to introduce,” said Rod Falcon, director of the Health Horizons Program at IFTF.

BodyShock’s grand prize, the Roy Amara Prize, is named for IFTF’s long-time president Roy Amara (1925-2000) and is part of a larger program of social impact projects at IFTF honoring his legacy, known as The Roy Amara Fund for Participatory Foresight, the Fund uses participatory tools to translate foresight research into concrete actions that address future social challenges.

PANEL OF COMPETITION JUDGES

Joanne Andreadis
Lead of Innovation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Linda Avey
Founder, Brainstorm Research Foundation

Jason Bobe
Director of Community, Personal Genome Project
Founder, DIYBio.org

Alexandra Carmichael
Co-founder, CureTogether
Director, Quantified Self

Ted Eytan, MD
Kaiser Permanente, The Permanente Federation

Rod Falcon
Director, Health Horizons Program

Peter Friess
President, Tech Museum of Innovation

Thomas Goetz
Executive Editor, WIRED Magazine
Author, The Decision Tree

Natalie Hodge,MD FAAP
Chief Health Officer, Personal Medicine International

Ellen Marram
Board of Trustees, Institute for the Future
President, Barnegat Group LLC

Kristi Miller Durazo
Senior Strategy Advisor, American Heart Association

David Rosenman
Director, Innovation Curriculum
Center for Innovation at Mayo Clinic

Amy Tenderich
Board Member, Journal of Participatory Medicine
Blogger, DiabetesMine.com

DETAILS

WHAT:
An online competition for visual design ideas to improve global health over the next 3-10 years by transforming our bodies and lifestyles. Anyone can enter, anyone can vote, anyone can change the future of health.

WHEN:
Launch – Friday, June 18,2010

Deadline for entries -Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Winners announced -Thursday, September 23, 2010

BodyShock Winners Celebration at IFTF – 6 – 9 p.m. Friday, October 8, 2010 – FREE and open to the public

WHERE:

http://www.bodyshockthefuture.org

(and 124 University Ave, 2ndFloor, Palo Alto, CA)

Once the idea of fixing one’s own nitrogen directly from the air takes hold in the plant kingdom, nitrogen need never be a bottleneck again. Then the Earth will be able to support a thicker, heavier, and more diverse blanket of vegetation. Since the animal kingdom ultimately depends on plants, the Earth will also then support more animal life (and potentially human life) as well. Fertilizer manufacturers may have one less component to worry about including in their products, but on the other hand might find less demand for their products. You might not have thought of beans as the vanguard of a new paradigm of domination among plants. But beans and many thousands of species of their descendants might take over the plant world analogously to how flowering plants began their ascendancy starting more than 100 million years ago.

At least they’ll taste good. The idea of beans as masters of the Earth may be tough to swallow if you’re not crazy about bean dishes. But maybe genetic engineering will change your mind and those of future generations. Genetically engineered crops will become increasingly important, accepted and desired, because there is little chance of stemming the coming tide of crop plants engineered to produce new and delicious foods at reasonable cost. Flavorings are metabolically cheap for plants to produce compared to soil fertility-draining and solar energy-intensive metabolic products like oils, proteins, and carbohydrates. Thus, there is no downside to major changes and improvements in plant product flavors. And it is relatively easy to do compared to some of the genetic engineering goals mentioned earlier. Even old-fashioned selective breeding, the “low tech” approach to genetic engineering, has produced such familiar taste-enhanced foods as sweet corn that is much sweeter than the corn eaten a couple of generations ago. Take beans, for instance (please don’t tire of my discussing them – as future monarchs of the plant kingdom, they are entitled to some respect!). They are already a nutritious protein source, like meat but with less fat. Yet they don’t taste as good as meat to many people. There is no reason they can’t be engineered to taste like small chicken nuggets. Processed fungus mycelium (i.e., roots), sold in grocery stores, taste like chicken already. Try it if you don’t believe it. Yum!. We could make chickpeas that taste like chicken, and rename them “chickenpeas.” But why stop there? Potatoes with small hamburgers in the middle sound good (let’s call them “hamburgatoes”), and there is no reason they can’t be grown once genetic engineering gets a little further along. Carrots are crunchy, as are potato chips. So why not grow carrots that taste like potato chips? Or like Cheetos or other crunchy, cheese-flavored snacks. Kids would want to eat more veggies, and carrot sales would skyrocket.

Speaking of cheese flavor, consider the pits of avocados. They are so large that it seems a waste to just throw them out, as we do now. Avocados already contain lots of fats in the edible part, as cheeses do, so genetic engineering to put more fats in the pit would help make them edible and even taste like a hard cheese, say romano or parmesan. Then grate the pit it on food to taste! Avocado pits are a specialty item of course, but just a start.

Next time: New Plant Paradigms (Part III: Giant seeds taste better)

Spore Storm. Anthrax bacteria can kill quickly, overwhelming an animal’s natural defenses by multiplying and secreting toxins. The toxins build up in the body and they, not the organisms themselves, are what ultimately cause death. Once dead, the animal host is no longer a suitable source of food, shelter, and oxygen for the anthrax. Now something interesting happens. Some of the anthrax bacteria succeed in growing, inside their bodies, a tough cover encapsulating their genes and certain other cell components. This is called an endospore, and is capable of withstanding environmental conditions for long periods of time – several decades has been documented. When conditions finally become favorable (e.g. it is eaten by a host animal), it comes back to life, attempts to grow and divide, infects the new host, and the cycle begins anew.

Many terms derived from “spore” exist, from aeciospores to zygospores, and endospores are just one kind. Some plants reproduce via spores, ferns for example. Spores do nothing until conditions for growth are promising. Then they spring into action. Plant spores sprout into baby plants called sporelings (spores become sporelings, like seeds become seedlings). The sporelings eventually become full grown plants if all goes well. However, many familiar plants produce seeds, not spores. Seeds are much bigger and carry much more nutrition, used to give a baby plant a good start, or perhaps sustain an animal that eats it. Spores, on the other hand, are microscopic.

Oaks produce acorns, which are large seeds, not microscopic spores. But even the mightiest oak, like a tiny blade of grass, is missing a big opportunity. That is the opportunity for each cell in each leaf to create an endospore, instead of uselessly falling to the ground to rot when the leaf gets old or winter approaches. In the future, by natural accident or human design, some plant may become the first to grab that opportunity, and things may never be the same again. Instead of dropping their leaves, these plants will release a dust storm as each leaf transforms into millions upon millions of endospores, blowing in the wind. These endospores will eventually land and try to start a new plant, in the spring in temperate climates or any time in warmer conditions. Such spore-producing plants could continue to also produce seeds as they always have, but rather than waste their spent leaves along with an additional opportunity to propagate, they will instead much more efficient convert those leaves into quantities of endospores. This will give them an advantage over traditional plants, out-competing them and eventually dominating the earth, just as flowering plants have come to dominate since they first evolved at least 140 million years ago. Let us hope these superplants make useful crops. That way their domination will be useful to us.

Next Time: A Return to Roots

The aim is to foster a community of donors, and to allow donors and potential donors to give each other advice, particularly regarding the pros and cons of various careers, and for networking with like-minded others within industries. For example, someone already working in a large corporation could give a prospective donor advice about how to apply for a job.

Over time, it is hoped that the network will grow to a relatively large size, and that donations to existential risk-reduction from the network will make up a substantial fraction of funding for the beneficiary organizations.

In isolation, individuals may feel like existential risk is too large a problem to make a dent in, but collectively, we can make a huge difference. If you are interested in helping us make a difference, then please check out the network and request an invitation.

Please feel free to contact the organizers at contact@xrisknetwork.com with any comments or questions.