WTF? WTG, science!
1 Like
We are right now planting boxes of genetically modified mosquito eggs (just add water!) in Florida, with permits up to 750 million gm mosquitoes.
These are a hybrid of a couple kinds of mosquitoes, and then further engineered with a genetic disorder that causes the females to die without antibiotics. The idea is that the males (which donât bite) will breed and pass on their deadly gene. Their daughters will die and their sons will live to pass on the gene again, eventually wiping out most of the mosquito population.
In short we are living in a scifi movie about playing God.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01186-6
Fwiw, weâve been doing this in Brazil for a while now. There were some concerns about things going awry, not sure if they ever really figured it out.
^Sounds like what they tried in Jurassic ParkâŚ
So, I know mosquitos are pests and very annoying. However, they serve a function in the larger ecosystem as food for many different types of creatures like fish or bats. It seems a project like this is designed to cause mosquitos to go extinct. If that happens, does it create problems in the ecosystem? I mean, arenât you pulling a layer out of the food chain? Or is the mosquito really an invasive species and other insects will take their place?
1 Like
I donât know. I donât think this could cause them to go all-the-way extinct. I also think it is intended to be temporary fix applied seasonally, although who knows (life finds a way!)
Also, I donât know if they are invasive, but Iâm sure thereâs plenty of stuff in the ecosystem that is unnecessary.
I watched a neat show about Yellowstone one time on PBS. It was about the reintroduction of wolves. One of the interesting things was that some of the streams that flowed through Yellowstone improved because of the reintroduction. It terms out that elk (I think it was elk, it may have been some other hooved beast) cause damage to riverbanks and the lack of wolves meant excess elk. The excess elk led to high erosion rates in these streams which meant unhealthy waterways. The reintroduction of the wolves decreased the elk and improved the waterways. Sometimes the connections between things arenât obvious but they still exist.
I believe itâs targeting a type of mosquito that is only 4% of the total population of mosquitoes, but responsible for almost all human disease.
Maybe that particular kind even is an invasive species?
Anyway, other kinds of mosquitoes would still be there.
Snake, neat show but mostly myth.
1 Like
Thanks- yes, itâs species specific, and the species in question is invasive to American.
1 Like
Disappointing but still refreshing to read the sentence:
âWillows are like ice cream to these ungulates!â
Thanks to all. Good to know both the targeting a specific type of mosquito and the wolf thing. I watched the clip (well, half the clip) and it definitely wasnât what I saw on PBS. The segment I was thinking about came from either Nature or Nova, which isnât to say it was any more accurate then the linked clip. I donât recall any talk of willows or beaver. It had to do with erosion caused by movement of elk on the riverbank and was really an aside from the point of the show. The video lost me when the guy claimed that a forest sprang up in 6 years. So Iâm going to hold onto privately liking wolves more because they fix rivers and not share the story publicly any longer.
1 Like
3d model of van Goghâs The Starry Night
Photogrammetric model of the canvas surface of Vincent Van Goghâs the Starry Night. Frame digitally added. 180,000 face model with 6144x6144 texture and normal maps. Decimated from 16 million faces. Initial point cloud 329 million points.
It canât be Starry Night that I did this with (because thereâs always so many crowds around), but a different Van Gogh â I went really oblique to the painting to look at it from the side so I could see the paint heaped up.
probably not this one, either:
1 Like
I saw that <3. In fact, I stuck it into Unity, and played with the notion of a silly game where you have to walk around the swirls, like a kind of hedge maze.
More generally, most of the whole friggin louvre is available for download these days.
Sort of strange that they have a ton of cities listed for that show that does not include mine, but my city has a different Van Gogh specific exhibit that looked fun. I was planning to attend.
I found out about this through a friend⌠whose cat was in the study
2 Likes
Paralyzed man learns to communicate by imagining handwriting. Scientists decoded the brain activity involved in handwriting.
5 Likes
Maybe they can let doctors use it for prescriptions.
Hey-yo!
1 Like
So, the coelacanth had been found back in 1938, but then in recent decades was considered endangered due to shark fishing⌠and evidently the catches have been increasing.
Lead author Andrew Cooke told Mongabay News that he and the other researchers were shocked at the increase of accidental coelacanth captures.
âWhen we looked into this further, we were astounded [by the numbers caught]âŚeven though there has been no proactive process in Madagascar to monitor or conserve coelacanths,â he said.
Their study goes on to purport that, with Madagascar likely being the âepicenterâ of various coelacanth subspecies, it is imperative that conservation steps are taken to preserve the ancient species.
Despite Cookeâs documented instances of recent coelacanth hunting and suspected trafficking, not all researchers agree with their findings.
itâs not astounding or anything, just interesting that maybe coelocanth numbers are increasing, which may be why more shark fishermen are catching them.