TIL: Today I Learned

[Lohrenswald]

neither the rpublic of china (taiwan) or the republic of korea (south) actually have the word republic in their names

prc and dprk do, though

 

[Ajidica]

In the Dune movie set to be released in 2020, Timothee Chalamet is cast as Paul Atreides and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

 

[Ferocitus]

Take those awful smilies off your post. You have no right to trivialise an ongoing massacre.

Massacre? What massacre? Even the Pentagon, the masters of massacre, are not claiming there's a massacre.

Those not suspected of allegiance to the ETLO or other similar groups responsible for the spate of bombings, or if they are not part of the disinformation regarding iodine supplements and vaccinations, get to go home in the afternoon.

That there is abuse by psycho prison guards is one thing, and that's not an unusual occurence in any country. Those abuses should be punished within the law and, like in every country, they should attract harsher penalties because the guards are in a position of trust.
There is no credible evidence of systematic torture on the orders of the CCP, as much as you would like that to be true it seems.

There is, however, ample evidence of Uyghurs being held for up to 12 years without trial and being systematically abused.
That wouldn't be of much interest to you or many others here would it?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

In the Dune movie set to be released in 2020, Timothee Chalamet is cast as Paul Atreides and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I'm not sure how I feel about the movie, period. If there is any involvement whatsoever of Kevin J. Anderson or Brian Herbert, the movie will be awful.

 

[Takhisis]

neither the rpublic of china (taiwan) or the republic of korea (south) actually have the word republic in their names

prc and dprk do, though

Eh? I've just checked wikipedia and they are both stated to be ‘officially the Republic of ___’

Massacre? What massacre? Even the Pentagon, the masters of massacre, are not claiming there's a massacre.

Those not suspected of allegiance to the ETLO or other similar groups responsible for the spate of bombings, or if they are not part of the disinformation regarding iodine supplements and vaccinations, get to go home in the afternoon.

That there is abuse by psycho prison guards is one thing, and that's not an unusual occurence in any country. Those abuses should be punished within the law and, like in every country, they should attract harsher penalties because the guards are in a position of trust.
There is no credible evidence of systematic torture on the orders of the CCP, as much as you would like that to be true it seems.

There is, however, ample evidence of Uyghurs being held for up to 12 years without trial and being systematically abused.
That wouldn't be of much interest to you or many others here would it?

I'm not going to pretend that I have not read this disgusting post.

Assuming you are posting honestly, please inform yourself and then we can both do what I am doing but youa re not, which is taking you and the issue seriously.

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL that there is an easy way to kill Malaria mosquitos with a natural fungus that attacks them and has been genitically engineered to produce snake venom once the fungus is inside the mosquito.

A fungus - genetically enhanced to produce spider toxin - can rapidly kill huge numbers of the mosquitoes that spread malaria, a study suggests.
Trials, which took place in Burkina Faso, showed mosquito populations collapsed by 99% within 45 days.
The researchers say their aim is not to make the insects extinct but to help stop the spread of malaria.
The disease, which is spread when female mosquitoes drink blood, kills more than 400,000 people per year.
Worldwide, there are about 219 million cases of malaria each year.

Conducting the study, researchers at the University of Maryland in the US - and the IRSS research institute in Burkina Faso - first identified a fungus called Metarhizium pingshaense, which naturally infects the Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria.
The next stage was to enhance the fungus. "They're very malleable, you can genetically engineer them very easily," Prof Raymond St Leger, from the University of Maryland, told BBC News.
They turned to a toxin found in the venom of a species of funnel-web spider in Australia.
The genetic instructions for making the toxin were added to the fungus's own genetic code so it would start making the toxin once it was inside a mosquito.
"A spider uses its fangs to pierce the skin of insects and inject toxins, we replaced the fangs of spider with Metarhizium," Prof St Leger explained.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48464510

hm

I do get the impression from the article that this fungus is very specific.
IF... if that is 100% absolute true, there is no risk of undesired killing of adjacent insects, organisms.
Which reduces the environmental risk to a new natural balance with very few malaria mosquitos.
Here an article on that:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35408835
Mosquitos are important as food and pollinators. And when gone... which insects are going to fill up the free habitat ?
That article also mentions that scientists are working on GM breeding to get a Malaria mosquito that is resistant for the malaria parasite, but you still need to push out the existing malaria mosquitos.

The wider concern is that this fungus GM technique can also be used as sneaky biological weapon.
You infect your domestic population with an "antidote" and when done spread some fungus with subliminal negative effects.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Eh? I've just checked wikipedia and they are both stated to be ‘officially the Republic of ___’

mistranslation

 

[rah]

I'm not sure how I feel about the movie, period. If there is any involvement whatsoever of Kevin J. Anderson or Brian Herbert, the movie will be awful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2020_film)

Brian will serve as an executive producers but otherwise doesn't seem too involved otherwise in terms of writing the screen play or direction so it may be fine.
The source material is still good.

 

[The_J]

TIL that there is an easy way to kill Malaria mosquitos with a natural fungus that attacks them and has been genitically engineered to produce snake venom once the fungus is inside the mosquito.



hm

I do get the impression from the article that this fungus is very specific.
IF... if that is 100% absolute true, there is no risk of undesired killing of adjacent insects, organisms.
Which reduces the environmental risk to a new natural balance with very few malaria mosquitos.
Here an article on that:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35408835
Mosquitos are important as food and pollinators. And when gone... which insects are going to fill up the free habitat ?
That article also mentions that scientists are working on GM breeding to get a Malaria mosquito that is resistant for the malaria parasite, but you still need to push out the existing malaria mosquitos.

The wider concern is that this fungus GM technique can also be used as sneaky biological weapon.
You infect your domestic population with an "antidote" and when done spread some fungus with subliminal negative effects.

There are several things there which make it more specific:
- The fungus was distributed inside houses, as an alternative to pesticide covered mosquito nets (so that decreases the danger for other insects)
- they were distributed on dark surfaces, since mosquitos like to rest after their blood meal on dark surfaces
- the fungus is highly light sensitive, and would probably not survive outside the house

I don't know if there's anything which makes the fungus exactly only specific to these mosquitos, but it definitely could be, there are more than enough parasites which are only pathogenic to certain species.
Here's https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/fungus-venom-gene-could-be-new-mosquito-killer a more detailed summary from Science (should be digestable for non-scientists, I think).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There will be an evolutionary arms race between the fungus and the mosquitoes if this approach is widely deployed. I wonder if we can guide that evolutionary process to give mosquitoes immunity to infestation by malaria.

 

[The_J]

There will be an evolutionary arms race between the fungus and the mosquitoes if this approach is widely deployed.

That is indeed very likely.
But since the plan is anyways to contain the fungus (because GM), there'd always be options to re-engineer.

I wonder if we can guide that evolutionary process to give mosquitoes immunity to infestation by malaria.

The thing is: If it was detrimental to the mosquito, it would already have gotten resistant. There must be some fitness advantage for it, else it would have been erradicated.
A quick check only revealed to me that apparently the infection increases attraction to certain plants (because apparently their odor mimicks the parasite odor), which I guess could result in increased fitness from more nectar uptake (source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24412210 ).
I also quickly checked, it seems that hte mosquito has already been engineered to be resistant, https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006898 , but that itself comes with a massive fitness cost, which wouldn't make it survive in nature.

I guess the most likely way for malaria eradication is still the gene drive, but the ecological impact of that...uuuuhhhh.
But there's still lots of work going on for a vaccine, so finger's crossed on that side.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm saying we can engineer a fitness advantage for the mosquito using the fungus as the catalyst. If the fungus can be made which kills infected mosquitos but spares un-infected ones preferentially, then that is the fitness advantage. The advantage does not have to pre-exist to exploit it, we can make it from scratch. I don't care if that means generations of supressed mosquito populations either.

 

[Hrothbern]

From the following article the severity of the malaria infection on a victim depends also on the number (and diversity ?) of the malaria parasites in the mosquito.

Could be that a small amount of parasites is usefull for a mosquito, but that this beneficial effect saturates fast with more parasites.
.
If that is the case getting the amount of parasites down (from less malaria mosquitoes causing less malaria parasite bearing victims)... could be enough to "contain" the issue.

Makes me BTW wonder whether in pristine tropical forest the parasite count per mosquito is at a lower level than in the proximity of dense human population.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/176909/malaria-infection-depends-number-parasites-number/

 

[Traitorfish]

neither the rpublic of china (taiwan) or the republic of korea (south) actually have the word republic in their names

prc and dprk do, though

I thought all of them used some variation on "People's State", which is generally taken as a calque for "Republic"?

 

[Lohrenswald]

I thought all of them used some variation on "People's State", which is generally taken as a calque for "Republic"?

so roc/taiwan and south korea use that term, people's state (民國), and just that

the (at least) chinese word for republic is 共和國, which means like "common harmony state" or something (this is used in when they translate country names with the word republic in them), and is used in the name of prc and dprk, but they also have put "the people" in front of that word as well (and for dprk also democracy)

so like "people's republic of china" is actually a correct translation of that state's name, but for taiwan it's more "the people's state of china"

(also btw south korea is actually the GREAT people's state of korea lol)

 

[Traitorfish]

so roc/taiwan and south korea use that term, people's state (民國), and just that

the (at least) chinese word for republic is 共和國, which means like "common harmony state" or something (this is used in when they translate country names with the word republic in them), and is used in the name of prc and dprk, but they also have put "the people" in front of that word as well (and for dprk also democracy)

so like "people's republic of china" is actually a correct translation of that state's name, but for taiwan it's more "the people's state of china"

Seems like a but of an arbitrary distinction, if both contain the same essential meaning as "republic". Do Taiwanese and South Korean sources translate the word "republic" from foreign sources using the name favoured by their commie-counterpart?

 

[Lohrenswald]

Do Taiwanese and South Korean sources translate the word "republic" from foreign sources using the name favoured by their commie-counterpart?

I'm pretty sure so, I could try to look harder

but like, this distinction is made in japanese as well, for example

 

[Takhisis]

Well, me might be getting into a bit of a tonguetwister but if they themselves, in English, call themselves the ‘Great/People's/- Republic of placename’ then they do officially count as being the Republic of.

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL: the flying wing is back on the drawing table for mass civil transport: the Flying-V.

The first concept has roughly the capacity (and overall size) of an Airbus 350, but the geometry uses 20% less fuel.
(you save some weight and drag by losing up the hull in the wings)
The article (Dutch) has a short vid: https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/economie/artikel/4732776/klm-tu-delft-duurzaam-vliegtuig-flying-v
The project a joint endeavour of KLM and the (specialised green) engineering university TU Delft. For sure sponsored also by KLM for a green image (they are also active in bio- and synthetic kerosine)

Here an article in English
https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ae/flying-v/

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Flight plans will have to change to allow for much more gradual, low-bank turns or else people out in the wings will have to get comfortable with 20 meter drops during a banking turn for flying wing-type designs to be accepted.