Are we slow rolling sterile mosquito release? My impression is that we’re not trying out some of the more aggressive ways to get there (genetic modifications like gene drives), but we’re using the technique “in the wild”, for example:
Hagfish slime is really cool.
Indeed, it’s one of the softest materials ever measured. “Jell-O is between 10,000 and 100,000 times stiffer than hagfish slime,” says Randy Ewoldt from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who had to invent new methods for assessing the substance’s properties after conventional instruments failed to cope with its nature. “When you see it in a bucket, it almost still looks like water. Only when you stick your hand in and pick it up do you find that it’s a coherent thing.”
I wonder if there are industrial uses for something so slick. Rubbers?
Not exactly ‘science’, but this is as good spot as any:
Drones unleashed against invasive rats in the Galápagos
Tiny copters deliver poisoned bait to islands where rodents threaten native birds and plants.
On 12 January, a team using two six-rotor drone copters started spreading bait laced with rat poison around North Seymour island and a nearby islet called Mosquera. Each drone can carry up to 20 kilograms of bait for up to 15 minutes.
The project might be the first of its kind, but Campbell and others in the field expect drones to play an increasing role in culling non-native animals that threaten rare species. Especially on small, remote islands, far from helicopter companies, drones could be a much cheaper way to spread poison. Poisoning rats requires dropping bait twice, 21 days apart, Campbell says. “You have to have a helicopter for a month, sometimes shipped by boat. Your expenses very quickly add up.”
Wow!
Yeah, 20 million is a drop in the bucket. There isn’t any good way to estimate the numbers of mosquitoes in an area, but there are likely hundreds of trillions of mosquitoes on the planet, and these population control methods are using an infection in the mosquitoes that makes their offspring less likely to hatch. It is a self defeating infection, as the population can’t pass on this to other mosquitoes (they just die).
Mosquito research is something that is only going to get more important, as we deal with climate change. The populations of mosquitoes in the U.S. will only increase as the average temperatures and amount of heavy rain events increases in North America.
I think the first knee jerk reaction to this is, making a species extinct isn’t a good thing. But a lot of research out there has shown that while mosquitoes do operate in a niche in the environment, it isn’t something that they are the total sum of. There are many other species that could fill that niche as well. It would be a shock to the ecosystem, but one could argue that continued human co-habitation and expansion into natural areas is a far more dangerous shock to natural ecosystems, and we aren’t doing much to scale that back. :)
Any, a Bill Gates funded research group is working on all sorts of ideas on how to control Malaria
The jury is out on what would happen if mosquitoes were to go extinct, but research is being done to answer that question.
You mean the blood-sucking carrier of pestilence niche? Yay.
A small team of Israeli scientists think they might have found the first complete cure for cancer.
“We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer,” said Dan Aridor, of a new treatment being developed by his company, Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. (AEBi), which was founded in 2000 in the ITEK incubator in the Weizmann Science Park. AEBi developed the SoAP platform, which provides functional leads to very difficult targets.
“Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market,” Aridor said. “Our solution will be both generic and personal.”
Put me in the skeptical but hopeful bucket. I worked with a lot of Israeli’s, and I admire their tenacity & work ethic. I really would like to pop a bottle of champagne if they can come through with this.
They will not offer a complete cure for cancer in a year’s time. Clinical trials don’t work that way. Especially in oncology, where long-term effectiveness–over years–must be shown before a therapy is considered a cure.
Their technology and approach may be promising–I have no idea–but it is deeply irresponsible of the company to promote it in this way.
Yeah. At the very end of the article, they finally say they haven’t even done phase one clinical trials yet.
This is interesting tech they are working on. Basically an anti-biotic for cancer, and it is something that can be used both in a targeted sense, and universally.
It attacks certain peptide chains in cancer cells, so it won’t (hopefully) target healthy cells. It sounds like they are unsure of the ability of this method to completely eradicate a cancer, as the stem cells can be more resistant to treatments, but they envision this cancer treatment as working similar to the current HIV/AIDS management plan.
You can have cancer, but take maintainence drugs to prevent the cancer from growing and spreading, at the very least it would extend the lives of cancer patients with (hopefully) minimal side effects.
But, the real dream is the customization
The MuTaTo cancer treatment will eventually be personalized. Each patient will provide a piece of his biopsy to the lab, which would then analyze it to know which receptors are overexpressed. The individual would then be administered exactly the molecule cocktail needed to cure his disease.
However, unlike in the case of AIDS, where patients must take the cocktail throughout their lives, in the case of MuTaTo, the cells would be killed, and the patient could likely stop treatment after only a few weeks.
Yep. It’s an exciting development, but it looks like they only hope to begin human trials within a year or so. Here’s hoping!
Because laser cats are AWESOME!
And I guess I’ll add this - h/t Bill Harris/dubious quality:
For something they snuck in the headline, they devoted an entire 2 sentences to this aspect!
I live in the UK, which means, outside of summer, I’d probably have to spend my entire life outdoors to get any useful UV from the sun :'(
What is this thing you call a ‘sun’?