https://gosimplelab.com/ZM7S1O
is my report. I found their UI/UX quite good, and very comparable to a 23andMe experience. Pleasantly surprised to say there were zero attempts at ongoing subscription upsells, reengagement, virality etc.
Since my collection was based on a plastic bottle, I doubt microplastics would be part of the report. However the same lab offers other tests with different collection containers and different assays.
since the back end testing and reporting is done through gosimplelab you might wish to look at their offerings more directly
https://gosimplelab.com/solutions/pfas
Doesnt seem to have pfas in any of the standard city water test batteries. I'd also like to see microplastics and medicines (hormones, antibiotics etc) in a test.
I think PFAS is actually hard to test for because you'd have to remove any added fluoride salts etc, and then use spectrometry. And microplastics is expensive to test for because it requires human evaluation through a microscope
The free-gratis supply of bread; as a daily life-preserving staple; to a portion of the population doesn't appear to match the spirit of "more stuff faster".
Surely basic food supply is "the bare minimum of stuff" and the rate is fixed to 'each day' (and the delivery to grain stores is 'each harvest in the supplying region'? Yes, it's more as populations grow and centralise, but that appears to be occurring the context of the question, no?
Yes, that was the topic of the article. I am just dubious that a location that got a lot of lightning could be selected for, though lightning is not uniform across the globe. But it's a rather crude factor and hard to defend against on a micro scale!
It’s also worth noting that early in earth’s history, it was geologically very active and thus resulted atmosphere with all kinds of extreme weather—including lightning storms.
I don’t know how likely spontaneous recombination is, but those two data points make it seem plausible enough that electricity may have had an important role in the development of life on earth.
In the past there were periods of billions of years at a stretch with not much else going on that single celled organisms being zapped by lightning. You'd think that in those conditions it happened and probably frequently enough to make a difference.
For multi-cellular organisms the picture is completely different and it likely wouldn't matter nearly as much.
Let me phrase it a different way: I don't think there are any organisms selecting for being genetically modified in petri dishes by researchers in research labs. I consider the gene transfers by lightning to be the equivalent of that.
Unsurprisingly there are organisms that seem to preferentially strike (and mutate) in hospitals, but have they (yet?) selected for some special preference for, say, urban hospitals? I doubt it, though it would be cool (and probably frightening) if so. That situation would be more likely to evolve than the researcher case.
There were no organisms selecting to reproduce either. Of course, natural selection is largely a random process that organisms are subject to rather than a process that requires them to be active agents.
I feel there is a useful analogy in what happens in toxic environments. In areas where there are high levels of arsenic, for example, you find a limited ecology of organisms adapted to tolerate it, and I think I am right to say that they do not do well outside of this environment, as the mechanisms of tolerance are sub-optimal where they are not needed.
The most relevant situation would be where the environmental toxin is mutagenic. My uninformed guess is that adaptation to that environment would typically involve mechanisms to reduce susceptibility to the toxin's mutagenic effect, and, as in the case with other toxins, organisms so adapted would be out-competed in areas where the toxin is not present.
I guess we have examples in the microbes which have adapted to live in areas of high radiation, but I do not know how they fare elsewhere.
Update: D. radiodurans is an example, but it has been suggested that its tolerance is simply a side effect of a mechanism for dealing with prolonged cellular desiccation - another sort of environment where they do well.
That's cause and effect reversed! Organisms don't select, it's selection pressure that determines which organisms get to the age of reproduction and whose offspring are viable. Some outside factor (environment, another organism) needs to supply the pressure. Absent pressure life will occupy whatever room you give it until it runs up against some kind of boundary and then that pressure will take over again.
3.5 million pigs are slaughtered for food each day.
2 pig subjects "were sedated with an intramuscular injection of tiletamine and zolazepam (4–8 mg/kg of each, in equal amount), atropine (0.04 mg/kg) and buprenorphine (0.05 mg/kg). They were then administered inhaled isoflurane, except during neurophysiological recording as noted below, and oxygen (2 L/min). These gases were applied first via snout mask and immediately afterwards via endotracheal intubation with mechanical ventilatory support. General anesthesia was maintained throughout the rest of the life of the animals, including euthanasia."
That protocol was approved by some suitable committee, in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act and similar protocols. I think most people informed of the details and the purpose of the research would agree the benefits easily justify the cost of their sacrifice.
"What you call climate change, is what most people call living."
Tradition does not beget complacency, nor does it preclude reflection. I'm also eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, just the vegan versions, which are really good these days.
The test subjects were treated to avoid as much suffering as possible, in fact they suffered less than animals for food production.
So even on a individual by individual comparison level ( neglecting the scale of slaughter for food) this research is less bad than eating meat.
I think (at the risk of sounding like a shill; I don't use them) you.com is an interesting search engine that is not very well known. I'd be much happier seeing it be used for that than some we.com type branding play (although I take your point that in the hands of some branding expert it could have maybe a more clear connotation than anything related to search.
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