SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Very low concentrations of the popular organic insecticide spinosad have profound effects on beneficial insect species, including vision loss and neurodegeneration, new research led by the University of Melbourne has found.
The study, published in eLife, used the vinegar fly Drosophila to analyze the impact of chronic exposure to low concentrations (0.2 parts per million) of spinosad and the resulting physiological impacts on the brain and other tissues.
Spinosad is commonly used to control insect pests including thrips, leafminers, spider mites, mosquitoes, ants and fruit flies, in both commercial and domestic settings.
"Within a matter of 20 days, tiny doses of spinosad can have an alarming impact on the brains of adult Drosophila. Observing sections of brain tissue under microscope demonstrated there was an average of 17% of the fly brains destroyed due to exposure," said Dr. Felipe Martelli from Monash University, who completed this work as part of his Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne.
"Neurons that serve vital functions die leaving large vacuoles, fluid-filled sacs, in the brain. This leads to neurodegeneration, blindness and behavioral changes in adult vinegar flies. Due to the Drosophila's genetic and biochemical similarities to other insects, the research indicates that these impacts could be translated to other beneficial insects such as bees," Dr. Martelli said.
[...] "When you look at insect species disappearing it's almost like randomly pulling blocks out of a Jenga tower; its destabilizing ecosystems making them vulnerable to collapse."
Journal Reference:
Felipe Martelli, Natalia H. Hernandes, Zhongyuan Zuo, et al. Low doses of the organic insecticide spinosad trigger lysosomal defects, elevated ROS, lipid dysregulation, and neurodegeneration in flies, (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.73812)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25 2022, @10:31PM (6 children)
-nomsg
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 25 2022, @10:50PM (3 children)
You have yourself a nice hydrocarbon burger. I'm going to cook someone's organic sacred cow. Aside from my own personal satisfaction in eating an organic cow, I'll have busloads of people crashing my party. Your hydrocarbon burger might attract some lonely ants.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25 2022, @11:15PM
Pity the ants. The issue I see is that naturally occurring insecticides are more likely to be broad spectrum while synthetic insecticides can be tailored to more specific types of targets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @12:01AM
It's still poison. Same with these "organic" insecticides.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @08:04AM
Not as bad as cooking and eating something you've fucked.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday February 26 2022, @09:39AM
Yup. First they banned or restricted pretty much every synthetic systemic because synthetics are evil(tm). It's OK, we've got nice friendly organic spinetoram/spinosad which can replace them.
Until you actually run some research on what your nice friendly organics do to non-target species...
Mind you, a related problem is that people want some sort of Maxwell's Demon insecticide that only kills the insects they don't like. Such a thing doesn't exist, you have to accept that anything you use is going to kill a certain portion of insects you're not really targeting alongside the ones you are rather than endlessly iterating through insecticides that don't implement Maxwell's Demon.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday February 26 2022, @07:26PM
...says the man who knows absolutely nothing about chemistry.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2, Troll) by Snotnose on Friday February 25 2022, @11:20PM (3 children)
Who woulda thunk stuff boiled out of tree bark would kill more broadly than something chemically engineered to kill a specific pest?
Seriously, I love seeing the liberal arts majors going ape shit for organic. I mean, arsenic is organic, asbestos is organic, etc etc etc.
What I really love is there is some aerosol that claims they're better because they use natural air to pressurize the can. Are they using normal air at pressure? Nitrogen? CO2? Or some exotic gas produced by heating, I dunno, Mercury past it's boiling point? They're all natural....
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 26 2022, @12:04AM
This message brought to you by the people who designed the targeted pesticide, all proud that their engineered products met it's design criteria of being more specific than the non IP protected generic.
Can we get some independent testing and review to look for things that weren't in the product development plan? See what representatives of the competing generic products think?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Sunday February 27 2022, @02:16AM (1 child)
Arsenic is not organic, either in the sense of being a carbon compound or in the sense of being a functional part of a healthy living organism. The same applies to asbestos. Incidentally, the dangerous aspect of asbestos appears to be mechanical rather than chemical.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 27 2022, @02:03PM
Arsenic and asbestos are all-natural.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @12:23AM (6 children)
Sometimes when you try to kill something, you kill more than you intended. Heard about a guy in the Southern US, in a swamp shooting poisonous snakes out of trees, until one snake fell into his canoe, and he blasted it with his shotgun. Nothing like swimming with the water moccasins and copperheads.
So here we are, the Editors have tries to kill aristarchus, and in the process have ripped the free speech heart out of SoylentNews. I guess aristarchus will just have to go open up an account with Truth Social, where at least they still respect freedom of speech.
Oh, it would be nice if there were a Public Announcement of such a definitive self-impalement on the site. But such dastardly actions are often done in secret.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @03:17AM (2 children)
It has been painful to watch. The self proclaimed philosopher, who started out posting interesting material, then slid into the morass of mental deficiency. The quicksands of moral torpitude. The closet of ethical decay. The warehouse of dunning kruger decline. Oddly, the arisockus has never actually identified his philosophical school of thought. He has merely borrowed a bit here, echoed a thought from there, always leaning heavily on Marxism and progressive thought. Sadder still, the former interesting person has nowhere to go. He doesn't understand that he would be more comfortable on Twitter, with the mindless masses. He fails to realize that discussion Facebook would be on his intellectual level. Youtube channels dedicated to the praise of Biden and progressivism would welcome him. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and sadly, we must watch the arisockus waste in front of us. Can't we convince the Sacklers to provide arisockus with a truckload of oxycontin?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @04:50AM
It's terrible to lose one's mind. Or to not have one at all.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @06:04AM
Hmm, "arisockus" is a Runaway tell. And this has always been about Runaway, your Average White Male, former trucker, married to a woman with real estate, working the graveyard shift for a foreign owned manufacturer of torture devices! Runaway is so stupid, that aristarchus' best efforts were not enough to even phase his ignorance. Someone was keeping a list of things that Runaway did not know, but evidently the burden became too much.
Aristarchus was an asset to SoylentNews. He was our Moral Compass. He would call out the alt-right, the racist right, and the severely medically ignorant right, as illustrated in DannyB's latest journal. He was one of the original BuckFeta group, he favored free speech and open, raucous debate. Unfortunately, his username is banned. I suggest that all Soylentils keep his username alive, through constant reference and citation, as a sort of SoylentNews Ravager's funeral.
And, we need to ban Runaway. If he succeeds, soon there will be no one to listen to his bullshit, other than himself, which is as it has been through most of his life. Have it on good testimony that neither his wife nor his kids listen to him at all anymore, that is why he is here. And The Mighty Buzzard loved Runaway, as FatPhil loves him now, and janrinok just likes to watch. Sad. SoylentNews had such promise.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @05:15AM (2 children)
And nothing of value was lost.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @06:06AM (1 child)
And even less of value was gained. SoylentNews is now a Wasteland.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @04:25PM
You must be new here.
(Old joke)