Humans plunder the periodic table while turning blind eye to the risks of doing so, say researchers
Where do you get the idea we are made of plastics? Not necessarily throwing shade, just.. I'm a molecular biologist and at first pass that seems like a stretch. I'd be excited to be wrong
Thermosets and thermoplastics, right? Not sure that we have that going on in there...
I'm copying this comment I just wrote elsewhere because I think you might find it useful:
"I think there's a lot of evidence that for most things (like "new tricks") there isn't any learning disadvantage for older dogs.
However, leash reactivity/aggression is not about teaching a dog a new trick (or even a new behavior) as much as it is trying to change an underlying emotional response to stimuli. I don't know anything about your dog, and there are lots of reasons why dogs can react like that on leash (fear, intense desire to play and socialize, actual aggression), but usually if the dog is freaking out they are past the point where the "logical" part of their brain can make decisions for them.
The human analogy is that people of all ages can learn new skills, like how to cook a new recipe or build a cabinet or something. But if a person has a fear of heights, they can't just learn the skill of not being scared of heights. That requires rewiring the base emotional response, which takes time and has a high rate of failure.
For dogs I worked with, we usually asked ourselves if we thought the dogs reactivity was lowering their quality of life. That is to say, does your dog need to be calm on leash to live a happy life? If you live in a city and she needs to navigate past dogs every time she goes to the bathroom, I'd say it's worth trying to make that less stressful for her. If she lives in the suburbs or in a rural area, and she barely ever encounters other dogs anyway, why bother? The human analogy is: if a person works on skyscrapers for a living, they probably need to not be scared of heights, but many people are scared of heights and live totally fine and happy lives from the ground. Of course, a human can have some control over their environment and career, but dogs don't have that luxury. We work with them where they are.
It's also worth noting that even the best "rewiring methods" take a long time and usually only work to reduce the fear, not eliminate it. We do it because it will really improve the dog's quality of life, not because we (selfishly) want a perfectly behaved dog to bring everywhere and do everything with.
A side note is that there are critical periods for dog socialization and development just like in humans. I haven't looked into this in a while but me memory is that it occurs at like 8-12 weeks of age. Puppies in this period learn about how to interact and communicate with other other dogs in the same way we learn language early in life. If they aren't socialized in this period, they usually struggle to effectively socialize for the rest of their lives. Still, this isn't necessarily the cause of leash reactivity, so I'm just throwing it in as a side comment if you want to learn more.
AND lastly, if you do decide you need or want to work on your dog's reactivity, I strongly recommend Grisha Stewart's BAT 2.0. I am not affiliated with her in any way, but this is the technique recommended by reinforcement-based training organizations and has the most likelihood of reducing reactivity in my personal experience. The textbook is like literally hundreds of pages long and covers a ton of case-scenarios. It would take time to read and learn to do the protocol, and you need a BAT leash (a 15 ft leash) and lots of practice managing it, but I have seen dogs go from freaking out and screaming from seeing another dog >100 yrds away to being able to (tensely) stand to the side of a sidewalk and contain their panic as a dog passes. It won't make a reactive dog confident and bomb proof, but it can make a huge difference when applied carefully and consistently, especially with other methods like look-at-that/counterconditioning, Karen Overall's calmness protocol, and engage-disengage games."
I think there's a lot of evidence that for most things (like "new tricks") there isn't any learning disadvantage for older dogs.
However, leash reactivity/aggression is not about teaching a dog a new trick (or even a new behavior) as much as it is trying to change an underlying emotional response to stimuli. I don't know anything about your dog, and there are lots of reasons why dogs can react like that on leash (fear, intense desire to play and socialize, actual aggression), but usually if the dog is freaking out they are past the point where the "logical" part of their brain can make decisions for them.
The human analogy is that people of all ages can learn new skills, like how to cook a new recipe or build a cabinet or something. But if a person has a fear of heights, they can't just learn the skill of not being scared of heights. That requires rewiring the base emotional response, which takes time and has a high rate of failure.
For dogs I worked with, we usually asked ourselves if we thought the dogs reactivity was lowering their quality of life. That is to say, does your dog need to be calm on leash to live a happy life? If you live in a city and she needs to navigate past dogs every time she goes to the bathroom, I'd say it's worth trying to make that less stressful for her. If she lives in the suburbs or in a rural area, and she barely ever encounters other dogs anyway, why bother? The human analogy is: if a person works on skyscrapers for a living, they probably need to not be scared of heights, but many people are scared of heights and live totally fine and happy lives from the ground. Of course, a human can have some control over their environment and career, but dogs don't have that luxury. We work with them where they are.
It's also worth noting that even the best "rewiring methods" take a long time and usually only work to reduce the fear, not eliminate it. We do it because it will really improve the dog's quality of life, not because we (selfishly) want a perfectly behaved dog to bring everywhere and do everything with.
A side note is that there are critical periods for dog socialization and development just like in humans. I haven't looked into this in a while but me memory is that it occurs at like 8-12 weeks of age. Puppies in this period learn about how to interact and communicate with other other dogs in the same way we learn language early in life. If they aren't socialized in this period, they usually struggle to effectively socialize for the rest of their lives. Still, this isn't necessarily the cause of leash reactivity, so I'm just throwing it in as a side comment if you want to learn more.
AND lastly, if you do decide you need or want to work on your dog's reactivity, I strongly recommend Grisha Stewart's BAT 2.0. I am not affiliated with her in any way, but this is the technique recommended by reinforcement-based training organizations and has the most likelihood of reducing reactivity in my personal experience. The textbook is like literally hundreds of pages long and covers a ton of case-scenarios. It would take time to read and learn to do the protocol, and you need a BAT leash (a 15 ft leash) and lots of practice managing it, but I have seen dogs go from freaking out and screaming from seeing another dog >100 yrds away to being able to (tensely) stand to the side of a sidewalk and contain their panic as a dog passes. It won't make a reactive dog confident and bomb proof, but it can make a huge difference when applied carefully and consistently, especially with other methods like look-at-that/counterconditioning, Karen Overall's calmness protocol, and engage-disengage games.
I'm not sure about the time scale you're referring to, but I have some expeirence with dog training and I've been interested in dog training history lately, so maybe I have insight for you. Also, I want to qualify this whole tirade by saying this is a USA-centric breakdown; other countries have different cultural histories with their dogs, and while the underlying animal behavior is the same, I can't speak to whether dogs in other countries are "well" or "poorly" trained.
Prior to the 1900s, dogs weren't really thought of as companion animals the way they are now. Dogs were usually from working lines-- hunting dogs, setters, pointers, terriers, ratters, herders, shepherds, guard dogs, sled dogs, etc. They were considered somewhat adjacent to livestock. In these situations, dogs were often "trained" by their breeding. You don't have to tell a working line rat terrier to kill rats, they just do. Sheepdogs will herd children if there aren't sheep around. Just try keeping a working line husky from pulling in a harness... you can do it, but it's working against it's nature. Mostly around this time, a person had multiple dogs of breeds with natural instincts to do the job they wanted them to do, and the dogs did it. The ones that did it best were bred by their owners, and the next generation was better than the last. It's also important to note that the major written documents describing dog training at this time mostly emphasized rewarding the dogs with meat and praise when they are good, and ignoring them when they are bad.
During and around WWII, there was a new interest in training dogs for policing, warfare, and personal protection. It became more common to have one-dog-one-handler arrangements, and since most working lines of guard dogs were more "bark at intruders and bite strangers" kinds of dogs instead of "dutifully and silently stand by until ordered to kill" dogs, there was an interest in developing training methods to achieve the desired result without needing to breed new working lines.
From this desire during WWII, two schools of thought arose. One was the "traditional" method (not very traditional after all...) which arose from trainers like William Koelher. These methods emphasized discipline, "corrections", and punishment. The other school of thought had its roots from behaviorists like Marian Breland Bailey (an advisee of BF Skinner) that illustrated the power of operant conditioning and positive reinforcement. They both started around the same time (1930s-1960s) but for one reason or another the traditional methods were more popular, and the reinforcement methods were seen as lesser "tid-bit training techniques" based in "the prattle of 'dog psychologists'".
It turns out they were both working with a similar framework-- dogs learn by associating an action or stimulus with a positive or negative outcome. The argument was whether positive or negative outcomes were better at inducing learning gains. At this point, mountains of research shows that positive reinforcement wins out every time, meaning that the behaviorists were more correct than the traditionalists.
Still, as I mentioned, the traditional methods were more popular for a long time. People still think they need to "be an alpha" or leader to their dogs, that they need to discipline the dog so it respects them, that punishing the dog is the way to achieve good behavior. Choke and shock collars, leash corrections, and "alpha rolls" are still common training techniques despite the evidence that they are counterproductive. Additionally, you'll remember what I said about the behaviorist/reinforcement methods being more aligned with training techniques recorded before WWII-- when farmers were training herding dogs, they weren't "alpha roll"ing them, they were giving them meat when they did their job and ignoring them when they didn't.
Anyway that's a whole fucken essay in itself, but the point I'm trying to make is this: prior to WWII, dogs were trained by being paid in daily food and by having the chance to breed. Many working dogs are still trained like this, perhaps giving you the impression that dogs "used to be trained well". Companion dogs are a more modern development and there continues to be two schools of thought about how to train them. People who look deeply into evidence-based dog training methods train their dogs with positive reinforcement-- these dogs are usually what we consider "well trained" dogs, and overwhelmingly these dogs exist in affluent areas where dog owners have the money to pay for expensive trainers, and where they have the free time to train the dog consistently. As class disparity grows, it is becoming more common for people in poorer areas to lack access to the education about the best methods, so they tend to default to "traditional" methods that were more popular in the 20th century. These dogs are... less "well trained". Even if someone wants to put in a lot of effort to learn how to train dogs, they might just not have access to the most up to date knowledge. Additionally, there's evidence that dogs trained with these methods are more susceptible to a lack of generalization than reinforcement trained dogs, which is to say they might act fine in most situations, but they act worse (more fearfully, less predictably) in novel scenarios. That's part of why you might see "well trained" dogs who suddenly and disasterously act out.
One last side note: often dogs who are reactive (the term for dogs who freak out and start screaming when they see a person or a dog or a bike, etc.) are not necessarily untrained. Reactivity is a fear response; you can imagine they might be like a normal human with a spider phobia. They might be 100% perfectly behaved in every situation... except for when a dog walks by. In this situation, the other dog is like a spider.
Traditional training might suggest that you try to order the dog to stop freaking out and punish them if they don't stop when they see another dog, but that's like punishing someone with a spider phobia for freaking out when they see a spider. The reinforcement methods instead try and convince the dog that other dogs (spiders) are actually harmless. This is shown to reduce reactivity much more than punishment. Still, reducing reactivity is like really really hard, just as fixing phobias in humans is. Even if someone is working very hard with training and using the best available techniques, the dog might still freak out when they see another dog (thus looking like they "aren't trained", according to your post).
And LAST last note, maybe the difference you're perceiving is from covid? A lot of people got a lot of dogs but couldn't take them out to socialize and train them due to lockdown. Additionally, during covid a lot of adoption agencies literally ran out of dogs, meaning that dogs that would usually be euthanized because of behavioral issues were instead adopted out to families. Compounded with a lack of socialization, and the fact that many people still use "traditional" training methods, maybe you're just seeing a lot of reactive, fearful dogs? Hopefully that will improve over time!
Anyway thanks for reading my whole fucken essay, lol... I wrote this while on a plane so I guess that's why I was bored enough to write this much. Hope you get something out of it!
I don't want this to be an accusation about lemmy's user base, so take this next comment with a grain of salt:
I feel like lemmy slants male the same way early reddit did, and the same way a lot of more technical communities seem to. I've definitely seen threads where the perspectives being shared feel alien and out of touch, and although I'm sure that they have valuable insights about many topics, it does feel kind of... homogenous?
One specific example is the threads arguing about whether to make lemmy more like reddit or not. Often, there are a lot of comments arguing that they don't want to change lemmy in ways that would make it more inviting, because then more people from reddit would show up. The implication is that the average user of reddit is an idiot or should be unwelcome in some way, but to me it seems that they are just trying to select for men in technical disciplines and who have similar world views to the current user base. Idk, it's not a great look.
Anyway, I'm non-binary and I don't have endometriosis so I'm probably not part of the communities you're looking for... still, I wish you all the best looking for your space. I think it's truly less homogenous here than it seems... We'll get more diverse perspectives over time!
I'm sorry! My knowledge of this process does not extend to the point where I could even give you a hint of the answer. To be honest, it would require me diving into the underlying mechanisms of your condition, and it sound like your doctor has said it isn't even settled science why it's happening, so I don't think anyone can tell you if this would work for you.
I know that isn't what you wanted to hear, but two things: 1) this treatment is a long way off anyway, so anyone will have to wait for it to be available, and 2) there are probably many other treatments coming down the line for your condition... even if those also take a long time.
Anyway, I'm sorry for your pain and that I couldn't help! Honestly, I hope something will be available to help you many years before this becomes a treatment option.
You're not oversimplifying from my description, my description was just too simple itself! Unfortunately, no, it wouldn't work like this. The whole idea is that the cell would pick up anything and discover that it isn't as dangerous as it thought. That's the opposite of what we'd want for cancer cells!
Luckily, there are many, many other treatments for various cancers coming in due time, also. My research is actually closer to cancer research than immunology, so I can tell ya-- there's good stuff coming!
Maybe? But it works by flagging specific proteins related to allergenic response. For people with higher tendency to develop allergies in general, I imagine you'd need a LOT of different flagged proteins to cover the bases of what one's immune system was already alerting to.
Tbh, it might be a good treatment for those individuals for their few, most problematic triggers, but I think in general there are probably better approaches for them!
Hi hello I'm your friendly neighborhood molecular biologist and I want to tell you (or anyone who might think like you) that you're totally fucken wrong lol
It is commonly accepted by contemporary biological scientists that sex exists on a spectrum. The technical definition of sex involves the size of gametes (in humans: sperm and egg cells) that are created by the organism, but we don't usually go around "unsexing" people who don't make gametes (the infertile, the elderly, etc.)
Instead we might look at chromosomes, genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics (beard, breasts, voice, etc.). Although the state of these characteristics often aligns (ie. XY usually means penis and more hair) they for sure definitely do not always.
You can have unusual chromosome combinations (XXY, XXX, etc.), you can have a modification of the signalling pathway for sex hormones (androgen insensitivity), you can have mutations in specific genes relating to secondary sex phenotypes (extra hair, no hair, voice changes, etc.). You might have a person whose gentalia say "female" but chromosomes say "male". You might get a person whose face, voice, and body says "female" but whose genitalia say "male".
You might think these things are too rare to bother with, but intersexuality (defined as a person who's sex can't be conventionally filtered into male or female) is estimated to be as common as 2% of the population (basically the same as red-headed people in the USA). Many people estimate that the actual incidence of unalignment between all sex characteristics as assigned gender is even more common if we expanded the definition to include internal brain structures relating to sexual and gender identity, or natural differences in hormone quantities that overlap between members of different sexes. Basically, science says non-binary is valid as fuck.
That's not even to get into the social construct of gender, but there's a whole scholarly discipline there as well. But I'm a biologist and people weirdly trust essentialist constructs of sex and gender more than social ones, so here I am.
This is basically my fear, also. How can I retain hope that new, amazing treatments will help people if we don't even have equitable access to the current treatments?
For example, we still make people seeking medicines for mental health try going through a gauntlet of dependency-forming drugs from greater than half a century ago (that have been shown to be effective in less than half of people who take them) before insurance will pony up for contemporary alternatives (that work much more often).
I don't work in the clinical space so don't trust me too much... but jeez we have so many things to solve before the "bio golden age" really helps normal people
That is so funny... tbh I know I'd get shit for this professionally, but it definitely frustrates me that we don't allow people with few other choices to have access to crazy, left field treatment stuff.
My best friend died of a specific and rare cancer this year. We know exactly how that cancer works on a molecular level, and we've found a few chemicals that interfere with the function of those cells in vitro while not seeming to harm average cells.
Sure, it's a huge risk to take that drug that's only been tested in a dish, and it wouldn't be worth it for most people. But he was going to (and did) die within a year of diagnosis. It's not like he had other options.
Maybe he should have invested in a rat costume ;)
Well, you'll also be happy to know that they started this work on allergin way before working on autoimmune disease, and in my opinion, the evidence that it works for allergies is much stronger than how it works for autoimmune diseases! Not necessarily because it won't work for auto immune stuff... just that they have done less confirming.
I have severe allergenic asthma so I was excited about it too 😁
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The article only barely mentions orthodontics like braces, retainers, etc. and not as the substance of her major criticism. I don't think she's trying to call out the groups that you are mentioning, and in fact, the doctor she rhetorically highlights as "good" is the one recommending braces over veneers.
It's the veneers and crowns she is mostly critiquing. She also unpacks how the standards for beauty are affected by celebrities doing this as a trend. Specifically, the procedures she is critiquing make an effect that is only achieveable by paying for the procedure, and the cost of getting and maintaining it makes it a class signifier. The financial elite set the standard.
You're valid and your thoughts are a valid contribution to the discussion, but I figured I could clarify that in case you or other people didn't see that in the article.
This article is garbage but I'm a molecular biologist and the publication they're talking about is really neat.
The "ELI5 to the point of maybe reducing out the truth" way to explain it is that the researchers can add "flags" to proteins associated with immune responses that make cells pick them up and examine them. This is shown to work for allergins (so say, add a flag to peanut protein and the cells can look at it more closely, go "oh nvm this is fine" and stop freaking out about peanuts) as well as autoimmune diseases (where cells mistake other cells from the same body as potential threats).
It's not nearly to a treatment stage, but tbh this is one of the more exciting approaches I've seen, and I do similar research and thus read a lot of papers like this.
There's a lot of evidence that we are entering a biological "golden age" and we will discover a ton of amazing things very soon. It's worrysome that we still have to deal with instability in other parts of life (climate change, wealth inequality, political polarization) that might slow down the process of turning these discoveries into actual treatments we can use to make lives better...
Still, don't doubt everything you read! A lot of cool stuff is coming, the trick is getting it past the red tape
Love this quote, but struggling to look the book up. Do you by chance mean "The Prophet" by the same author? There's a painting by his cousin (with the same name) called "The Prince" so I could totally see the names getting confused.
If it's really The Prince, can you link it? I just love this quote a lot
Actually... If an animal you own/trained makes art... you did get to have the copyright to the art, until recently with these same legal developments. Now it's less clear.
I also agree more with the other posters interpretation in general. We copyright art made by random chance emergent effects (Polluck et al.), process based art (Morris Louis et al.), performance art (so many examples.. Adrian Piper comes to mind), ephemeral art, math art, and photography, as the poster says. None of those artists are fully in control of every aspect of the final project- the art makes itself, in part, in each example.
If a human uses a math equation for the geometric output of a printer, and they tweak the variables to get the best looking output, we consider that art by law. Ai is exactly the same.
It's funny, I find that illustrators hate ai art, but "studio" artists (for lack of a better term) usually adore it
I enjoyed LingoDeer for Japanese!
dude the downvotes are because the entire vegetable section is about lactic acid fermentation, so your comment is just factually wrong
It's okay to be wrong... just maybe think about whether it's your own mistake before calling people alcoholic dipshits
I'm confused; the link says it was updated in 2023 but none of the data is from later than 2022. Am I missing something?
Yeah but like... not all polymers are plastics, right? Like... they aren't synonyms?
Wikipedia says acrylics, polyesters, silicones, polyurethanes, thermoplastics, and thermosets are plastics. Do those exist in organic tissue? Am I missing an obvious group?