All racing does is formalize what horses will do on their own. Pasture horses sometimes suffer similar injuries just doing what horses do, which commonly is run full-tilt in a group for no visible purpose. I've seen untrained horses do that, even to the point of exhaustion and laming.
I'd hazard that on a per capita basis, racehorses probably have fewer such injuries than average, because they're a helluva lot more valuable and are far more closely watched and vetted than the average horse. The main difference is that when they have a major injury, the whole world hears about it.
Since the study compared eating placentas to eating placentas, what does that have to do with anything? What was goofy was the relative dosage per body weight.
Just because you swallow the hormone doesn't mean it necessarily acts on the wrong organ system. It will still behave the same in the body, since it can't do otherwise (it can only mate up with its own receptors). Otherwise we wouldn't have oral hormone replacement therapy (or oral contraceptives, for that matter), which is commonly used for estrogen, progesterone, and thyroid.
Not blind assumption; understanding of biochemistry and hormone systems. Hormones have broadly the same effects across species, and dosage matters.
What would be a lot more informative is an analysis of what hormones are found in a human placenta, and in what quantity and concentration. But "We tried a microdose and nothing happened" isn't exactly definitive.
Actually, all it showed was that the effect wasn't present at the dosage used. The rats are eating the entire placenta. If a human consumed an entire placenta, the dosage would be different, and you might see a quite different physiological response. Underdosing a hormone can actually have a paradoxical effect (low dose can be just enough to make the body think it doesn't need to manufacture any of its own, so the serum level of that hormone can actually go *down*).
Not really, because hormones are cross-species, and do much the same jobs in every organism that has 'em. We use hormones from various livestock to treat human hormone deficiency; we can be affected by plant estrogens as if they were animal estrogens. Studying hormone interactions in rats creates a good starting point for where we should study human hormone metabolism, but at a vastly accelerated rate (you can examine the hormones during rat births every few weeks; you have to wait 9 months to examine hormones during human births).
From the NIH article, it sounds like what eating the post-partum placenta mostly does is act as short-term birth control by depressing progesterone production. (I wonder what the effect would be from a pre-birth placenta?) Which might have evolved as a way of preventing next-litter competition from arriving too soon in those animals that cycle again immediately after birth.
Indeed, a very lame excuse. Those bus stops shouldn't let people hang around waiting for a bus; anyone might loiter, and public decency would be offended! 'Course when you've got a captive audience like that, well, it must be hard for a hardworking cop to resist.
My college roommate got arrested for sitting on a public curb enjoying the evening (this was in 1973), tho I imagine it had more to do with that he would not give the cops his name. Why wouldn't he give his name? His family had escaped from Soviet Ukraine just after the Stalin era, and he took Constitutional freedoms seriously; you are not required to identify yourself if no crime has been committed. Next morning the judge released him, but even so -- it's the kind of thing that should never happen in the first place.
The trouble with loitering as a crime is that it's too open to interpretation. Standing on the corner watching cars go by? That's loitering. Walking down the street with no particular destination? That can be loitering too. Too often it boils down to "We don't serve your kind here" rather than being an act which causes harm.
A contrary explanation might be that TSA gate monkeys know their job is nothing more than harrassment, so they choose to ignore 95% -- finding 5% is just enough to keep them employed.
Per the last stats I saw, home ownership in CA is actually higher than average. A great many hovels are owner-occupied, especially in the rural areas. And there's an astonishing lot of CA that still doesn't have electric service, including well-populated canyons -- some within 15 miles of Los Angeles.
Canyons get started by water, but it doesn't take much -- just enough of a ditch to generate a bit of wind. Windblown sand does the major carving after that.
I had the same thought -- what would that do to relieve stress on the host populations? Some might expand to where they're better off if we harvest more of 'em.
Fleas, ticks, chiggers, hookworms, whipworms, horseflies, deerflies, doubtless others (especially the wide array of parasites found in Africa and Australia)... can't think of any downside, other than possibly to their own parasites. Oh well!
I read somewhere that anemia due to the arctic's twin-engine mosquitoes is the leading cause of death in caribou.
Very interesting. Now if they can target the other species that feed on humans... I'm sure there will be plenty left of the species that only feed on plants, or not at all in the adult phase.
Ironic that some folks scream "GMO!" on the one hand, and ignore "invasive species" on the other...
Actually roundworms, at least in dogs, are a symbiote, not a parasite. Recent research found that they serve to stimulate development of the puppy's immune system. It's possible to produce puppies that never experience roundworms, but they are very prone to neonatal diarrhea and pre-weaning unthriftiness, which is a lot more of a problem for the puppy.
As I point out above, it's probable that the ecological niche will be filled by crane flies, and probably gnats and other small pests, but that's a pretty good trade for being rid of mosquitoes.
I suspect the niche will be filled by crane flies, which are both edible and harmless. That's what I've observed in the wild already -- one has a population that is predominantly mosquitoes, or predominantly crane flies, without appearing to change much else. Sure, the balance may change at some levels, but wholesale collapse? Not unless something is so narrowly adapted that it feeds ONLY on mosquitoes. Doubtless there are some specialty parasite that would suffer, or have to adapt to a new host. I can't think of any mosquito predators that are so limited.
Yep, but if you can rig things so most females only produce males, you can radically shrink the population. And that would be good enough for a start. Worry about eliminating pocket populations later.
As to their ecological niche, I've noticed that when there are a lot of crane flies, there are few or no mosquitoes, and v.v. I take this to mean they can more or less substitute. Crane flies are harmless, and just as edible for mosquito predators.
Another consequence is that because it digs deeper in the pile, it tends to put a lot of affirmatively-actioned applicants in over their heads, who otherwise wouldn't have qualified academically. So it actually increases the failure rates among those minorities. And this is somehow seen as evidence that we need more affirmative action...
I bought the Hacking Exposed books.... they were enlightening: Linux isn't really 'safer' than Windows; it just has a different set of vulnerable points (fewer of 'em, but penetrating deeper into the system and more likely to persist across versions). If you want true security, run Netware.
The patching system may be the real culprit, tho: It's been pointed out that when a Windows version becomes "unsupported" there's an abrupt cessation of newly-found vulnerabilities. Why? Because the bad guys discover the holes mostly (perhaps entirely) by reverse-engineering the official patches... which with Windows, tend to be monofocused on a single bug, making the hole fairly easy to ID, and thereby paint a handy target on unpatched machines. Conversely linux updates are, to my grok, more likely to address a bunch of stuff at once, making any single hole harder to identify. Likewise, Windows service packs (which address a bunch of stuff at once) have not typically been followed by a rash of newly-found vulnerabilities.
I used to maintain a BBS list for my local SoCal calling area. That was about 55 BBSs, and as you say -- all different, all with their own unique flavor -- which depended on the mix of board software, file areas, message areas, and the users those attracted. A few survive as internet-accessable (including Techware, which was also the last of our local dialups) but for the most part... a lost era.
I had a neutered male cat who from about 9 months old spent all day, every day, killing gophers. Within a few months he'd completely exterminated them within about half a mile of my house. He only ate part of the first gopher of the day, far as I ever saw.
Most predators kill for fun as well as for food and for training their young; it's not at all unusual. -- That's the real problem with wolves vs domestic sheep; it's so much fun to shoot fish in a barrel that they wind up killing a whole flock just for jollies.
Slashdot Mirror
All racing does is formalize what horses will do on their own. Pasture horses sometimes suffer similar injuries just doing what horses do, which commonly is run full-tilt in a group for no visible purpose. I've seen untrained horses do that, even to the point of exhaustion and laming.
I'd hazard that on a per capita basis, racehorses probably have fewer such injuries than average, because they're a helluva lot more valuable and are far more closely watched and vetted than the average horse. The main difference is that when they have a major injury, the whole world hears about it.
Since the study compared eating placentas to eating placentas, what does that have to do with anything? What was goofy was the relative dosage per body weight.
Just because you swallow the hormone doesn't mean it necessarily acts on the wrong organ system. It will still behave the same in the body, since it can't do otherwise (it can only mate up with its own receptors). Otherwise we wouldn't have oral hormone replacement therapy (or oral contraceptives, for that matter), which is commonly used for estrogen, progesterone, and thyroid.
Not blind assumption; understanding of biochemistry and hormone systems. Hormones have broadly the same effects across species, and dosage matters.
What would be a lot more informative is an analysis of what hormones are found in a human placenta, and in what quantity and concentration. But "We tried a microdose and nothing happened" isn't exactly definitive.
Actually, all it showed was that the effect wasn't present at the dosage used. The rats are eating the entire placenta. If a human consumed an entire placenta, the dosage would be different, and you might see a quite different physiological response. Underdosing a hormone can actually have a paradoxical effect (low dose can be just enough to make the body think it doesn't need to manufacture any of its own, so the serum level of that hormone can actually go *down*).
Not really, because hormones are cross-species, and do much the same jobs in every organism that has 'em. We use hormones from various livestock to treat human hormone deficiency; we can be affected by plant estrogens as if they were animal estrogens. Studying hormone interactions in rats creates a good starting point for where we should study human hormone metabolism, but at a vastly accelerated rate (you can examine the hormones during rat births every few weeks; you have to wait 9 months to examine hormones during human births).
From the NIH article, it sounds like what eating the post-partum placenta mostly does is act as short-term birth control by depressing progesterone production. (I wonder what the effect would be from a pre-birth placenta?) Which might have evolved as a way of preventing next-litter competition from arriving too soon in those animals that cycle again immediately after birth.
Indeed, a very lame excuse. Those bus stops shouldn't let people hang around waiting for a bus; anyone might loiter, and public decency would be offended! 'Course when you've got a captive audience like that, well, it must be hard for a hardworking cop to resist.
My college roommate got arrested for sitting on a public curb enjoying the evening (this was in 1973), tho I imagine it had more to do with that he would not give the cops his name. Why wouldn't he give his name? His family had escaped from Soviet Ukraine just after the Stalin era, and he took Constitutional freedoms seriously; you are not required to identify yourself if no crime has been committed. Next morning the judge released him, but even so -- it's the kind of thing that should never happen in the first place.
That leotard thing under the armor, it's black, right??
Makes about as much sense as the rest of this...
Actually in some states (CA for one, IIRC) it IS illegal to carry a toy gun unless it's clearly marked with bright pink. Cuz, ya know, realism kills.
Smart criminals will just apply a little spraypaint to their weapons to disguise them as toy guns.
I don't know what they're going to do about the hot-pink rifles they sell at Murdoch's and Cabella's... are they already legally toy guns??
The trouble with loitering as a crime is that it's too open to interpretation. Standing on the corner watching cars go by? That's loitering. Walking down the street with no particular destination? That can be loitering too. Too often it boils down to "We don't serve your kind here" rather than being an act which causes harm.
A contrary explanation might be that TSA gate monkeys know their job is nothing more than harrassment, so they choose to ignore 95% -- finding 5% is just enough to keep them employed.
Per the last stats I saw, home ownership in CA is actually higher than average. A great many hovels are owner-occupied, especially in the rural areas. And there's an astonishing lot of CA that still doesn't have electric service, including well-populated canyons -- some within 15 miles of Los Angeles.
Canyons get started by water, but it doesn't take much -- just enough of a ditch to generate a bit of wind. Windblown sand does the major carving after that.
I had the same thought -- what would that do to relieve stress on the host populations? Some might expand to where they're better off if we harvest more of 'em.
Fleas, ticks, chiggers, hookworms, whipworms, horseflies, deerflies, doubtless others (especially the wide array of parasites found in Africa and Australia) ... can't think of any downside, other than possibly to their own parasites. Oh well!
I read somewhere that anemia due to the arctic's twin-engine mosquitoes is the leading cause of death in caribou.
Not that I know of. No loss to the world if they went away. Tho I wonder how it would affect the flea population that's their primary vector?
Very interesting. Now if they can target the other species that feed on humans... I'm sure there will be plenty left of the species that only feed on plants, or not at all in the adult phase.
Ironic that some folks scream "GMO!" on the one hand, and ignore "invasive species" on the other...
Ah yes, the land of twin-engine mosquitoes...
Q: What does a tundra mosquito call a bus full of kids?
A: Sardines!!
Actually roundworms, at least in dogs, are a symbiote, not a parasite. Recent research found that they serve to stimulate development of the puppy's immune system. It's possible to produce puppies that never experience roundworms, but they are very prone to neonatal diarrhea and pre-weaning unthriftiness, which is a lot more of a problem for the puppy.
As I point out above, it's probable that the ecological niche will be filled by crane flies, and probably gnats and other small pests, but that's a pretty good trade for being rid of mosquitoes.
I suspect the niche will be filled by crane flies, which are both edible and harmless. That's what I've observed in the wild already -- one has a population that is predominantly mosquitoes, or predominantly crane flies, without appearing to change much else. Sure, the balance may change at some levels, but wholesale collapse? Not unless something is so narrowly adapted that it feeds ONLY on mosquitoes. Doubtless there are some specialty parasite that would suffer, or have to adapt to a new host. I can't think of any mosquito predators that are so limited.
Yep, but if you can rig things so most females only produce males, you can radically shrink the population. And that would be good enough for a start. Worry about eliminating pocket populations later.
As to their ecological niche, I've noticed that when there are a lot of crane flies, there are few or no mosquitoes, and v.v. I take this to mean they can more or less substitute. Crane flies are harmless, and just as edible for mosquito predators.
Another consequence is that because it digs deeper in the pile, it tends to put a lot of affirmatively-actioned applicants in over their heads, who otherwise wouldn't have qualified academically. So it actually increases the failure rates among those minorities. And this is somehow seen as evidence that we need more affirmative action...
I bought the Hacking Exposed books.... they were enlightening: Linux isn't really 'safer' than Windows; it just has a different set of vulnerable points (fewer of 'em, but penetrating deeper into the system and more likely to persist across versions). If you want true security, run Netware.
The patching system may be the real culprit, tho: It's been pointed out that when a Windows version becomes "unsupported" there's an abrupt cessation of newly-found vulnerabilities. Why? Because the bad guys discover the holes mostly (perhaps entirely) by reverse-engineering the official patches ... which with Windows, tend to be monofocused on a single bug, making the hole fairly easy to ID, and thereby paint a handy target on unpatched machines. Conversely linux updates are, to my grok, more likely to address a bunch of stuff at once, making any single hole harder to identify. Likewise, Windows service packs (which address a bunch of stuff at once) have not typically been followed by a rash of newly-found vulnerabilities.
I used to maintain a BBS list for my local SoCal calling area. That was about 55 BBSs, and as you say -- all different, all with their own unique flavor -- which depended on the mix of board software, file areas, message areas, and the users those attracted. A few survive as internet-accessable (including Techware, which was also the last of our local dialups) but for the most part... a lost era.
http://www.techware2k.com/publ...
I had a neutered male cat who from about 9 months old spent all day, every day, killing gophers. Within a few months he'd completely exterminated them within about half a mile of my house. He only ate part of the first gopher of the day, far as I ever saw.
Most predators kill for fun as well as for food and for training their young; it's not at all unusual. -- That's the real problem with wolves vs domestic sheep; it's so much fun to shoot fish in a barrel that they wind up killing a whole flock just for jollies.
That, and the other question I had -- are these metabolites *unique* to cocaine? Cuz if not, cue the false positives.