Because mosquito populations move naturally around the environment at the moment, and are not particularly limited by the presence of other species. This mosquito being targeted does not compete meaningfully for any resources with other mosquitos that carry diseases that affect humans. Those other mosquitos or other biting insects are limited by resources, and breeding pools and such - not competition with the one that is being proposed to be eliminated or reduced.
Err - no. Tetracycline levels need to be really high. From memory, it's about.1% of the food. There is nowhere in nature that this exists - apart perhaps from some third world pharmaceutical plant. Mere traces don't do it.
Sure. And now explain why the same risk isn't present when any other significant challenge (a dry year) happens. Plus - the 'new variation' - there is no plausible direct genetic benefit from this gene. It doesn't make the mosquitos more fit under any circumstance.
Also - any remnant resistant population can be followed up by either genetic variants, or irradiated mosquitos. Reducing the level of mosquito to 0.1% of current is a success of its own, even if it does not lead to eradication.
It may be with consideration of further DNA modifications. http://www.nature.com/nbt/jour... - as an example. This is an interesting technique which means that if you mate a wild mosquito, and a modified one, you get a modified male, or an infertile female. This can spread through the population and wipe it out.
It is short-lived. The point is to breed lots of mosquitos, and release in an area. You continue doing this for several cycles, and significantly depress numbers of mosquitos in the area.
The mosquitos in principle are very cheap and easy to raise - you need to grow them in a very low-tech lab, with tetracycline in their food, and then sort by size before releasing them. (the large ones are females which you destroy). You can actually exterminate species this way. This has been done before. From http://www.fao.org/docrep/U422... "USDA scientists next arranged a screwworm eradication experiment against a completely isolated population on the island of Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. The island covers an area of 440 km and is 65 km from the coast of Venezuela. Screwworms were mass-reared in a facility near Orlando, Florida. Irradiated pupae were shipped by air to Curaçao, and the emerged flies were released by a single-engine plane flying 1.6 km wide swaths over the island. Each week 300 sterile flies were released per square kilometre during the eradication phase. Within less than six months from the initiation of the experiment, screwworms were eradicated from the island of Curaçao, in 1954 (Baumhover et al., 1955). "
The males are engineered to pass on a gene to their offspring. This gene kills the offspring.
So as to be able to raise them in the lab, the gene can be turned off by adding tetracycline to the food - an antibiotic. If for some reason this fails in a small percentage of mosquitos - nothing happens other than normal mosquitos being produced.
But, in the vast majority of cases, the eggs are produced and during development, because there is no tetracycline (an antibiotic) in the environment, they die.
Limited. These mosquitos can't bite people - they're males. They can't reproduce due to their sterility. The DNA can't transfer to other things because that bit of engineered DNA is very special purpose, and does not confer any significant fitness to anything.
This works by having mosquitos mate (which they do only with their own species), and having the developing eggs have developmental defects that lead to them dying in the egg. The female mosquito is otherwise unaffected, but dies after she lays the eggs, as she would normally.
From someone who has no clue, this seems like a novel idea. However, it is entirely clear to anyone in the field that you can put together things that will work much better than simple voice activation. For example - picking up 'Hey John' - while looking at you (assuming your name is John) makes it pretty certain someone wants to talk to you, and is not merely talking to their friend next to you.
It could in principle just play the last 1s at moderately increased speed after unmuting. I should note that I entirely agree with the 'should not be patentable'. This is a very simple concept that is not worthy of protection. Specific novel implementations of it in principle may be. But the most obvious core of the invention - using voice recognition, locating people speaking, perhaps using other microphones in a network, maybe even amplifying with gaze at the person, sound filtering et al are all well understood bits that should not form any part of a patentable solution.
But if you say 'butter is bad' - you need some evidence to prove, or at least reasonably suggest that it is significantly worse than other things you may substitute in its absence. While it is in principle true that you can become obese to the point of damaging your health by eating mixed leafy vegetables only - that does not remotely mean they are 'bad'.
Weelll. The evidence for butter being actually bad for you is surprisingly thin. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... - for example. Is a systematic review of the literature that concludes: "This systematic review and meta-analysis suggests relatively small or neutral overall associations of butter with mortality, CVD, and diabetes. These findings do not support a need for major emphasis in dietary guidelines on either increasing or decreasing butter consumption, in comparison to other better established dietary priorities; while also highlighting the need for additional investigation of health and metabolic effects of butter and dairy fat."
In other words, butter consumption has a small and uncertain correlation at most with dying early, heart disease and as small a protective effect for diabetes. This is not to say overconsumption is healthy.
Clicking through to the article finds - for example - they are refering to Glycidol. NIOSH in the USA recommends a limit of 25ppm over a 8 hour shift for workers.
The first link I find says 350l/hr are breathed, meaning 3000l/ work day. This is about 4.5kg of air. 1ppm is 4.5mg, so 25ppm is 110mg. It showed about 2 micrograms per puff in the graph at http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016...
In order to exceed the NIOSH recommendations for worker safety for glycidol, you need to take _HALF_A_MILLION_ puffs. PER DAY.
So, yes, they have found novel compounds in the vape, but at least some of these are considered 'safe' in other context at levels way above what is found in the smoke.
Not quite. Going from pure 2d, to 2.5d is not the same. With 2d, you get (for example) 40000*40000. To double (in the same chip area) - you need to go to 60000*60000, or 40000*40000*2. You can do this several times. You may reach 40000*40000*8 - you are not going to reach close to 40000, without the chip fabrication costs getting completely out of control.
In this case, as I understand it, bribery. Large amounts of money paid to corrupt malaysian government officials. Dealing with the proceeds of this in the USA is not legal, and it is treated as simply as if the people involved walked into a bank and stole it. The regulations - or earlier versions of them - were in force at the time of the original deposits into US institutions.
Not quite. The hardware is capable of energy recovery and in some circumstances may extend the battery life. It's just that in most circumstances, for most users, it is going to be largely, or entirely reliant on battery to the point that it will work just fine for 5 years without any energy recovery.
If, for example you put it close - 50cm? to your phone or router, it may actively stay charged, and not discharge at all.
But, the battery is large enough, with low enough self discharge that it meets the published specs with none, and in at least many cases it's not going to recover anything meaningful.
'Large' in this case is a 450mAh lithium-ion battery (as shown in a teardown). Properly chosen lithium ion do not suffer from self-discharge much. This weighs about 15 grams. The battery will permenantly lose some capacity - but as the discharge is very slow and at very low rate, most of the capacity will be usable.
There is also a large battery in, which has enough energy to power an infrequent (30s?) BLE sample for the specified battery life of 5 years. This raises the obvious question of if the wireless energy harvesting does anything in most cases.
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/r... - I am unsure if this link will work. This shows a teardown of a tag. On eevblog, under the title "weird "energy-harvesting" broadband (?) antenna ".
This shows a 450mAh rechargable lithium-ion battery. http://www.ti.com/ww/en/wirele... - this is a TI device which is designed for sensor tags, and sports a 1 year battery life reporting once a second over BLE with a 2032 battey. This is one half the capacity of the lithium battery used. It also won't be sending data at one second intervals. It seems entirely reasonable that the comparatively large battery will last five years without any wifi charging at all.
Some more research finds that some instances of the blurb say it uses the RF to 'boost' the battery on the device. In principle, the device is large enough that a $1 battery would run it for years. In some cases (if you put a phone on top of it) it will actually probably net charge. In a normal office environment, it will not.
However, the amount of power is available is very small, and is not suitable to power wifi or bluetooth devices - even BLE. This does not mean in principle you can't use it for things that use orders of magnitude less power.
Slashdot Mirror
As an alternative to engineering the mosquito - it may be possible to engineer the endosymbiant.
Because mosquito populations move naturally around the environment at the moment, and are not particularly limited by the presence of other species.
This mosquito being targeted does not compete meaningfully for any resources with other mosquitos that carry diseases that affect humans.
Those other mosquitos or other biting insects are limited by resources, and breeding pools and such - not competition with the one that is being proposed to be eliminated or reduced.
Err - no. Tetracycline levels need to be really high. From memory, it's about .1% of the food.
There is nowhere in nature that this exists - apart perhaps from some third world pharmaceutical plant. Mere traces don't do it.
Sure. And now explain why the same risk isn't present when any other significant challenge (a dry year) happens.
Plus - the 'new variation' - there is no plausible direct genetic benefit from this gene. It doesn't make the mosquitos more fit under any circumstance.
Also - any remnant resistant population can be followed up by either genetic variants, or irradiated mosquitos.
Reducing the level of mosquito to 0.1% of current is a success of its own, even if it does not lead to eradication.
It may be with consideration of further DNA modifications.
http://www.nature.com/nbt/jour... - as an example.
This is an interesting technique which means that if you mate a wild mosquito, and a modified one, you get a modified male, or an infertile female.
This can spread through the population and wipe it out.
It is short-lived. The point is to breed lots of mosquitos, and release in an area. You continue doing this for several cycles, and significantly depress numbers of mosquitos in the area.
The mosquitos in principle are very cheap and easy to raise - you need to grow them in a very low-tech lab, with tetracycline in their food, and then sort by size before releasing them. (the large ones are females which you destroy).
You can actually exterminate species this way.
This has been done before. From http://www.fao.org/docrep/U422...
"USDA scientists next arranged a screwworm eradication experiment against a completely isolated population on the island of Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. The island covers an area of 440 km and is 65 km from the coast of Venezuela. Screwworms were mass-reared in a facility near Orlando, Florida. Irradiated pupae were shipped by air to Curaçao, and the emerged flies were released by a single-engine plane flying 1.6 km wide swaths over the island. Each week 300 sterile flies were released per square kilometre during the eradication phase. Within less than six months from the initiation of the experiment, screwworms were eradicated from the island of Curaçao, in 1954 (Baumhover et al., 1955). "
The males are engineered to pass on a gene to their offspring. This gene kills the offspring.
So as to be able to raise them in the lab, the gene can be turned off by adding tetracycline to the food - an antibiotic.
If for some reason this fails in a small percentage of mosquitos - nothing happens other than normal mosquitos being produced.
But, in the vast majority of cases, the eggs are produced and during development, because there is no tetracycline (an antibiotic) in the environment, they die.
Limited.
These mosquitos can't bite people - they're males.
They can't reproduce due to their sterility.
The DNA can't transfer to other things because that bit of engineered DNA is very special purpose, and does not confer any significant fitness to anything.
This works by having mosquitos mate (which they do only with their own species), and having the developing eggs have developmental defects that lead to them dying in the egg. The female mosquito is otherwise unaffected, but dies after she lays the eggs, as she would normally.
From someone who has no clue, this seems like a novel idea.
However, it is entirely clear to anyone in the field that you can put together things that will work much better than simple voice activation.
For example - picking up 'Hey John' - while looking at you (assuming your name is John) makes it pretty certain someone wants to talk to you, and is not merely talking to their friend next to you.
It could in principle just play the last 1s at moderately increased speed after unmuting.
I should note that I entirely agree with the 'should not be patentable'.
This is a very simple concept that is not worthy of protection. Specific novel implementations of it in principle may be.
But the most obvious core of the invention - using voice recognition, locating people speaking, perhaps using other microphones in a network, maybe even amplifying with gaze at the person, sound filtering et al are all well understood bits that should not form any part of a patentable solution.
But if you say 'butter is bad' - you need some evidence to prove, or at least reasonably suggest that it is significantly worse than other things you may substitute in its absence.
While it is in principle true that you can become obese to the point of damaging your health by eating mixed leafy vegetables only - that does not remotely mean they are 'bad'.
Weelll. The evidence for butter being actually bad for you is surprisingly thin.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... - for example.
Is a systematic review of the literature that concludes:
"This systematic review and meta-analysis suggests relatively small or neutral overall associations of butter with mortality, CVD, and diabetes. These findings do not support a need for major emphasis in dietary guidelines on either increasing or decreasing butter consumption, in comparison to other better established dietary priorities; while also highlighting the need for additional investigation of health and metabolic effects of butter and dairy fat."
In other words, butter consumption has a small and uncertain correlation at most with dying early, heart disease and as small a protective effect for diabetes.
This is not to say overconsumption is healthy.
Clicking through to the article finds - for example - they are refering to Glycidol.
NIOSH in the USA recommends a limit of 25ppm over a 8 hour shift for workers.
The first link I find says 350l/hr are breathed, meaning 3000l/ work day.
This is about 4.5kg of air. 1ppm is 4.5mg, so 25ppm is 110mg.
It showed about 2 micrograms per puff in the graph at http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016...
In order to exceed the NIOSH recommendations for worker safety for glycidol, you need to take _HALF_A_MILLION_ puffs.
PER DAY.
So, yes, they have found novel compounds in the vape, but at least some of these are considered 'safe' in other context at levels way above what is found in the smoke.
Not quite. Going from pure 2d, to 2.5d is not the same.
With 2d, you get (for example) 40000*40000.
To double (in the same chip area) - you need to go to 60000*60000, or 40000*40000*2.
You can do this several times.
You may reach 40000*40000*8 - you are not going to reach close to 40000, without the chip fabrication costs getting completely out of control.
In this case, as I understand it, bribery. Large amounts of money paid to corrupt malaysian government officials.
Dealing with the proceeds of this in the USA is not legal, and it is treated as simply as if the people involved walked into a bank and stole it.
The regulations - or earlier versions of them - were in force at the time of the original deposits into US institutions.
Federal observers have a right to be there, and cannot be denied entry or required to leave.
If you can be denied entry to a place, or asked to leave, you're not really an effective observer.
Regulation is corrupted by lobbying I guess is the general theme, which is quite on-topic.
Not quite. The hardware is capable of energy recovery and in some circumstances may extend the battery life.
It's just that in most circumstances, for most users, it is going to be largely, or entirely reliant on battery to the point that it will work just fine for 5 years without any energy recovery.
If, for example you put it close - 50cm? to your phone or router, it may actively stay charged, and not discharge at all.
But, the battery is large enough, with low enough self discharge that it meets the published specs with none, and in at least many cases it's not going to recover anything meaningful.
'Large' in this case is a 450mAh lithium-ion battery (as shown in a teardown).
Properly chosen lithium ion do not suffer from self-discharge much.
This weighs about 15 grams. The battery will permenantly lose some capacity - but as the discharge is very slow and at very low rate, most of the capacity will be usable.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com...
There is also a large battery in, which has enough energy to power an infrequent (30s?) BLE sample for the specified battery life of 5 years. This raises the obvious question of if the wireless energy harvesting does anything in most cases.
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/r... - I am unsure if this link will work. This shows a teardown of a tag.
On eevblog, under the title "weird "energy-harvesting" broadband (?) antenna ".
This shows a 450mAh rechargable lithium-ion battery.
http://www.ti.com/ww/en/wirele... - this is a TI device which is designed for sensor tags, and sports a 1 year battery life reporting once a second over BLE with a 2032 battey. This is one half the capacity of the lithium battery used.
It also won't be sending data at one second intervals.
It seems entirely reasonable that the comparatively large battery will last five years without any wifi charging at all.
Some more research finds that some instances of the blurb say it uses the RF to 'boost' the battery on the device.
In principle, the device is large enough that a $1 battery would run it for years. In some cases (if you put a phone on top of it) it will actually probably net charge. In a normal office environment, it will not.
Note also https://store.clean.space/prod... "Battery Life: Up to 5 years"
However, the amount of power is available is very small, and is not suitable to power wifi or bluetooth devices - even BLE. This does not mean in principle you can't use it for things that use orders of magnitude less power.