MostBotsAreBad

MostBotsAreBad t1_jdmba3c wrote

Reply to Heavy metal concentrations in rice that meet safety standards can still pose a risk to human health by aboynamedbluetoo

There's arsenic in a lot of rice grown in the U.S., too, and possibly in other crops, especially those grown in former cotton fields, as arsenic products were used on cotton for pest control.

Reports of testing pop up periodically, but mostly the problem seems to generally be ignored. Even if you don't eat rice, this kind of legacy environmental contamination is going to be an ongoing issue, and it's worth keeping an eye on, maybe worth learning the symptoms of chronic low-level metal poisoning.

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MostBotsAreBad t1_jdfz66m wrote

Reply to comment by lai-shxuan in A study shows that patients with the most serious health issues who thought that continuing the treatment would result in destitution only had an estimated 24% chance of continuing treatment, while those thinking paying fees would not negatively affect their financial situations had a 95% likelihood by nmhhg8

They got paid to do this study.

To be fair, a lot of rich people / politicians insist people will pay anything for medical care they want. It might be worth rebutting.

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MostBotsAreBad t1_jd8q0c2 wrote

Reply to ‘Terminator zones’ on distant planets could harbor life, UC Irvine astronomers say by SnthesisInc

This is still only in the range of Life As We Know It. We literally do not know the range of Life Other Than That, although it's suspected that it requires a certain range of chaos -- that is, a reasonably consistent range of energy transfer in a consistent environment.

Life seems to need environmental energy being used to create and perpetuate (and, probably, replicate) patterned formations. We don't know that it has to be water-based, or even chemical. Electromagnetic-pattern lifeforms could exist, for all we know, just for instance, so it may be that most life in the universe exists entirely within stellar bodies.

Or not. But we don't know. It could be that most life on Earth exists in the hot rock miles beneath the surface and isn't water-based at all.

Still, we're probably mostly interested in water-based life that's at least pretty much Life As We Know It. Unless deep hot-rock organisms ever breach the surface, in which case we'd be very interested in that, especially if they're quite large.

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MostBotsAreBad t1_jd8nn3i wrote

Reply to Newly established mosquito in Florida identified as the little-known Culex lactator — other Culex species are known to transmit the West Nile and St. Louis Encephalitis viruses by marketrent

I remember when I first saw predictions this would happen, back around 1990. Read an article that said "Learn the word arbovirus now, to save time."

It also said that the First World would suddenly make a real effort to find a cure for malaria. Made perfect sense. And then, suddenly, 'altruistically', First World funding for it went into high gear. The funding is good (Bill Gates still hasn't made even, but it's a good start), but the timing's a trifle suspicious.

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