It is however amazing that nobody (me included) never thought that this could be a solution to our plastic issues. "It's common knowledge, why waste time thinking about it?"
Digesting the polymer OTOH - that's a bit of a paradigm shift.
EDIT: It just occurred to me that both wax and plastic bag polymers are large chains of carbon with some hydrogen hanging off the edges. Perhaps it should not be so surprising that wax worms can digest that polymer.
EDIT2: Nevermind, that was in the article, I didn't read the whole thing.
https://m.phys.org/news/2014-12-gut-bacteria-worm-degrade-pl...
> Scientists say that the degradation rate is extremely fast compared to other recent discoveries, such as bacteria reported last year to biodegrade some plastics at a rate of just 0.13mg a day.
.13mg of plastic per day per bacterium would be incredible; per kg of bacteria would be not so amazing.
http://www.kidsdiscover.com/quick-reads/penicillin-found-fun...
Isaac Asimov
Imagine yourself coming home with your bicycle and having a massive (250 ug) LSD trip only having experienced it once, pretty scary and interesting at the same time [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann#Discovery_of_LS...
[1]: http://www.thegooddrugsguide.com/articles/lsd_accident.htm
Not necessarily, it is a totally subjective experience and very much dependent on the individual and the dosage.
> at most you see some visual stimuli, like blending colors.
This is an incorrect and dangerous statement, the effects of LSD can be very intense and very easily traumatizing, even in a controlled environment. The intensity of the visual hallucinations has considerable variability between individuals and can most certainly include "seeing things" and "talking to objects". This is without considering the possible permanent side effects like HPPD or the serious risks to those predisposed or with a family history of certain psychological disorders.
> People who say that they were hallucinating have never tried it or are lying
Very wrong. I am going to flag your post because it contains serious misinformation that could be dangerous if taken as genuine by someone without accurate knowledge of the risks and effects of LSD.
edit: I am not against LSD usage and think it can be a very enlightening experience, but the glib dismissals of its potential side effects are wrong and dangerous.
I used to trip regularly. Lsd effects can definitely inude hallucinations!
As a matter of fact, not having strong hallucinations was often a reason to drop another tab lol.
A lot of us used to drop acid in college.... Almost everyone tripped balls.
Vitamin C, for whatever reason, seem to intensify some visual aspects. (maybe placebo)
Even if you are an experienced psychonaut, you can get yourself into a bad trip, especially by being paranoid about having a bad trip lol.
That said, Lsd was a very useful thing to have experienced. I learned from mushrooms as well, but by far my deepest experiences have been Salvia divornium. It's so deep, it's not really a recreational drug.... You have to invest, and it can be violently dissociative.
I have (obviously false) recollections of an entire different life from my experiences with Salvia.... But I got insights from those experiences that I would have been unlikely in the extreme to have had without the drug.... And those insights have served me very, very well.
I guess some people get addicted easily.
I think it's best to stay away. But that's me.
Interesting, can you expand on this? First time I hear this. I know someone that told me of a friend of his that hid some LSD at a border crossing close to the body and as a result of the trip, the guy got severe permanent psychatric damage in that he's currently residing in an institution.
I thought he was full of shit, but if what you're saying is true, he might not have been.
Most psychoactive substances may potentiate and escalate some condition, the simplest example would be to get a full cup of strong coffee after a long period of abstinence (if you suffer from anxiety).
In the case of LSD and many other HT2A-receptor agonizing substances I can attest that it has indeed an effect that may result from simple paranoid delusions (I can read what people are thinking of me) to full on panic attacks (They are coming to kill me).
The substance in itself is not what really triggers latent disorders but what stimulates an environment in which a condition may deteriorate very fast, that's not to say that in a controlled, safe environment with the appropriate mindset this may be attenuated or even non existent.
I could digress about anecdotes here, but I don't feel comfortable, so I'll share a link [0] to an irc network where you can probably find someone tripping on LSD right now, just check if the user has |LSD appended to the nickname.
At #drugs people will be glad to talk with you about it, and you may possibly find very helpful information. Just don't do it on #sanctuary or #tripsit as these are there to help people in altered states.
It was incredibly scary that it lasted so long and I was so worried he'd never be the same again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotic_break
> Several types of psychoactive drugs have been shown to correlate with psychotic breaks
It is common knowledge amongst psychiatrists and psychologists, and has been for decades. For most people, no problem. For some people, big problem. Most people that have a psychotic break never fully recover from it either.
I think that one might stand out somewhat since I'd expect most accidental advances to be helpful to humanity. Or maybe I'm just an optimist. :)
So some of these scientists may not have known what their creations were going to be used for.
It's pretty clear that even if insecticide was the beginning there was a pretty clear point in time where it was obvious that this had nothing to do with insects any longer.
Okay, then they'll get someone else to take your work and weaponize it. The bulk of the work would have already been done by then, which is synthesizing the chemical and showing its effects on people.
By your reasoning you can excuse away any behavior. Which of course plenty of scientists and other horrible people tried to do. And then there was the collective amnesia epidemic of 1945.
Shockingly, it's not a black and white world with many layers of gray in between, which is what I was trying to show. That a lot of research can get twisted for evil.
In your earlier post, you claimed there was "no upside". That's patently false, since these started with the ideal of getting rid of pests more efficiently. Yes, there's a point where it turns from this generic research to weaponizing, but that might not be immediately obvious at the time, nor what the repercussions might be 50 years later.
No, the second people start weaponizing your research you have the option to stop participating.
> Shockingly, it's not a black and white world with many layers of gray in between, which is what I was trying to show. That a lot of research can get twisted for evil.
Chemical weapons research is pure evil, I don't doubt that at all.
> In your earlier post, you claimed there was "no upside".
Yep.
> That's patently false, since these started with the ideal of getting rid of pests more efficiently. Yes, there's a point where it turns from this generic research to weaponizing, but that might not be immediately obvious at the time, nor what the repercussions might be 50 years later.
It was obvious within the lifetime of the scientists involved because they were the ones to help weaponize it. And for that there are no excuses.
I really don't understand why you're twisting so much to come up with excuses for these people here, their role and position in all this is pretty well documented. If not for the Germans fear that allies would be able to retaliate in kind that stuff would have been used.
This is one of the best documented era in the history of mankind, there are people who deserve the benefit of the doubt but this particular group isn't one of those.
I want to agree with this, but I'm not certain how I would act if I knew my options where a) continue weaponisation research or b) get shot in the face.
Making a principled stand is only useful when it stands a non-zero chance of accomplishing something.
One could extend this argument to engineers who work for nefarious, privacy-violating ad companies, invasive surveillance...
Basically any powerful/impressive weapon can be justified to have upside as it might reduce further casualties by ending conflict sooner.
And looking at trench warfare, if there had been a way to make it completely unfeasible by being able to "permanently" poison an entire field at a time, perhaps that would have turned out better.
https://books.google.com/books?id=mykDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA80&lpg=P...
How many random chemicals did scientists accidentally ingest for every artificial sweetener discovered? It must be quite a lot, and many of those must have been quite dangerous.
Would we have artificial sweeteners at all if people practiced decent lab safety?
Could we massively speed up the discovery of future sweeteners and similar things, by intentionally exposing people to as may random chemicals as possible? Ideally after verifying they are at least probably safe in a very small quantity for tasting. I'm guessing that wouldn't be legal.
The caterpillars in the linked article are biodegrading the plastics into non-plastic (fairly quickly). That's the key thing.
What a great accident.