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Ask An Entomologist @BugQuestions
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So...we're planning another history of science Deep Dive in the near future, and there's an *extremely weird* side story about Robert Oppenheimer of Manhattan Project fame that I wanted to highlight.

It turns out that he was a bit of a creeper.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert…
Early on in Oppenheimer's career, he planned on doing a collaboration with Linus Pauling to figure out how chemical bonds worked.

However, he soon became smitten with Ava Pauling...who was Linus Pauling's wife.
Oppenheimer asked Ava Pauling on a-we'll just call it a 'love vacation' down in Mexico, and she politely declined.

However, when Linus Pauling found out about it...he wasn't happy. Their collaboration dissolved, and they weren't exactly close friends after that.
Now, of course, we were still able to figure out the nature of the chemical bond. The Pauling/Oppenheimer collaboration-while it would have been cool-wasn't essential to figuring this out.

No single collaboration or researcher is essential to scientific advancement.
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For our last #DeepDive of 2018, let's talk about a mosquito that you'll be hearing a lot about in 2019.

Aedes aegypti is one of the most important disease vectors in the world.

So...what makes it a good vector, and why is it found worldwide?
Ae. aegypti is a mosquito that's originally from sub-Saharan Africa, adapted to living in the holes in trees.

This genus has a unique egg laying behavior. They lay their eggs on surfaces above water, and those eggs are dormant until the hole fills up.

flic.kr/p/8gXkQf
In it's home range, there are two color forms.

One color form is dark, and doesn't hang out around people.

The second is lighter colored, and pretty much specifically feeds on people.

It's that second one which more or less took over the world.
Read 12 tweets
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This question, inspired by our cricket packaging thread, is another excellent question.

Even if we're not releasing mosquitoes, why do we need to breed them in captivity?

There's a few reasons...
The most important is a reference strain. Lots of mosquitoes were being bred in labs before pesticides were introduced, so we *know* they're not resistant to them.

If we're curious about a modern population, we can compare and use them as a standard.
Besides reference strains for pesticides, we know that the lab reference strains can transmit most of the 'normal' diseases that Ae. aegypti spread.

However, not all populations of Ae. aegypti spread every disease.

Why is that?

Scientists need to know!

journals.plos.org/plosntds/artic…
Read 5 tweets
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In relation to that *amazing* cricket unboxing story comes this really awesome question.

How do you get 1,000 SUPER JUMPY crickets into a box in the first place?

Turns out, that's actually a surprisingly easy thing to do.

(Thread)
There is no shortage of videos/guides on how to rear crickets.

It's pretty easy, and you can generally get a few thousand in a rearing box at a time. Essentially, you rear->ship.

...but how do you move them from the rearing box to a shipping box?

It turns out that there are specialized tools for this.

One such tool, that you've probably seen in petstores is a cricket funnel.

This allows you to measure small amounts of crickets by volume, essentially you know roughly how many crickets are needed to reach a certain point.
Read 8 tweets

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Long Reads Sunday #24. Crypto winter feels ominous this week. Maybe it’s sinking prices, or competitive pessimism to predict how low they’ll go. Maybe it's the specter of global discontent spilling out on the Champs-Elysees. Let's dig a little deeper. 👇
2/ Let’s start with the undeniable harbinger of gloom that is recent price action. Buzz, your BTC prices..Woof! Vindicated bear @MustStopMurad interprets: while @kenoshaking suggests that the bottom isn’t in, but we’re close:
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I sometimes feel @georgialibs don't get enough high quality, academic press #history & #sociology books. Using the GA Pines automated system, people who are members of participating libraries can get a number of very good books which have recently come to my attention.
"The oldest living things in the world" by Rachel Sussman gapines.org/eg/opac/record…. This photo essay book is a beautiful, mind-expanding paean to our biosphere. (I realize this is a #science #ecology book)
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Kicking off my #aashtoAM tweeting with a few relevant tweets from #WalkBikePlaces below. And really, you should just go look at that whole thread if you work in transportation.
Why speed management is critical for safety, via @GoddardTara. It saves lives. #aashtoAM #safetyoverspeed #RoadSafety #WalkBikePlaces
Taking @RelayBikeShare in Atlanta bike infrastructure. Raised path an interesting experience--I like it. Celebratory 100-mile marker a nice touch--recognizes progress. #AASHTOam #infrastructure #BIKES TO #bikeshare
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Review of the outstanding presentation by @5uggy @sveckert @tillkrause and deep dive into the underbelly of predatory publishing and its far-reaching damage to the fabric of #science incrementalhealthcare.com/defending-scie…
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@5uggy @sveckert @tillkrause
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Simple way to say, human #History is millions of years old, and measured in the manner of Chaturyuga (4 main yugas/cycles). In due time, the Races of mankind (and/or, genetic make-up) gets diluted, lost, assembled/reassembled, out-mixing (w/other species), unregulated mixing,
etc. & via such phenomena in successive ages. Truly unfathomable to understand, Sat Yuga was of dominant Brahmanas/Rishis (a single homogeneous racial purity/ 12 strand+ DNA), & divisions arose in Treta- 6 main races & various sub-races, interbreeding w/other species & so forth.
The emergence of total white skin(albinism/12K BP) further aggravated the racial dilution few thousand years back(who masterminded this scenario?). Anyway, discerning the present scenario, and learning something out of this mess, it's necessary to connect to the remnants of ...
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Pilot in BC Canada: @velometro 3-wheeled enclosed #ebikes operating as shared vehicles. Think Car2Go+bike. Geofenced to keep off pedestrian walkways. #TRBAM
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Traffic operations questions created by low-power vehicles that aren't quite bikes. If they operate (maybe in general motor vehicle lanes) + you want smaller vehicles used for urban delivery + working for bike mode shift, what happens? #TRBAM #LEVs
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