"Severe Abnormalities" Found In Fukushima Butterflies 189
Dupple writes "The collapse of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant caused a massive release of radioactive materials to the environment. A prompt and reliable system for evaluating the biological impacts of this accident on animals has not been available. This study suggests the accident caused physiological and genetic damage to the pale grass blue Zizeeria maha, a common lycaenid butterfly in Japan. We collected the first-voltine adults in the Fukushima area in May 2011, some of which showed relatively mild abnormalities. The F1 offspring from the first-voltine females showed more severe abnormalities, which were inherited by the F2 generation. Adult butterflies collected in September 2011 showed more severe abnormalities than those collected in May. Similar abnormalities were experimentally reproduced in individuals from a non-contaminated area by external and internal low-dose exposures. We conclude that artificial radionuclides from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant caused physiological and genetic damage to this species."
butterfly effect? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:butterfly effect? (Score:4, Funny)
Not funny. The full extent of the damage can be seen in these photos here. [wordpress.com]
Every time something nuclear comes up, someone has to come along and undermine it with these petty jokes.
Re:butterfly effect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because every time something nuclear comes up, there is a slew of OH MY GOD NUCLEAR BAD!!! people. Who is not willing to compare its safety record, with fossil fuels (It best alternative).
I am not touting the Nuclear Energy is Clean, Safe, too Cheap to meter. However right now the effects of Fossil fuels is worse then the effect of nuclear energy.
We should expand our Nuclear Energy usage. At the same time we need a strong set of regulations involved and enforced to make sure Nuclear Energy stays safe. Using any mistake that goes on as a lesson learn to make it safer.
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I am not touting the Nuclear Energy is Clean, Safe, too Cheap to meter. However right now the effects of Fossil fuels is worse then the effect of nuclear energy.
We should expand our Nuclear Energy usage.
If it's true that fossil fuels and nuclear energy are the two and only two alternatives available, then your second statement logically follows from the first. If there are any other forms of energy, your second statement simply does not follow.
Re:butterfly effect? (Score:4, Interesting)
ok, I'll bite. The fact is, there is no "clean" energy that can be built anywhere, and many have major flaws.
Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles and often requires long transmission lines that make them inefficient in the best of cases. Not viable everywhere.
Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines. Energy output varies by season in many areas.
Hydroelectric Dams have a horrible safety record, especially during construction, mess up the earth's spin, and can affect wildlife that depend on rivers. Some of the better power generating models (ie pumped storage) depend on high elevation drops and some other power source (like Coal) to pump
Tidal (wave) energy - many of the same construction dangers as Hydroelectric, only works for coastal cities
Peat (mostly in Russia) - large CO2 producer, kills fish with runoff
Biofuel - corn absolutely rapes soil nutrients, and other sources aren't much better. Most sources are subsidized because they aren't economical
Geothermal - great if you live near steaming hot springs and are basically sitting on an inactive volcano, not so great if you aren't
did I miss anything?
There's nothing inherently wrong with nuclear fission, Fukishima was just using a dangerous reactor design without the failsafes built into later designs. I personally feel LWRs are dumb to build on an earthquake and tsunami prone island, but passively safe designs like the MSRE were never developed and only are being looked into again now by companies like FLiBe energy [flibe-energy.com]. This technology was successfully developed in the 1960s and then subsequently abandoned, and the official reason was to avoid fragmenting the industry (but we damn well know it was all about the money - the nuclear lobby existed to protect LWR patents and these were threatened by any other nuclear power technology).
Fusion will require a very expensive containment vessel, and it will be a long time before it becomes efficient in any way (when and if they manage to get more energy out than they put in).
Re:butterfly effect? (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is, there is no "clean" energy that can be built anywhere.
did I miss anything?
Yes. Nobody has said that there's a one size fits all clean energy source, so pretending one required and start attacking that false hypothesis is nothing but a straw man technique.
By your reasoning, the entire world is dead of starvation, as there's pretty much no source of food that can be grown everywhere. Different solutions for different locations.
For the record, I'm relatively pro nuclear power - but you're still arguing against a straw man.
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Pretty much all power generation, including nuclear and coal, requires long transmission lines. The only sources that don't are local ones, such as right in homes or right down the street. That pretty much means solar (could also be wind or gas/diesel generators, or hydro with people lucky enough to have their own river, but not very likely). So, the long transmission line argument is pretty much bunk since you don't present any alternative that doesn't need them.
Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles and often requires long transmission lines that make them inefficient in the best of cases. Not viable everywhere.
All tall structures kill birds. I don't thin
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except every type of field grown biofuels competes with food. We are already seeing price hits, and it's hardly used.
Unless you are growing bio fuels from tiny animals in places where we can't grow food, then bio fuels should end.
"Seems like good places to grow crops that aren't intended for human consumption. "
it's not nearly enough to offset cost impact to food.
"on't require long transmission lines"
WTF is every ones hang up with transmission lines? There a lot more efficient the the tankers/ trunks you
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except every type of field grown biofuels competes with food. We are already seeing price hits, and it's hardly used.
Unless you are growing bio fuels from tiny animals in places where we can't grow food, then bio fuels should end.
As I pointed out, there are some quite massive areas of otherwise arable land that are contaminated and aren't fit for growing food for human consumption. There are also alternatives like harvesting algae from the sea, etc. Biofuels done poorly (such as corn ethanol) are a problem, but that doesn't magically mean that biofuels can't work. I also just can't accept any financial market-based arguments since those markets are all pretty much entirely based on perception rather than reality. As for "tiny animal
Re:butterfly effect? (Score:4, Interesting)
Geothermal - great if you live near steaming hot springs and are basically sitting on an inactive volcano, not so great if you aren't
This is not true in general and not in Japan specifically because the entire region is geothermally active. New enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) can extract electrical energy from temperature deltas far lower than traditional dry steam plants. They don't even have to be on land: offshore subsea geothermal plants would work quite well especially with a cool flow of ocean water to supply the cold side of the delta. There is very little of the US [nrel.gov] that could not generate power [energy.gov] with EGS. Google mapped them for us. [google.org] Quote: "Potential for the continental U.S. exceeds 2,980,295 megawatts using Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and other advanced geothermal technologies such as Low Temperature Hydrothermal. " This is 3/4ths of domestic consumption in 2011. We don't even have to look for them - typically EGS thermal sources are found incidental to other mineral exploration, and ignored even though most of the work is already done at that point.
Since these resources are completely safe, nontoxic, natural, carbon-free electrical energy resources that cost even less than nuclear energy [wikipedia.org] it would be irresponsible to engage in any increase in risk or carbon generation whatsoever before all of these resources were fully exploited.
As both baseload power and on-demand power EGS also offers the potential to mitigate the variability of other clean resources in a way that even nuclear can't. The persistent thermal resource in a given area is limited, but over a long time base so on surges in need can over-extract thermal energy for many years before diminishing returns diminish the resource locally for a while. This makes them the perfect complement to PV solar and others.
There are other things we could do to improve the situation without the toxins of carbon or the risk of nuclear, like encouraging shallow geothermal heatpumps for home heating and cooling, and extracting electricity from the thermal deltas of manufacturing, but EGS is a really big bucket to serve our energy needs in a realistic way and your dismissal of it in this way is offensive so now I'm going to reciprocate.
One chief objection to nuclear is that we have many hundred reactors worldwide of the Fukushima disaster designs. And every one has 40 years worth of spent fuel stored in an elevated pool [wikipedia.org] on top of the building that could be destroyed in some way - many times the design load of fission byproducts for these pools now, and dozens of times the fuel in the reactor vessel. After cooling for a time this fuel is supposed to be moved to safer dry cask storage. But casks cost money and the operators are skinflints and it's cheaper to have the pools recertified for more and more spent fuel packed tighter and tighter and not ever move any to the casks. But density is the bugaboo of nuclear fission: the tighter you pack these rods the more they encourage each other to fission. So now our national production capacity for these casks is 3% of the need, and one brick of C4 on the bottom of one of these pools could lead to a meltdown outside of the containment leading to a vast wasteland of hundreds of square miles of American Exclusion Zone [wikipedia.org] that can't be occupied for 100 years - among other things - for each of these reactors. Certainly there is evidence that this occurred at Fukushima to some degree. On that very day the dumb bastards trusted to operate our nuclear plants should have been cutting P.O.s for casks - and that
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You can't simply go around making blanket statements (well you can, but people will slap you statements down so hard, they'll leave impressions in the asphalt), especially when you quote information that is either grossly dated, fundamentally meaningless or simply lacks vision, and an understanding of what a diverse energy system can, indeed must look like.
Our nation runs on a grid. There are long distance lines everywhere. This already exists, and therefore does not preclude the existence of large green en
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did I miss anything?
Yes the fact that many of the same problems exist with coal, eg....
To get the 'advertised' output of 6 coal plants requires you build 7 to cater for maintenance.
To efficiently meet peek load, hydro dams and gas turbines must be available.
To efficiently fuel the plant it must be built on or very near a coal mine and use long transmission lines.
These are large engineering projects we are talking about, you don't get the efficiency of scale you get with a one shoe fits all solution like changing over
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Your ignorance on a topic you seem to think you have fully explored is incredible.
Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles and often requires long transmission lines that make them inefficient in the best of cases. Not viable everywhere.
The bird kill thing is a myth, and long distance transmission lines are a solved problem.
Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines. Energy output varies by season in many areas.
Solar thermal collectors are highly efficient and also help the grid by offering massive amounts of energy storage capacity. They don't take up that much space, and besides which a lack of space is not the problem in many places. Energy output varies but that isn't a problem is you just build enough of them.
Hydroelectric Dams have a horrible safety record, especially during construction
No, dams have a horrible safety
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DO you know the power loss in modern line? inefficient isn't a word I would use.. but then I actually know the numbers.
"Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines."
again with that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Solar is two technologies(many more if you are padatic.)
Panels and Industrial thermal. IN many areas, panels need to become part of every house built. It wojudl feed all the nergy, but it will offset energy use cons
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False dichotomy. If it were a simply choice between nuclear and "fossil" you might have a point, but there are different types of fossil fuel and other non-fossil sources to consider. Also when looking at the potential risks you have to consider where we are now, not where we were in the past or where other less developed nations are.
Don't oversimplify the debate.
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Apparently you've been avoiding the headlines. The nuclear reactors in the U.S. were designed for a 40 years life expectancy, however, no new generation of reactors sprung up to replace them. So the industry asked the government to let them go to 60, then 80 years. Recently is was discovered that a particular reactor's containment vessel had huge cavities in its wall that would soon have released the content of the vessel exposing people to a life threatening flood of radioactive coolant and exposing the co
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And you add nothing and do so anonymously.
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Global warming!
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Actually to get a Giant butterfly we will need far more Oxygen in our atmosphere for one to survive.
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No, the butterfly would only needs to evolve lungs, because spiracle are a very inefficient means to move oxygen. Of course even lungs set an upper limit to the size of a butterfly... figure to get really big, it would have to migrate to the ocean. A butterfly whale... now that would be a site-seeing tour!!!
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How does this affect the butterfly effect?
Putting the polonium in pollinate. Ask Arafat.
Re:butterfly effect? (Score:5, Funny)
Whoosh.
The sound made by those butterfly wings.
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Godzilla butterflies!!! RUN!!!
Re:butterfly effect? (Score:5, Funny)
OH SHIT! (Score:4, Funny)
MOTHRA!!!!!!
Re:OH SHIT! (Score:5, Informative)
I came here to post the same thing and provide a link for the younger Slashdotters
http://dreager1.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/mothrabattleforear1622.jpg [wordpress.com]
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Don't worry, Godzilla [wikipedia.org] will take care of Mothra, and everything will be fine (unless you live in Tokyo).
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OH NO! Tokyo!
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OH NO! There goes Tokyo!
FTFY.
Go, go Godzilla! Yea...
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There should be a movie about people living in poverty and bankrupt governments and coprorations due to the massive capital damage movie heroes occur on cities every year.
DC, LA, and NYC will probably need to be rebuilt every 6 months.
I mean 9/11 was considered a major tragedy, the people who caused the damage are considered as some of our most evil people living in the world. But a couple of movie comic book hero's cause wide mass destruction and we parade them as heroes!!!
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Have you seen "Hancock"? It's not too far from what you describe.
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You have seen the Rodney King tapes??? Or read about Abner Louima the poor Haitian bugger who was mistakenly arrested in Brooklyn, where at the hands of the police he was beaten, clubbed, kicked in the tender vittles, sodomized with the business end of a toilet plunger and then had the plunger shoved through his teeth (tearing out most of the teeth in the front of his mouth.) The officer who committed the atrocity strutted around the precinct bragging "I took a man down tonight!" I dunno, I'm guessing most
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In a strange twist, radiation from cold-war era atomic testing in the South Pacific about half a century ago is responsible for those Japanese monster movies. They were inspired by fishermen returning home with severe radiation sickness, following exposure during a test.
So it isn't just the current butterflies resulting from release of radiation. The movie monster characters did too.
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perhaps? no, definitely. Watch the original Godzilla. I recommend the Japanese version, not the western version where the edited in the reporter.
There is a scene that just rips me apart every time.
The edited American version stars Raymond Burr, and is titled " Godzilla, King of the Monsters!." Sadly, it treats American views like they are complete idiots. Typical studio exec. thinking.
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Damn! Where are the Peanuts when you need them?
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Mosura ya Mosura!
Dongan kasakuyan indoo muu
Dumbasses (Score:5, Insightful)
This is forever. It's genetically inherited and it can NEVER be cured. There is no way to know how bad the effects will be (i.e. disease, immunity response, deformities, life span, etc) in the offspring for all generations. And all you can do is make jokes and actually excuse it!! Wow... Is something wrong with your brainwashed, apathetic, sorry excuse for minds? They used to say the same things about cigarettes except this can never be quit, and it effects all these victims' children and their children and on and on... Ya, it's real fucking funny. It's people like you that make this world shit.
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We do not know that this is forever. Natural Selection pressures which lead to the development of larger forewings my over the next few decades lead the butterflies right back to the larger wingspans. Or not.
That's evolution. There is no *should* - there is only what is; and what is, is constantly changing. Bigger wings, smaller wings, it's all the same to me, until you can show me species *dieing out*, or having abnormally high rates of birth defects (and smaller wings are NOT a birth defect if they otherw
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This is forever. It's genetically inherited and it can NEVER be cured. There is no way to know how bad the effects will be (i.e. disease, immunity response, deformities, life span, etc) in the offspring for all generations. And all you can do is make jokes and actually excuse it!! Wow... Is something wrong with your brainwashed, apathetic, sorry excuse for minds? They used to say the same things about cigarettes except this can never be quit, and it effects all these victims' children and their children and on and on... Ya, it's real fucking funny. It's people like you that make this world shit.
How is this more permanent than taking a piss in the ocean?
Where do you get your notion of genetic permanence from anyway, how do you think those butterflies got whatever traits they have now?
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"This is forever. It's genetically inherited and it can NEVER be cured. There is no way to know how bad the effects will be (i.e. disease, immunity response, deformities, life span, etc) in the offspring for all generations."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw [youtube.com]
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Listen, buddy. It is never going to be cured. It's bad. There's not a fucking thing we can do about it. So we may as well get a laugh out of it. Unless you have a magical solution that for some reason doesn't work in the presence of humor, howsabout you take the stick out of your ass, grab a beer, and relax a little? All your fuming isn't improving the situation either.
Also, some of the other comments make me think you don't know what you're talking about.
Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters (Score:5, Insightful)
I love science. But this is barely news. These creatures eat the sweet surface juices and pollen, and develop at a rate so fantastic it make them a source of childhood wonder. Of course they'll be the first to be affected. A reduced fore-wing size will not unravel the entire food chain, and very importantly: evolution will push back. This species has an enormous population that is unaffected by radiation. If the small wings are an advantage going forward: great. If not, their neighbors will out compete them, and the mutants will die out.
Wake me when they have a stable population of 6 legged dogs.
Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it newsworthy. And interesting.
These creatures eat the sweet surface juices and pollen, and develop at a rate so fantastic it make them a source of childhood wonder.
That is a good lay explanation of why this is not scientifically unexpected. But that doesn't mean it is unimportant. Most news articles have been focused on the direct human impact of the Fukushima disaster. But it is important for people to understand that even if the environmental impact is not significant to large long-lived mammals, it is significant to smaller beings. Ultimately, we depend on their survival, albeit indirectly.
Either way, this is valuable research. It is a good baseline to compare to in years to come.
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But it is important for people to understand that even if the environmental impact is not significant to large long-lived mammals, it is significant to smaller beings
To the contrary, similar exposure will have a larger effect on big, long-lived animals like humans. It's possible that this butterfly has an unusually narrow genetic variation due to specialization or happenstance which means it might show effects of mutation more easily. Say like cheetahs supposedly are less varied than leopards.
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Blinky the Three-Eyed Fish (Score:3)
"Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish"
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That's not evolution, thats natural selection. Huge difference.
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Evolution: One species evolves into another
Natural selection: members of a species with a successful trait thrive over others, becoming dominant within the species. Species itself does not change.
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This is purely your own private definitions. It certainly isn't definitions that any biologist would agree to. Hell, it's not even the definition of natural selection Darwin used. But please, continue to show how pig ignorant you are.
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It's that incorrect understanding that has set the understanding of evolution back.
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Natural selection is the most visible cause, evolution is the effect. There are other causes to evolution, such as mutation and genetic drift (evolution [wikipedia.org]).
I'm not sure I would say that distinction is "huge". Comment history suggests GP is not just some kind of creationist-troll. Curious what he meant.
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Perhaps they're saying that the horribly mutated butterflies were already out there and are somehow better able to survive in the radiation. That's the only reasonable understanding I can make of it. Not that it's reasonable in the sense of making sense.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution [wikipedia.org] vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection [wikipedia.org]
Evolution happens by process of Natural Selection. People that refute human evolution often accept intra-species natural selection, but won't accept natural selection changing a species to a point where it cannot reproduce with a former version. Yet, generally speaking evolution and natural selection are synonymous.
So, no, there is no huge difference.
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My hypothetical conservative friend says butterflies don't matter, and neither do frogs or furry animals or lower-class humans. When the Job Creators start spawning hideous offspring, then maybe we've got a story here.
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I have an actual conservative friend who says exactly that... so, yeah.
Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is not the damage to the butterfly as a species, it is that there is measurable and concrete evidence of the damage caused by the radiation leaked from Fukushima Daiichi. For people who (used to) live there, whose livelihoods are based on farming products from that region, who are concerned that TEPCO is trying to reduce the amount of compensation it has to pay out but claiming the damage isn't that bad...
For those people this is an early and important report, one of many to come over the years and decades they are going to be dealing with this.
No it's safe! (Score:2)
The government says it's safe, and I believe them! You whacko libertariqans and your anti-gov rhetoric is the true source of evil. The government is just there to help us and protect us!
/end sarcasm
Tell me that the butterflies have mutated... (Score:2)
So you say you have mutant problem (Score:2)
For a price I take care of this, I have perfect auto-shotgun for this job...if you have no money I also accept rare artifacts.
Mutant Butterflies, but why? (Score:2)
A natural disaster causes a lot of pollutants to escape. I didn't read the article, but has the cause been narrowed down to anything particular?
That's not a bug on that butterfly (Score:5, Funny)
It's a feature!
Yes, folks, we now have real bugs with features.
NOT Mutant Butterflies (Score:2)
I'm sick of the scaremongering (Score:5, Funny)
It's the butterflies' fault. If they had not stopped with the development of nuclear power 30 years ago, they would not suffer from these "abnormalities". After all, modern reactor designs are intrinsically safe!
Wait. What?!
Most of the fallout went in the ocean (Score:4, Insightful)
sharks? (Score:2)
Will they grow lasers on their heads?
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This is a complex and information-dense article. I'm so glad someone like you posted... with your brilliant and dismissive hand waving, now I don't have to read it or learn anything new. I now look forward to any Fukushima-scale nuclear events in my area as you have shown us that unless something is detrimental, it isn't damage. I bet flipper-babies probably even swim better than normal babies.
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It's a substantial change in a population post-incident. Whether the changes are beneficial or not is besides the point.
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Re:Damage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I see, so this is some sort of semantics pissing match you want to win. Call it what you like, but the odds are far greater that we're going to be dealing with very few beneficial mutations, and more than likely a good many bad ones, but hey, if it somehow makes you feel like you've won a debate, then so be it. In fact, I recommend you go and get some substantial dosage of radiation right now. After all, you can't call it damage until your dick falls off.
Re:Damage? (Score:4, Funny)
you can't call it damage until your dick falls off.
Forgive him. He works for a tobacco company.
Re:Damage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. "Why, you can't call those malignant growths in your lungs harmful until you actually die. For all you know, they could give you superpowers!"
When you have severely malformed wings and eyes and other developmental abnormalities of a clearly genetic nature in a population, many of which are clearly deleterious from a purely fitness measurement, then it's not going over the top to call it "damage".
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Actually, you have to occasionally point and say "Everyone... this is what stupid looks like... back to your business." Because if you don't, other stupid people will begin to quote him, you'll start seeing it on FOX News, and before you know it, the Tea Party is demanding Obama's birth certificate. Just point and say "Everyone... this is what stupid looks like... back to your business." Nip it in the bud... as a public service mind you.
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He probably works as a health insurance claims processor.
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I'm not angry at all. The fact is that a massive number of genetic mutations in a population within a few generations from something like ionizing radiation or some other agent does not lead to greater fitness, but almost inevitably to lesser fitness; deleterious morphological changes (ie. malformed wings, eyes, internal organs) and increase in various cancers. Insects get an edge, in general, because fast breeding and lots of offspring can counterbalance such effects, and eventually, you will see some popu
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any more than firing into a chicken coop with a shotgun and still having some chickens manage to survive means shotguns are potentially good for chicken survival.
Well, theoretically, if you keep doing this for a million generations natural selection ought to automatically breed hulking armour-plated bullet-resistant chickens. That's basic Darwin 101, innit?
In fact there's probably a US defense contractor working on exactly this idea right now...
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That's not Darwinism 101 at all. In fact, plenty of lineages just go extinct when confronted with environmental pressures that they cannot adapt to.
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Unless you believe evolution to be massively inefficient in the long run, you cannot seriously believe that many random changes over a very short span in any given organism will not include detrimental ones. Your stance is nonsense.
Evolution IS massively inefficient in the long run. It's random noise that sometimes makes a better picture than the previous picture which was selected for over hundreds of millions of years. The longer it goes on, the more inefficient evolution becomes. If you build up a finely-tuned, massively complex genetic base and then randomly fuck shit up, the odds are astronomically against you. If the environment changes, the larger, older code base means it takes much longer to adapt.
Evolution is the selecti
Re:Damage? (Score:4, Informative)
There are no "beneficial" changes. There are only changes, in the form of mutations. The ones that do not produce viable offspring die. The ones that do continue to survive.
To question whether this change is beneficial is like asking whether water is good or evil.
What this is illustrating is the rate of change, which is fairly high. A high rate of change can be beneficial in the long run, but extremely damaging in the short run. And it is both damaging for the species concerned, as well as for the rest of the ecology which is dependent on the health of all its species.
If you extrapolate it to more advanced and sophisticated species, ultimately those with vertebrae, it's a frightening picture. Insects can handle quite a bit of mutation, as well as are built to resist radiation. Not to mention the species will survive by sheer reproductive numbers alone. More advanced lifeforms like birds and mammals cannot handle the radiation, cannot handle almost all but the smallest of mutations. Worse, birth rates decrease as complexity increases. A 99.9% chance of stillborn for an insect that lays hundreds of eggs is nothing. A mere nine in ten chance of stillborn for more advanced animals would irrepairably damage the species' survivability.
Not to mention that species survivability is a much lower threshold than maintaining civilization. So if you want to put a Good-Bad qualifier on these findings, it's Bad. Very Bad.
Re:Damage? (Score:5, Informative)
There are no "beneficial" changes. There are only changes, in the form of mutations. The ones that do not produce viable offspring die. The ones that do continue to survive.
To question whether this change is beneficial is like asking whether water is good or evil.
A thousand times "wrong". In the context of evolutionary theory, a beneficial mutation provides a "benefit"... I know this is a radical logical leap. A beneficial change would be a mutation that allows an organism to better compete and ultimately have more offspring. It is nothing at all like asking about good or evil, it is about being better suited to the environment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation#Beneficial_mutations [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Damage? (Score:5, Interesting)
Haha, that's a good one. Could have been:
I have a pretty strong mathematics background (acountant)
and been about as funny.
But just FYI, wether a change is beneficial or not evolutionary is a rather subtle thing. Just consider sickle cell anemia [wikipedia.org], which sucks, but can protect you from malaria.
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Butterflies lay offspring by the hundreds, have short enough lifespans that selection will take place soon after the event, lack the socializing effects of modern healthcare in humans, etc.
There's no doubt that there were millions of stillborn and otherwise irreparably genetically damaged butterflies already. The question is has it affected the long-term survivability of the species.
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Uh . . . Poe's Law [wikipedia.org]. I have a feeling you're trying to be funny, but in the absence of a smiley or similar, I have no way of telling if you're a serious whacko nutcase.
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Hey, has anybody mentioned Mothra yet?
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Just look at the spider that bit Peter Parker.
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You don't understand science, do you?