Posts Tagged ‘embryology’
“A world that is safe for mothers is safe for all”*…
There’s much discussion today of falling fertility rates and the prospect of a shrinking population. In her terrific newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist, Katelyn Jetelina explores the (real) reasons why, and what can be done…
In the U.S.—and across much of the world—fertility rates are falling, and populations are projected to shrink.
The reasons people are worried vary. Some fear a loss of global influence or long-term human survival. Others approach the issue through religious, political, or ideological lenses—or just out of curiosity. Whatever the motivation, the question keeps coming up: What can we do?
In response, the new administration—guided in part by Project 2025—is considering financial incentives to encourage people to have more children. Ideas include education, like on menstrual cycles, or a “National Medal of Motherhood” to mothers with six or more children, as well as financial incentives like a $5,000 cash baby bonus or Fulbright scholarships reserved for mothers.
Globally, paying families to have children has yielded mixed results. In Russia, for example, payments ($10,000) have increased fertility rates by about 20%. However, in Canada during the 1970s, similar efforts yielded only a short-term increase.
So no—we don’t need to blindly throw spaghetti at the wall. We have the evidence: if we want people to have more children, we need to create a society that actually supports parents…
[Jetelina unpacks the dynamics at play: access to affordable health care, the lack of support for new parents, the cost of raising a child, the climate of fear of maternal mortality, and the dismantling of programs that support women…]
… People aren’t having fewer children because they don’t care about family, faith, or their future, or the future of this country. They’re having fewer because the system makes it too hard, too risky, and too expensive. A $5,000 payment is a drop in the bucket compared to what is required of families in this day and age.
If the government wants to be part of the solution, it shouldn’t just throw out incentives. It should invest in the foundation: affordable care, parental leave, safe childbirth, and supportive systems.
Let’s focus on what matters: building a society where families can thrive. If we do that, everything else—including birth rates—may just follow…
It’s not rocket science: “Birth rates are falling. But solutions are focused on the wrong thing,” from @kkjetelina.bsky.social.
(Image at top: source)
* Abhijit Naskar (@naskarism.bsky.social)
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As noodle on nativity, we might spare a thought for Edouard Van Beneden; he died on this date in 1910. An embryologist, cytologist and marine biologist, he made discoveries concerning fertilization in sex cells and chromosome numbers in body cells. His studies (of the roundworm Ascaris) showed that sexual fertilization results from the union of two different cell half-nuclei. Thus a new single cell is created with its number of chromosomes derived as one-half from the male sperm and the other half from the female egg. Van Beneden also determined that the chromosome number is constant for every body cell of a species. His theory of embryo formation in mammals became a standard scientific principle.
“The only kind of seafood I trust is the fish stick, a totally featureless fish that doesn’t have eyeballs or fins”*…
A minority opinion, it seems… we’re consuming more seafood than ever, and increasingly from farmed sources, which have overtaken that of wild-caught fish for the first time in history…
At the latest count, the average American was eating ~5 lbs more seafood per year than they had been in the 1990s, and globally the consumption of seafood has been outpacing population growth since the 1960s. But where exactly is all of that shrimp, tuna, and salmon coming from?
When we think of fishing, it’s easy to romanticize weather-beaten boats helmed by wizened sea captains. But, on a global scale, much of modern fishing looks very different. In fact, increasingly, the contents of a seafood tower or “catch of the day” is more likely to have been farmed rather than caught in the wild.
That’s the latest conclusion from The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, an annual report published earlier this month by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which revealed that — for the first time in history — the majority of the world’s seafood came from fish farming rather than wild catching in 2022.
The practice of aquaculture — rearing fish and sea plants in controlled ponds, pens, and pools — produced more than 94 million metric tons of seafood in 2022 and is being hailed by some as a means of sustaining seafood production in the face of depleting wild fish stocks. The 2022 tally was double the production figure from 2006 and reflects decades of investment and innovation in the aquaculture industry, which 30 years ago accounted for just 15% of total seafood.
Note: Total aquaculture production, which includes algae and aquatic plants like seaweed, overtook wild fishing efforts more than a decade ago (the more recent milestone excludes sea plants).
Asia, which has long been at the center of the world of commercial fishing and seafood more generally, is driving much of the aquaculture boom. In fact, the FAO attributes more than 90% of total global aquaculture production (including aquatic plants) to the continent, helping to secure fish farming’s spot as the “fastest-growing food production system in the world”…
Read on for more about aquaculture– it’s history and practice– and for the rise of U.S. seafood imports and the fall of shrimp: “We now farm more fish than we catch,” from @sherwood_news.
* Dave Barry
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As we reach for the ketchup, we might send aquatic birthday greetings to Frank Rattray Lillie; he was born on this date in 1870. A zoologist, he was an early pioneer of the study of embryology (making key discoveries about the fertilization of the egg (ovum) and the role of hormones in sex determination).
But he is probably better remembered for his role in building the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Lillie formed a lifelong association with the laboratory, eventually becoming its director in 1908, then turning it into a full-time institution.
Sadly, Lillie was also involved in the American eugenics movement at several levels: he was member of Chicago’s Eugenics Education Society; he was a committee member of the Second International Eugenics Congress; and he served on the advisory council for the Eugenics Committee of the United States. His status as a leading scientist likely helped to legitimize the movement.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated…”*
Capt. Kirk facing a Horta, a silicon-based life-form (in “Devil in the Dark” from “Star Trek: The Original Series”
Silicon-based (and other alternate) forms of life are a staple of speculative fiction. But are they as far-fetched as they might seem? In Smithsonian‘s Daily Planet blog, astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch suggests not…
It would be extremely “earth-centric” to presume that the biochemistry on our planet is the only way life can operate. But just how different can it be? One extreme example are the “Horta,” the silicon-based life portrayed in Star Trek. Could we expect organisms like that on a terrestrial, meaning Earth-type, planet? Most likely not, because the biochemistry of life is intrinsically related to its environment. On Earth, silicon and oxygen are the main building blocks of Earth’s crust and mantle. Most rocks, particularly volcanic and igneous rocks, are built from silicate minerals, which are based on a silicon and oxygen framework. Any free silicon would be bound in these rocks, which are inert at moderate temperatures. Only at very high temperatures does the framework become more plastic and reactive, which led Gerald Feinberg and Robert Shapiro to suggest the possible existence of lavobes and magmobes that could live in molten silicate rocks…
Adam and 3-CPO, from “Darths and Droids”
One can read the full story at “Is Silicon-Based Life Possible?”
And one can muse on a resonant issue: if we earth-bound humans tend to be pretty precious about our definition of life, we are even more sensitive– indeed, often down-right chauvinistic– in our understandings of consciousness, sentience and who/what can or can’t enjoy them.
* Confucius
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As we study up for the Turing Test, we might send animated birthday greetings to Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch; he was born on this date in 1867. The father of experimental embryology and the first person to clone an animal, Driesch was also the creator of the philosophy of entelechy— and thus the last the last great spokesman for vitalism. Following in the footsteps of Epicurus, Galen, and Pasteur, Driesch argued that life cannot be explained as physical or chemical phenomena.
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