Tongue scraper too

Mostly, yes. Although the aspartame part is optional, it could be any other sweetener or even real sugar.

Nah.

Sometimes it's basically just plastic with sorbitol.

I heard that myself a couple years ago and was equally disappointed/disbelieving. I started looking for more natural plant-based alternatives, but they're actually a plastic polymer too. If you're out hiking and forage for spruce/pine resin directly from the source: it's still plastic. Very surprising, not what I would have intuited.

It's not my field so I don't know if the plant-based stuff is the same level of harm as petroleum-based plastic, but I would imagine either way it's breaking down into undigestible particles that you're stuck with for life.

As far as an alternative goes for minty breath: nothing stops you from cutting out the middleman and chewing on mint leaves directly. They grow like weeds so if you get some in your garden you'll never run out. I guess the freshness probably doesn't last as long that way, but it makes up for itself in intensity which is just as important for a palate cleanser imo. You could probably get more mileage out of it by turning it into iced tea, then you can sip it whenever you need some freshness.

Floss daily. That's the best way to ensure your breath isn't bad.

To my understanding yes, when the ingredients list includes "gum base", which is a mixture of chemicals like polyethylene (plastic). I believe there are chewing gum products that don't include "gum base" or any other plastic ingredients

Correct me if I'm wrong, but generally it's not one gene one trait. So altering genes to, say eliminate a specific type of birth defect, might also eliminate something else. Making this up, but say, sense of taste or maybe resistance to some other illness. This change will now be in the gene make-up and therefore propagate through future generations. Since they interact in complex ways, it can be challenging or even dangerous to make these adjustments.

I'm a biologist so I see experiments and results from gene editing somewhat often in presentations and papers. It's not quite the hot thing that it was 10 years ago, but it's still very relevant.

Most discoveries that come out of this sort of work are quite niche, and often discovered using non-human models. Some of that may only now be getting into human models, but I'm not aware of any (I'm not "that" kind of biologist).

Depends on your news sources. If you are subscribed to biotech sources it's every other day. There's breakthroughs, or at least novel applications, all the time. Routine at this point.

If you mean mass media, well, just look at the brainrot that gets shoveled at the 'frontpage'. Everything is optimized for broadest appeal with the most clicks.

The Sutter Bypass and Yolo Bypass in California are examples of prescribed/controlled flooding infrastructure. When the Sacramento River is about to overflow its banks, the bulk of the flow spreads out into the bypasses, keeping the river level low and flooding agricultural areas rather than urban areas.

After Dolly was cloned China enacted stricter ethical guidelines for researchers. Then they didn't clone anymore. I can imagine the same happening in advance now with other ethically challenging topics around this.

And they are probably still working with bacteria or similar, but that makes for less impressive of a headline.

Edit: right, and in polo you can use cloned horses nowadays. It's kind of a rich people thing. Possible also that that makes it more of a quiet topic, because the rich like to stick to each other.

We're too busy dealing with Terminator right now; we don't have the capacity to deal with GATTACA too!

Yeah this is actually one of the main things fueling this massive anti transgender wave we’re seeing now across the world. People were taught there’s xx and xy and that’s it. That’s what makes you one sex or another when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Turns out nothing in nature is black and white. Literally nothing.

A few decades ago when the human genome was first being sequenced, it was assumed that most genes would have a straightforward 1:1 relationship with specific associated traits (so you’d find a “gene for X” and a “gene for Y”). And while there are a few genes like that, it turns out that most genes are part of complex gene regulatory networks that resemble neural networks in that there are complex non-linear relationships between the inputs and outputs. So if you want to make a specific change to a specific trait, you have to edit multiple genes, and each of those genes affects multiple other traits you weren’t intending to change, etc.

IIRC the first attempts at it went poorly so they tend to be a bit more discreet with the PR nowadays (I’m not a scientist tho)

As another poster said there are indeed some advances that are happening

There's a lot of news about gene editing. Anything that references CRISPR is gene editing. CRISPR in particular has become such a common and useful tool, usually in the earlier phases of research, that it's less and less likely to get top booking in the headline. And when it does it's often buried in another term like "GMO".

Controlled flooding gives a place for the water to go when there’s too much. For example I remember reading about dikes along the Mississippi for flood control, but when there was too much water it would flood less inhabited farmland before city areas

When I was a kid, one of the fields at the local park where we used to play football and soccer was lower than the rest and separated by berms. It was designed as a controlled place for water to go when the river flooded every spring with snow melt.

Of course, climate change means we now have a more permanent solution to snow melt

Wouldn't a dam be a form of "controlled flooding"?

I've actually done controlled burns in Northern BC back when I was in forestry. We go in during the winter and burn up dead branches that have fallen during the year. The snow stops the fire from spreading and the burning depletes the excess fuel on the ground, making it harder for fires to grow out of control in the summer. The burning also releases nutrients into the soil and encourages a healthy undergrowth by making space for new plants.

As others have mentioned there are also some trees(usually pine) that require fire to spread seeds. Those controlled burns are usually reserved for public parks where they want the forests to have a more natural look. They are small fires created with drip torches, just enough for the cones to open before being put out. When mass producing those pines trees to replant a logged forest, we use ovens to open the cones instead.

Controlled flooding is also very much a thing we do as humans either to divert water from flooding other areas, or to rehabilitate soil. Its pretty common throughout the world. I would bet that you are unfamiliar with the practice because you live somewhere beavers are already doing it for free.

There’s nothing to be gained by flooding land, it will not prevent future floods or reduce the size or strength of them.

This is incorrect. Controlled flooding is used to mitigate the risk and effect of floods. This is especially common in the Netherlands, where designated areas - "uiterwaarden" - are periodically flooded as needed. These areas are typically used as pasture or for recreation under normal conditions.

Do you mean controlled flooding to prevent natural floods like controlled burns prevent natural fires?

Look to nearby colleges or universities with an agricultural arm. Example, https://snr.unl.edu/academicprograms/prescribed/index.aspx

Why not controlled flooding? Controlled fires are consuming a backlog of available fuel to mitigate the chances of a future uncontrolled fire. A flood wouldn't be relieving any sort of equivalent pressures, they're not analogous.

In the context of controlled burns, there's nothing to gain from flooding land temporarily in a similar fashion. However, rebuilding wetlands is actually a great way to prevent floods in other areas.

Well said.

There's a researcher who in the 80's tried to tell the forest service all this, and they simply wouldn't listen.

There's even a news clip of him from the time.

I'll see if I can find it.