#ecotoxicology

I have serious mixed feelings about it

I did the experiments, I did most of the analysis except the modelisations, I wrote the first 3 to 4 drafts of the full article 

it’s mine. It’s my stuff 

but after I finished my PhD and eventually could run away from where I had a seriously hard time socially and work speaking (lucky for me I was in 3 different labs over my PhD, only 1 of them was awful) I just couldn’t. Work. On it. 

If you’re in research you know the work doesn’t stop after the PhD or whatever diploma/contract is finished. I still had 2 articles to publish, and to polish before submission 

But I also had a new job

And anxiety attacks whenever I opened the article files. 

Yay. 

So I did polish the last draft of this publication before sending, but as I changed work and was working A LOT during these last months, I didn’t do anything about the review process. Nothing. 

And now I can’t even feel happy that my last article is out, because I feel I don’t deserve the first name. I WROTE IT. I DID THE EXPERIMENTS. I DID THE ANALYSIS THE EXCRUCIATINGLY LONG DATA CLEANING PROCESS I WENT TO THE BEEHIVES ALONE ON SUNDAYS AND EVEN WHEN IT RAINED WITH AN UMBRELLA I GOT STUNG COUNTLESS TIMES AND I SPENT HOURS CRYING OVER THIS PAPER AND HOW I WAS TREATED TO MAKE IT 

YET MY BRAIN WONT LET ME FEEL LIKE I DESERVE IT

IT WONT LET ME ENJOY THE FACT THAT I AM NOW FREE 

NO 

I STILL NEED TO FEEL PAIN ABOUT IT 

I HATE THIS AND I HATE THE PEOPLE WHO MADE ME THIS WAY it’s my supervisor and the horrendous atmosphere in this institute. 

Anyway. If you’re interested in honeybees, virology, neonicotinoid pesticides, and the effects of both combined on the field, you can DM me and I’ll send you the article. 

Love and above all strength to all the suffering PhD students who read this. 

Ecotoxicology

The first draft of our manuscript is complete!

I’m proofing it right now, and then I just need to wait on feedback from one of my collaborators and I’ll be ready to rework some things.

Closer and closer to publication every day!

Right, so back in the mid-80s, some people started noticing that the vultures in the Indian subcontinent were all suddenly dropping dead. Someone went “Awwww… I mean, they look a bit weird and all, but surely this isn’t good”.

JK, they’re majestic, look at this one.

So people started looking into it and they couldn’t really figure out what was happening to these vultures.

They thought maybe someone was killing the vultures. Nope

Maybe there is less food and the vultures died? Nope.

Ok so maybe it’s a disease? Nope.

How about some chemicals in the environment, like pesticides or heavy metals?  Nope.

Maybe these vultures ate something weird? Well, they feed on dead cattle that is left out in the open (you know, since some Hindus don’t eat cows), but these cows didn’t die of anything weird and vultures have digestive systems that are basically the Rock of digestive systems. They would have to eat something REALLY weird. Like weirder than what us regular humans (or even most animals) consider weird.

All they knew was that the vultures were dying from kidney failure, and none of these reasons were causing it.

So people started looking into these cows that the vultures were eating. What were they up to before dying (or rather what their owners were up to, because cows don’t really have very active lives you know)?

They didn’t find anything particularly weird, but they did notice that a lot of these cows were in pain before dying (awww), and since their owners were Hindu and they really liked their cows (<3), they gave then an anti-inflammatory drug called diclofenac to reduce their pain.

Now you may have heard about diclofenac, might have even taken it (I have). Don’t go freaking out thinking you’re going to die, diclofenac isn’t dangerous for humans. Or cows. Or most animals. But guess who it turns out it’s terrible for.

Vultures.

In the 90s, vultures in India decreased 95%. Some specific species even 99%!

After this. Veterinary diclofenac has been banned in India, Nepal, and Pakistan. However, it’s still available for people, and it’s cheap, so people that own cows just buy the human one and give it to cows.

Veterinary Diclofenac is also not banned at all in many countries that have lots of vultures, like Spain.

Sad story I’m afraid.

You can read some more about it on the links below:

http://www.nature.com/news/cattle-drug-threatens-thousands-of-vultures-1.19839

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1351921/

It's a disturbing thought: At this very moment, tiny crumbs of plastic are trickling through our bodies, a parade of unwelcome houseguests ready to take up residence in some tissue or organ. A wave of new studies has come out recently, and each one seems to paint an ever more vivid picture of how microplastics — and their smaller counterparts, nanoplastics — have infiltrated the deepest corners of our anatomy. The lungs, liver and heart, guts and brain, even the testicles and placenta — nothing seems to be spared. The outpouring of research has brought enormous visibility to how these fragments permeate our daily lives. Long studied in oceans, waterways and marine life, researchers have now shifted focus to human health. A decade ago, Heather Leslie could scarcely find anyone to fund her work in this area. "It seemed like nobody wanted to touch it," says Leslie, a microplastics researcher in the Netherlands whose team was the first to detect these particles in the human bloodstream several years ago. As the work has gained momentum, so have questions about the damage microplastics could be doing inside of us. Researchers tend to be wary about making pronouncements because the field is still in a "pioneering phase," as Leslie put it. And yet there are undoubtedly concerns. Some of the strongest evidence comes from lab studies using animals as well as what's already known about the damaging effects of chemicals added to plastics. A review of the data published Wednesday concludes that microplastics are "suspected" to harm human reproductive, digestive and respiratory health, with a possible link to colon and lung cancer. "This is a signal that we should be acting now," says Tracey Woodruff, a senior author on the study who directs the Program on Reproductive Health & the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. Susanne Brander, an ecotoxicologist at Oregon State University, says it's not helpful to "elicit a gigantic state of alarm," but she agrees that we already know enough about the health risks to push for substantive changes, including a global agreement to curb the rising production of plastics. As they push to solve the puzzle of microplastics, here are six questions scientists are trying to answer.