Lithium is far from the drug with the highest amount of side effects among psych meds. Take the first generation antipsychotics for example. They are nasty.
As a matter of fact, lithium patients aren't much worse off when it comes to kidney function. Especially with modern levels of around 0.6 to 0.8 mmols.
Lithium has many modes of action, ion channels like you said, but also GSK3 function, BDNF changes and many more. It even changes the DNA methylation.
Sorry, yes, I meant "highest number" rather than "highest severity". Lithium being such a tiny single atom goes all over the place and touches all kinds of things, but not all that strongly on most of them.
Lithium cures Bipolar the same way all the other psych meds do. They don't. They just manage symptoms. Like insulin does, or antihistamines, etc. A propper cure is rare in medicine.
There are so many misconceptions about lithium wrt to the human body.
I don't know why so many people differentiate between lithium orotate and the lithium carbonate in psychiatry. Although they differ in absorption the active component is the lithium ion in both cases. Dosage is done according to lithium content, there are tables for converting from orotate to carbonate and back.
Then the effects of lithium orotate and carbonate can't be that different. And thus, above a particular dose blood monitoring is mandatory.
There are benefits of low dose lithium for sure. And the dosages in psychiatry have been on a steady decline. With lower doses come less side effects. It is definitly not the hammer of psychiatry that turns people into zombies or messes. It feels quite natural.
In addition the reduction of Alzheimers cases is not unique to lithium. Many meds cause Alzheimers rates in mentally ill people to decline to general population levels.
The reason the researchers chose ororate is that it has reduced binding to amyloid. I don't know whether that is also true of carbonate, just pointing out they chose that lithium salt for a specific reason.
How about stuffing the books in a freezer? Apparently this can kill both bugs and their eggs, although I'm not sure it works on the particular kind of bugs in these books:
Also there exist "ultra low" freezers which can bring temperature waay lower than the regular -20 Celsius. Like -80 or something. I doubt any bug or egg can survive such environment, although the books should suffer no harm.
I do not doubt that freezing them would kill the bugs. I would be worried that unless it is very carefully managed it might damage the books though. In particular i would worry that moisture from the air would freeze on the books and as they are thawed they would get water damaged. Or that moisture trapped inside the bindings would form ice crystals and physically damage the books as they form.
None of these are concern with the hypoxic treatment they choose. Plus the nitrogen atmosphere treatment is so much simpler on the practical level. Instead of bringing in freezers and powering them for the whole duration of the treatment all you need is some crates, plastic bags and nitrogen bottles. Makes it much easier to bring the treatment where the books are, thus you avoid all kind of complications with transporting the books.
Well, it's an idea. Perhaps de-humidifying the books first...
The hypoxic approach needs to last at least until eggs hatch, otherwise you're back to square one. And I'm not so sure if a plastic bag can hold tight for long without leaking (nitrogen out, air in).
One potential problem might be that they have to treat the entire collection of 400,000 books at the same time (which makes sense because otherwise you risk rotating the beetles through the collection). So they'd have to find such an ultra-low temp freezer that was large enough to hold 400k books.
Also, although I assume this is a very rare ability among insects and probably not applicable to the "drugstore beetle" from this article, check out this insane fly species I found while looking for freeze tolerant insects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypedilum_vanderplanki
It (or its larvae, anyway) can survive temperatures as low as 3K!
> One potential problem might be that they have to treat the entire collection of 400,000 books at the same time (which makes sense because otherwise you risk rotating the beetles through the collection). So they'd have to find such an ultra-low temp freezer that was large enough to hold 400k books.
They don't have to treat them all in the same place. They could use more than one freezer.
I'm dealing with a carpet beetle infestation at my house which is eating my furniture (natural fibres and horse hair).
Insecticides will damage the natural fibers. The risk is that they damage the books more than the beetles would.
Insecticide or desiccants directly on the books, for example the natural adhesives, could cause the adhesive to crack, destroying the book.
I wish I could do this sealed nitrogen process. At the moment, it's spraying cedar wood with lavender and sticking into the less accessible places where the beetles are likely burrowing, and vaccuuming regularly.
You should try diatomaceous earth, it gets rid of anything with an exoskeleton and is even food safe. Just don’t breathe it in or get it in your eyes. It takes a while to settle from the air if you use a bellows type applicator.
In general mice need larger doses of most medication candidates. AFAIK this is because they have a faster metabolism compared to humans.
In addition I don't think there is a overdose risk with psychedelics.
I vaguely recall reading that as a rule of thumb, mouse doses of various drugs tend to be equivalent to around ten times higher than human doses in terms of mg/kg. (Don't quote me on that.)
It's not true that there's no overdose risk with psychedelics. Ones that are partial agonists of the serotonin 2A receptor, like LSD and psilocybin, are fairly safe, physiologically. Psychedelics that are full agonists of that receptor, like NBOMe- phenethylamines (which are commonly sold as LSD!), can be deadly vasoconstrictors at dosages not far beyond a pleasant dose. They have killed people. Anyone taking "LSD"/"acid", who didn't make it themself, should be aware of this.
Although I like the idea in principal, I don't see the real use case here.
Most of the examples can easily be replaced by pen and paper which is faster than building a app. More complex use cases require more complex solutions which I'm not sure this provides.
One use case could have been an application to study functions in time and frequency space. But does it provide an fft?
Water usage in humid regions is not a problem (and not nearly as efficient for cooling). Is a problem when consumption gets so high that ground water levels change or fossile ground water is used.
Yeah, but the nuclear waste would be a problem. The cost would be a problem too.
I don't get why some people won't get that nuclear is not the solution to the energy problem. Nuclear is one of the most expensive energy sources, and that's without the cost of long term storage of burnt fuel. Without the cost of health issues in mining areas.
The call for energy consumption reduction is not "for cultish reasons", it's because of climate change that's already screwing us.
Many environmentalists revert back to criticizing nuclear based on cost but if they really put the environment first that should logically not be a big deal for them.
Efficiently solving the climate crisis is the biggest challenge for humanity right now. Even though it is projected to just cost 4% of GDP for the next 30 years, it is still very challenging for market economies to achieve (I think primarily because the negative impacts are global not local).
It's just the fact that renewables aren't enough (since it's not always windy or sunny) and storage just isn't cheap or plentiful enough. They're great in many ways, but they alone won't provide enough power and stability.
So you're left with water power (which is only applicable in few areas and they destroy the nature), coal/oil/gas (which are much worse for the environment) and nuclear energy.
Nuclear might not solve everything itself either, but it's definitely part of the solution.
Which is a myth. Renewables can in fact supply most requirements if they are coupled with battery storage. Then the price would be cheaper than nuclear still.
Also, natural gas is much much better than coal for the environment. And more responsive too so dark and calm times can be handled as well.
So, why are we not doing it? Lobbyism, lock in, politics, nimby.
Batteries are the most expensive parts on EVs, they're heavy, require rare-earth metals and they wear out. So not an ideal solution.
Would be pretty cool to have the EV batteries on cars hooked up to the electric infrastructure and handle the offset and also charging them when there is too much power in the grid.
I always liked the idea of rapidly swappable batteries, like pulling into a gas station. Then they could be charged / stored in centralized locations which act as very large batteries for the grid. Keep batteries at 90% or even less and use that amount to absorb or push energy to the grid.
> It's just the fact that renewables aren't enough (since it's not always windy or sunny) and storage just isn't cheap or plentiful enough
Often repeated but untrue. There have been studies that compare the total cost including all storage and transmission requirements and found that nuclear is still much more expensive.
