> There is no question in my mind
> that bee health and survivability
> where I live is drastically lower
> than it was 35 years ago. Yet,
> I can not imagine where my bees
> would get any pesticide exposure at all ...
> Ditto. There is very little agriculture in my area,
> but everyone has a hard time keeping bees alive.
Ditto ditto. Near zero agriculture in the City as a whole, and zero
pesticide use in Manhattan by city policy, leaving only the occasional
backyard gardener to screw up now and then. But they are working on banning
the sale of certain pesticides at the Home Despot, too.
But strange as it may seem, our pampered bees still fair little better than
bees in the midst of agriculture.
As for "unprofessionalism cynicism", everyone has focused only on the
quality of the science done (poor), and the conclusions draw (cartoony).
There has been no glee, as Harvard has quite a PR office, and these kinds of
articles do nothing but divert funds and attention to problems that do not
exist, rather than to problems that do exist.
I am sure that Dr. Lu is a fine fellow, he just is not helping to move the
ball down the field at all in bee science, so for his work to have value, it
will only gain value via the critique of others as applied to the work that
is so insufficient. So WE are moving the ball down the field, even though
Dr. Lu has now been sacked well behind his line of scrimmage more often than
Tom Brady.
And the "breakthrough" technology that he used is circa 1980s stuff. Excuse
me for being an analytics geek, but electrospray ionization mass
spectrometry (ESI-MS) was developed by a fellow named Fenn. Fenn got
himself a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 for the trick. (Someday, there
will be Topps Nobel Prize Winner TRADING CARDS, just like MLB!)
But plain old HPLC/MS/MS (liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry) of
the exact sort I had in my basement back in VA (from the VA Tech obsolete
gear auctions!) has been capable of 0.3 ng/g LOD and 1 ng/g LOQ for
Imidacloprid for decades, which is more than good enough, as what is
commonly found in pollen of Imidacloprid-treated plants is 2-3 ng/g which
is 2 to 3 ppb.
You can do fine with with LODs that are about 1/10th the known typical value
for what you seek. There has to be some equivalent of Nyquist-Shannon
sampling theory for chemistry, damned if I can remember if there is one, but
to me is seems an apt analogy from the world of bits and bytes and
nanoseconds.
So, a 0.3 ppb LOD is fine, no one needs to upgrade gear beyond "commodity"
HPLC/MS/MS for pesticide work in the context of bee toxicology.
Re-reading the above, I have to admit that this Google voice-to-text thingy
works pretty well, and learns even techno-lingo over time. I had to correct
very few words.
The band is back from its break, and my drink is empty. I am beckoned back
to the dance floor. If I don't go, I may be dragged there.
========
Sent from my not-so smartphone.
My typo rate may vary
========
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