Shrimp on treadmills, your tax dollars at work

[billc]

yes, your hard earned money went to shrimp running on treadmills, the story...

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/taxpayers-funded-shrimp-on-treadmills

From the article:

May 26, 2011
You’ve probably heard of shrimp on the barbie, but what about shrimp on a treadmill? The National Science Foundation has, and it spent $500,000 of taxpayer money researching it. It’s not entirely clear what this research hoped to establish.
But it’s one of a number of projects cited in a scathing new report from Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, exclusively obtained by ABC News.
It’s not just shrimp on a treadmill. The foundation spent $1.5 million to create a robot that can fold laundry. But before you try to buy one to save some time, consider that it takes the robot 25 minutes to fold a single towel.
Towel-folding being a job that even illegal aliens won’t do.


(From me: it should be noted that data from the shrimp running on a treadmill and the towel folding robot will help the government manage the new government run healthcare plan. That is a relief, isn't it?)

 

[Bob Hubbard]

shrimp should be in my belly.

 

[Empty Hands]

It’s not entirely clear what this research hoped to establish.

Then perhaps someone should read the grant application, which is in the public domain, and any papers based on the PI's research prior to making admittedly ignorant comments.

The funding cutoffs are below 10%. No one gets half a million in funding over 3-5 years for nonsense science. I guarantee you there is a perfectly rational reason behind it.

And really, no one can see the benefit in designing robots that independently perform tasks? Which might be slow now but will be perfected and optimized over time?

So, so, so stupid. Nihilism and point-scoring for its own sake, completely divorced from rationality.

 

[Empty Hands]

Here, I did your homework for you:

"A sluggish, sick human is easy to spot. But it's harder to tell when a shrimp is under the weather. So one scientist put the little crustaceans on a tiny treadmill [video] to examine how diseases impact their performance....The shrimp treadmill, invented and built by Scholnick, allows researchers to measure the activity of an exercising shrimp for a set period of time at known speed and oxygen levels...Sick shrimp, however, had reduced aerobic performance. They also had elevated blood lactate levels. Lactate is produced during exercise as a by-product of metabolizing glucose. Infected shrimp are unable to remove it from their tissues efficiently and therefore could not recover from exercise as well as healthy shrimp.
Shrimp dealing with an infection would be less active and might be limited in their ability to migrate, find food, and avoid being eaten, Scholnick said. "These studies will give us a better idea of how marine animals can perform in their native habitat when faced with increasing pathogens and immunological challenges."

****ing philistines. Just tear it all down.

 

[billc]

Wow, they discovered that a sick animal does not perform as well as a healthy animal. I can see it was actually worth the money now.

 

[Empty Hands]

Wow, they discovered that a sick animal does not perform as well as a healthy animal. I can see it was actually worth the money now.

As always, it's the hows and whys that are more important. You clearly don't know the first thing about this scientist's research, yet you feel confident enough to pass judgment on it. Now, what would you call that if someone did the same thing to something you are for?

 

[bushidomartialarts]

Whenever we talk about scientific research in America, what galls me is the political compromises to scientific development in our country.

Let's get a few things straight.

1. Scientists are not idiots. If they were, they'd write ill-informed liberal or conservative blogs for a living. They have advanced degrees and spend their lives learning the truth about things we barely understand.
2. Research grants are long and arduous processes, renewed annually and only if you can show progress and importance in your work.
3. Politicians are rarely actually stupid, even if they're on the other side. They are, however, often constrained from making good decisions because of how power works in Washington.

Research is all about funding. If you don't get some, you don't do your research...and in America, this means our research is fundamentally compromised.

• You can't get grants to look into why some minorities score lower on IQ tests, because the liberals won't let you admit it's true.
• We're the only developed nation in the world that seriously questions global warming as fact (whether it's human-caused is another matter)...because the cons have a stick up their bums about all environmental issues.
• Stem cell research in this country was stalled for almost a decade because we had a President who couldn't risk offending the christians.

It goes on and on and on.