Thanks! Now it makes sense how a decree would help. I imagine some additional culture shift would be needed to make sure that the kids weren't still under a lot of pressure, just less overt.
I don't see how "decreeing minimum sleep" would work. Why aren't the high school students getting enough sleep? Are they also working jobs? Do they live far away from the schools?
(Writing in cluelessness from the USA) I accept the argument for importance, and notice myself defaulting to considering the problem intractable because I don't know how tractable it is to meaningfully improve school safety in Uganda. Will you please share more about how hard it might be, and what it would take, to make this better?
I agree that reducing childhood trauma in the USA looks quite tractable, and that it's not as neglected as other issues. Examples of things which are happening:
1. There's already work being done to understand, prevent, and overcome Adverse Childhood Experiences (notably in California, under Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris). ACEs are dose-dependent, with people who report more childhood trauma having worse health outcomes, including a higher risk of early death.
2. the intactivist movement appears to be making progress over the last decade on shifting public opinion toward opposing childhood genital cutting.
DonorsChoose (recommended by an Experiment friend). I haven’t seen yet whether these projects do report back, but the infrastructure is there for following up about whether the project went as expected.
I used to do transcribing with timestamps. I met some cool people and learned a lot about the topics I was working on that way. It was a good remote flex-time freelance job for me at 20. I rarely do transcription work anymore, but I would be happy to do a call about what I learned and my setup with anyone considering this line of work.
RE #3, the company's website includes a helpful infographic. It sounds like they added an optogenetic control on the Z chromosome (I couldn't find anything more specific than that). The breeding hens contain one altered and one normal Z chromosome, and the breeding roosters are normal. Female chicks receive a normal W from their mother and a normal Z from their father and are "wild-type", but male chicks receive an edited Z chromosome from their mother and a normal Z chromosome from their father. Shining blue light on all the eggs "deactivates" the edited Z chromosome in male eggs, disrupting development when the embryo is "only two layers of cells." Maybe we can find out more about how the optogenetic control works if someone with paid Academia.edu access searches for Dr. Yuval Cinnamon's papers? I tried a title search and didn't find anything.
If you had other small predators around to keep the rodent populations in check, such as weasels and hawks, maybe you could get away with removing snakes. Rodent population booms are undesirable because rodents carry diseases which can be infect humans, pets, and livestock. Rodent poison isn't a good alternative because the poisons also kill scavengers (dogs, owls, etc.) that eat the poisoned rodents, and are harmful at sub-lethal doses. Birds of prey aren't enough to keep a rodent population in check because they can't access most of the places where rodents like to hide, so predators are also needed which can travel along the ground and enter burrows.
Predator removal has been tried repeatedly, usually with negative consequences on the ecosystem. Australia in particular has lots of case studies about humans trying to manage small pests without enough predators, and Yellowstone has a famous case study about the value of reintroducing predators. Keeping predators around is unpleasant, but the human effort involved in compensating for their absence is expensive.
I think keeping the non-venomous snakes mostly covers this concern though!
The only upside I know of provided by venomous snakes specifically is that they are a source of very complex specialized proteins with potential medical applications, such as anticoagulants and vasoconstrictors.
Thanks! Now it makes sense how a decree would help. I imagine some additional culture shift would be needed to make sure that the kids weren't still under a lot of pressure, just less overt.
Neat about the alcohol sachets!
I don't see how "decreeing minimum sleep" would work. Why aren't the high school students getting enough sleep? Are they also working jobs? Do they live far away from the schools?
Meta: looks like this is Skye's first post on the EA Forum. Welcome, Skye! Thanks for your courage in posting this!
(Writing in cluelessness from the USA) I accept the argument for importance, and notice myself defaulting to considering the problem intractable because I don't know how tractable it is to meaningfully improve school safety in Uganda. Will you please share more about how hard it might be, and what it would take, to make this better?
I agree that reducing childhood trauma in the USA looks quite tractable, and that it's not as neglected as other issues. Examples of things which are happening:
1. There's already work being done to understand, prevent, and overcome Adverse Childhood Experiences (notably in California, under Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris). ACEs are dose-dependent, with people who report more childhood trauma having worse health outcomes, including a higher risk of early death.
2. the intactivist movement appears to be making progress over the last decade on shifting public opinion toward opposing childhood genital cutting.
DonorsChoose (recommended by an Experiment friend). I haven’t seen yet whether these projects do report back, but the infrastructure is there for following up about whether the project went as expected.
I used to do transcribing with timestamps. I met some cool people and learned a lot about the topics I was working on that way. It was a good remote flex-time freelance job for me at 20. I rarely do transcription work anymore, but I would be happy to do a call about what I learned and my setup with anyone considering this line of work.
RE #3, the company's website includes a helpful infographic. It sounds like they added an optogenetic control on the Z chromosome (I couldn't find anything more specific than that). The breeding hens contain one altered and one normal Z chromosome, and the breeding roosters are normal. Female chicks receive a normal W from their mother and a normal Z from their father and are "wild-type", but male chicks receive an edited Z chromosome from their mother and a normal Z chromosome from their father. Shining blue light on all the eggs "deactivates" the edited Z chromosome in male eggs, disrupting development when the embryo is "only two layers of cells." Maybe we can find out more about how the optogenetic control works if someone with paid Academia.edu access searches for Dr. Yuval Cinnamon's papers? I tried a title search and didn't find anything.
Oooh, I'm hopeful this technology could be used for identifying insect stings too! Insect antivenom faces some similar challenges.
If you had other small predators around to keep the rodent populations in check, such as weasels and hawks, maybe you could get away with removing snakes. Rodent population booms are undesirable because rodents carry diseases which can be infect humans, pets, and livestock. Rodent poison isn't a good alternative because the poisons also kill scavengers (dogs, owls, etc.) that eat the poisoned rodents, and are harmful at sub-lethal doses. Birds of prey aren't enough to keep a rodent population in check because they can't access most of the places where rodents like to hide, so predators are also needed which can travel along the ground and enter burrows.
Predator removal has been tried repeatedly, usually with negative consequences on the ecosystem. Australia in particular has lots of case studies about humans trying to manage small pests without enough predators, and Yellowstone has a famous case study about the value of reintroducing predators. Keeping predators around is unpleasant, but the human effort involved in compensating for their absence is expensive.
I think keeping the non-venomous snakes mostly covers this concern though!
The only upside I know of provided by venomous snakes specifically is that they are a source of very complex specialized proteins with potential medical applications, such as anticoagulants and vasoconstrictors.