A Hole In Time

05 Jan 2012 | By Ralph Benedetto

Yes, it’s physics time on the old blog…WAIT!…don’t stop reading just because I used the “P” word.

A recently published article makes this fascinating claim:

[S]cientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker.

Hm.  Okay.  What does this actually mean?

Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don’t see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It’s not just that the thief is invisible — his whole activity is.

Now, I’m a big believer in analogies and examples, but this one has one or two little tiny problems with it.  How long does this mysterious example art heist take place?  (And when was the last time you saw the word “heist” used?  Why didn’t they go whole hog and call it a “caper”?  But I digress…)

How long does this mysterious example art heist/caper/job take?  I don’t know, but it better be fast, because the actual “time masker” lasted for about 40 trillionths of a second.

So, how does this time masker work, anyway?

Magic.

No, wait.  That’s not it.  This is science.

(“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke)

Okay, I’m not going to spend my time arguing with quotes from Arthur C. Clarke.  Let’s move on.

Essentially what we’re talking about here is circumventing the eye.  It isn’t a question of the hand being quicker than the eye but making the eye selectively blind.

In order for you to see an object, light has to strike that object, bounce off, and then hit you in the eye.  If you can interfere with any part of that process, you make an object undetectible by the eye.  (That’s why you can’t see something that’s behind your back – the light rays bouncing off of the object are hitting you in the back of the head instead of in the eye.)

So, how do you interfere with this process?

If you could surround someone with a field that would make the light beams go around the field, hit what is behind it and then go back around the field before returning to strike the eye of an observer, the object within the field would be invisible.

The recent research apparently according to the article I read, somehow altered the speed at which light moves.  Something tells me that I’m missing something here.

The scientists created a lens of not just light, but time. Their method splits light, speeding up one part of light and slowing down another. It creates a gap and that gap is where an event is masked.

“You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place,” said study co-author Alexander Gaeta, director of Cornell’s School of Applied and Engineering Physics. “You just don’t know that anything ever happened.”

My brain hurts now.

Now, what we have at this point probably doesn’t sound massively useful, and it would sound even less useful if you heard the whole process, because it has to take place within a fiber optic cable, and I don’t imagine that too many art heists/capers/jobs are taking place inside of fiber optic cables (well, not the old fashioned kind described above, anyway), but it’s a first step.  That’s often the way in science – the first step doesn’t sound like much, but it lets you move on to a second step and then a third…and you can count the rest of the steps for yourself (unless one of them in the middle there gets hidden behind a time masker, I suppose).

And what are the advantages of a time cloak?

I have to say that I don’t know.  That is, I can see lots of bad uses for it – such as the art heist mentioned above, but what are the good uses?

Hm.

Only time will tell, I guess.

Category: Biology, Physics  Leave a Comment

Pluto = Goofy?

27 Oct 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

You may remember that Pluto was demoted.  Back in 2006 astronomers decided that Pluto would no longer be considered a planet.  So, if it isn’t a planet, what is it?  It was originally referred to as a “dwarf planet”. But, as it turns out, the International Astronomical Union Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (whew!) wasn’t happy with the term “dwarf planet” so they needed a new name for objects similar to Pluto.  And the name they finally came up with?  Plutoids.

Yes, Pluto is not a planet, it is a plutoid.

Isn’t it wonderful what you can do if you have a committee?  I suspect that one person working alone could have come up with that one.

So, now that we have a word for it, what exactly is a plutoid? Let us turn to the experts.

Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the Sun at a distance greater than that of Neptune that have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared the neighborhood around their orbit.

Now you know.

So, how many plutoids are there?

Well, counting Pluto, the original plutoid, that would be…2.

Wait.  There’s another one?

Why, yes, there is.  That would be Eris.

In case you didn’t know about Eris, it was discovered in 2005.  It is bigger than Pluto, 3 times farther away from the sun than Pluto and even has its own moon called Dysnomia which, by the way, means “lawlessness.”  I don’t know why that’s a good name for a moon, but obviously it is.

There is another dwarf planet in the solar system, by the way.  That would be Ceres, but Ceres is not a plutoid.  Why not, I can’t you hear you not asking (don’t try to figure that one out)?  Because it is located between Mars and Jupiter and is therefore not in orbit around the Sun at a distance greater than that of Neptune.  Like the real estate agents say, it’s about location, location, location.

Now, if objects like Pluto are called plutoids, why aren’t objects like Ceres called Ceresians or something?  That would be because scientists don’t think that there are any other objects like Ceres.  That’s right.  Ceres is in a class by itself.

In French plutoid is plutoïde, in Spanish plutoide and in Japanese 冥王星型天体.

I don’t know how useful it is for you to know that, but there it is anyway.  So, even though Pluto is no longer a planet, it does get to be the thing that other things are named after.  I guess that’s some consolation.

Category: Astronomy  Leave a Comment

The Filthiest Surfaces in America

25 Oct 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

How’s that for an attention getting title?  It makes you want to read the list, doesn’t it?

The way it works is this – a team of hygienists from Kimberly-Clark Professional went around to several U.S. cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia) and swabbed a variety of surfaces to check them for bacterial growth.  (When a biologist talks about “filthy” it usually means “covered with germs” rather than just “dirty”.)

You would think, by the way, that if you were looking for bacteria, you would simply check for bacteria, but no…what they were actually checking for was ATP which, as any good biology student knows, is adenosine triphosphate, the primary energy storage molecule in living systems.

If you find ATP, there is something living there, and, if the surface you swabbed is, for example, a computer keyboard, what is living there is probably bacteria rather than weasels, beluga whales or bigfoot.

So what are these mysterious filthy surfaces that you are going to way to avoid touching from now on?

Let’s see…from least filthy to more filthy we have:

Vending machine buttons in shopping malls (oddly specific, don’t you think?)

Crosswalk buttons (which, by the way, in many cities, don’t work because they aren’t actually connected to anything.  The idea is that pressing the button makes the pedestrian feel better.  Well, not any more, I guess.)

Parking meters and kiosks (it’s still better than getting a ticket)

ATM buttons (giving a whole new meaning to the term “dirty money”

Escalator rails

Handles on public mailboxes

And, at the top of the list, the winner is (drum roll please) gas pump handles

And what do all of these things have in common?  Two things, really.  One is that they are touched by a large number of people every day..  The other is that they don’t really get cleaned much (or, in some cases, at all).

By the way, increased used of hand sanitizer is not the best solution here.  Just try washing your hands with good old fashioned soap and water.  Sometimes the simple things work just fine.

Oh, and try not to think too much about it.

Category: Microbiology  Leave a Comment

Don’t ask. Just watch.

21 Oct 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

This is an infection control project for done by Dental Hygiene students at Wayne Community College.

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Category: General Science, Microbiology  Leave a Comment

A Superhero For Our Times?

04 Oct 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

It isn’t faster than speeding bullet.  it doesn’t even come close to being more powerful than a locomotive, and any attempt to leap tall buildings would really just make a mess.  Also, I don’t see much hope of it getting its own comic book any time in the near future, but it may someday be available at a supermarket near you.  I am, of course, talking about Super Broccoli.  (If I had multimedia, this would be the right time for some stirring music and a picture of Super Broccoli, cape waving in the wind, standing and looking into the distance, ready to fight crime…I mean, heart disease and cancer.

Super Broccoli is better known as Beneforte and will go on sale in the UK very soon.  (Mind you, I don’t know when you’re reading this, so maybe it has gone on sale already.  You are now in the future reading my words from the past.  Oooooh.)

Spiderman had his radioactive spider.  Green lantern has his ring.  Batman has…well, lots of money, really.  So what does Super Broccoli have?  Glucoraphanin!  Yes, that’s right.  Super Broccoli has three times as much glucoraphanin as normal broccoli.  (I’m sure that, if I could draw, I could make that sound really interesting.  People always want to read about mutations and superheroes from other planets, but glucoraphanin just doesn’t come up in comic books that often.

What is glucoraphanin, anyway?  It’s a precursor.  The stomach converts glucoraphanin into suphoraphane which, it is believed, will stop early-stage cancer cells from dividing.

Professor Richard Mithen says, “Our research gives insight into broccoli’s role in promoting health.”

Science minister David Willetts said the research would give “a real boost to agriculture, personal health and the economy.”

I’ll admit that none of those slogans has the same ring as “Faster than a speeding bullet…” or even as “There’s no need to fear; Underdog is here!” but it’s still a good thing, catchy or not.

Now go eat some broccoli.  It’s good for you.

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Sweaty Socks and Fatal Diseases

28 Jul 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

Researchers in Tanzania have chemically reproduced the stench of smelly feet

Now, I don’t know about you, but that is a first sentence that makes me want to keep on reading.  I’m used to reading articles about scientists performing all kinds of unusual experiments (after all, there was once a scientific study entitled Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs) but I really want to know why anybody wanted to reproduce the stench of smelly feet, so let’s finish the sentence:

in an innovative new approach to combat the spread of malaria in the country.

Huh.  Didn’t see that one coming.

So, how does this work?

Well, let’s start with malaria.  What is it?

[Warning:  Nonhumorous Science Content Follows]

Malaria is one of the most important diseases in the world.  There are over 300 million new cases per year with some 3 million deaths-the greatest mortality rate of any infectious disease.  It is transmitted by the bite of the anopheles mosquito or the Asian tiger mosquito.  There are four forms of malaria depending upon which species of protozoan is acquired:  Plasmodium falciparum (most dangerous and geographically widespread), Plasmodium vivax, (also widely distributed), Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium ovale, which cause geographically restricted, milder diseases.

All forms of malaria are characterized by chills and fever due to the rupture of erythrocytes (RBCs) by merozoites as they are released.  Anemia from loss of erythrocytes and hypertrophy of the liver and spleen are added complications.

Mosquito control is the only current preventative measure.

And, with that last line, we get to the root of the problem (or the foot of the problem).

It turns out that mosquitos like the smell of stinky feet.

The scientific team at Tanzania’s Ifakara Health Institute has developed a potent serum — similar to that of human foot odor…Four times more powerful in attracting mosquitoes than natural human odor, the synthetic smell is now being used in a pioneering research program aimed at killing mosquitoes outdoors using a “mosquito landing box.”

Who knew?  It sounds a bit like the stinky toe episode of Angry Beavers, but it turns out to have a valid scientific point to it.

Mosquitoes are lured inside the boxes by the synthetic odor, which is dispersed by a solar-powered fan. Once inside, the insects are either trapped or poisoned and left to die.

Mosquito control without the use of wide spread pesticides such as DDT is a good thing.  I admit that concentrated dirty foot smell being dispersed by fans doesn’t sound like something you’d want in your back yard, but malaria prevention is certainly worth a little stench.  Or even a great big stench.

According to one of the researchers:

“If you came to our lab when the research was being done, you would have thought that someone had just come off a soccer field.”

Mosquitos are not as mindless as you might think, according to the same researcher, Dr. Okumu.

“Mosquitoes can modify their behavior quite rapidly to deal with the added deterrents of sprays and bed nets,” he said.

“For example, instead of going into houses to bite people, mosquitoes are now starting to wait to bite people outside,” he said.

The idea of mosquitoes waiting around outside your door because they’ve learned not to come inside to get you is kind of startling to me.  The world is a strange place.

Well, at least we have a new weapon in the fight against malaria.  We’re going to win this fight, even if we have to raise a stink to do it.

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Category: Entomology, Microbiology  Leave a Comment

In Good Company

05 Jul 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

Well, here’s another new discovery that is not for the squeamish.

Scientists sampling DNA strains from the navels of volunteer donors have found 662 microbes that are apparently new to science, showing that the human navel is apparently a ripe environment for bacteria.

Hey, it’s dark, it’s warm, sweat collects there so it’s moist, what’s not to like if you are a bacterium?

The Belly Button Biodiversity Project, run by scientists at North Carolina State University has been analyzing navel swabs from a host of volunteers.  So far, they’ve found 1,400 distinct bacterial strains, nearly half of which have never been seen before.

The Belly button Biodiversity Project?  Why, yes, indeed.  You can also check out a  belly button bacteria website.  The world is a fascinating place.  The belly button bacteria website (not its real name) says that you know more about the creatures that live in Australia than you do about those that live in your very own belly button.  How do they know?  We could do a test on the monotremata and find out, but perhaps we’d better just skip it.

So, why belly buttons, anyway?  What prompted the researchers to look there?   The article I read has an answer for you:

Researchers led by Rob Dunn and Jiri Hulcr at NC State wanted to examine belly buttons because, well, they’re harder to scrub than the rest of your body.

Because they’re dirty, so you’re more likely to find bacteria there.  This is not a reason to start attacking your belly button with cleansers, by the way.  Biology is fully of facts that are often disconcerting, such as the revelation that lobsters are in the same phylum as insects so they are more closely related to bugs than to other animals, but, don’t worry, bugs are generally high in protein and low in fat.  You just have to get used to these things.

And now, back to our story:

Science writers Carl Zimmer and Peter Aldhous (from New Scientist) each donated a swab, and while Aldhous’ sample failed to yield bacterial colonies, Zimmer’s sample was apparently flush with life.  Some species in his microbiome have previously only been found in the ocean, he writes. Another one, a species called Georgenia, has only been found living in the soil in Japan, a place Zimmer has never been.

I think that’s the part that intrigues me the most.  Japanese soil bacteria riding around in the belly button of a guy who has never been to Japan.

Human beings are, of course, giant bags of bacteria.  We are covered with bacteria and filled with bacteria.  When we die, the bacteria inside us spiral out of control and we start to putrefy from the inside out.  This process begins within minutes of death.  Of course, many of our bacterial hitchhikers help us out by fighting off infection or by producing nutrients or vitamins that we can make use of, so don’t knock the little guys.  Many of them are your friends.

Look at this way, at least you know you’re never truly alone, right?

Category: Microbiology  Tags: , ,  Leave a Comment

Fact or Fiction

20 Jun 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

I am currently reading Following the Equator by Mark Twain.

I know, I know, the last article on here was about the care and feeding of the apostrophe, and now I’ve brought up Mark Twain.  Is this a place for science articles or what?  Let’s allow Mr. Twain to speak for himself:

Dr. Hockiu gave us a ghastly curiosity–a lignified caterpillar with a plant growing out of the back of its neck–a plant with a slender stem 4 inches high. It happened not by accident, but by design–Nature’s design. This caterpillar was in the act of loyally carrying out a law inflicted upon him by Nature–a law purposely inflicted upon him to get him into trouble–a law which was a trap; in pursuance of this law he made the proper preparations for turning himself into a night-moth; that is to say, he dug a little trench, a little grave, and then stretched himself out in it on his stomach and partially buried himself–then Nature was ready for him. She blew the spores of a peculiar fungus through the air with a purpose. Some of them fell into a crease in the back of the caterpillar’s neck, and began to sprout and grow–for there was soil there–he had not washed his neck. The roots forced themselves down into the worm’s person, and rearward along through its body, sucking up the creature’s juices for sap; the worm slowly died, and turned to wood. And here he was now, a wooden caterpillar, with every detail of his former physique delicately and exactly preserved and perpetuated, and with that stem standing up out of him for his monument—monument commemorative of his own loyalty and of Nature’s unfair return for it.

Nature is always acting like that. Mrs. X. said (of course) that the caterpillar was not conscious and didn’t suffer. She should have known better. No caterpillar can deceive Nature. If this one couldn’t suffer, Nature would have known it and would have hunted up another caterpillar.  Not that she would have let this one go, merely because it was defective. No. She would have waited and let him turn into a night-moth; and then fried him in the candle.

Now, Following the Equator is a work of nonfiction, but there’s no particular reason that should stop Mark Twain from inserting a tall tale or two if the spirit moved him to do so, so I began to wonder if this was real.

Well, yes, as it turns out.

Twain didn’t tell us where the mysterious Dr. Hockiu (would that not be a great title for a movie?) found his caterpillar or his fungus, but the activity described in the section is relatively close to that of Cordyceps sinensis, also known as Caterpillar fungus, which acts upon the caterpillar of the ghost moth.

The caterpillar in question lives underground for several years.  If the fungus attacks it, it eventually fills the caterpillar’s body, kills it and removes all the moisture, mummifying it.  When the caterpillar is near the top of the hole it lives in, it dies and the mushroom of the fungus grows out through the caterpillar’s forehead and can stand from 2 to 6 inches in height.

Why does the caterpillar go to the top of its hole to die?  I don’t know.  Presumably a signal from the fungus takes over the body.  There are a whole series of insect parasites that are able to alter the insect’s behavior in ways that help the parasite.

The mushroom, by the way, is apparently prized for its medicinal qualities in some Asian traditional medicines.

I don’t know if this was the specific caterpillar and fungus combination that Mark Twain saw, but, if not, it’s close enough for now.

You never know what you find when you read a good book.

Category: Microbiology  Tags: , , ,  Leave a Comment

Making Your Mark

20 Jun 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

Well, the small and the weak need someone to speak up for them, and there is a group that is making sure that happens.  I am talking, of course, about the Apostrophe Protection Society.  What does this have to do with science?  Absolutely nothing at all, as far as I can tell.  Now that we’re clear on that, let’s continue.

In fact, let’s continue in the group’s own words:

The Apostrophe Protection Society was started in 2001 by John Richards, now its Chairman, with the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language.

Well, I guess that’s clear enough.

The group’s website gives a nice list of the rules for the correct use of the apostrophe and then includes an extremely polite disclaimer:

We are aware of the way the English language is evolving during use, and do not intend any direct criticism of those who have made the mistakes above.  We are just reminding all writers of English text, whether on notices or in documents of any type, of the correct usage of the apostrophe should you wish to put right mistakes you may have inadvertently made.

By the way, is it just me, or does the Society in Favor of Correct Comma Usage (should there by chance be such an august body) need to take a look at the first sentence in that last paragraph?

What else do they have?

On our Examples pages you will see pictures of real-life apostrophe abuse, many of which have been submitted by visitors to this site.

I don’t know why, but it amuses me that they feel the need to say that these are “real-life” examples.  Well, I suppose they are being scrupulously correct in letting us know that they didn’t make up any of these examples.  Good for them.

But they also want you to learn about our friend the apostrophe:

Now CLICK HERE for a fun way to check your knowledge of apostrophe use! Afterwards why not consolidate your knowledge HERE?

You might want to note the fact that I have substituted links that amuse me in place of the links the Apostrophe Protection Society uses on their page.

So, why bother to post something like this on a science blog?  Well, after all, small details can have a big impact, and clear communication is a vital part of science.  In this world of texting and tweets, some of the small details (and some of the big ones) are being lost to our detriment.

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In Bad Company

01 Jun 2011 | By Ralph Benedetto

Germany is currently suffering through an outbreak of E. coli which is believed to have spread throughout Europe on contaminated vegetables.  Now, that statement by itself doesn’t tell anything like the whole story, so let’s start by introducting the main character.

Escherichia coli is a normal inhabitant of the mammalian digestive tract.  You, as a human being (and I assume that only human beings are actually reading this article, though I suppose I can’t rule out the idea of a particularly gifted Labrador retriever or something) have a nice population of E. coli living in your intestines right now.  (If there is a particularly gifted Labrador retriever reading this article, you, too, have your very own population of E. coli, so don’t feel left out.)

E. coli has certainly been responsible for a large number of disease outbreaks over the years, and most of them are nonlethal.  These typical involve such symptoms as (unpleasantness alert) stomach cramps, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting.

The current outbreak in Germany, however, is different.  It involves what is called EHEC.  This stands for enterohaemorrhagic E.coli.  This version of the microbe can cause symptoms such as bloody diarrhea and fever in addition to the symptoms listed above.  If the individual is a previously healthy adult, as bad it is, that may be all there is to it.  A small percentage of patients, however, particularly the very young and the elderly, may develop hemolytic uremic syndrome or HUS, which can lead to acute kidney failure and death.  There may also be neurological involvement, leading to seizures, strokes, coma and death.

Germany typically sees, at most, 50 or 60 cases of HUS annually.  Well over a thousand cases have been reported in a little over a month.  In fact, cases have been reported in nine different European countries:  Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K.  Nearly every single case, however, involves a person who is either in Germany or who had recently traveled to Germany.  (There are a couple of exceptions, but since a certain number of HUS cases occur each year anyway, that isn’t surprising.)

It’s extremely unusual to see so many case of HUS, even in the midst of an E. coli outbreak.  This particular strain of the bacterium is apparently causing HUS at a much higher rate than any previously known strain, going back as far as public health records have been kept.

This isn’t the only way in which the outbreak is unusual, either.  Only a very small percentage of those afflicted are children, which is not how this disease normally works.

It only goes to show that, no matter how much we think we know about microorganisms, they always have the power to surprise us, sometimes to our detriment.  We always need to be on our guard, and we always need to remember that, no matter how much we know, there will always be more to learn.

Category: Microbiology  Tags: ,  Leave a Comment
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