Daily Science Dose

All the good stuff’s showing up in the news these days - MRSA attacking school children, amoebas that eat your brain and you can’t do anything to stop them, Mexicans with TB, West Nile…Salmonella in pot pies! Adenovirus gone worse.

Do you guys…wanna talk about this stuff? It’s pretty exciting. Better than a carved pumpkin, I say, and, unlike a carved pumpkin, these things will be with us for years and years and years.

Bird flu has it rough these days. It’s tough to compete with brain-eating amoeba. People don’t really connect with “dead Indonesian boy” as they do with “Banquet pot pie.”

MRSA seems to be the super star. If there were an Academy Awards show for infectious disease, I’d be putting my money on MRSA.

Let’s take a look!

CDC/ Bruno Coignard, M.D.; Jeff Hageman, M.H.S.

And here’s the close-up:

Credit: Janice Carr
CDC/ Jim Biddle

Don’t you just love the holidays? I wonder what we’ll be having for Thanksgiving…

I’ve got dysgeusia. It started last week with a cucumber. The cucumber did not taste like cucumber; the cucumber tasted like poison, like varnish. I’ve since tried eating other cucumbers and, while not as terrible as the first, they taste wrong. I can’t eat them.

Coffee also does not taste right. It tastes like poison, too. Today, my Starbucks tasted like peppermint.

Tap water has been tasting like it’s food-flavored or, yeah - poisoned.

Whatever is going on here? Why, it’s dysgeusia - an altered and distorted sense of taste and/or smell.

At times, I have an increased sense of smell, which also falls under the category of dysgeusia. Increased taste/smell is called hypergeusia.

Dysgeusia is pronounced dis-gooz-ee-a. Gooz.

If everything tasted metallic, that could be a symptom of pregnancy. Or cancer.

This site talks about how dysgeusia might be a neurological issue due to a viral infection. Ooh. Aah.

Here’s a nice list of reasons (from doctorstrust.com) one might be experiencing dysgeusia:

“Dysgeusia…can be caused by upper respiratory tract infection, hormonal changes, tobacco smoke, or nasal polyps. Certain medications, like the blood pressure–lowering drug captopril (Capoten) and antibiotics such as metronidazole (Flagyl), may also cause an altered sensation of taste. Sometimes, the cause of dysgeusia is unknown; this is called idiopathic dysgeusia.”

Other causes include (from MedlinePlus):

“Aging (the number of taste buds decrease with age)
Bell’s palsy
Common cold
Flu
Gingivitis
Heavy smoking (especially pipe smoking)
Injury to the mouth, nose, or head
Mouth dryness
Nasal infection, nasal polyps, sinusitis
Pharyngitis
Salivary gland infections
Side effects of medicines, including antithyroid drugs, captopril, griseofulvin, lithium, penicillamine, procarbazine, rifampin, vinblastine, and vincristine
Sjogren’s syndrome
Strep throat
Vitamin B-12 or zinc deficiency”

I’m gonna take a multivitamin.

There’s more, too. One can experience dysgeusia (per InteliHealth) from:

Chemotherapy drugs
A brain tumor
Damage to the taste nerves
Metabolic problems, such as diabetes, thyroid disease or liver problems
Depression
Laryngectomy (removal of the voice box)

If you’re experiencing dysgeusia, you might want to mention it to your doctor, especially if it worsens or continues for more than a week.

Now that you know about dysgeusia, another fun word you might wanna toss around at your next cocktail party is xerostomia. It means dry mouth. At the party, you can tell people you have dysgeusia due to xerostomia. You’ll be the belle of the ball!

Xerostomia can be caused by all kinds of things, and is a common side effect of many medications.

In addition to xerostomia and dysgeusia, I’ve got some major fatigue goin’ on, so I must leave this post tagless and without pictures and get myself to sleep. I haven’t found a fancy word for super fatigue, but I’ll let you know if I do.

Super fatigue can be a symptom of pregnancy. Or cancer. It can also be a symptom of any number of autoimmune conditions.

I have a few autoimmune conditions, one of which can cause xerostomia!

What a tangled web I weave.

Good night, sleep tight, and I promise the bedbug stories are on the way!

Dunno if you remember me talking about that whole allergy and autoimmune disease possibly caused by lack o’ parasites and too clean an environment, but Zooillogix has a great post today about studies being done with hookworms.

People with hookworms appear to suffer far less from allergies, asthma, and hay fever, as well as autoimmune conditions like MS and Crohn’s disease.

Which do you think it is - immune system, sans parasites, all bored and deciding to rough up the neighborhood? Or, do you think it’s that the parasites pump out suppressive chemicals that our immune systems have adjusted to, so much so that, in the absence of these chemicals, our immune systems do not know how to behave properly.

I suppose it comes down to the same thing. Our bodies miss worms.

Photo courtesy of CDC’s Public Health Image Library

That there is what little baby hookworms look like when they are snuggling into a dog’s intestines.

O, worms. O sweet, writhing, hook-faced treasures. Angels, won’t you please come for a stay in my intestines? Then I can trade out my Claritin OTC - one med down, a dozen more to go.

Do you think worms could take care of my other things, too, the other things for which I take pills? I think that they might, especialy things like my yet-to-be-named autoimmune conditions.

Here’s the life cycle of hookworms, as usual, courtesy of the CDC’s public health image library:

CDC says, “Barely visible larvae penetrate the skin (often through bare feet), are carried to the lungs, go through the respiratory tract to the mouth, are swallowed, and eventually reach the small intestine. This journey takes about a week.”

Wikipedia, being Mr. Buzz Kill, has this to say about hookworms:

“Hookworm is a leading cause of maternal and child morbidity in the developing countries of the tropics and subtropics. In susceptible children hookworms cause intellectual, cognitive and growth retardation, intrauterine growth retardation, prematurity, and low birth weight among newborns born to infected mothers.”

But, if you’re not a mother or child in a developing country, probably the worst that could happen is some anemia from blood loss. That’s not so bad now, is it? A fair trade for hay fever. Vitamins instead of Claritin. Worms instead of my body eating itself.

The body misses the worms eating, so the body gnaws away at itself. Romantic, really. Tragically romantic.

I’m done here. Adios.

hookworm, autoimmune, allergies, hayfever, worms, Zooillogix, immune system, romance

Britney has been court ordered to take drugs tests! Could things get any worse for The Brit? I was just saying the other day that…

Woah. Where am I? Who am I?

It’s true. I read the news about B. Spears (if you do too, here’s a blog with all the latest Britney news). I find her to be very compelling.

So yes, who is this blog again?

O yeah - science. Science…mmm…

You guys heard about that meteor that crashed in Peru and made a cow die and also made the people who went to see it, it made those people get all sick and pukey - you heard about that, right?

If you did not, here’s a link to the BBC story. Some fun quotes:

“The crater spewed what officials described as fetid, noxious gases.”

Hot!

“The gases are believed to have affected the health of hundreds of people who visited the site.

Most of the victims have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea.

Honorio Campoblanco, one of Peru’s leading geologists, called on the authorities to stop people going near the crash site.”

Sure, I suppose staying away might help things, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as exciting.

Why o why is no one guessing what gases might be coming from the meteorite? Does anyone have any ideas? Maybe the Angry Toxicologist will know.

Maybe it’s only mass hysteria. Wouldn’t that be a letdown?

Let’s have some more meteorite fun tomorrow, shall we?

meteor, meteorite, Peru, Britney, gases, noxious, outerspace, Angry Toxicologist

Two fun articles for today’s post.

A study by the British Journal of Dermatology has shown that wearing tight socks, even just once, can leave sock scars on a baby’s legs.

Socks and, I imagine, tight socks, have been around for so long. Why are we only noticing now?

Everyone please take a moment to examine your lower calf for sock scars.

The article, here at BBC News Health, explains that it’s important to know about sock lesions so as to differentiate them from other, more serious conditions, like birth defects.

No one knows if the scars will be permanent, although, in some children, they have seen the scars persist for months, even years.

Moral of this story: sock your babies very carefully. Give their little legs plenty of sock room at the top of their socks.

Tight socks are the worst, no?

Moving on, Russia is shooting gerbils into space. Somehow, this is going to help them in their quest to put people on Mars.

From the BBC article:

“The Russian space agency has blasted 10 gerbils into space for a 12-day mission to test the possible effects on humans of a flight to Mars.”

Also:

“The 10 are all sand rodents, praised as ‘a very interesting object for research’ because they ‘can live for more than a month without using liquids,’ said Anatoly Grogoryev of the Russian Academy of Science.”

A month without any liquids! Why, just like us! On Mars!

What?

I’m sure they know what they’re doing. Something about salt exchange in…in space. They’re even filming the gerbils up in their little gerbil spacecraft, and have installed machines that will clean up their droppings.

I hope this footage becomes available on youtube.

Look out, Mars - here we come.

Mommies and daddies - don’t leave your babies alone with any suspicious socks.

The end.

That whole “possible hemorrhagic fever killing loads of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo” thing? Turns out it is only Ebola. Phew. Big sigh o’ relief, huh? No further mention of chickens and pigs. Just a hundred or so people who got all dead from Ebola, about 400 infected.

There’s this (from the AP article on Google): “[Health Minister] Makwenge [Kaput] did not say whether the outbreak had been contained.” The number of infections is still rising, but the number of deaths is falling, now that everyone’s being taken care of.

I’m sure it’ll be fine. Ebola, so far, is so good at making people ill that they don’t get all that far before they, like, fall down, so the disease hasn’t managed to spread too far, not yet. Maybe it’ll get lucky someday.

That’s what all these bugs are tryin’ to do - get lucky.

That’s what every single alive thing is tryin’ to do - get lucky.

O, sigh.

I’m goin’ on a trip tomorrow, so I might not get back to you ’till late Wednesday, early Thursday. I will be hyper vigilant in my quest to acquire new information from the world of science while I am out in the big, wide world.

Until I return, avoid the Congo area if at all possible. Probably avoid it after I return, too, unless you’ve got a really good reason for going there. Bleeding out of one’s eyeballs, while good for dramatic picture taking, is not really a funtime. Not that I have experience with such a thing. I’m guessing. A hypothesis, let’s call it. All official and science-like.

‘night!

The dark side of the moon does not exist.

Repeat.

The dark side of the moon does not exist.

There is not one side of the moon that is always dark. There is one side of the moon that we never see from the earth, but it gets as much light as the side we see. When the moon is dark to us, except during eclipses, the moon is light on the “dark side.”

See? Here’s the dark side being…not so dark.

Image Courtesy o’ NASA

It was such a romantic idea, no? The dark side of the moon…eternally cold, uber-barren.

It does not exist, so said the lady at the Griffith Observatory. She worked there, and had a gigantic mobile which showed how it works and everything, so I’ll take her word for it, especially since I’m not so great at the 3D abstracts.

O, I found a boyfriend at the observatory.

He’s really smart and knows all kinds of things. Perhaps he’ll be able to explain this whole moon business so that I finally get it straight.

moon, dark side of the moon, Griffith Observatory, orbit, lunar, sun, earth, light, dark

This post is gonna be quick. Apologies. Must get to sleep. Tsetse, tsetse.

It’s not nice, really, to keep calling my fatigue tsetse. Tsetse fly transmitted sleeping sickness is a pretty horrible deal, and involves much more than fatigue.

Still, it’s sorta catchy. I enjoy the repitition. Tsetse. Yumyums. Jawjaw.

Jawjaw? That’s what I’m gonna quickly tell you about or, more specifically, direct you to.

New discovery - moray eels have a second, secret ’till now set of jaws that extends forward when they open their mouth wide. These secret jaws grab into and onto the food, and pull it back into their gullets. Mmm.

Our jaws come from a series of pharyngeal slits that all vertebrates have. Ours - those are the “gill slits” that we’ve got when we’re embryos. One set of ours turn into jaws. Then, the rest turn into things like ears and…inner head parts.

In other vertebrates, like fish, the pharyngeal thingies turn into jaws and gills.

I’m sure it’s much more complex than my explanation here. And o how I would love to tell you about the characteristics that all vertebrates have in common. I’ll tell you this now - one of the characteristics or features that ALL vertebrates have is this: they all have pharyngeal slits.

How does this have to do with tsetse and yumyum and eels? Eels use one pair o’ slits for jaws, and then they use yet another set of pharyngeal slits to make that second, inner, secret set of jaws, the jaws that come forward to clamp down on their prey. Jawjaws snatch yumyums. Hooray for moray!

PZ Myers has an excellent description of the process on his blog, Pharyngula. Here’s the link. He’s also got pictures and video, showing that second jaw coming forward.

Now, here’s some illustrations of a human embryo, showing the pharyngeal structures and what they are busy doing. Arch=slit=pharyngeal structure that we’ve been talking about. Mandible and maxilla = bottom and top jaws.

18-21 days old

27-30 days old
Wilhelm His (1831-1904)
1888 - Anatomie menschlicher Embryonen

moray eel, eel, jaws, Pharyngula, development, embryo, fetus, pharyngeal slits, gill slits, vertebrate, gills, yumyum, tsetse, PZ Myers

Dog rabies is gone. In the US. Done for. Bye-bye.

I have trouble believing that anything is ever really over, but here’s what Dr. Charles Rupprecht, a CDC rabies expert, told Reuters (link to story at Yahoo news here):

“Even though we still live in a sea of rabies and even though we have rabies viruses circulating among raccoons and foxes and bats, the dog rabies virus, which is the most responsible for dog-to-dog transmission and which is still the greatest burden to humans … it is that virus that has been eliminated.”

Eliminated. Wow.

Even so, I’m a bit taken by the idea of a sea of rabies. So I googled “sea of rabies.” Know what I found?

Dr. Charles Rupprecht, throughout the years, telling everyone about how we are all living in a sea of rabies.

I wanna cool line like that. These days, I’m most easily found by typing in things like “egg laying hentai” or “pokeporno” (Symptoms of a Girl - that’s me!). I mean, those things are pretty cool, I guess, if you’re into…those sorts of things. Me, I’m more into a sea of rabies.

Anyway, hooray for us and for dogs and hooray for Dr. Charles Rupprecht.

Dogs will still need to be vaccinated, ’cause dog rabies lives on all over the world.

We now live on an island in a sea of dog rabies.

Goodnight. Sleep tight. I promise that the bedbug story is coming.

ps - I was gonna put up a picture of a rabid dog, but it was too upsetting to look at. I would put up a picture of egg-laying hentai or pokeporno, but a) I don’t really know what either one entails, and b) I think it might get me into some trouble. I don’t wanna drag 451 Press into the gutter now, do I? Of course, I’m assuming that egg-laying hentai and pokeporno belong in the gutter. Perhaps that’s presumptuous of me. I apologize in advance.

pps - If you’re into all things meta, you’ll be pleased to know that, by typing this post into the internet, I’ve managed to a) link myself to “sea of rabies,” and b) link Dr. Charles Rupprecht and 451 Press to egg-laying hentai and pokeporno.

rabies, canine, dog, eliminated, CDC, Charles Rupprecht, sea of rabies, meta

Myspace or my beating heart. Tough call, right? A new study published today in the Critical Care Journal tested second and third generation mobile devices (i.e., cell phones with internet access, BlackBerrys, etc.) in the Critical Care environment and found that:

“…nine [of seven] intensive care ventilators…could be ‘influenced’ by mobiles.

Of these, six were described by the researchers as ‘hazardous’…

Critical care monitors were also vulnerable, with seven out of 13 disrupted by mobile signals, while three out of seven syringe pumps were affected [two of which were hazardous].

Other devices which suffered problems were dialysis machines [one hazardous event], external pacemaker machines [one hazardous event], feeding pumps and even air humidifiers.”
BBC News article

A hazardous event is defined by the study (which can be found here as a PDF) as “direct physical influence on the patient by an unintended change in equipment function, for example total stopping of ventilator or syringe pump.”

Total stopping of ventilator doesn’t sound so good, does it? Many of these events occurred without any alarms going off.

The average distance between the mobile device and the equipment, when the events occurred, was three centimeters. That’s pretty close, but you’ve got to consider things like a BlackBerry stuffed in a doctor’s pocket as he/she leans over the patient and/or equipment. Some incidents occurred at a distance of a few hundred centimeters.

The study supports maintaining the current rule of keeping mobile devices one meter away from the patient’s bedside and from any equipment. Restrictions have been relaxed over time, especially since medical staff use these devices to, like, do their job. Even so, with new and fancier wireless technology, it’s best to keep a safe distance.

Moral of the story: Do not check your Myspace while sitting at someone’s bedside in the ICU. Shut that stuff down, and keep it off until you are many, many centimeters away from any and all medical-type equipment, lest your Palm Pilot stop someone’s heart.

O, a centimeter is like an inch, except it is smaller and therefore inferior.

That is a joke about how America is better than other countries, according to America, of course.

Ah, America…

Critical Care Journal, mobile, cell phones, study, hazardous, restrictions, distance, equipment, ICU, BlackBerry, interfere, centimeter

Here are some things you may or may not know. The internet told me about these things.

a) From LiveScience

College boys place a higher priority on romantic relationships than college girls do. Silly boys!

b) From BBC News

Men are into attractive ladies. Hotness is at the top of their list of…choosing…thingies. Women like attractive men, but consider other factors, like financial security, much more than men do.

Men will choose as attractive a lady as possible, while women tend to go with someone who is as attractive as she is. If he’s got, say, loads of cash, less attractive will do just fine.

Men will also pick as many ladies as they can. Women…not so much. They are much choosier, presumably because they get stuck lugging the fetus around.

c) BBC News again.

Kisses mean different things to men than they do to women. Women use kisses to evaulate potential mates, for bonding, and to assess how their relationship is going. Men use kisses to get sex. Pretty much. They’ll kiss, you know, like, whoever is around. O, and they like wet, sloppy, tonguey kisses. I swear - the internet says so! It also says, once again, that women are choosier than men. The internet seems to be indicating that women have better taste than men, at least as far as mating is concerned.

d) From Yahoo news

Stay the hell away from microwave popcorn. The fumes could KILL YOU. Maybe. Looks like.

It’s the buttery topping/flavor. It’s already been established that the buttery-goodness, a/k/a goop with diacetyl in it, can cause “popcorn lung” in those working at microwave popcorn factories (and other food factories that also use diacetyl-flavored flavoring). For further details on this, please see the Angry Toxicologist.

Scientists and doctors and other important, white-coated types think that diacetyl exposure leads to a lung condition known as bronchiolitis obliterans. As in obliterated in the bronchio-parts.

So yeah, today it comes out that this doctor, Dr. Cecile Rose (some sorta fancy lung-type doctor a/k/a pulmonologist or pulmonary specialist), thinks a patient of his, who ate several bags o’ “extra buttery” microwave popcorn every day for years and years and years, Dr. Rose thinks that maybe the buttery topping caused his patient’s lungs to get all obliterated. Dr. Rose and his team of helpers measured the levels of diacetyl in the patient’s home and everything. The levels were pretty high.

The public health blog, The Pump Handle broke this story today. Hooray for The Pump Handle!

The Pump Handle is totally friends with one of my favorite blogs (another public health blog), Effect Measure.

The reason why The Pump Handle is called The Pump Handle is as follows (from their site):

“The story of the pump handle is familiar to any first-semester public health student: During the London cholera epidemic of 1854, John Snow examined maps of cholera cases and traced the disease to water from a local pump. At the time, the prevailing theory held that cholera spread through the air, rather than water, so Snow faced criticism from others in the science community – not to mention resistance from the water companies. He finally convinced community leaders to remove the pump’s handle to prevent further exposure.”

Isn’t that a nice story? I think that it is a lovely bedtime story.

The end.

To sum up, if you’re getting kissed by a lady, remember that she’s sort of kissing you with her brain, at least, more brain than tongue. You should feel lucky, ’cause ladies don’t just kiss anybody. Even so, you’re probably not any more attractive than she is. Most likely, she’s using her mouth to suss out how well you are able to support her, emotionally and materially, should she wind up with a fetus inside of her.

O, and stay away from extra buttery microwave popcorn!

ps - in case you don’t know what a fetus looks like, here’s a peek. This is a four month old fetus:

CDC Public Health Image Library, Image 1666
jdg1@cdc.gov, 1998

I think that’s worth, at the very least, some good kissing.

My, fetus, what a big mandible you have! My, what a whip-like spine/tail/leg-section you have, tiny fetus!

microwave popcorn, attraction, men, women, college, tongue, kissing, attractive, love, diacetyl, Pump Handle, Effect Measure, romance, buttery, topping, flavor, popcorn lung, Angry Toxicologist, bronchiolitis obliterans, fetus, Cecile Rose

Somethin’s goin’ on in Congo. First they thought typhoid, now, hemorrhagic fever (maybe Marburg or Ebola).

I promise - I haven’t forgotten about salmonella. It’s just…it’s a very gigantic topic! I had no idea! For example, did you know that typhoid is a salmonella? I sure didn’t. So, I’m researching salmonella so I can give you a very good picture of what salmonella is all about. Literally and figuratively. There are some good pics out there, flagella all hangin’ loose, medusa-style.

Back to Congo. Over 100 people have died, and they started dying two weeks ago. Check out this lovely bit of info, courtesy of ProMed-mail:

“The deaths began following the funeral of 2 village chiefs. ‘Everyone
that attended those funerals is now dead,’ said the medical inspector.”

O yikes. That sucks, huh? Right out of a horror movie.

Fluwiki has directed me over to the quite awesome Scott McPherson and his lovely blog. My blog now has a big crush on Scott McPherson’s blog. Scott’s keeping excellent tabs on all the latest H5N1/bird flu news. Also, there are some pics of skeletons on there now. Hot!

Where was I? O yes, happy to not be in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Here’s the really exciting/terrifying bit, a quote from BBC News (hat tip Okieman @ fluwiki):

“Speaking from Kananga, the capital of West Kasai region, Dr Jean-Constantin Kanow said the illness had first started three months ago, when chickens and pigs started dying - but now people were also affected.”

Q: Does Marburg or Ebola kill chickens and pigs?
A: No.
Q: What does kill chickens and pigs and people too?
A: Influenza.
Q: But would a normal influenza kill so many chickens and pigs and people?
A: No.
Q: What kind of influenza would do such a thing?
A: High path H5N1, a/k/a, bird flu, as in the bird flu everyone means these days when they say “bird flu.”

Probably, it’s nothing. I mean, um, hopefully, it’s Marburg. ? I mean. Um. O yes, hopefully, whatever it is has nothing to do with chickens and pigs dying. Perhaps this Dr. Kanow made that part up. We don’t want Marburg and Ebola spreading from birds to people, nor from pigs to people. As far as we know, it can’t. But, bird flu can.

We’ve had so very many close calls. Check out this story from the Australian Broadcasting Corp. It’s about the newly-confirmed human to human spread of H5N1 in Indonesia.

Here’s a quote:

“It is the nightmare possibility that health authorities have been fearing ever since the disease first appeared.

It happened in Indonesia last year and reveals the world only narrowly avoided a global bird flu pandemic.”

I know all bird flu news may seem like people crying over wolves, but that’s a good thing. It means the people who spend their days and nights working to prevent pandemics…it means they’ve been doing great work. It also means we’re all very lucky.

Let’s hope that those people in Congo only have a bad case of Ebola or something. Let’s hope that their chickens and pigs are a-ok.

Here’s hoping! Just in case, might wanna revisit the “what if”s of a pandemic. You know, renew your Sam’s Club/Costco card, stock up on Spaghettios.

mmm…spaghettios…

Congo, H5N1, bird flu, Marburg, Ebola, virus, hemorrhagic fever, outbreak, typhoid, salmonella, Scott McPherson, chickens and pigs, flu wiki

There’s a new recall for fresh spinach distributed by the California company Metz Fresh LLC. The company still has 90% of the recalled spinach, i.e., it didn’t go out, but the other 10% has been distributed throughout the continental US and Canada, packaged for both retail and food service.

Yahoo says:

“The recall covers 10- and 16-ounce bags, as well as 4-pound cartons and cartons that contain four 2.5-pound bags, with the following tracking codes: 12208114, 12208214 and 12208314.”

All of the Metz spinach you may have purchased at the store…it’d be branded as Metz Fresh. According to the FDA. So far.

Me, I want pictures.

This time, it’s salmonella, not Escherichia coli. If you ask me, E. coli, especially O157:H7, is way tougher than salmonella, way more hard core. But, they both can kill people. I shouldn’t choose favorites.

If you’ve already forgotten our friend O157:H7, maybe revisit Dirty Pictures.

Now, please meet our new friend, Salmonella infantis!

CDC image 7183 / Janice Carr

As you can see here, S. infantis can be a bit cliquey. As you can also see, we’ve got another rod-shaped bacterium on our hands and/or spinach.

I’m going to publish this now so that you are aware of the recall.

Here’s a link to the company’s site: Metz Fresh.

Here’s a link to the FDA’s notice of recall.

Tomorrow, we’ll get to know salmonella a little bit better. This is especially true if you’ve eaten any of the lucky spinach!

spinach, recall, spinach recall, Metz, salmonella, Metz Fresh, FDA, fresh

CDC/ Prof. Frank Hadley Collins, Dir., Cntr. for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, Univ. of Notre Dame

News, news, news.

Would you like a vaccine to prevent cancer from oral sex?

The increasing rate of home foreclosures = growing public health risk.

A few sippy cupfuls of neutron star material weighs more than Mount Everest. The real news is that neutron stars are warping spacetime.

Rock snot is growing out of control.

Which do you wanna start with?

1) No, you cannot get cancer from oral sex. You can, however, get cancer by contracting HPV from, say, a lady, while giving her some oral sex. Young men might be next in line for the HPV vaccine (young ladies have hopefully already had their shots, so they should be safe to give other ladies oral sex).

What kinds of cancer might one get by way of oral sex on ladies? Throat cancer. Mouth cancer. Nose cancer. Salivary gland cancer. Know what, though? If you’re not a) relatively pure or b) a young man/young lady (this is assuming, of course, that b most likely equals a), chances are pretty good you’ve already got it. HPV, that is. Not cancer. I don’t know if you have cancer.

In one study, HPV-16 (a sexually transmitted strain of the virus which is the “biggest causative agent of cervical cancer“) was present in 72% of men with oral/throat cancer. In the tumor part, that’s where it was.

If you don’t know much about HPV (human papillomavirus), which is the human wart virus, don’t go all, like, freaking out. There are a bazillion different strains, some of which are sexually transmitted, some of which are not. Some do not cause cancer, some are more likely to cause cancer. Some don’t seem to do much of anything. So, don’t let it keep you up at night. I will type to you soon about HPV, ’cause I don’t want to be responsible for, like, stopping any oral sex from happening.

Do you know where I work? I should probably stop typing about this issue right now, at least ’till I’m back at home.

2) Click the second link up top, the one about public health and foreclosures. It’s an article from the LA Times. Here’s how it goes: people cannot afford their monthly mortgage payments; house goes into foreclosure; no one is buying house; glut of houses on the market; house sits and waits for someone to care; house has a pool; no one takes care of the pool; mosquitoes notice the pool and decide it’s a nice place to breed; more mosquitoes means more vessels, more vectors, for the West Nile Virus.

The neighbors of these abandoned homes sometimes take care of the pools themselves, to protect themselves, since no one else is stepping up to the plate. The neighbors, they are scared of the West Nile.

Don’t get terribly scared of the West Nile. You might have already been infected and not even noticed. Still, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll also type some about West Nile Virus, and about things you can do in your environment to help cut down on baby mosquitoes.

Don’t tell the mosquitoes that I said that. But, yes - protect yourself from mosquitoes, especially if you’re old or sick or if you are a little child.

O…where were we? Three? We are at three. But I am at 5:40, and I must be leaving this place where I work, so you’ll have to either a) click on the rock snot link above, or b) wait until later for me to talk to you about rock snot, HPV, West Nile Virus, bedbugs, bezoars, and the latest bird flu updates.

Bird flu, H5N1, high-path bird flu, is in Germany.

Willkommen, Grippe!

ps - Isn’t that an attractive mosquito?

HPV, vaccine, human papillomavirus, cancer, oral, mouth, sex, mosquitoes, West Nile Virus, housing market, foreclosures, rock snot, neutron star, oral sex, pool

Tomorrow morning, the part that comes after tonight, is when we’ll be getting our lunar eclipse! It’s, like, totally a total lunar eclipse.

Nasa Image Gallery
Credit and Copyright: Fred Espenak

Here’s a little graphic which shows what time you should be standing outside, staring at the moon (or lack of moon):

Here’s NASA’s official page for this lunar eclipse.

What’s the deal with lunar eclipses anyway? I can never keep it straight. Luckily, we have Mr. Eclipse to help us out!

“An eclipse of the Moon (or lunar eclipse) can only occur at Full Moon, and only if the Moon passes through some portion of the Earth’s shadow. The shadow is actually composed of two cone-shaped components, one nested inside the other. The outer or penumbral shadow is a zone where the Earth blocks part but not all of the Sun’s rays from reaching the Moon. In contrast, the inner or umbral shadow is a region where the Earth blocks all direct sunlight from reaching the Moon.”

Since I don’t do 3D so well, here’s a picture that Mr. Eclipse made:

What do we see during a total lunar eclipse?

“While the Moon remains completely within Earth’s umbral shadow, indirect sunlight still manages to reach and illuminate it. However, this sunlight must first pass deep through the Earth’s atmosphere which filters out most of the blue colored light. The remaining light is a deep red or orange in color and is much dimmer than pure white sunlight. Earth’s atmosphere also bends or refracts some of this light so that a small fraction of it can reach and illuminate the Moon.”

Tonight/tomorrow morning’s eclipse is a rather long one - about an hour and a half of total eclipse.

Only those of us west of the Rockies will be able to see the entire eclipse, start to finish.

Ha ha.

Oh - feel free to stare away at lunar eclipses. You won’t burn your eyes out, at least not according to NASA and Mr. Eclipse.

lunar eclipse, eclipse, moon, total eclipse, NASA, August 28 2007, Mr. Eclipse