The tips of the shells are slowly dissolving, but how?

The oceans are well-known as a sequester of carbon dioxide. So much so that some have advocated that instead of bothering with cutting carbon emissions, we can just “sink” the carbon in the oceans. And it is true that this has been the Earth’s way of dealing with excess carbon and methane for eons, but lately, it seems that anthropogenic carbon (that means that the source is man-made) is too much for the ocean to take it in without throwing the whole system out of whack. When the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, or CO2, water’s H2O binds with that CO2 and forms HCO3, and that, my friends, is carbonic acid.

Now, obviously, it would take a LOT of carbon dioxide to turn the seas acidic, or more accurately, less alkaline, as the ocean’s typical pH (potential Hydrogen) is 8.2, or at least was before the Industrial Revolution. And guess what we humans have pumped into the atmosphere — a LOT of carbon dioxide.

Do you ever wonder that perhaps fossil fuels were buried in the first place as “carbon sinks?” And we have simply released all that carbon that nature put under ground so many years ago…

I digress. The problem at hand is now that if the pH of the ocean becomes too acidic (less alkaline) too fast, many marine organisms will not be able to adapt quickly enough to survive. Any creature that builds a shell uses calcium carbonate and aragonite in order to do so. Carbonic acid corrodes the aragonite, and shell formation becomes difficult. Scientists have found that some snails that happen upon carbon vents in the Mediterranean are losing their shells, literally. The carbonic acid is dissolving the shells.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, you know, the Nobel-prize winning IPCC) has warned that pH may decrease 0.14 to 0.35 by 2100. This could mean that with the decrease of 0.1 experienced since the beginning of the Industrial Rev, we could see oceans of 7.8 pH. Shelled creatures will most likely not be able to keep up with that amount of change in pH, and when we lose the shelled organisms, such as some snails, we can lose a valuable food source for things we like to eat, like salmon. With the oceans already stressed, a decrease in pH may be more that they can handle.

ocean acidification, carbonic acid, pH, carbon sinks, climate change, IPCC, methane, calcium carbonate, shells, aragonite

Science is publishing a new report that the number and size of these oceanic dead zones are increasing. This may be because of more extensive surveying, but many of these dead zones are being attributed to agriculture and the use of fertilizers.

So, how do fertilizers kill organisms living in the ocean? Aren’t fertilizers used on land and not the sea? Also, how do fertilizers make our crops grow, but kill fish? What gives?

The red areas signify extremely low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water.

A notable dead zone of late is the Gulf of Mexico. I actually wrote something about it for Environmental Graffiti some time last year. The problem in the Gulf is that fertilizers being used in the Midwestern states like Iowa and Illinois are leaching into water sources or just running off the acres the nitrogen-rich fertilizers are originally applied and entering the Mississippi River system. Any little creek running by a corn farm in Iowa picks up the fertilizer run-off and then that creek meets up and joins a bigger creek, and then a small river, and so on until that fertilizer enters the Mississippi River. Then that nitrogen is headed for the Gulf of Mexico.

The nitrogen does not kill plants or animals in the Gulf. In fact, quite the opposite. The nitrogen and other nutrients involved in agricultural fertilizers cause what are known as “blooms.” Algae and other microscopic organisms thrive in this newly fertilized environment. They thrive and thrive so much that it is like a bloom, when everything comes into maturity at the same time. However, the downside of that is most organisms have an expiration date, if you will, and when a enormous number of anything dies at the same time, it means that an enormous number of things are going to decompose at the same time.

Guess what diatomic element is need for decomposition? Yep, O2. Good ol’ Oxygen.

The primary agents involved in decomposition are bacteria, and bacteria require oxygen. Thuse bacterial decomposition requires oxygen, and the problem is that when all that algae dies, their little corpses require a LOT of bacteria and that bacteria requires a LOT of oxygen. So much so that the too much oxygen is being depleted from the water at too fast a rate to balance the system. And voila, no oxygen, no life.

There are other dead zones that are not being attributed to fertilizers, but instead on perhaps natural fluctuations in ocean currents. The increase in hypoxia in the world’s waters may mean that ocean currents are becoming a little whacked out. Some scientists point to global warming as a cause for this disruption in normal ocean currents.

These dead zones are popping in some of the richest fishing waters around the globe, so obviously, this is a dangerous situation. The boom in ethanol and other bio-fuels is further heightening fears about the affects of fertilizers in our oceans.

And geez, it’s not like our fishing industries aren’t hurting enough…

dead zones, hypoxia, oceans, fertilizers, global warming, Science magazine, science, marine science, Gulf of Mexico, oxygen, nitrogen, bacteria, algae, blooms, ethanol, bio-fuels, fishing

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…

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!

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

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

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.

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!

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

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