Fun Science

CONTENTS

1.   We are Plastic People

2.   Microplastics Found in Artery Plaques

3.   COVID-19 Shape-Shifting SPIKE protein

4.   Soap kills coronavirus better than hand sanitizer

5.   Brown Rice - what you didn't know

6.   Beriberi

7.   Stephen Hawking was Wrong

8.   Happiness

9.   Zombie Deer Disease -  Deer-Elk Plague

10. Prion Brain Disease Rising in U.S.

11. Nature's Zombies 

12. Brain of a Psychopath

13. Bacteria on Cellphone Worse than on Men's-Toilet Flush Handle

We are Plastic People

I subscribe to The NY Times. Andrew Jacobs reported “plastics are forever” and the 400 million metric tons of plastic produced each year will remain on Earth in some form as they are broken down into tiny particles. Microplastics are found everywhere, even places nearly inaccessible to humans, from highest remote mountain peaks, the Arctic, to the deepest part of the ocean floor. It's in rain, hurricanes, and water people drink. It's in seafood and other food people eat.

Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute said, "the human body is full of microplastics."  He said, "It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, there's no sheltering yourself from this kind of new pollution."

Microplastics are found inside the human body in lungs, blood, arteries, brain, cancerous brain tumors. They are found in human breast milk and placenta. A study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found "patients with inflammatory bowel disease had a significantly higher amount of microplastics in their feces than those without the disease." Dr. Nienke Vrisekoop, microplastics researcher, University Medical Center, Utrecht (Netherlands) found immune cells that come in contact with microplastics die three times faster than those that do not. It's not just physical presence of particles, plastic is composed of toxic chemicals that can leach in your body. Watch this short (2 minutes) trailer to a new documentary, "Plastic People."   https://plasticpeopledoc.com/

Microplastics Found in Artery Plaques

Max Kozlov reported, for Nature, about a study. published in The New England Journal of Medicine on March 6 that involved 257 people who who had a surgical procedure to remove plaque from an artery in their neck to reduce stroke risk. The study found nearly 60% had microplastics and/or nanoplastics in the artery. “Those who did were 4.5 times more likely to experience a heart attack, stroke or death in the approximately 34 months after the surgery than were those whose arteries were plastic-free.”

The study was conducted by Dr. Giuseppe Paolisso, internal-medicine physician at University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Italy, and his team. They knew microplastics are attracted to fat. They wanted to see if microplastic particles will build up in fatty deposits (plaques) that form on the lining of blood vessels. They looked at excised plaques under an electron microscope and saw “jagged blobs” of microplastics in samples from 150 of the study participants.

Kozlov reported, “On average, participants who had more microplastics in their plaque samples also had higher levels of biomarkers for inflammation, analyses revealed.” Dr. Robert Brook, physician-scientist at Wayne State University in Michigan, who studies environmental effects on cardiovascular health and was not involved with the study, said if microplastic particles trigger inflammation, they might boost the risk a plaque will rupture, spilling fatty deposits that could clog blood vessels.

COVID-19 Shape-Shifting SPIKE protein

The photo on this post is an electron micrograph of an actual spike protein on the original COVID-19 coronavirus. It's a shape shifter. It was frozen partly to keep it from changing shape so it could be seen in the micrograph and photographed. Being a shape shifter may be one reason this spike protein is able to fit into receptors on different types of cells in many different parts of the body.

The spike protein protruding from the coronavirus is the hook the virus uses to attach to receptors on human cells to infect the cells. The spikes are functionally an important part of the virus. To generate an immune response against this structure is important because without the spike, the virus could not attach to our cells to infect them.

When a virus infects a cell it enters the cell or injects its genetic material (DNA or RNA) into the cell. Viral replication takes place inside the infected cell, making copies of the virus, essentially turning the cell into a "virus factory." Mistakes during replication can lead to mutation. Most mutations tend to be inconsequential. If it's advantageous to the virus, it could make the virus more dangerous to us.

Most mutations advantageous for the virus, so far, have been at the spike. Most COVID vaccines work by getting human antibodies to target the spike proteins on the virus.  

Soap kills coronavirus better than hand sanitizer

60% alcohol-based hand sanitizer is adequate, but soap and water is better.

People may believe hand sanitizer is better than soap because hand sanitizer is more modern, has more chemicals and costs more. Science writer, Ferris Jabr, reported for The New York Times that ordinary soap and water can rupture and kill many types of bacteria and viruses, including COVID-19 coronavirus because of soap's structure and properties.

Soap consists of pin-shaped molecules. Each molecule has a hydrophilic head. That means it loves water. It mixes with water. Soap has a hydrophobic tail that has affinity for oil and lipid. In water, soap molecules form bubbles called micelles with water loving heads outside and hydrophobic tails inside away from water.

Pathogenic bacteria and some viruses, including coronaviruses, are protected externally by a lipid membrane. Coronaviruses have a membrane of oily, lipid molecules.

When we wash our hands with soap and water, microorganisms on our skin become surrounded by soap molecules. Soap's hydrophobic tail, moves toward and push into the lipid membrane of microorganisms to escape water. This pries the membrane apart, rupturing the membrane, causing contents inside to spill out, destroying the bacteria or virus.

Dr. Palli Thordarson, Director of Research in Chemistry at University of New South Wales in Australia, said soap dissolves the lipid membrane and the virus falls apart. Hand sanitizers containing alcohol and soap have a similar effect, but are not as good as ordinary soap. Dirt, pathogens, and viral and bacterial fragments stick to skin. They get trapped by soap and water inside micelle bubbles, lifting them off your skin, washing them away when you rinse.

Hand sanitizers with at least 60% alcohol destabilize bacterial and viral lipid membranes, but they do not remove pathogens the way soap does due to soap's physical properties and the mechanical action of washing with soap and water. Hand sanitizers are adequate when you do not have soap and water, but not as good as scrubbing with soap and water. Be safe. Wash your hands.

Watch my short video→ Soap kills COVID-19 virus better than hand sanitizer  (4:41)

Brown Rice - what you didn't know

The first vitamin was identified in 1912, but it was not chemically defined and isolated until 1926. In 1942, Robert R. Williams was granted one of the first patents for chemically or artificially synthesizing a vitamin. That was vitamin B1 or thiamine.

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is in brown rice. Today we can find brown rice all over Hawaii, in many homes and restaurants, but there was a time few people knew about it except hippies and health advocates. It wasn't until Dr. Terry Shintani began telling people in his seminars about health benefits of brown rice that people became interested in brown rice, wanted to eat it and began asking for it. People now take for granted that it's widely available in many places that sell food in Hawaii, but they don't know it's because of Dr. Shintani.

Long before there was white rice, brown rice was what people ate. In the 1800s the Germans perfected rice milling machines that stripped the bran and germ from brown rice to make white rice. One reason they did this was to extend the shelf-life of rice.

White rice was more expensive and advertising told people it was superior to brown rice. This was during European colonization of Asian countries and European colonists saw white rice as more desirable and of better quality compared to cheap brown rice eaten by the common local people.

White rice caused the disease beriberi. No one noticed the poor local people who ate brown rice were not getting beriberi. Some symptoms include fatigue, irritability, poor memory, sleep disturbances, anorexia, abdominal problems, and neurological problems like burning sensations in feet; calf muscle cramps; weakness. It can affect the heart and can lead to death if not treated. No one knew how to treat it.

This was when Dr. Louis Pasteur was famous so people were afraid beriberi was caused by germs and that it was contagious.

Beriberi

In the 1890s during a beriberi epidemic among Dutch colonists in Java, people with beriberi were quarantined at a hospital and research facility deep in the jungle to keep them from spreading beriberi “germs.” Dr. Christiaan Eijkman headed the facility. They had a flock of healthy chickens. When they ran out of the cheap brown rice used for chicken feed, they had to feed the chickens the “good” white rice. The chickens subsequently displayed the same kinds of symptoms as the beriberi patients. The facility staff were alarmed because they thought the disease was so contagious even the chickens were getting infected by the beriberi “germs.” They didn't want to waste white rice on sick chickens so they stopped feeding them white rice. By then new supplies reached the facility, including brown rice so the chickens were fed brown rice again and the chickens regained their health.

Based on this evidence, Dr. Eijkman proposed beriberi was really a nutritional deficiency and not caused by germs and that something in rice bran prevents beriberi. No one believed him and he was relieved of his duties and sent back home a failure. That was before he received the Nobel Prize.

I Believe Stephen Hawking was Wrong about One Thing

Stephen Hawking died in 2018. He was 76-years-old. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York, said, “Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world.”

As a graduate student in 1963, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular wasting disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He was given a few years to live. The disease reduced him to only being able to flex one finger and voluntary eye movements but left his mind untouched. He became the leader in properties of black holes, bottomless gravitational pits so deep & dense, not even light can escape. In 1973 he discovered black holes were not really black. They eventually fizzle, leaking radiation and particles, and finally explode and disappear. Pretty amazing. He discovered black holes explode. His discovery of Hawking radiation turned our knowledge of black holes upside down.

Even with his disabilities he traveled to scientific meetings, visited every continent; wrote best-selling books, appeared on TV shows “The Simpsons,” “Star Trek: the Next Generation,” “The Big Bang Theory.” He celebrated his 60^th birthday by going up in a hot air balloon. At age 65 he took part in a zero-gravity flight aboard a specially equipped Boeing 727, hoping to eventually go to space. Asked why he took such risks, he said, “I want to show that people need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.” He was doing these things when all he could do physically was flex one finger and move his eyes. He said don't give up.

He said keeping an active mind was vital to his survival, also, maintaining a sense of humor. He credited his work and sense of humor with keeping him alive.

Here is some advice from him in a Newsweek article by Maria Vultaggio, “16 incredible Stephen Hawking quotes about life, the universe & more.”

“Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.” “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” “I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

He said, “My goal is simple. It's complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exits at all. We're just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us very special. I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. He was one of the smartest people in the world. He did not believe in God. I believe, when he died he learned he was wrong about that.

A Simple Truth about Happiness

Dr. Arthur Brooks, professor at Harvard University and an expert on happiness, said diet, nutrition, exercise, sleep do not actually bring happiness, but they lower unhappiness. Unhappiness is not the opposite of happiness. Happiness and unhappiness are processed in different parts of the brain. Taking care of your self by diet, nutrition, exercise, sleep won't make you happier, but they lead to less unhappiness. 

Dr. Brooks said. “The secret to being more satisfied, is not having more, it's wanting less.” 

Many people are not going to be happy about this because they don't want to do what they need to do to lower their unhappiness and they don't want to want less.

Zombie Deer Disease - Deer-Elk Plague

EARTHWEEK: Diary of a Changing World by Steve Newman [StarAdvertiser 01/07/24; A5] reported, “A new, highly contagious, incurable and invariably fatal disease is spreading among the animal population of the western U.S. Zombie deer disease, or chronic wasting disease (CWD), was first discovered in a dead deer at Yellowstone National Park in November and has since been found in 32 other states.” It is spread by prions. Prions also cause Mad Cow Disease. It has been known for decades. I reported in the 1990s, on the radio show Dr. Shintani and I co-hosted, people were afraid hunters could get a disease similar to Mad Cow Disease from eating deer and elk meat. You can't get meat more natural and organic than deer in the wild.

EARTHWEEK reported, “It is spread by prions, a set of proteins that are almost indestructible and can affect humans and animals.” Prions are scary. You cannot kill them by cooking. Prions are not alive. These things essentially do not die. How do you kill something that is not alive?

Around a year after becoming infected, animals show symptoms such as dementia, wobbliness, drooling, aggression. Officials warn against eating infected deer and elk. How are you going to know if a deer or elk is infected if they do not show symptoms until a year after becoming infected?  

Prion Brain Disease Rising in the U.S.

University of Nebraska Medical Center Global Center for Health Security, in 2022, launched The Transmission, providing news and data focused on global health security, led by Claudinne Miller, former Dept. of Defense Intelligence analyst. Miller, for years, produced reports to top-level US government leadership and international public health, academic and government leaders about outbreaks like H5N1, H1N1, Ebola, and COVID. She has extensive background working in emerging infectious diseases as an intelligence analyst with experience in the US Intelligence Community and US Dept. of Defense.

December 2023 news published in The Transmission included, “Prion Disease Rising in the U.S.” It reported Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) incidence increased consistently from 2007 to 2020. John Probasco, MD and Matthew Cranc, BS, both at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and co-authors of the study, said, “Our findings indicate the reported incidence of CJD has risen considerably” It's the most common human prion disease.

CJD causes dementia and death. Another prion disease is variant CJD linked to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow disease) by contaminated meat. First detected in Britain in 1990s, usually in young people. Another fatal prion brain disease is Kuru in New Guinea cannibals who ate human brains. Those are more commonly known prion diseases (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) in humans. This is only the beginning of this information. 5 parts to this post. Earlier parts posted then deleted due to limited space.

Part 5 – Sandra Blakeslee reported for The NY Times, “From the early 1980s on, [in Britain] millions of head of cattle were fed high protein dregs from rendering plants, and thousands of them developed mad cow disease.” By “high protein dregs from rendering plants,” she means protein from animal carcass and wastes from slaughter houses, ground up and added when producing cattle feed. She wrote, “Many researchers believe that a prion disease in sheep called scrapie was transmitted to cattle” in this way. In 1996 the human version of mad cow disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was identified in Britain.

Dr. Thomas Pringl, a scientific consultant for the Sperling Foundation, a charitable public health organization, said some published reports estimate 6 to 8 percent of people who are told they have Alzheimer's disease may actually have a form of CJD.

Blakeslee had a scary warning, which medical science knows is true: “a deeper reason to worry is the diabolical nature of the infectious prion particle. It seemingly cannot be destroyed. When medical instruments contaminated with prions are boiled at high temperatures for 30 minutes, the prions remain infectious, and have passed the infection from person to person. When infected materials are incinerated, the ash contains prions, which remain infectious.”

Nature's Zombies

47-year-old British artist, Ben Taylor, suffered years of worsening health, depression and occasional thoughts of suicide. Then he discovered a parasite worm living in one of his eyes.

Kristine Phillips reported for The Washington Post that Taylor had been experiencing symptoms doctors could not explain. Lumps appeared and disappeared on his body, blinding pain in his eyes, itchy rashes, joint pain, his white blood cells were elevated, but otherwise, tests showed nothing.

One morning he saw a faint yellowish lump protruding underneath his left cornea. He felt the eye vibrate like something slithering. The lump became a thin protruding line that moved when he touched it. At a hospital a doctor used a scalpel on a small part of that eye's outer layer and pulled out a wriggling, inch-long roundworm called Loa loa, a parasite, known as African eye worm. He had been infected in the jungles in Africa. Doctors found two other types of parasites in him, a hookworm and a roundworm called Strongyloides. The parasites thrived in him as his health deteriorated. He believes they affected his mind.

Phillips reported, parasites have been known to affect people's behavior and mental health. Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite found in cats, rodents, and sometimes in humans. In Newsweek, Aristos Georgiou reported this parasite can have an effect on the brain of rats. The parasite reproduces sexually in cats and infects other animals such as rodents that eat the cat's feces. Infected rodents display behavior changes. Their behavior becomes more risky towards cats, increasing their chance of being eaten by a cat which is part of the parasite's life cycle.

This parasite can enter humans through contaminated food, water or other routes such as from a pregnant woman to her unborn child. It can spread to the brain and other parts of the body. Studies have shown infected people have a higher risk of suicide, being neurotic, or dying as a result of risky behavior. Researchers at University of Chicago Medical Center found that people with frequent bouts of impulsive anger are more than twice as likely to have been exposed to Toxoplasma gondii.

An international study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. found that people infected with Toxoplasma gondii are more likely to display entrepreneurial behavior and have reduced fear of failure when starting a new business.

Ed Yong, for The Atlantic, reported the natural world is full of mind-controlling parasites that subvert behavior of hosts. Some parasites seem to manipulate the behavior of their host to the parasite's advantage. Entomophthora muscae, is a fungus that seems to be able to control organisms more complex than itself. Researchers at University of California, Berkeley led by Dr. Michael Eisen described how Entomophthora controls flies before it kills them.

When an Entomophthora spore falls on a fly, the spore grows into the fly's body and begins eating the fly alive on the inside. The fungus makes the fly climb to a high point and open its mouth. A substance produced by the fungus glues the fly's open mouth to its perch. Stuck, in this way, the fly is made to lift its wings as the fungus sprouts long tubes out of the fly's back. Each tube shoots out spores up to 21 miles per hour. When spores land on other flies the cycle begins again.

Phillips, Kristine. “His health had been failing for years. Then he saw something crawling in his eye.” The Washington Post 09 Aug. 2018. washingtonpost.com Web. Aug. 2018.

Georgiou, Aristos. “Parasite Found in Cat Feces May Make You More Entrepreneurial.” Newsweek 25 Jul. 2018. newsweek.com Web. Jul. 2018.

Yong, Ed. “Is This Fungus Using a Virus To Control An Animal's Mind?” The Atlantic 25 Jul. 2018. theatlantic.com Web. Aug. 2018.

Brain of a Psychopath

Dr. James Fallon was looking at thousands of brain scans of serial killers, looking for anatomical patterns correlated with psychopathic tendencies. He was looking at scans of murderers, schizophrenics, and others, and saw a “scan that was obviously pathological.” It showed low activity in areas of the frontal and temporal lobes linked to empathy, morality, self-control. That psychopathic brain scan turned out to be a scan of his own brain.

Dr. Fallon is “a happily married family man.” He said, “I've never killed anybody, or raped anyone.” He has difficulty feeling true empathy, but can keep his behavior roughly within socially-acceptable bounds. He said he was always aware he was motivated by power and manipulating others. His family line includes seven alleged murderers, including Lizzie Borden. So his brain and genetics are related to psychopaths. 

He believes his childhood helped. He said, “I was loved, and that protected me” He was given a lot of attention by his parents. He thinks that played a key role. Research found a positive or negative childhood is “especially pivotal in determining behavioral outcomes.”

He said, “Since finding all this out . . . I've made an effort to try to change my behavior. I've more consciously been doing things that are considered 'the right thing to do,' and thinking more about other people's feelings.  . . . I'm doing it because of pride---because I want to show to everyone and myself that I can pull it off.”

Bacteria on Cellphone Worse than on Men's-Toilet Flush Handle

I subscribe to Scientific American. See this information in their publication. This is a colored scanning electron micrograph of bacteria cultured from a cell phone. Tests show the average cellphone handset carries 18 times more potentially harmful germs than on a flush handle in a men's public toilet.

Scientific American reported, “With frequent use phones remain warm, creating the ideal breeding ground for bacteria. With touch-screen phones, the same part of the phone touched with fingertips is pressed up against the face and mouth, increasing chances of infection. In tests E. coli, Haemophilus influenzae and MRSA were amongst the infectious bacteria found on handsets.”

Amazing, Amusing, and true   

Albert Einstein, one of the great minds in 20^th-century science, was in Japan in 1922 when he learned he won the Nobel Prize in physics. He was in his hotel room in Tokyo when a messenger arrived with a delivery. Einstein did not have change for a tip, so he wrote two short notes and gave them to the messenger, telling the messenger that the notes may someday be worth more than a tip.

Nearly 95 years later, a relative of the messenger sold the autographed notes in an auction. One of the notes, written in German on the hotel's stationery, said, “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.” It was estimated to sell for $5,000 to $8,000. Bidding began at $2,000. In about 25 minutes it sold for more than one and a half million dollars.