#Lessons From The Panama canal, 100 Years Agowhen it opened in August 1914 the 48-mile Panama canal provided a vital shortcut between the Atlantic
because malaria yellow fever dysentery and other diseases claimed the lives of approximately 20000 workers. The U s. took over the project in 1904 and implemented some sanitation practices--including draining wetlands
In this essay from the September 1913 issue of Popular Science Dr. John Silas Lankford from the University of Texas describes how the country where death with grim terror reigned as king queen
and has become the home of health and happiness. You can read it in its original format here.
and sorrow and human happiness he lesson of sanitation and health. The unhealthiest section of the globe so acknowledged by all the world has been converted into the healthiest.
The land of the jungle where the mosquito sang her weird song of death unmolested for four hundred years vying with the germs of dysentery typhoid fever and pneumonia in the destruction of human life;
and has become the home of health and happiness a plain fact almost approaching the miraculous.
It has been accomplished by the forceful and efficient efforts of a corps of intelligent sanitarians who have proven themselves master pioneers in the prevention of tropical diseases
and the amount spent for the prevention of disease it is found that about one cent per day per man has been expended.
and streams the most important of the latter being the Chagres Eiver celebrated for malignant malarial disease.
The heavy rainfall insures permanent stagnant water where the larvae of the yellow fever and malarial mosquitos thrive in countless millions;
Decaying animal matter leads to the generation of innumerable flies ever ready to convey disease
and the water supply is polluted and pregnant with disease germs. This is the condition of things now in the surrounding country
Yellow fever had been endemic for hundreds of years and epidemic when new material was available. Malaria was ever present consuming the life blood
and limiting the capacity of generation after generation of the native population and attacking the unacclimated with vigor and fatality.
Typhoid fever was very common and the ravages of dysentery were sorely distressing. The history of the Isthmus is linked inseparably with disease and death.
For more than three hundred years it was the favorite highway from ocean to ocean and many thousands perished en route from tropical disease.
The Panama railroad is only forty-five miles long but it took five years to build it
and the cost in human life has never been estimated satisfactorily. Two different times a thousand imported men all died within one year.
One of the most pathetic incidents in all the history of human effort was the failure of The french
Gorgas himself says that the Americans could have done no better than The french without the knowledge of the mosquito as a disease carrier.
which yellow fever has been banished for more than six years; where the mortality from typhoid fever and dysentery has been reduced to the minimum;
where malaria has become mild and controllable; the country where the deaths per thousand among canal employees instead of De Lesseps's 240 is only seven and one half.
It is almost unbelievable but it is true. Among white American employees the death rate is less than three per thousand.
The unconquerable Gorgas with a good force of physicians surgeons nurses expert sanitarians skilled engineers and helpers with ample supplies of disinfectants were put in the lead.
As soon as possible a modern hospital was built with up-to-date equipment and every possible facility for scientific investigation and the most skilled surgical and medical treatment.
This hospital has grown to great dimensions and has few equals in results. The annual death rate of Colon under this method has been reduced from 50 to less than 20 per thousand.
Adjoining Panama city is Ancon the attractive American suburb where are established the administration buildings and the great Ancon hospital
and regulations put in force for the protection of the public health. A number of living stations for employees were arranged along the railroad
Now the real war against diseases was begun lakes and swamps that had never been drained since nature made them poured out their accumulated filth to the sea;
Disinfectants were used freely and fumigation resorted to when necessary in handling contagious diseases. Rotting vegetable and animal matter offal
and garbage were burned. The life and habits of the men were regulated carefully Government dining halls furnished good meals well cooked
good dispensaries were established in convenient places; a hospital car was run with every train for the ill or the injured;
medical and surgical service was skilled and prompt and the hospital attention was second to none.
But it was the one cent per day per man expended for the prevention of disease that worked the miracle.
It was a tremendous undertaking beset by human hardship and hazard and surrounded by difficulties apparently insurmountable.
and shall be subordinated to the prevention of disease. And this will not be altogether humanitarianism for a human life has its commercial value a definite value worthy of consideration One of the first results of this remarkable sanitary crusade will be noticed in Central and South america.
and enervated by centuries of disease have not kept pace with the progress of the world
Shall we go on permitting hundreds of thousands of people to die of preventable diseases like typhoid fever malaria and tuberculosis?
The heavy mortality from these and other diseases is highly discreditable to an enlightened people.
while this marvelous transformation was taking place in the Canal Zone poisoning patent-medicine makers and conscienceless food adulterators were spending money by the millions to defeat the purpose of the people to establish a health bureau in Washington to prevent disease
and promote the public health. Our national state and municipal health officers and our citizens should study this great lesson well
and profit by it. Thorough instruction of our twenty millions of school children on practical sanitation would result in reducing the mortality from preventable diseases by half in one generation.
This proposition was demonstrated beyond all question in a great educational campaign on the mosquito in the San antonio public schools several years ago in
which the mosquito was exterminated completely. It is an inspiring sight to witness this unseemly death-ridden tropical country changed into a place of beauty
and a veritable health resort right in the midst of disease and death. The Panama canal is a wonderful feat of engineering
and add much to human health happiness and longevity h
#Ticks That Can Make People Severely Allergic To Meat Are Spreading In The U s . But a few hours after dinner Abley started itching like mad.
He burst into hives his tongue swelled and he eventually passed out prompting his wife to call 911.
At the hospital doctors determined he had gone into anaphylactic shock potentially deadly allergic reaction. Fortunately Abley pulled through
and he later met with an allergist to determine what had caused the terrifying episode. A series of tests revealed something strange:
And it wasn t just the beef he was allergic to; it was practically all red meat.
Abley is one of at least 1500 people in the United states who suffer allergic reactions after eating meat
and doctors interviewed by Popular Science believe such cases are on the rise. But what s even more bizarre is the source of the allergy.
The condition called alpha-gal allergy is caused by the bite of a Lone Star tick species traditionally found mostly in the Southern United states
but has spread farther north in recent years. And as the tick spreads more and more cases of meat allergies are being reported.
In one area of Long island New york for example one doctor we spoke with has seen an increase of 200 cases in the past three years p from practically zero in 2011.
The connection between Lone Star ticks and meat allergies in America first came to light in 2008.
At the time Thomas Platts-Mills and Scott Commins both allergy specialists at the University of Virginia Health System were trying to understand why some of their patients had developed a severe allergic reactions to cetuximab an intravenous cancer-fighting drug.
The doctors eventually learned that Immunoglobulin e (Ige) antibodies in their patients were reacting with a sugar in the drug called alpha-gal.
It was peculiar since nearly everyone produces these antibodies but not every patient reacted poorly to the drug.
Commins and Platts-Mills discovered these strange reactions occurred in patients who all hailed from the same place:
the southeastern United states. So a lab technician Googled for medical conditions that fit geographically with the allergy they were seeing.
Sure enough they found that Rocky mountain spotted fever tickborne disease ffected the same areas. We went back to our patients
and started asking them about ticks says Commins who along with Platts-Mills published their findings in 2008 in The New england Journal of Medicine.
It became clear over a series of months that this tick theory fit better than anything else we could find.
Around the same time more and more healthy patients began reporting meat allergies (one of them being Abley.
The symptoms began three to four hours after eating meals that contained beef or pork.
Like the patients allergic to cetuximab these patients were also predominantly from the Southeast a region crawling with ticks.
It didn t take long for Platts-Mills and Commins to figure out the allergies were connected nd that the link was alpha-gal sugar.
Alpha-gal is a major component of cetuximab but it s also found in a far more common natural source:
and we all have some form of immune response to it. In fact alpha-gal is the main barrier preventing cross-species organ transplants;
which makes the tickborne meat allergy so surprising. Moreover the patients of Commins and Platts-Mills weren born t with the condition
and they reportedly showed symptoms much later in life unique trait for an allergy. So the doctors finally asked the question they'd wanted to
since discovering a potential connection: Are ticks actually causing this alpha-gal allergy? In a series of revealing experiments they sampled blood from their patients with meat allergies
and combined them with various tick extracts. They discovered that the Ige antibodies in their patients blood samples binded to the Lone Star tick extract;
meanwhile the same antibodies from people without the meat allergy did not glom onto the tick proteins.
So in some way these tick bites could manipulate people s immune systems changing the Ige response. Despite identifying the vessel for the mysterious meat allergy Commins
and Platts-Mills say many questions remain unanswered about the condition. How do does the tick induce this Ige response essentially breaking tolerance
and why does it take four hours for symptoms to show? says Platts-Mills. One hypothesis has to do with fat absorption in the body
which takes approximately two hours. Whatever the case he says those two questions will occupied keep us for a long time.
or if only some do (as is the case with Lyme disease which is caused by a bacterium).
As Commins and Platts-Mills struggle to understand the mechanisms behind this allergy the number of cases they re seeing is trending upward nd the allergy is confined no longer to the south.
Dr. Erin Mcgintee an allergist on New york s Long island who s worked with the UVA team has diagnosed approximately 200 cases of this allergy in the area she works.
I don t think it s a nationwide epidemic but as the Lone Star tick geographical distribution increases
I think it s going to be a regional epidemic in many areas. Meanwhile many of the meat allergy sufferers have had to adjust to a new normal.
Abley initially refused to accept his diagnosis experimenting with different meats to see if he could tolerate them.
He tried pork and lamb but both caused reactions. He finally narrowed down his list of acceptable meats to chicken
lest he wind up in the hospital. So he decided to become a vegetarian for the most part ot by choice
I d rather have the allergy than leave that
#Can Biohackers Succeed At Making'Real Vegan Cheese'?'A group of Oakland California-based biohackers believe they can create real vegan cheese.
You don't have to worry about all the hormones and antibiotics. Real Vegan Cheese also claims their product could address future food scarcity concerns
Responding to our questions via blog post Dr. Ricky the pseudonymous writer behind Science Based Cuisine stated that the campaign makes some scientifically dubious promises
Milk is chock full of a structure known as micelles Dr. Ricky writes which form a framework that holds and transports lots of calcium to mammal offspring.
Controlling pests whether it's with microbes in a hospital or grubs in a field is always an arms race against evolution.
Companies are also likely developing new GMO crops perhaps with more insect toxins engineered into them to combat the newly evolved resistance.
There is already a second generation of genetically modified Bt crops that make two Bt toxins instead of just one.
There are some scientifically proven ways to slow bugs'ability to adapt to GMO toxins. Planting a mix of GMO
Both strategies lessen the deadly pressure against insects susceptible to Bt poisoning so they'll evolve more slowly.
#MERS Virus May be Able To Spread Through The Air Research strongly suggests that camels carry Middle east Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) a viral illness that has sickened nearly 700
and the owner who came down with MERS a week after administering a topical medicine to his camels'runny noses.
The finding implies that virus could possibly be spread in enclosed spaces such as hospitals and therefore further studies are needed urgently the scientists wrote.
#Eating Poo Helps Packrats Digest Toxic Plantsdesert woodrats are picky but not in the way you might expect:
several woodrat populations in the U s. Southwest specifically eat a type of highly toxic creosote bush.
Another group eats juniper which is also toxic to many animals. This gives the woodrats (Neotoma lepida) a nice niche allowing them to dine on a plant that others avoid.
A new study suggests that the microbes in their gut break down the toxic chemicals in the plants
Then they fed two groups of the animals antibiotics killing off many of their gut microbes.
and lost weight whereas animals given rabbit food (devoid of toxins) seemed to do just fine and didn't lose weight.
These animals apparently developed the ability to break down the plant compared to those just fed rabbit food who couldn't subsequently eat the toxic plant.
All this work with toxic plants poo and packrats has wider implications than you might imagine however.
It may be possible for example to help livestock feed on toxic plants like juniper which is spreading throughout the Southwest
since breeding in the lab can cause the animals to lose microbes necessary for digesting certain toxic plant compounds found in the wild.
Scientists are working on varieties that survive disease drought and flood. So what exactly do consumers have to fear?
or a toxin or if it is going to turn another gene off says Peggy G. Lemaux a plant biologist at the University of California Berkeley.
One frequently cited study published in 2012 by researchers from the University of Caen in France claimed that one of Monsanto's corn GMOS caused tumors in lab rats.
770 examined the health impact on humans or animals. They found no evidence that the foods are dangerous.
But glyphosate is among the mildest herbicides available with a toxicity 25 times less than caffeine.
Its use has decreased reliance on more toxic alternatives such as atrazine. A 2012 paper from Iowa State university and the University of Minnesota suggested glyphosate-tolerant GMOS are responsible for monarchs'recent population decline.
which prevents the production of histamines that can trigger headaches. It also improves flavor and color.*
#This Game Brings Post-Apocalypse To The Presentin the wake of a mysterious disaster that destroys human civilization a poisonous mist has spread over the land.
A team of chemists from China and the U s. manufactured steel with a particular microstructure inspired by teeth and bamboo.
The resulting material was both more flexible and able to handle higher amounts of stress than conventionally made steel.
Structural steel should be able to handle a lot of stress but it should also bend a little
when it comes near its stress limit. That way it will give engineers more time to fix it before it fails instead of shattering suddenly.
The gradient helps them deal with stresses such as weather and wearing. The China-U s. team published their steel gradient findings in two papers in the journals Materials Research Letters and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the past few years other chemists and materials scientists have made copper and stainless steel like this. The latest gradient-grained steel is not stainless steel.
I m not a nutritionist says Cole but I would imagine that it would not be very healthy.
When it comes to chickens geneticist Carl Schmidt is working to prepare the most-dined-upon North american breeds to withstand greater heat stress in coming decades.
and use of these toxic pesticides until determined safe Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica told the AP P
This aspect of wildlife forensic science is supported by the United nations Office for Drugs and Crime and has already proved highly successful in tracking seizures and locating their source.
There are many labs around the world working on making animals that are engineered to grow faster resist disease
whose milk is designed to prevent deadly diarrhea in children and chickens in which bird flu viruses don't reproduce.
In spite of public opposition and a lack of funding GM meat research has continued to advance. One major trend:
but a messy room full of equipment used by researchers with the Macaw Project who have been studying the habits and health of the area's macaws and parrots here at the research center for decades.
You will notice items like pasteurized nonfat milk a variety of nonfat milk that comes not from the pasteurization process but from the Pasteur Cows of the Lower Himalayan Range.
There is also evaporated cane juice a substance so rare it must be bartered for from one of the eight living practitioners of the cane juice evaporation process an ancient family trade lost to the sands of time.
'#howmatters Material science metallurgy and geology to obtain aluminum needed to make foil lid on containers#howmatters@Chobani Dear@Chobani As a natural products chemist
#New Air pollution Rules Tie Public health To Major Carbon Cutspower plants nationwide must cut their carbon dioxide pollution by up to 30 percent in less than two decades under the clean power plan released today by the Obama administration.
and heart diseases would also decrease under the plan although it doesn't regulate them directly.
Mccarthy emphasized that the new rule confronts well-known threats to both public health and the economy which are tied to power plant CO2 emissions
Rising temperatures bring more smog more asthma and longer allergy seasons. If your kid doesn t use an inhaler consider yourself a lucky parent said Mccarthy
because 1 in 10 children in the U s. suffers from asthma. Carbon pollution from power plants comes packaged with other dangerous pollutants like particulate matter nitrogen oxides
This is about protecting our health and our homes. This is about protecting local economies and jobs Mccarthy said
Time after time when science pointed to health risks special interests cried wolf said Mccarthy. And time after time we followed the science protected the American people
was a threat to public health and welfare. EPA made just such an endangerment finding in 2009
when the Mayo Clinic injected human stem cells into fetal pigs creating swine with human blood
The Stanford team avoided rejection by permanently suppressing their subjects immune systems a solution that would leave humans vulnerable to catastrophic disease and infection.
The Beast Folk lurching through H g wells s 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau are created through grisly surgical experiments.
Although bioweapon stockpiles are in short supply (with very good reason) Mathaudhu is confident that geneticists could synthesize whatever new plagues seem useful.
The technology that has revolutionized genetic analysis allowing for whole-genome sequencing of human DNA could also enable a precision pathogen of last resort.
Who needs nerves of steel when your soldiers are made of it? This article originally appeared in the July 2014 issue of Popular Science l
Polluted air hysterical traffic the pressures of crowding and competition the fears of age and failure under stress the relentless nervous drive to get ahead
and a sleeping bag that feels like a plaster cast is either insane or an abysmal liar.
and a sleeping bag that feels like a plaster cast is either insane or an abysmal liar.
By the time you've settled the quarrel with the neighbors your kids are making a sound like whooping cough.
and before long that chlorophyl is a definite soporific. A week or so of this may mend your defenses
The study's authors a team of chemists from France and Germany wanted to try to distinguish between wines made from the same variety of grapes grown in vineyards less than two kilometers away from one another.
The chemists analyzed their samples separating the chemicals in the wines and measuring the masses of the molecules they gathered.
After that however they go into a big cylindrical bioreactor like the ones used in the pharmaceutical industry today.
Beyond price there's one comparison many have missed says a Texas-based science communicator who goes by the name Dr. Ricky.
Dr. Ricky who prefers to go by his pseudonym has written and given public talks about the drawbacks of cultured meat.
Dr. Ricky doesn't think it will be. We're talking about feeding cells running the bioreactor sterilizing the area the facilities we need to do all that he says.
whether Dr. Ricky is right. While many scientists have calculated the environmental footprint of beef no one has done that for stem cell burgers.
what Dr. Urey calls a pocketful of rocks for him to analyze. If you ask an American why we want to get to the moon he will usually say To get there before the Russians
Dr. Urey gives a truer reason ecause we are curious. And it seems to me that one of the definitive diagnostics of the human animal besides being the key to his success in survival
Without the pressure of cold hunger disease danger from outside and even greater danger from the quarrelsome combativeness in his own heart it is probable that he would still be living in trees
#The Disquieting Delights Of Salt-Rising Breadas befits a nasty pathogen Clostridium perfringens grows aggressively. Its cells can divide every ten minutes a handful turning into trillions of hydrogen makers overnight.
A century ago a scientist went so far as to bake bread leavened with Clostridium perfringens drawn from an infected wound in
what the West virginia Medical Journal called perhaps the most macabre experiment in culinary history. And so I present to you an all-you-can-eat story not about the limits of stomach capacity but about the far shores of edibility.**
The realization that the salt-rising bacterium was a form of pathogen came in 1923 when a USDA microbiologist named Stuart A. Koser analyzed commercial salt-rising starters.
but it was implicated in gangrenous flesh wounds. So Koser checked to see whether bakery loaves of salt-rising bread contained any of the bacillus. Indeed they did but in the form of spores rather than live cells.
He tested these bread strains on guinea pigs and found that they didn't cause gangrene.
Koser then wondered if a known disease strain could grow well enough in dough to leaven it
and so pose a hidden hazard to the consumer. So he obtained a bacillus culture from the army that had originally been taken from a soldier's infected wound.
It was called the Silverman strain probably after the soldier or his doctor. And Koser made bread with these wound bacteria.
Less understandably he didn't test the wound-risen bread for toxicity. But his creepy experiment made clear that there were different strains of the bacillus with different toxicities
and that though the strain in the commercial breads was relatively innocuous it was possible that other breads might contain a dangerous strain.
It wasn't until the 1940s and'50s that scientists recognized Clostridium perfringens as a leading cause of foodborne illness as well as wound infections Since then they've found that there are at least five major types of the bacterium that produce different toxins and cause different kinds of disease.
Their surveys have also found that most samples from the general environment don't produce the toxin that causes food poisoning.
The safety of salt-rising bread was revisited in 2008 by a physician at West virginia University and a microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
Professors Gregory Juckett and Bruce Mcclane noted Koser's macabre but inconclusive 1923 experiment and set out to determine
whether salt-rising bread should be viewed as the Appalachian equivalent of fugu the poison-laden pufferfish of Japanese gourmands.
and found that all of them contained strains of Clostridium perfringens type A the group associated with food poisoning rather than wound infection.
But none of these strains actually produced toxins. Given that finding together with the fact that both toxins
and active bacteria are inactivated by the heat of baking and the lack of any known cases of the bread causing illness Juckett and Mcclane concluded that it seems reasonable to continue the consumption of this delicious old-fashioned bread.
Good! It also seems reasonable to begin exploring new possibilities for this old-fashioned and unusual process.
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