Table of contents for December 2018 in Discover

A core tenet of yoga is the inherent connection between the mind and body. What happens in the brain can manifest in the gut, shoulders or lower back. This was only too apparent one recent Sunday morning in yoga class. My hips were talking, not happy about merely sitting cross-legged on the floor. The hips often reflect — and hold onto — our stress. And when that happens, yoga poses become exercises in patience, working through and accepting the tightness in both body and brain. For researchers and clinicians who study Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, it’s been one long exercise in patience. After watching pharmaceutical companies chase supposed one-drug solutions, a growing number of physicians are focusing on a whole-body, systemic approach to Alzheimer’s. How do we sleep? How…

WHILE LIGHTNING CAN, in fact, strike the same place twice, if it strikes enough sand, it can create glass. That process — turning something into glass — is called vitrification. In this case, the sand heats up and liquefies, then rapidly cools into a glasslike state. Vitrification pops up all over, beyond traditional glass. Fertility experts use extreme cooling to vitrify immature human eggs and embryos, better preserving them. We also vitrify some radioactive waste for safe storage by liquefying it and mixing in glass-forming compounds like silica sand, until it cools into a safe-to-store chunk of glass.…

There have been hints that amyloids weren’t the toxic bad boys solely responsible for the destruction of vital brain circuits. Those clues were largely ignored. Autopsies have revealed that many people’s brains are peppered with these plaques, yet their mental faculties were undiminished before they died. For more than a decade, research suggested other factors were at play. As far back as 2005, Suzanne de la Monte, a pathologist at Brown University, had concluded that Alzheimer’s was actually a form of diabetes — what she calls Type 3 diabetes. It affects the brain and has many molecular and biochemical features in common with Type 2 diabetes, which we know is a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s. In one experiment, she and her colleagues blocked insulin to rats’ brains. Their neurons…

As a child, James Pinfold adored magnets. He recalls marveling at the invisible force that clacked the metallic objects together or hurled them apart. Out of curiosity, he once sawed a bar magnet in half, trying to separate its north and south poles. Like anyone else who’s ever made the attempt, Pinfold instead just ended up with a pair of smaller two-poled magnets. “I thought, ‘That’s amazing,’” says Pinfold, now a physicist at the University of Alberta. “Why could there not be separate poles?” It’s a question he’s never stopped asking. Pinfold is now the leader of an experiment looking for theoretical particles with single magnetic charges — a north without a south, and vice versa. Called magnetic monopoles, they seem perfectly possible, even inevitable, in a host of theories…

In the world of epidemiology, diseases that have seen an uptick in recent years are called “emerging infectious diseases.” But are there really more cases of these diseases, or have we just become better at spotting them? According to Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the non-profit Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, it’s not just us getting better. “It’s actually an increasing problem of infectious diseases,” she says. And most of these diseases originate in animals. Han decided to figure out what makes certain animals more likely to host specific diseases. “There is something inherent about a species that enables it to carry disease, compared to the vast majority that don’t,” she says. “I want to know what the data can give me, what can the data…

Doctors Without Borders (also known by the French name Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) and the British Red Cross (BRC) are collaborating to tackle the spread of disease in real time. Their efforts began with the Missing Maps Project, a 2014 initiative carried out by MSF, BRC, the American Red Cross and the U.S.-based non-profit Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. The project trained citizen volunteers to digitally trace the buildings and roads that appear in satellite images, creating maps. They focused on regions that are most vulnerable to crises like disease outbreaks and natural disasters, but aren’t typically mapped in detail — which can be a problem for aid workers responding to a disaster. MSF and BRC applied this technique in Lubumbashi, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They mapped…

Common Misconception (“Tongue Twister,” September 2018) The Vital Signs feature in this issue perpetuates a misconception with an unfortunate and undeserved stigma. The article correctly notes that the herpes simplex virus, specifically herpes simplex type 1, is the common cause of both herpes encephalitis and common fever blisters. However, it is not commonly a sexually transmitted disease, but rather transmitted by oral secretions or skin-to-skin contact. Kissing and sharing eating and drinking utensils, plus any other contact with infected oral secretions, are typical ways the virus is acquired. It may also be shed in the saliva whether or not a fever blister is present. Although it can be transmitted sexually, that is not the usual route of acquisition for this very common virus. Herpes simplex type 2, on the other…

AT YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK IN CALIFORNIA, granitelike towers loom over the park’s main valley. But one monolith stands out: Half Dome, which, with its curved, peeling layers, looks a bit like an onion. Until recently, experts weren’t sure what caused these layers to peel and fracture, but new research in the journal Nature Communications suggests hot days are to blame. High temps cause the stone to expand and sometimes fracture into layers. The event that helped inspire the Nature Communications paper came after a hot summer’s day at a different, much smaller dome near Yosemite. There, Scott Lewis, an engineering geologist and one of the paper’s authors, went to assess a dam damaged by such a fracturing event. On site, he witnessed something few ever have. IN HIS OWN WORDS…

By day, Håkan Kvarnström is a suit-wearing Stockholm businessman, but his true passion is photographing tiny science. While collecting a water sample from a commercial fish farm for an algae photo shoot, he noticed a tiny shell. Immediately, he saw the possibilities. After placing it on a match head for scale, he captured the view at 40x magnification. Kvarnström couldn’t determine the exact species of this tiny spiral, but he suspects it’s one of the 50,000 in the mollusk phylum.…

Dale Bredesen’s protocol is designed as a comprehensive personalized program that aims to reverse the biological causes of cognitive decline and early Alzheimer’s disease. Bredesen believes that Alzheimer’s isn’t just one disease but that there are three distinct subtypes driven by different biological processes, and each distinct condition requires a customized treatment regimen. Type 1 of the disease is associated with systemic inflammation. Inflammation is not present in Type 2, but abnormal metabolic markers are, including insulin resistance and extremely low levels of certain vitamins and hormones. Type 3 is characterized by a specific type of brain atrophy, seen on an MRI, and generally strikes younger individuals with no family history of Alzheimer’s. This subtype may be associated with chronic exposure to environmental toxins, such as certain metals and mold,…

While physicists are hard at work hunting magnetic monopoles, decades-old findings suggest we may already have stumbled upon them. On Feb. 14, 1982, Stanford University researchers detected a characteristic electric current on a superconducting loop, only thought possible from a magnetic monopole. And three years later at Imperial College London, another unexplained current popped up that also perfectly matched theoretical predictions. Since no other detectors have reported such events, many scientists dismiss the signals as unexplained instrument errors or background noise. But if that were the case, argues physicist James Pinfold, surely other spurious, and likely explainable, detections would have occurred over the years. “It is indeed very difficult to have a problem that exactly mimics the signal from a monopole,” he says. Even further back, in 1973, a University…

→ In December 2014, a handful of Disneyland tourists left the California theme park with more than just memories of Mickey Mouse and Space Mountain. They also left with the measles. Within weeks, 125 cases were confirmed in the United States. Of the adults and kids infected, 110 lived in California — and nearly half had not been inoculated with the vaccine for mumps, measles and rubella (MMR), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ultimately, the outbreak resulted in 147 measles cases. The disease spread because people had not been fully vaccinated, according to a 2015 analysis published in JAMA Pediatrics. The culprit was America’s growing anti-vaccination movement. Measles is a highly infectious disease with symptoms including high fever and severe rash. In rare cases, complications can…

Under Pressure People aren’t the only ones capable of peer pressure, it seems. A recent study says robots can influence kids as young as 7. We covered the news on our website, where it sparked quite the debate. John Little - omegashock - com: So, this means that the mainstream media and “mainstream” social media really do have the power to manipulate — especially the young. And yes, this holds true for adults, too — just somewhat less. It’s a “brave new world” out there, kids — the Orwell version. Atlas Shrugged: This isn’t limited to robots — kids can be influenced by anything. Woodsy the Owl was designed to influence kids not to pollute — don’t throw that trash on the ground, Dad, Woodsy the Owl says to give…

NINE PINTS A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood By Rose George Don’t be squeamish about picking up this lively investigation of everything from medicinal leeches to blood-borne pathogens to profiting off plasma. George’s sanguine writing is flush with fascinating details. EINSTEIN’S MONSTERS The Life and Times of Black Holes By Chris Impey Astronomer Impey’s accessible approach breaks down complex scientific concepts with ease and flair, name-checking everyone from Edgar Allen Poe to Pink Floyd as he lays out what we think we know about black holes — and what remains mysterious. TURNED ON Science, Sex and Robots By Kate Devlin A chance conversation in a pub while attending a conference led Devlin down what might sound like a dark alley: the world of sex robots. But…

Screen Time of the Sexes Hollywood isn’t really known for equal representation of men and women on the silver screen. But it’s making strides, according to a recent paper published in the journal Sex Roles. Researchers from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia looked at 50 of the top-grossing U.S. movies of 2016 and compared their findings with a separate 2002 review of 88 U.S. movies. They found that, though women (especially those age 60 and over) still aren’t represented as often as men, today’s Hollywood is more likely to portray women in leadership roles than in the past. Degrees of Separation From threatened lands to ants’ workloads. 6 MILLION SQUARE KILOMETERS The area of protected forests, parks and conservation areas that we humans have put under intense pressure, according to a paper…

Sally Weinrich knew something was terribly wrong. On two separate occasions, she forgot to pick up her grandkids from school, and she kept mixing up their names. The 70-year-old retired nursing professor had to face reality. Her worsening symptoms — the forgetfulness and confusion, the difficulties communicating and organizing activities — weren’t just stress or the normal wear and tear of aging. She lived in a matchless setting, on a lake in South Carolina, nestled in a bucolic wood. She swam daily and kayaked three days a week. But even her purposefully healthy lifestyle couldn’t protect her from the darkness she feared most: Alzheimer’s disease. In 2015, imaging tests revealed the presence of amyloid plaques, the sticky proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease that collect around brain cells and interfere with…

It is tricky to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease because it shares symptoms with many other complications of aging, such as stroke, tumors, sleep disturbances, Parkinson’s disease and other forms of dementia. Even side effects from certain medications can mimic the signs of the disease. Until now, diagnosis was based on observation of the constellation of symptoms associated with the mind-robbing disorder, such as forgetfulness, fuzzy thinking, confusion, difficulty concentrating, or changes in behavior, personality, and the ability to function normally. In addition, extensive neuropsychological evaluations look at such factors as how quickly people can process information, solve problems or remember words. Other standard medical tests, such as blood and urine tests, can spot other potential causes of the problem. Thanks to advances in a type of brain imaging technique called a…

Although the magnetic monopole is the big fish MoEDAL seeks, the experiment could haul in plenty of interesting bycatch. Here are some other exotic phenomena that could leave anomalous trails in MoEDAL’s detection system. Black hole remnants. It’s possible the particle smashups in the Large Hadron Collider could create microscopic black holes. (Don’t worry, these motes can’t gobble up the planet.) The late Stephen Hawking thought the itty-bitty objects would rapidly lose mass and evaporate, but perhaps leftover particles would persist. These remnants would help bridge incompatible theories of the cosmos at its largest and smallest scales, as well as possibly constitute a sizable portion of the presently unaccounted-for dark matter. Strangelets. Protons and neutrons in atoms of everyday matter are composed of “up” and “down” quarks. So-called strange matter,…

Pathogens hitch rides on hosts, spreading microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses. Researchers have studied many of these pathogens (human immunodeficiency virus, for example). But the results of their work aren’t all stored in the same place — they’re scattered across journals and various databases. If experts sequence a pathogen’s DNA (which helps identify and track it), that data typically gets uploaded to a public database, but it’s not paired with any additional existing descriptions. Instead, interested researchers have to manually cross-reference with various journals. “We needed to find a better way of bringing the information together,” says Marie McIntyre, an epidemiologist at the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool. So McIntyre and her colleagues created a new database: the Enhanced Infectious Diseases Database, or…

EcoHealth Alliance, another New York-based non-profit focused on global health, is also interested in how and when diseases jump from animals to humans. Not only is it looking at which species put humans at risk, it also focuses on which regions and animal habitats are more susceptible to sparking pandemics. “A few years ago, we compiled a database of every known emerging disease to find out what the reality is,” says Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist and the organization’s president. “Around two-thirds of all emerging diseases, maybe even more, are of animal origin.” Daszak and his team created a mathematical model that uses outbreak data from the last 50 years to predict where outbreaks might occur. With that tool, he and his colleagues found that many of these hot spots…

1 Penguins loom large in pop culture, but they were once even bigger. Several extinct giant penguins, such as human-sized Kumimanu biceae, described in 2017, could have tipped the scales at more than 200 pounds. 2 Today, their sizes range from the blue penguin, just over a foot tall, to the emperor penguin, nearly three times as big. Regardless of size, all penguins have the same body plan, including wings that have evolved into flippers and dense bones to counter buoyancy. 3 Hard evidence of the very first penguins is lacking. However, based on a 2014 genetic study, the lineage may have split off from their closest relatives, a group of seabirds that today includes albatrosses and petrels, around 60 million years ago. 4 The limited fossil evidence, though, suggests…