Salmonella watch: Tomatoes in the clear, but watch out for hot peppers

The Food and Drug Administration this week gave the all-clear to tomatoes but warned that some varieties of hot peppers were still suspect in a salmonella outbreak that has sickened 1,200 people in some 40 states and Canada, leaving victims with symptoms including diarrhea, vomiting and fevers. This news came as a relief to the beleaguered tomato industry, which was considered an early culprit in the scare. The FDA in early June warned consumers to avoid certain varieties of tomatoes, which reportedly cost the industry $100 million in lost sales even though investigators failed to find salmonella on any farms they checked. The FDA and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added jalapeño and serrano peppers as well as cilantro to the list of possible salmonella sources last week. These foods have not yet been cleared, although, so far, they have only recommended that vulnerable populations--infants, elderly persons and individuals with compromised immune systems--avoid them. According to the FDA, investigators have zeroed in on a pepper-packing outfit in Mexico that it believes may be responsible for at least a portion of the outbreak. The initial source of the contamination, however, has not been identified.

The U.S. [More]
07/18/2008

The Food and Drug Administration this week gave the all-clear to tomatoes but warned that some varieties of hot peppers were still suspect in a salmonella outbreak that has sickened 1,200 people in some 40 states and Canada. This news came as a relief to the beleaguered tomato industry, which was considered an early culprit in the scare that left victims with symptoms including diarrhea, vomiting and fevers. The FDA in early June warned consumers to avoid certain varieties of tomatoes, which reportedly cost the industry $100 million in lost sales even though investigators failed to find salmonella on any farms they checked. The FDA and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added jalapeño and serrano peppers as well as cilantro to the list of possible salmonella sources last week. These foods have not yet been cleared, although, so far, they have only recommended that vulnerable populations--infants, elderly persons and individuals with compromised immune systems--avoid them. According to the FDA, investigators have zeroed in on a pepper-packing outfit in Mexico that it believes may be responsible for at least a portion of the outbreak. The initial source of the contamination, however, has not been identified.

(Image: © iStockphoto/Skip ODonnell)

Italian cyclist Riccardo Ricco today was pulled from the Tour de France after he tested positive for the banned substance EPO, a hormone that boosts oxygen levels in the blood and, hence, stamina.

Ricco, 24, is the third cyclist to test positive for EPO use during this year's Tour. Spanish riders Moises Duenas Nevado and Manuel Beltran were both booted after testing positive for the endurance-enhancing drug. Duenas Nevado was expelled yesterday; Beltran tested positive last Friday.

Problems are mounting for the Orion spacecraft that is supposed to replace the retiring space shuttle fleet and carry U.S. astronauts to the moon by 2020. Among the most severe, according to a 117-page internal NASA report posted on Nasawatch.com this week: an $80-million overrun on development of a single motor; a hard-to-open hatch door; and the potential that the stack (craft and Ares 1 rocket) will vibrate itself to pieces during takeoff. Constellation's official launch date for practice flights remains March 2015, but NASA had envisioned a best-case scenario of summer 2013. An agency spokesperson told the Associated Press that in principle a launch could now occur no earlier than August 2014. Some NASA watchers say the setbacks are signs of agency mismanagement, but others say they are par for the course for an attempt to return to the moon in an era of uncertain funding.Photo credit: Lockheed Martin Corp

I have a biking nemesis: During my regular rides around the six-mile outer loop of New York’s Central Park, the big hill at the north (uptown) end of the park invariably sucks the very life out of my aging legs. Yesterday, however, pedaling up the big incline was another story altogether. It was as easy as climbing a small rise. My new-found prowess had nothing to do with any improved fitness, of course; it was the bike I was riding, the Twist Freedom DX from Taiwan’s Giant Bicycle, Inc., which augments every pedal stroke with a finely timed electric boost.

Next time you're at a loud singles bar, thank a fish for inspiration. Here's why: When a male midshipman fish [above] eyes a competitor swimming too close, he chases off the interloper with an audible grunt. To attract a mate, he hums loudly for hours on end [see video below]. Now these cries have attracted researchers seeking to figure out whether noisy animals, from fish to mammals, have a common ancestor that gave them the ability to vocalize. Researchers studied the larvae of three closely related species of bony fish--the midshipman fish, Gulf toadfish and oyster toadfish--that make sounds by squeezing their swim bladders up to 200 times per second. They report in Science that the parts of the brain and spinal cord that control the rhythm of those muscles develop in a pattern similar to that of other vocalizing animals, which suggests a common origin. Of course, the instruments being played by these brain cells--swim bladders in fish; the larynx in mammals--probably evolved independently. Think of that next time you're listening to a tall fishing story.

Researchers say they have come up with a new concept for a two-dimensional cloak of invisibility that would be much easier to make than the three-dimensional version demonstrated last year in rudimentary form. This, however, is not the kind of cloaking device the military might be interested in: When viewed under red light, it would make a lump in an otherwise flat surface appear smooth and shiny like the image in a mirage. [More]
07/18/2008

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

Counting is one of the first things we teach our kids. I mean, every parent’s probably said, “You had better be in that bed by the time I count to three.” Followed by “One…two…two-and-a-half…” But counting might not be as universal as it seems. Because scientists from M.I.T. have found that a tribe living in the Amazon has no words for numbers.

View the Isle Royale Wolf/Moose Study Slide Show

On a secluded island in Lake Superior, captive wolf packs and moose populations depend on one another for survival: The moose are the wolves' chief nutritional source, and the wolves, in turn, help keep the moose population in check. But when the wolves eat too many moose, the resulting food shortage pares down the former's number, controlling their population, as well.

Former vice president Al Gore today challenged the U.S. to go from getting more than half its electrical power from greenhouse gas-spewing coal-fired power plants to getting all of it from 100 percent carbon neutral sources in a decade. In other words: eliminate fossil fuels for electricity, until the greenhouse gases can be captured and buried, in favor of nuclear, solar, wind and geothermal.

A decade ago, this week, scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the Institute for Genomic Research announced they had decoded the genetic information inside Treponema pallidum, the bacterium that causes the sexually transmitted disease (STD) syphilis.

At the time, Penelope Hitchcock, the chief of the sexually transmitted disease branch of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), hailed the work as critical to developing better drugs. NIAID director Anthony Fauci added the genome would boost efforts to develop a preventative vaccine. [More]
07/17/2008

Tasmanian devils aren't just hyperactive on Looney Toons. Seems a fatal facial cancer coursing through the population has driven the much-maligned marsupials to procreate earlier than normal. The devils--named for Tasmania, the Australian island off the continent's southeastern coast, where they reside--live an average of five years and typically begin mating when they've reached adulthood at around two years of age. But researchers at the University of Tasmania report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that the animals are mating by or before the age of one--some 16 times more frequently than they did before the disease was detected a decade ago. Unfortunately, the researchers say this race against the clock isn't doing the trick: Tasmanian devil populations continue to decline, dropping by up to 89 percent from what they were 10 years ago in some groups. The scientists hope, however, breeding early and often will buy the animals time and beat the cancer. (Picture: © Istockphoto/Leo Stanners)

As San Diego and Los Angeles have grown, the scrub land of southern California has been paved and built over. That has squeezed out the Quino checkerspot butterfly's habitat, and with the climate changes coming as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions, its listing as an endangered species by the U.S. government may not be enough to save the pretty little butterfly from extinction. [More]
07/17/2008

Researchers say that x-rays may help them predict where lightning will strike by allowing them to view what happens inside bolts as they move. University of Florida and Florida Institute of Technology engineers report in the online edition of Geophysical Research Letters that lightning zaps to the ground in 30- to 160-foot (nine- to 49-meter) stages--emitting x-rays after completing each "step." Understanding how a bolt travels, they say, is crucial in determining where it will strike. For the first time, researchers have been able to track lightning's journey using x-rays to probe its composition, much the way physicians use x-rays to peer inside the human body. Among questions they hope to answer: do lightning strikes on airplanes produce x-rays harmful to passengers?

A common belly bug once thought to be harmful may have beneficial effects early in life. Researchers at the New York University (N.Y.U.) Langone Medical Center have found that a lack of Helicobacter pylori--a microbe that thrives in the human stomach--may be linked to childhood asthma and other allergies.

They report in The Journal of Infectious Diseases that children ages three to 13 years were 59 percent less likely to have asthma and 69 percent less likely to have hay fever and other childhood allergies if they tested positive for the bacterium. The question is whether the benefits outweigh the potential risks later in life. H. pylori has been linked to the development of peptic ulcers and gastric cancer in adults after their third decade.

Nineteen years ago today, the U.S. Air Force flew a B-2 Spirit bomber--better known as the Stealth Bomber--for the first time. The flight came at a cost of billions of dollars, as the sophisticated technology that allows the bomber to evade radar detection required far more development than the Air Force had budgeted. [More]
07/17/2008

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

Our Milky Way galaxy produces only about 10 new stars annually. But a galaxy far, far away is experiencing a major baby boom. It’s pumping out up to 4,000 new stars a year, and should become a massive elliptical galaxy. The discovery was announced in the July 10th issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

Dear EarthTalk: I heard that children are reaching puberty at earlier ages now and that it may have to do with environmental toxins and even their TV viewing habits. Can you enlighten? -- Mark Abbot, via e-mail

Editor's Note: This story will be published in the October/November issue of Scientific American Mind.

Losing a loved one is always painful, but for most people time eventually heals the wounds. For about 10 to 20 percent of the bereaved, however, accepting and getting over a loss remains extremely difficult, even years later. Now researchers have come a step closer to elucidating the neurobiological underpinnings of this condition called complicated grief (CG). A new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, published online in May in the journal NeuroImage, shows that in CG patients reminders of the deceased activate a brain area associated with reward processing, pleasure and addiction.

If you're ever injured on a spacecraft, don't worry: hospitals already have a code to enter on your chart--it's ICD-E845.0. Unless, that is, you happened to be weightless at the time. That's E928.0. Prompted by a random tidbit making the rounds on medical blogs, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog dug up some context:

ICD (International Classification of Diseases) codes are the basic international health codes that exist for just about everything (as this spaceship thing suggests). They’re used both for billing purposes and for tracking trends in public health.

Last Friday at 11 A.M., the operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt., detected a leak. About 60 gallons (225 liters) of water a minute was escaping from the eastern cooling tower of the 620-megawatt power plant that provides nearly three quarters of the state's electricity needs. By noon, the owners had shut down both the damaged and undamaged cooling towers and had cut the plant's electricity output in half to avoid any harm to the reactor. By Monday, the plant was operating at 23 percent capacity because of limits on the amount of water it could use from the Connecticut River to cool its nuclear core. [More]
07/16/2008

Ousted head of the Alden March Bioethics Institute (AMBI) Glenn McGee has agreed to drop his lawsuit against Albany Medical College for allegedly refusing to acknowledge his severance package, following his dismissal two months ago. This from The Business Review (Albany). [More]
07/16/2008

Light from distant quasars--early galaxies that shine with tremendous brightness--has given researchers a new clue to the origin of vast magnetic fields studding today's galaxies: They were running strong when the universe was only a third of its present age. [More]
07/16/2008

What can tattoos tell psychiatrists about the mental state of prisoners locked up after being judged unfit to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity? Plenty, according to a Michigan Center for Forensic Psychiatry study published in the journal Personality and Mental Health. [More]
07/16/2008

Editor's Note: This feature, originally printed with the title "Living with Cancer," Is a free preview of Scientific American's Special Report "New Answers for Cancer"

It was February 2003, and Kris Carr, a photographer and actress, was on a roll. The bubbly, green-eyed stunner was in high demand. She was considered “the Julia Roberts of advertising” (at least according to her agent), thanks to her success in two popular Bud Light commercials that aired during the Super Bowl. She also had some impressive theater and film credits, among them a role in Arthur Miller’s Mr. Peter’s Connections, in which she performed (in the buff, no less) alongside actor Peter Falk.

Researchers have discovered early blood markers in people genetically predisposed to develop Huntington's disease, a mysterious neurodegenerative disorder. These signs may provide future targets for staving off or even preventing symptoms from developing. [More]
07/16/2008

Editor's Note: This store is part of our feature "Living With Cancer: Lessons and Advice from Kris Carr" which was originally printed in the Special Report "New Answers for Cancer" from Scientific American.

Rather than surrendering to despair and impersonal medical treatments, growing numbers of cancer patients are empowering themselves with information and control over their therapies. The trend is finding acceptance in mainstream medicine and helping people with cancer lead healthier lives.

Dear EarthTalk: I really want to eat healthy and organic but am constantly traveling and on the go. How can I eat fast food without having to always end up at McDonalds and Burger King?-- Dylan Baker, Seattle, Washington

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

In 2005 two scientists won a Nobel Prize for discovering that a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori causes most stomach ulcers. One of them even chugged a glassful of the bugs to prove the point. But before you wash out your mouth with antibiotics, consider this: a new study from New York University suggests that Helicobacter might also protect you--from asthma.

George Musser talks about his new book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news.  [More]
07/16/2008

FINALIST YEAR: 1947 [More]
07/15/2008

Add kidney stones to the growing list of possible consequences of global warming. A new study warns that as many as 2.3 million more people may develop these mineral deposits in their kidneys by the year 2050 as the result of a warming world. The reason? There's a greater risk that they will be subject to dehydration in more sultry climes, which is believed to be a major contributor to stone formation, according to research published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

"I think the reality of this study is accurate as temperatures do play a great role in stone diseases," says Stephen Nakada, chair of urology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The Oxfordshire band known for taking digital risks has done it again.  [More]
07/15/2008

During a 24-hour period humans experience a rise and dip in the production of most hormones and neurotransmitters (the chemicals that relay signals between nerve cells). This daily cycle is referred to as the body's circadian rhythm and is regulated by both internal systems and external stimuli, the most powerful of which is visible light. [More]
07/15/2008

Beginning next month, consumers will be able to check an online list of stores that sold or stocked recalled meat. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) secretary Ed Shafer said the move is designed to prevent stores from continuing to sell tainted food and, also, alert consumers who might be at risk if they shopped at certain markets. [More]
07/15/2008

Cuckoos are notorious freeloaders, conning other species into rearing their young, often at the expense of the hosts' chicks. But a new study suggests that the parasitic birds are not mere opportunists. [More]
07/15/2008

The development of trust is an essential social tool, allowing people to form productive and meaningful relationships, both at a professional and personal level. Bonds of trust are also extremely fragile, however and a single act of betrayal--such as a marital affair--can instantly erase years of trustworthy behavior. The consequences of such breaches in confidence can be disastrous, and not only for a relationship. People who have been betrayed in the past will sometimes start avoiding future social interactions, which is a potential precursor to social phobia. In light of these connections, recent research has attempted to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying trust behavior. This is the goal of an exciting new study by neuroscientist Thomas Baumgartner and colleagues at the University of Zurich in Switzerland that combines different disciplines (economics and neuroscience) and methodologies (neuroimaging and neuropharmacology) to investigate how the brain adapts to breaches of trust. [More]
07/15/2008

Dear EarthTalk: I need to replace my old TV. Can you tell me which of the latest models is the greenest? I was told that the flat-screen/plasmas are real energy hogs. What do you recommend?-- Angela Montague, via e-mail

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

In the insect world, bright reds, oranges and yellows can be a warning: “Eat me at your own risk, pal.” Because colorful bugs can be toxic, they often get their chemical protection from nibbling poisonous plants. But these poisons can have a flip side for us--some fight cancer or tropical parasites that cause diseases like malaria.

A brain chemical linked to pleasure and depression may also trigger fear, according to a new study. Researchers say this may explain why the neurotransmitter dopamine, known to cause addictive behavior, may also play a role in anxiety disorders.

"Showing that dopamine can enhance both approach and avoidance behaviors is an important finding," says Howard Fields, a neurobiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Approach behavior describes what someone attracted to an object does to obtain it. Fields says the finding reveals a new potential target for treating puzzling neurological disorders such as schizophrenia.

Volcanic rocks deep beneath the sea off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington State might prove one of the best places to store the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing global warming, a new study finds. In fact, the very instability that causes earthquakes and eruptions adds an extra layer of protection to keep the CO2 from ever escaping. [More]
07/14/2008

It looks as though global warming will cut short a study of… global warming.

Witness the following: On June 24, home plate umpire Brian O'Nora was hospitalized after the broken barrel of a bat hit him on the head during a game between the Colorado Rockies and Kansas City Royals. He suffered a mild concussion. [More]
07/14/2008

Editor's Note: This story will be published in the August issue of Scientific American.

A few heaping piles of scrap metal and a rusty coal shed are all that is left of the power plant that until recently squatted like an immense, smoke-belching dragon in the middle of Tongliang, a gray city of 100,000 in south-central China. As we walk toward the shed, a Belgian Shepherd begins barking furiously, jerking its iron chain and baring sharp teeth. A brown-eyed face peeks out from the open doorway--it belongs to a girl in a stained shirt, holding a tabby cat that jumps away to hide under a slab of concrete as we approach. The girl is no more than six or seven years old and appears to be living in the shed with her father, who watches us warily from within.

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]

On the June 30th podcast, you heard some bad singing. Clearly a lot of people think they can sing--just look at the enormous crowds that show up to audition for American Idol. But how many people can actually stay in key? [Sound of bad singing.]

Batman is the most down-to-earth of all the superheroes. He has no special powers from being born on a distant world or bitten by a radioactive spider. All that protects him from the Joker and other Gotham City villains are his wits and a physique shaped by years of training--combined with the vast fortune to reach his maximum potential and augment himself with Batmobiles, Batcables and other Bat-goodies, of course. In the 2005 blockbuster Batman Begins, vengeful Bruce Wayne (played by Christian Bale) hones his killer instincts in the streets for seven years before landing himself in a Bhutanese prison, where he falls in with the mysterious League of Shadows, who teach him the way of the ninja. The Dark Knight, the next movie in the Batman franchise, opens in theaters Friday. To investigate whether someone like Bruce Wayne could physically transform himself into a one-man wrecking crew, ScientificAmerican.com turned to E. Paul Zehr, associate professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and a 26-year practitioner of Chito-Ryu karate-do. Zehr's book, Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero (The Johns Hopkins University Press), due out in October, tackles our very question. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

What have comic books and movies told us about Batman's physical abilities? [More]
07/14/2008

[Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]

[More]
07/14/2008