October 1

Something pretty sad happened in my personal life over the weekend, and now I find myself idly wishing the world really WOULD end as soon as I sometimes prophesize on this blog. I thought that I could hitch some hope to the Mayan apocalypse, but sadly that does not seem to be on the horizon. Some lady at the Washington Post suggests I could worry instead about the volcano at Yellowstone erupting, or global warming, but those are too unlikely to happen anytime soon (in the case of the former), or too gradual to have the type of effect I'm looking for (in the case of the latter).

Guess I'll just link to a bunch of things I've bookmarked over the past few months in an effort to inject some depression into the world. I'll bring you all down to my level if it kills me! (I'm always here for ya.) Which it won't (kill me, that is)...this is only a small selection of the links I've bookmarked for this blog. Lists like this are just too easy to make.

1. Saw this today and it went straight to my Amazon wishlist: Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus.

It is the most fatal virus in the world, a pathogen that kills nearly 100 percent of its hosts in most species, including humans. Fittingly, the rabies virus is shaped like a bullet: a cylindrical shell of glycoproteins and lipids that carries, in its rounded tip, a malevolent payload of helical RNA. On entering a living thing, it eschews the bloodstream, the default route of nearly all viruses but a path heavily guarded by immuno-protective sentries. Instead, like almost no other virus known to science, rabies sets its course through the nervous system, creeping upstream at one or two centimeters per day (on average) through the axoplasm, the transmission lines that conduct electrical impulses to and from the brain. Once inside the brain, the virus works slowly, diligently, fatally to warp the mind, suppressing the rational and stimulating the animal. Aggression rises to fever pitch; inhibitions melt away; salivation increases. The infected creature now has only days to live, and these he will likely spend on the attack, foaming at the mouth, chasing and lunging and biting in the throes of madness — because the demon that possesses him seeks more hosts. (via)

2. On the rabies front, India is not a great place to live. According to the New York Times:

No country has as many free-roaming dogs as India, and no country suffers as much from them. They number in the tens of millions and bite millions of people every year, including vast numbers of children...An estimated 20,000 people die every year from rabies infections — more than a third of the global rabies toll.

3. Traveling to Yosemite? Might want to stay away from the park's cabins - they could be full of hantavirus.

Hantavirus is a respiratory disease that first causes flu-like symptoms, then coughing and shortness of breath, and can eventually lead to fatal lung or kidney failure. It doesn’t spread from person to person, but humans can contract it through contact with airborne particles from the feces, urine, or spit of an infected rodent, primarily deer mice.

4. A reason to NOT smoke weed during your teenage years: it makes you stupider. Permanently.

Persistent cannabis use was associated with neuropsychological decline broadly across domains of functioning, even after controlling for years of education. Informants also reported noticing more cognitive problems for persistent cannabis users. Impairment was concentrated among adolescent-onset cannabis users, with more persistent use associated with greater decline. Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning among adolescent-onset cannabis users. Findings are suggestive of a neurotoxic effect of cannabis on the adolescent brain and highlight the importance of prevention and policy efforts targeting adolescents.

5. Speaking of getting stupider, check out this article about brain anomalies in children exposed prenatally to a common pesticide. From the article's conclusion:

Our findings indicate that prenatal CPF [chlorpyrifos] exposure, at levels observed with routine (nonoccupational) use and below the threshold for any signs of acute exposure, has a measureable effect on brain structure in a sample of 40 children 5.9–11.2 y of age. We found significant abnormalities in morphological measures of the cerebral surface associated with higher prenatal CPF exposure, after adjusting for possible confounders.

...our findings of altered brain development in children exposed to CPF in utero have important public health implications. First, associations between prenatal exposure, brain structure, and neurocognitive alterations at 5.9– 11.2 y of age suggest that the neurotoxic effects of CPF are long term, at least extending into the early school years. The persistence of effects is consistent with animal studies suggesting that CPF effects are irreversible. Second, the high-exposure group...had relatively modest doses of CPF—doses that were measureable only because of the remarkable sensitivity of the CPF assay. Specimens from a Cincinnati blood bank during the same time period showed a background CPF concentration of 9 pg/g in serum (twice the mean level reported here), suggesting that exposure concentrations in the present sample were not unusually high. Current safety limits are set according to levels needed to achieve inhibition of plasma cholinesterase, a surrogate for inhibition of acetylcholinesterase in the brain, long assumed to be the common mechanism by which organophosphates induce neurodevelopmental deficits. However, pathogenic mechanisms other than cholinesterase inhibition are almost certainly contributing to the deleterious effects of early exposure to organophosphates, including the observed brain abnormalities and their accompanying cognitive deficits. Human exposure limits based on the detection of cholinesterase inhibition may therefore be insufficient to protect brain development in exposed children.

6. Oh, and damage from pesticide exposure may be hereditary. Pesticides are killing the children AND the children's children! Or...more accurately, pesticide exposure of mama rats might be stressing out their children, and their children's children in turn.

We find that a single exposure to a common-use fungicide (vinclozolin) three generations removed alters the physiology, behavior, metabolic activity, and transcriptome in discrete brain nuclei in descendant male [rats], causing them to respond differently to chronic restraint stress. This alteration of baseline brain development promotes a change in neural genomic activity that correlates with changes in physiology and behavior, revealing the interaction of genetics, environment, and epigenetic transgenerational inheritance in the shaping of the adult phenotype. This is an important demonstration in an animal that ancestral exposure to an environmental compound modifies how descendants of these progenitor individuals perceive and respond to a stress challenge experienced during their own life history.

7. And to continue the topic, pesticides might be killing the bees after all.

...data [from two recent studies] present a rather damning portrait of our fondness for pesticides, particularly the modern new neonicotinoids. Not only do bee colonies suffer a significant reduction in growth, but forager bees exposed to even low doses of neonicotinoids are not as likely to find their way home. Further, even if these struggling bee colonies survive, they have an 85% reduction in their production of new queens compared with untreated control colonies...So in short, use of any neonicotinoid pesticide appears to spell out imminent doom for honeybees, bumblebees and their wild kin -- all of which are essential for the continuing survival of flowering plants. Since humans and other animals depend upon flowering plants and their fruits for our survival, the common and widespread use of these pesticides appears to threaten us all.

8. And now for something completely different. Did you hear about the ZEBRA HERPES THAT KILLED THE POLAR BEARS? Herpes is apparently "fatally mixing" in zoos out there. I guess we should try to avoid kissing zoo animals from now on.

9. Newsflash: Pretty much everyone is fat (thanks to Jessie for sending along the Wired article with that delightful title). The CDC recently came out with new estimates of adult obesity in the US and omg, one-third of Americans are obese (yet more are overweight). In The Economist's coverage of the story, which included a view of obesity in other countries (American side note: There are other countries?), the fat epidemic is called "another thing that's too late to prevent." The Economist offered this cheery view of the situation in America [pardon the British oddities in spelling, they do things differently over there]:

America's national governing ideology is based almost entirely on the assertion of negative rights, with a few exceptions for positive rights and public goods such as universal elementary education, national defence and highways. But it's become increasingly clear over the past decade that the country simply doesn't have the political vocabulary that would allow it to institute effective national programmes to improve eating and exercise habits or culture. A country that can't think of a vision of public life beyond freedom of individual choice, including the individual choice to watch TV and eat a Big Mac, is not going to be able to craft public policies that encourage people to exercise and eat right. We're the fattest country on earth because that's what our political philosophy leads to. We ought to incorporate that into the way we see ourselves; it's certainly the way other countries see us.

10. Last but not least, my sister's worst nightmare: have you heard about the SPIDER SWARMS? In June, swarms of poisonous spiders invaded an Indian town during a cultural festival, causing massive chaos. And in March, Mazda had to recall a bunch of its cars because Yellow sac spiders apparently like to live inside a certain part of the car. Says Time:

Yellow sac spiders have found a new place to weave their webs — inside the evaporative canister vent line in the Mazda6 Sedan, which has forced the automaker to recall approximately 52,000 cars due to safety concerns...The spiders’ webs are causing blockages preventing air from getting into the vehicle’s gas tank, which can result in negative air pressure, cracks in the tank’s casing or even fires. It’s a dangerous and creepy situation that has been reported in 20 vehicles so far...According to Mazda representatives, they are unsure why the spiders have decided to take up residence inside the car, but it does appear that the crawlers have a preference. They've been found only in 2009 and 2010 models with 4-cylinder engines. Apparently the V6′s are not as appealing.

Has this list not been depressing enough? Looking for some additional doomsday reading? Why don't you check out the CDC's 12th Report on Carcinogens, which came out in June! Newly reviewed substances this year include Aristolochic acids, Captafol, Certain glass wool fibers (inhalable), Cobalt-tungsten carbide: powders and hard metals, Formaldehyde, ortho-Nitrotoluene, Riddelliine [not a misspelling, believe it or not], and Styrene. FUN!


P.S. Happy (?) birthday to me.