US Scientists say Senate bill will endanger people 'living downwind' of nuclear plants
Nuclear Power Plant (Photo: Jeff Fusco/Getty Images)
As U.S. senators prepare to vote on a bipartisan bill proponent say will accelerate the development and commercialization of advanced nuclear reactor technologies, the Union of Concerned Scientists warned Monday that the legislation would increase the chances of a "catastrophic" meltdown by weakening the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—an agency already ridden by conflicts of interest.
Upper chamber lawmakers are expected to vote this week on the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act, introduced last year by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and passed by the House of Representatives in a 365-36 vote on February 28.
Proponents of the legislation argue it will facilitate U.S. nuclear leadership, develop and deploy new reactor technology, preserve existing nuclear energy, and more.
"A compromised NRC could lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown impacting an entire region for a generation."
However, critics including the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argue that the bill threatens the independence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), some of whose officials have long been criticized for their dangerously close ties to the industry they regulate. Additionally, NRC advisers have been accused of undisclosed conflicts of interest.
"It's extremely disappointing that, without any meaningful debate, Congress is about to erase 50 years of independent nuclear safety oversight by changing the NRC's mission to not only protect public health and safety but also to protect the financial health of the industry and its investors," UCS director of nuclear power safety Edwin Lyman said in a statement Monday.
"Just as lax regulation by the [Federal Aviation Administration]—an agency already burdened by conflicts of interests—can lead to a catastrophic failure of an aircraft, a compromised NRC could lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown impacting an entire region for a generation," he continued.
"Make no mistake: This is not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board, a long-standing industry goal," Lyman contended. "The change to the NRC's mission effectively directs the agency to enforce only the bare minimum level of regulation at every facility it oversees across the United States."
"Passage of this legislation will only increase the danger to people already living downwind of nuclear facilities from a severe accident or terrorist attack, and it will make it even more difficult for communities to prevent risky, experimental reactors from being sited in their midst," he added.
In a February opinion piece published by The Hill, Lyman asserted that the ADVANCE Act would "put the proverbial fox in charge of the henhouse" by eroding the independence of an agency that critics say is already too cozy with the nuclear industry.
"Congress needs to strengthen, rather than weaken, the NRC's science-based safety focus," Lyman stressed.
Some ancient lifeforms can live on hydrogen – and we can learn from their chemical powers
The Conversation
June 18, 2024
Carsten Steger / Wikimedia, CC BY
Three-quarters of all matter in the universe is made up of hydrogen. The young Earth was also rich in hydrogen, thanks to fierce geological and volcanic activity.
Just as stars burn hydrogen to produce heat and light through nuclear reactions, life emerged by extracting energy from this simple molecule via chemical reactions.
Some of these early life forms were archaea: an enigmatic third form of life only discovered in the 1970s. (The other two forms are bacteria and eukaryotes, the group that includes all animals, plants and fungi.)
We have studied thousands of species of archaea to understand how they have thrived for billions of years on our constantly changing planet. In their genetic blueprints we found instructions for producing special enzymes (called hydrogenases) to harvest energy from hydrogen gas, which lets them survive in some of the most punishing environments on Earth. Our latest research is published in Cell and Nature Communications.
A life powered by hydrogen
Archaea are found in places where no other life can survive. For example, some flourish in boiling hot springs where the water is so acidic it would dissolve iron.
Here, hydrogen is continually formed from the geothermal processes in Earth’s crust. Archaea devour this hydrogen to repair their bodies and even sometimes grow in otherwise deadly conditions.
We found some archaea can even make use of the minute amounts of hydrogen present in the air as an additional food source. This ability would likely help them survive transport through the atmosphere from one hydrogen-rich hot spring to another.
The authors investigating hydrogenases in archaea. Julia Veitch
Surviving in the dark
Many archaea are not found on the surface, but live a humble life far underground. Plants and animals can’t survive in this environment because there is no light or oxygen to sustain them.
Archaea have found a solution: they break down deeply buried organic matter from plant or animal remains. They do so through a process called “hydrogen-forming fermentation”.
Just as in the process of beer fermentation yeasts convert sugar to produce carbon dioxide, these dark-dwelling archaea convert organic matter to produce hydrogen gas.
This process releases some energy, but only a little. To survive, some archaea form ultra-small cells to minimize their energy needs. Many are also parasites of other microbes, stealing organic matter to fuel their own growth.
Archaea making methane
Many archaea live in extreme environments, but some find a warm home in animals.
In the animal intestine, many bacteria help digest food through hydrogen-forming fermentation. But a group of archaea known as methanogens eat hydrogen and breathe out the potent greenhouse gas: methane.
Methanogens are especially abundant and active in the guts of cattle, which are responsible for around one-third of human-caused methane emissions. We have also been working on ways to inhibit the activity of gut methanogens to reduce these emissions.
These same archaea are also responsible for methane emissions from lots of other sources, from termite mounds to thawing permafrost and even trees.
Learning from archaea’s hydrogen economy
As our societies try to move away from fossil fuels, we may be able to learn from the hydrogen economy of archaea, which has thrived for billions of years.
Much of Earth’s hydrogen is tied up in water. (It’s the H in H₂O.) To extract the hydrogen and work with it, industries currently need expensive catalysts such as platinum. However, there are also biological hydrogen catalysts, enzymes called hydrogenases, that don’t require precious metals and work under a wider range of conditions.
We have found that some archaea make highly streamlined hydrogenases. These enzymes can form a basis for more efficient and economical hydrogen catalysts.
A diagram showing a streamlined hydrogenase enzyme from archaea. Rhys Grinter
Hydrogen and the history of life
Perhaps hydrogen is a key to our future energy. But it’s worth mentioning that hydrogen also helps explains our past.
The first eukaryotes (the ancestors of all animals, plants and fungi) evolved some two billion years ago, when an archaeal cell and a bacterial cell merged together.
Why did they merge? The most widely accepted theory, known as “the hydrogen hypothesis”, suggests the merger of two cells allow them to more efficiently exchange hydrogen gas. A likely scenario is the archaeal cell survived by making hydrogen, which the bacterial cell then ate to make its own energy.
Eventually, this process gave rise to all eukaryotes over a billion years of evolution. Most modern eukaryotes, including humans, have since lost the ability to use hydrogen.
But traces of the ancient archaea and bacteria still exist. The body of our cells come from archaea, while the energy-producing organelles inside the cells called mitochondria are derived from bacteria.
Hydrogen may be simple, but it has helped create much of the complexity on Earth.
Pok Man Leung, Research Fellow in Microbiology, Monash University and Chris Greening, Professor, Microbiology, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Central China farmers face crop failures in 'withering' drought
Agence France-Presse
June 19, 2024
A Chinese Farmer (JADE GAO/AFP)
Farmer Bao Mingchen gestured to a dry pipe where water typically irrigates a patch of crops, the soil now cracked under a drought hitting China's vast agricultural hinterland.
"Everything is dry," he said as he strode along the perimeter of a rice paddy near his home in Hudian, a humble township in the central Chinese province of Henan.
The rice plants still shine a radiant green but Bao, puffing on a cigarette, told AFP that the local farmers are beginning to worry about how much longer they can go without rain.
Recent years have brought a long list of extreme weather events to China, including destructive floods and record-breaking heatwaves that experts say are made more frequent by global climate change.
Even as parts of central China were hit by drought, heavy rains and landslides across the south killed four people and left more than a dozen missing this week.
The weeks-long dry spell striking central China has led many farmers to hold off on planting as agricultural authorities warn of damage to crops.
A short drive down the road from Bao's home, 70-year-old reservoir manager Liu told AFP that the area hadn't seen any significant rain since April.
"The drought conditions currently are very severe," said Liu, who gave only his surname, as he stood on the bank of the reservoir, the unusually low level of which was emphasized by a ring of stained concrete.
Liu's reservoir serves as an important water source for the surrounding area, where farmers grow crops such as rice and corn.
"If it doesn't rain there'll be a loss of the reservoir, and those farmers' rice paddy fields -- they will have to be saved," he said.
"If it really doesn't rain, (the crops) will all die."
- 'All withered' -
Nearby, a 59-year-old woman farmer surnamed Wang arranged bushels of Chinese mugwort, a fragrant herb used in traditional medicine, along the side of the road.
"Look at it, it's all withered," Wang said.
"The bottom half is dead already. There are a few sprouts at the top but they're also about to dry up."
Across the road, Wang showed AFP a patch of crumbling dry soil where corn typically grows.
In a stroke of bitter irony, a sprinkling of measly raindrops fell for a couple of minutes, quickly evaporating on the scorching ground before the pale clouds dissipated beneath the blinding sun.
Wang said she hoped authorities could harness the power of technology to help local farmers through the drought.
"With advanced technology and artificial rainfall, there'd be some hope for us," she said.
"But if there's really no rain, average folks like us will face total crop failure," she said.
"That's just how it is."
Air pollution linked to nearly 2,000 child deaths a day: report
2000 X 365 = 730,000
Agence France-Presse
June 19, 2024
Air pollution contributed to the deaths of more than 700,000 children under the age of five in 2021, the report found (Sajjad HUSSAIN/AFP)
Nearly 2,000 children die every day from health problems linked to air pollution, which is now the second biggest risk factor for early death worldwide, a report said Wednesday.
Exposure to air pollution contributed to the deaths of 8.1 million people -- around 12 percent of all fatalities -- in 2021, according to the report from the US-based Health Effects Institute.
This means air pollution has overtaken tobacco use and poor diet to become the second leading risk factor for early death, behind only high blood pressure, it said.
Little kids are particularly vulnerable to air pollution, and the institute partnered with the UN Children's Fund UNICEF for its annual State of Global Air report.
Air pollution contributed to the deaths of more than 700,000 children under the age of five, the report found.
More than 500,000 of those deaths were attributed to cooking indoors using dirty fuels such as coal, wood or dung, mostly in Africa and Asia.
"These are problems we know that we can solve," Pallavi Pant, the Health Effects Institute's head of global health, told AFP.
- 'Profound effects on next generation' -
Nearly every person in the world breathes unhealthy levels of air pollution every day, the report found.
Over 90 percent of the deaths were linked to tiny airborne pollutants called PM2.5, which measure 2.5 micrometers or less, it said.
Inhaling PM2.5 has been found to increase the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and a range of other health problems.
The report aimed to link the rates of such diseases with air pollution levels.
But despite the "pretty stark" figures, the report could still be underestimating air pollution's impact, Pant said.
It did not take into account how air pollution could affect brain health, neurodegenerative diseases or what impact using solid fuels for heating could have, she explained.
The report also found that ozone pollution -- which is expected to get worse as the world warms due to human-driven climate change -- was linked to nearly 500,000 deaths in 2021.
"Increasingly, many parts of the world are seeing very short, intense episodes of air pollution," during events such as wildfires, dust storms or extreme heat, which can drive up ozone levels, Pant said.
There are "very similar solutions" for both climate change and air pollution -- particularly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, she added.
More can also be done about using dirty solid fuels for cooking indoors, Pant said, pointing to how China had made significant improvements in this area.
More than two billion people cook on basic stoves or over open fires indoors, inhaling the harmful smoke.
Partly due to access to cleaner cookstoves, the rate of small children dying from problems linked to air pollution has fallen by more than 50 percent since 2000, the report said.
In May, the International Energy Agency announced that $2.2 billion had been pledged by governments and companies to improve access to less deadly cooking methods.
The report released Wednesday used data covering more than 200 countries and territories from the Global Burden of Disease study conducted by the US-based Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation.
"Every day almost 2,000 children under five years die because of health impacts linked to air pollution," UNICEF's Kitty van der Heijden said in a statement.
"Our inaction is having profound effects on the next generation."
'Nature's mirror': Climate change batters Albania's butterflies
Agence France-Presse
June 20, 2024
A painted lady butterfly in Zvernec. Researchers say 58 of Albania's 207 butterfly species are at risk (Adnan Beci/AFP)
Bright yellow, black, red and blue, Alexanor butterflies once fluttered abundantly on southwestern Albania's flowery slopes. Now, like many related species, scientists say they are disappearing due to human impacts, including climate change.
Increasingly absent from the picturesque district of Zvernec, the Alexanor is one of 58 of the Balkan country's 207 butterfly species that researchers say are at risk.
"Sensitive to changes, they are a true mirror of the conditions of the ecosystem in which they live," said Anila Paparisto, an entomologist at Tirana University.
In Zvernec, Paparisto leads a team of researchers and students working to identify the country's remaining butterfly species along with those that are now extinct.
Numerous scientific studies have measured the impact of climate change on butterfly populations, though researchers also cite other environmental factors.
They blame a combination of rapid urbanization, pesticides and warming temperatures for the decrease.
"Human activity and climate change have had major impacts on nature," said biology student Fjona Skenderi, who was helping conduct research in Zvernec.
In the nearby Divjaka Natural Park, Albanian agronomist Altin Hila points to the disappearance of the Giant Peacock Moth and the Plain Tiger as another worrying sign.
"It's a disaster marked by climatic disruptions, an early spring and excessively high temperatures in January and February," explained Hila, who is also a passionate collector and oversees a butterfly museum in Divjaka.
"It encouraged the eggs to hatch and the butterfly larvae to grow, but in April the temperatures were too low" for them to survive, he added.
- 'Butterfly effect' -
The butterflies' decline also affects other species.
"It will impact the entire food chain and biodiversity, which is also essential for humans," Paparisto said.
"When there are fewer butterflies, you expect... the butterfly effect."
Like large swaths of Albania, coastal areas near Zvernec have become increasingly overrun with resorts and apartment blocks, built with little oversight.
Scientists say the rapid urbanization in the area, along with overfishing and climate change, has also played a part in the dramatic drop in migratory bird populations.
And while some butterfly populations are in decline, other similar species are prospering -- to the detriment of the environment.
The arrival of a non-native moth through imports of ornamental plants from China has ravaged more than 80 percent of Albania's boxwood forests since 2019, according to experts.
"It is very aggressive, it can reproduce three to four times a year, and it is a real misfortune which reduces entire areas to nothing," said forest engineer Avdulla Diku.
With their distinct neon green and black bodies, the larvae are easily spotted when clinging to the boxwoods' leaves and stems.
On the road along Lake Ohrid to Pogradec in northwestern Albania, the once vibrant green rows of boxwoods are reduced to husks after being devoured by the moths' larvae.
"It is a firm reminder of the fragility and subtle balance of the environment in which we live," said Sylvain Cuvelier, an entomological researcher who co-authored the first Albanian butterfly atlas.
"It is obviously urgent to unite our efforts to find solutions, to rethink in depth our use of natural resources and the way forward for the protection and restoration of our environment."
The first chemist in history may have been a female perfumerSHE WOULD BE AN ALCHMYST
The Conversation
June 21, 2024
Flowers and Herbs (Vera Petruk/Shutterstock)
Perfume making dates back at least 3,000 years – to the time of Tapputi-belat-ekalle, who is considered the first chemist in history. What we know about her comes from inscriptions on fragments of clay tablets dating back to the Middle Assyrian period (1400–1000BC).
The inscriptions tell us that Tapputi was in charge of “overseeing the palace” as the leader of a collective of female expert perfume makers in Mesopotamia (present day Iraq and Iran). These muraqqītu, experts in aromatics, prepared fragrances for the king and his royal family. The inscriptions, which are on display in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, also show a detailed procedure for how Tapputi produced one of her perfumes. Tapputi and her team used aromatic and medicinal plants and flowers, that were commonly found at the time, to extract essential oils and fragrances.
Perfumes can be floral, fruity, sweet, spicy, woody and much more. These attributes, or “notes”, are what we are drawn to when picking one to wear. The different chemical molecules that make up the perfume notes are known as volatile compounds. These are compounds that evaporate easily. When these molecules become a gas, they are detected by the sensory organs in your nose.
Behind the sensations we get from our favorite perfume, there is a sophisticated process where art and chemistry are tightly interlaced.
Tapputi’s recipe describes a series of techniques to extract and concentrate volatile scent compounds that are still foundational to several chemistry applications, such as the production of perfumes, cosmetics, medicines or supplements.
Some of these extraction techniques involve heating. To prepare a decoction (the extraction of water-soluble substances from plants), for example, the raw material, such as leaves or roots, is boiled for a prolonged amount of time with a solvent such as water. The technique of infusion was also described. This is where the material to be extracted is soaked briefly in hot water, just like a tea.
Other techniques rely on the extractive power of the solvent in which the raw material is soaked for a long time at room temperature – a process known as maceration.
Tapputi’s recipe also illustrated a sequence of heating and cooling down of the raw material, in a process that resembles what nowadays we would refer to as distillation. This method uses evaporation and condensation to separate the different volatile scent compounds from each other. This conversion from liquid to a gas state, and vice versa, is based on how easily, and at what temperature, the compounds evaporate.
Finally, multiple steps of refinement via filtration were carried out, to obtain perfumes “fit for a king”.
These very same techniques are still relevant in modern perfumery but have been optimised through the centuries and are now more efficient.
Are all noses the same?
If Tapputi had been born in modern times, she may have been a “nose”, the term for highly skilled fragrance artists, who master chemistry and creativity. Like in nature, many perfumes combine a large number of scent compounds. Making a perfume means assessing the interaction of many volatile compounds in a blend and their stability, alone and together, after bottling.
These highly trained professionals can comfortably distinguish between notes with subtle differences and recreate them in their laboratory.
The expertise of gifted noses also finds application in sensory analysis in the food, beverages and cosmetics industries, where they study how a product feels through their five senses.
In the laboratory, chemists often rely on advanced instruments to try to understand the origin of the aroma of natural products. These instruments scan through the complex fragrance to separate and identify the hundreds of volatile molecules that, when combined, give the overall scent that our nose can smell.
In our recent study, for example, we screened the aroma of some Irish honey samples, marketed as heather honey, to understand more of its botanical origin. Volatile compounds found in the honey mainly originate from the plants and flowers that the honeybees visited to collect the nectar that, through much processing, is converted into honey. We found all of the samples had aroma notes from several different plants.
A new frontier of aroma research lies in the development of the “e-noses”. These are molecule-sensing electronic devices that mimic how our noses detect volatile compounds, providing a “fingerprint”, a screening of the characteristic aroma compounds of a sample. These e-noses could be important for other industries too. For example, in the diagnosis of disease (volatile molecule fingerprints may change with blood sugar levels), and for quality control for the food industry, where the volatile fingerprint of a food may change as it spoils.
Modern perfume research is also exploring the important, but often overlooked, psychology of fragrance. They hold highly evocative power over humans. We are starting to understand why certain scents make you fancy a cup of tea, want to keep your nose in a book or feel festive.
This seems to depend on the physical interconnection between our sense of smell and the parts of our brain linked to memories and emotions.
This could explain why, in Tapputi’s day, the fragrances were not only seen as cosmetics, but they also had a religious function. They were used as part of rituals and ceremonies and offered to the gods to bridge an invisible connection with them.
If reading this has left you feeling curious about perfumery, you can try making a perfume inspired by Tapputi’s fragrance.
Roberta Angioi, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher in Analytical Chemistry, Dublin City University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Raw milk health risks significantly outweigh any potential benefits
The Conversation
June 21, 2024
Milk Cow (JUSTIN SULLIVAN/AFP)
Despite an ongoing outbreak of bird flu in dairy cows, the popularity of raw milk has only risen. Advocates claim raw milk has superior health benefits over pasteurized milk. There is little evidence to support these claims, however, and the risk of serious illness is much greater.
Mississippi State University food scientists Juan Silva and Joel Komakech and nutritionist Mandy Conrad explain the difference between pasteurized and raw milk, addressing common misconceptions about the health risks and purported benefits of consuming unpasteurized milk. These questions are more important than ever, since cattle can shed viral material into their milk. Not only can pathogens end up in milk, but at least three farmworkers reportedly have contracted H5N1, the virus that causes avian influenza, in 2024. Farmworkers can get sick by handling infected animals or their byproducts, such as raw milk.
What is pasteurization? Does it destroy nutrients?
Pasteurization is a process that involves heating beverages and foods at high temperatures – over 145 degrees Fahrenheit (62.78 degrees Celsius) – to kill harmful microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses and parasites. This reduces the total number of microorganisms in the product and also inactivates enzymes that could contribute to spoilage.
The taste, nutritional value and quality of pasteurized products aren’t significantly affected by the process.
While pasteurization can lead to some nutrient losses, the changes are generally minimal and outweighed by the benefits. Pasteurization typically causes minor denaturation of proteins and has little effect on fats and carbohydrates. While water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C and some B vitamins, usually not abundant in milk except vitamin B2, can be partially degraded during pasteurization, fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K, found in significant amounts in milk) are more heat stable and suffer minimal loss.
Thus, nutritional losses in milk due to pasteurization are generally small compared with the significant benefits of reducing foodborne illnesses and spoilage.
Is raw milk healthier than pasteurized milk?
Studies have compared the benefits of raw milk with pasteurized milk and have found little evidence that raw milk is superior to pasteurized milk. The perceived advantages of raw milk are outweighed by its health risks.
First, raw milk does not improve lactose intolerance.
Raw milk also does not have more vitamins than pasteurized milk. Milk is not a good source of vitamin C or other heat-sensitive vitamins, and pasteurization does little to reduce vitamin B2 or riboflavin, which is not as sensitive to heat. Moreover, Vitamin D is added to pasteurized milk to enhance your body’s ability to absorb the calcium in milk.
Pasteurized milk is fortified with vitamin D and other nutrients. Burke/Triolo Productions/The Image Bank via Getty Images
Fortified milk replaces nutrients that may be lost in the pasteurization process. Vitamin D is added to milk to enhance uptake of the calcium found in the milk. No single food is perfect, so it is OK for milk to lack some nutrients, as these can be obtained from other foods.
Some people believe that probiotics – foods or supplements that contain live bacteria beneficial to health – are more prevalent in unpasteurized milk and products made from raw milk. However, raw milk is generally lacking in probiotics and has significantly more harmful bacteria. Probiotics are added to many dairy foods such as yogurt after pasteurization.
Furthermore, a 2011 review of the available research on the health benefits of raw milk found that many of these studies were conducted with poor methods, meaning their results should be interpreted with caution.
What are the health risks of consuming raw milk?
The health risks of consuming raw, unpasteurized milk come from the harmful microorganisms that may be present.
Raw milk has been associated with hundreds of foodborne disease outbreaks. Between 1998 and 2018, 202 outbreaks resulted in 2,645 illnesses and 228 hospitalizations. More recently, from 2022 to 2023, there were 18 outbreaks and recalls associated with raw milk. A number of outbreaks and recalls associated with pathogens in raw milk have already occurred in 2024. In all cases, pathogens in the raw milk that cause human diseases were directly responsible for these illnesses.
Pathogens from infected cattle can be found in their raw milk.
Is it safe to eat foods made from raw milk?
Many, if not all, dairy products made from unpasteurized milk are not safe to eat. A number of products can be made from raw milk, including soft cheeses, such as brie and Camembert; Mexican-style soft cheeses, such as queso fresco, panela, asadero and queso blanco; yogurt and puddings; and ice cream or frozen yogurt. Pathogens in raw milk can survive the processes involved in making these types of dairy products and thus be unsafe for consumption.
Only products that undergo a process to inhibit or kill harmful microorganisms may be safe enough to be made from unpasteurized milk. However, the potential for cross contamination of raw and cooked food as well as the survival of pathogens from inadequate processing is high when products are made with raw milk.
Can pasteurized milk still get you sick?
The few reported outbreaks associated with pasteurized milk can be traced to contamination after pasteurization. When handled properly, pasteurized milk is a very safe product.
The U.S. government requires farmers to destroy milk from herds infected with avian influenza. As of June 2024, 12 states have reported herds positive with H1N5, the virus that causes bird flu.
There is currently no evidence that consuming pasteurized milk from infected cows causes illness in people. Based on the evidence available, the Food and Drug Administration currently states that pasteurization is able to destroy or inactivate heat-sensitive viruses such as H5N1 in milk.
Consuming raw milk, however, may pose a risk of disease transmission to people.
Can you gain immunity from H5N1 from drinking raw milk?
Some people believe that drinking raw milk can strengthen their immune system. However, there is no scientific evidence to support that drinking raw milk can improve immunity against disease.
Vaccines train your body to protect itself from future infections without actually getting sick from that infection. They do this by exposing your immune system to very small amounts of dead or significantly weakened pathogen.
Bird flu is spreading among dairy cows in the U.S.
Raw milk contains live H5N1 virus, meaning it could still infect you and make you sick. Rather than contributing to your immunity, raw milk exposes you to the virus at its full strength and can result in severe illness. Any protective antibodies that may be present in raw milk are likely degraded in stomach acid.
Moreover, people who contract bird flu from raw milk run the risk of transmitting it to other people or animals by giving the virus a chance to adapt and improve its ability to spread between people. This increases the risk of more widespread disease outbreaks.
Juan Silva, Professor of Food Science, Nutrition and Health Promotion, Mississippi State University; Joel Komakech, Assisstant Professor of Food Science, Nutrition and Health Promotion, Mississippi State University, and Mandy Conrad, Assistant Clinical Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, Mississippi State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
House of the Dragon: if dragons were real, how might fire-breathing work?
The Conversation
June 22, 2024 
"Fire breathing Dragons" Shutterstock
The images of dragons unleashing torrents of flames on the new series of House of the Dragon got me thinking: if dragons existed, what real-world biological mechanisms and chemical reactions might they use?
But first, a chemistry recap. To ignite and sustain a flame, we need three components; a fuel, an oxidizing agent - typically the oxygen in the air - and a heat source to initiate and maintain combustion.
Let’s start with the fuel. Methane could be a candidate. Animals produce it during digestion. The images on the screen of Westeros show dragons are keen on eating sheep. However, our methane-fuelled dragons would need to have a diet and digestive system more like that of a cow to produce enough gas to burn down a city.
There’s also a problem with the storage of sufficient amounts of methane gas. A typical methane cylinder might be rated for 150 atmospheres of pressure, while even a bloated gut can only tolerate a little over one atmosphere. So there’s no biological basis for non-marine animals to store gasses under high pressure.
A better option would be a liquid. Ethanol could be an option. Maybe our dragons hold a vat of fermenting yeast in their guts, or they could have a metabolic system similar to Devil’s Hole pupfish, which live in hot springs in Nevada, US. Under low oxygen conditions, these fish switch to a form of respiration which produces ethanol.
However, storage is once again an issue. Ethanol quickly passes through biological membranes, so keeping it at high concentrations and ready to deploy on the “dracarys” signal (which translates to “dragonfire” in the fictitious language High Valyrian) would require some otherworldly biology.
So, if we are sticking to explanations with at least one foot in real-world biology, then my preferred option is something more oil-based. As anyone who has accidentally set fire to a frying pan knows, this can be a source of roaring flames. There is a biological basis for this in the fulmar gull.
They produce energy-rich stomach oil that they regurgitate to feed their chicks. The oil also serves as a deterrent. When threatened, the fulmar vomits the sticky, stinky oil over predators. Thankfully, the gulls have not yet evolved a way to ignite their vomit.
You don’t want to get on the wrong side of a fulmar.
Feeding the flames
Now that we have a fuel source, let’s turn our attention to the oxidising agent. As with most fires, this will most probably be oxygen. However, it will take more than oxygen in the surrounding air to generate a jet of pressurised flaming oil hot enough to melt an iron throne. And it would have to be well mixed in with the fuel. The better the supply of oxygen, the hotter the flame.
A dragon could draw on some chemistry used by the bombardier beetle. This insect has evolved reservoirs adapted to store hydrogen peroxide (the stuff you might use to bleach your hair). When threatened, the beetle pushes hydrogen peroxide into a vestibule containing enzymes that rapidly decompose the hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen.
This is an exothermic reaction, which transfers energy to the surroundings, and in this case raises the temperature of the mixture to almost boiling point. The reaction is so aggressive it is sometimes used to propel rockets. The increase in pressure caused by the rapid production of oxygen and the boiling water forces the noxious mixture out of a vent in the beetle’s abdomen and towards its prey or threat.
Bombardier beetles store hydrogen peroxide in their bodies.Johannviloria/Shutterstock
If employed by a dragon, this reaction has a few nice features. It would create the high pressure needed to drive the jet of oily fuel, the exothermic reaction would heat the oils making them more ready to combust, and most importantly, it would generate oxygen that would drive the combustion reaction.
All the dragon would need is some sort of biological equivalent of a petrol engine carburetor to mix the oil with the oxygen and create an explosive mix. As a bonus, the erupting mixture would probably form a fine mist of oil droplets, like an aerosol, which would ignite all the better.
The spark
Finally, we need a spark to ignite the mix. For this, I’m going to suggest the dragons have evolved an electric organ similar to that found in many fish, particularly electric eels.
These can generate short pulses of up to 600 volts, easily enough to create a spark across a short air gap. If these sparks discharged across the ducts at the back of a dragon’s mouth, they could ignite the high-pressure jet of oil and oxygen.
While we’ll never see a dragon unleashing torrents of flames outside the realm of fiction, it’s intriguing to ponder the science behind fantasy. So, next time you witness a Targaryen’s command of “dracarys,” think about the biology behind that magical inferno.
Mark Lorch, Professor of Science Communication and Chemistry, University of Hull
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Broken records: How WaPo and the NYT are recklessly spinning false political narratives
D. Earl Stephens
June 22, 2024
Photo by Mark König on Unsplash
I am seeing the same dangerous narrative from the political, horse-race, corporate media as you are, folks, and it would be entertaining and laughable if it wasn’t so damn dangerous.
If you perused only the headlines of two of the most influential newspapers in this nation, The Washington Post and The New York Times, you might come around to believing that President Joe Biden is in deep trouble, and the felon and serial liar, who does nothing but attack America 24/7, Donald Trump, is somehow in front as we crash toward the most important election of our lives.
All of it defies belief, of course, but that’s exactly how these two baloney-and-cheese dealers like it. They want you, the suckers (er, readers) who are slopping through their endless menu of tasteless political treats to believe they are seeing things through the thick walls of their offices that you somehow aren’t in your communities where the voting actually takes place.
They lean on polls that may or may not be right, and that they themselves don’t trust, and the opinions of political experts and “insiders” who have made handsome livings being wrong approximately half the time to spin their tales that are heavily disguised as news stories.
These papers occasionally pull themselves away from the safety of their cocoons inside the Washington Beltway to visit suburban diners, where they have decided all the undecided, disillusioned voters go to eat in the seven battleground states they tell us 27 times a day will decide the election.
They do literally everything they can to avoid doing what they absolutely should be doing as alleged robust news operations, and newspapers of record: reporting facts and educating the voters who they haughtily seem to think they understand so well.
Rather than relentlessly reporting about what is at stake in this election, so that our electorate can be informed, they trumpet how little these people know, or in many cases even care.
It’s like they get off on belittling voters, rather than educating them, which is the most important thing any good newspaper can do.
Rather than reporting on the enormous consequences of this election and major issues at stake such as democracy, healthcare, social security, women's rights, our vote, environment and Supreme Court, just to name a few … they’d rather tell us what voters are thinking, as if they really have a single clue.
Lately, and mostly, they are telling us that Joe Biden is in deep, deep trouble with these people, which is akin to starting fires all over town, and then reporting how poorly the fire department is at extinguishing them all.
They seem to get off on watching people react to a narrative they have helped set. It’s morbid, it really is, but apparently not beneath them.
Before typing farther and citing a couple of deliciously appalling examples of their journalistic malfeasance, I’ll break any suspense you might be harboring and tell you why they are doing all this: There is HUGE money in it.
Fear and suspense sells, baby. Only Trump loves the low-information voters more.
So now I’ll quickly bring you just two examples of this terrifying nonsense I came across on Monday — one from The Washington Post, and the other from The New York Times that is so obviously over the top it’s a marvel it didn’t bleed out all over the newsroom floor before publication. The thing needed bandages not editors.
Apparently, some reporters and editors at The Post had a get-out-of-the-office day, went out on an exciting adventure, and returned to dedicate about 100 column inches to people they have called “The Deciders.”
Ooooooo … “The Deciders” ... It sounds like some bad TV series from the ‘80s.
Tucked under their headline: “Who are the deciders and what makes them tick” they made sure to quickly make clear what doesn’t make a Decider tick: voting.
According to the endless piece, this powerful non-voting bloc comprises people who “voted in only one of the last two presidential elections; are between ages 18 and 25; registered to vote since 2022; did not definitely plan to vote for either Biden or Trump this year; or switched their support between 2016 and 2020.”
The piece is replete with comments that these “Deciders” may or may not take back two days from now. They literally could do anything, but for now they are plenty undecided about everything, except for the fact they think they are mostly leaning toward Trump, unless and until a stiff wind blows in and they change their minds.
These are the people The Post has decided will be deciding who the next President of the United States will be.
What The Post is obviously hoping is that they never learn a single thing about what is at stake in this election, and will do everything they can to make sure they don’t. It is much more entertaining to watch “The Deciders” twist in the wind armed only with heavy doubt about what they may or may not do with their vote in November — and if they decide to bother voting at all.
At any rate, the suspense should be killing the rest of us, because The Deciders have the fate of the free world in their slippery hands. What will they be thinking a month from now … two months from now?
I bet even they haven’t decided yet.
Not to be outdone Monday, The New York Times Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy tried to keep up with his own run-away story headlined “Why the election is slipping away from Joe Biden right now”
Whoa. Talk about having the pulse of the election.
I was literally holding my breath because I was about to learn why everything was slipping away from Biden RIGHT NOW in the middle of June.
My heart was beating inside my head before I got to the part where Healy boldly put his entire reputation on the line by typing this:
“When this spring began, on March 19, Trump had a polling average lead of 2 percentage points over Biden nationally, according to Real Clear Politics. As spring ends, Trump leads by about 1 percent. I think a successful spring for Biden would have had him ahead.
I think that paragraph needs a moment of silence …
Go ahead, read it again. I’ll wait.
The writer thinks that because Joe Biden is gaining ground the election is slipping away from him. This would make sense in a flat world that was round, where no means yes, up means down, undecided voters are called deciders, and Healy is to be taken at all seriously ever again.
Sorry, but how in the hell isn’t the headline on Healy’s fable, “Biden making up ground in new polling”
And it gets even worse with this sad and pathetic story where worse means better, because he somehow waded into the looming Presidential Debate to buttress his narrative that the sky is falling on Biden, while he gains ground he allegedly lost to Trump.
Read this whopper:
“Trump isn’t doing much campaigning prep, according to my colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein, but the expectations for him are lower than for Biden. Many voters expect Trump to be the same unhinged guy he was in the 2020 debates, ranting and talking over Biden. Trump can afford to spend time in must-win Pennsylvania while Biden tries to ensure his summer is better than his spring.
Now read THAT slop again. I’ll wait.
Healy and his newsroom buddies, who presumably lunch together and tell each other knock-knock jokes when they’re not busy filling the NYT news hole, have decided that the debates will be worthless because Trump will just be the same unhinged guy he was in the 2020 debates which then is a tremendous advantage to him because it frees him up to do some unhinged campaigning in Pennsylvania, while Biden continues to take his job as president very seriously by preparing for a debate he should win, because he’s not an unhinged guy, but is nonetheless watching an election he is gaining in slip away in June …
How much more of this are we supposed to take?
I haven’t mustered the guts to read either paper yet this morning, because I thought it was important to think straight while I rattled off this column. I am prepared to predict, however, that they are busy spinning new narratives rather than educating the American voters who they so clearly hold in such contempt.
Sotomayor: Ruling against foreign spouses will 'most heavily' harm same-sex couples
Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams
June 22, 2024
Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (Commonwealth Club/Flickr)
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned Friday that her right-wing colleagues' finding that American citizens have no right to have their foreign spouses admitted to the United States will disproportionately harm same-sex couples—and could foreshadow a future reversal of federal LGBTQ+ marriage equality.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Department of State v. Muñoz that Sandra Muñoz, a civil rights attorney and U.S. citizen, "does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country."
As Courthouse News Service explained:
[Muñoz] argued that her right to live with her noncitizen husband, Luis Ascencio-Cordero, in the United States was implicit in the "liberty" protected by the Fifth Amendment, and that denying his visa request deprived her of that liberty and violated her due process rights.
The consular officer who denied her husband's application violated her right to due process by not disclosing the reason her husband was deemed "inadmissible,'" which opens the officer's decision to judicial review, despite visa denials normally being unreviewable.
Muñoz later found out during litigation in federal court that the decision was based on the officer's finding that Ascencio-Cordero's tattoos were associated with the transnational gang MS-13 and his concern that he would commit crimes upon entering the country.
In her dissent, Sotomayor cited Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
"The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition," Sotomayor wrote. "The majority today chooses a broad holding on marriage over a narrow one on procedure."
Sotomayor contended that her conservative colleagues were committing the "same fatal error" in "requiring too 'careful [a] description of the asserted fundamental liberty interest'" as they did in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 ruling that erased half a century of federal abortion rights.
"The majority's failure to respect the right to marriage in this country consigns U.S. citizens to rely on the fickle grace of other countries' immigration laws to vindicate one of the 'basic civil rights of man' and live alongside their spouses," she added. "Same-sex couples may be forced to relocate to countries that do not recognize same-sex marriage, or even those that criminalize homosexuality."
" Obergefell rejected what the majority does today as 'inconsistent with the approach this court has used in discussing fundamental rights' of 'marriage and intimacy'," Sotomayor opined. "The burden will fall most heavily on same-sex couples and others who lack the ability, for legal or financial reasons, to make a home in the noncitizen spouse's country of origin."
Sotomayor's assertion that the majority's decision erodes LGBTQ+ marriage protections follows far-right Justice Clarence Thomas' suggestion in Dobbs that the high court should reexamine the right to same-sex marriage—and even the abolition of laws banning sexual relations between adults of the same sex—at some future date.
