Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! And happy March. For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s get this month off to a good start with a quick roundup of some of the science and tech stories you might have missed last week.
First, an unfortunate public health update. Last Wednesday health officials confirmed a death from measles in West Texas. That marks the first fatality in the region’s ongoing outbreak, which has now infected more than 120 people across nine counties. It also marks the first death from measles within the U.S. since 2015. According to a news release from the Texas Department of State Health Services, the death was a “school-aged child who was not vaccinated.”
The measles virus can survive in the air for up to two hours and is highly contagious. The best way to protect yourself and your kids is to make sure everyone’s vaccinations are up to date. The rarity of measles-related deaths in the U.S. doesn’t mean the virus isn’t dangerous; we’ve just done a very good job of vaccinating kids against it over the past few decades. Now those vaccination rates are slipping, and we’re facing the consequences. For more context on how falling vaccination rates have contributed to the severity of this outbreak, check out last week’s news roundup episode.
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Speaking of vaccines: federal health officials have apparently canceled a meeting critical to the flu shot development process. At the meeting, which was set for March 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee was meant to discuss which strains of the flu virus should be used in next year’s vaccines. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, this committee makes the final call on which viral strains go into our vaccines. The CDC’s website states the following, “Information about the circulation of influenza viruses and available vaccine viruses is summarized and presented to VRBPAC in February or March of each year for the U.S. decision about which viruses to include in the upcoming season’s flu vaccine.” Because flu viruses are always mutating and changing, having an updated assessment of which strains pose the biggest threat is crucial for rolling out an effective vaccine.
Members of the committee received an email canceling the meeting last Wednesday. On Thursday a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told The Hill pharmaceutical manufacturers would still receive recommendations in time to create updated vaccines for next flu season. The World Health Organization met last week to do its own review of the flu data, and its findings often inform the FDA committee’s recommendations—so fortunately, it’s not like the FDA will be taking a shot in the dark.
Meanwhile, last week the World Health Organization reported two clusters of illness and death from an unknown disease in the northwest Democratic Republic of Congo. As of February 15 there had been 431 cases and 53 deaths in total between both outbreaks, according to WHO. The first outbreak, reported in January, involved 12 cases and eight deaths, with symptoms progressing from fever to hemorrhagic illness. That outbreak was traced back to three children under the age of 5 who reportedly consumed bat meat before becoming ill. Samples from infected individuals have all tested negative for Ebola and Marburg.
A second, larger cluster has since been reported in another village in the DRC. As of February 15 there had been 45 deaths out of 419 reported cases, with individuals experiencing symptoms like fever, pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Almost half of the fatalities occurred within 48 hours of a person presenting symptoms. While there’s no known connection between these outbreaks as of yet, samples from individuals in the second cluster have also turned up negative for Ebola and Marburg. WHO reports that health teams are investigating other potential causes and that the villages where these outbreaks are taking place have limited testing and surveillance infrastructure. It’s possible that these deaths can be explained by an existing illness or that they’re due to some kind of toxic-substance exposure. Late last year another unknown disease responsible for an outbreak in the DRC turned out to be severe malaria.
Now let’s head into space for—more health news, actually.
You’ve probably seen or read at least one piece of science fiction about mysterious space microbes infecting humankind. But in a study published last Thursday in the journal Cell, researchers suggest that the International Space Station might actually be too clean. After testing more than 800 samples swabbed from different surfaces of the space station, scientists found that microbial diversity on the ISS is quite low. They compared it to the sterility of a hospital, with lots of disinfectant use.
That might be great for avoiding infections in people recovering from surgeries, but most of us on Earth benefit from regular exposure to a variety of microbes. And unlike a hospital here on the ground, where lots of people come and go, bringing their own microbial passengers with them—and where air circulates in from the microbial melting pot that is the outside world—the ISS gets most of its microbes from the skin of astronauts. The researchers noted in the study that astronauts often complain of persistent rashes, atypical allergies, immune dysfunction and fungal or bacterial infections. The study says previous research has tied those sorts of issues in the general population to a lack of microbial diversity, so paying more attention to the tiny critters living on the ISS could help.
Speaking of space: is anyone up for a beach trip on Mars? Apparently all you’ll need is a time machine. And a spaceship, of course. And, like, some kind of space suit you can also swim in. Anyway, the point is that Mars apparently once had sandy beaches, at least according to a study published last Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
China’s Zhurong rover used ground-penetrating radar to peek below the Martian surface, and it measured layers of sand some 30 to 115 feet down. The authors of the new study say this sand forms smooth, sloped layers similar to those that would accumulate on the shore of a beach on Earth. The researchers say their findings strengthen the case for the existence of a true ocean on Mars in its distant past.
We’ve also got a quick update on asteroid 2024 YR4. Great news! It no longer poses a statistically significant threat to our planet. We’ll have to find something else to look forward to in the 2030s. For more info on why the story about this asteroid developed and fizzled out so quickly, check out our episode from February 12.
And now for something completely different! Let’s wrap things up by talking about how a human brain can turn to glass.
Back in 2020 researchers described some unique remains from a victim of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in what’s now Italy. The researchers determined that glassy black fragments extracted from the unfortunate Vesuvian’s skull were likely brain matter. The team speculated that the brain went through a process called vitrification, where extremely high heat followed by rapid cooling can turn material into glass. Glass can only form when the liquid within a material cools fast enough to avoid crystallization as it hardens.
A study published last Thursday in Scientific Reports concludes that a very hot, short-lived ash cloud did the deed.
Scientists analyzed the chunks of supposed brain glass and concluded that a brief temperature spike above 950 degrees Fahrenheit [510 degrees Celsius], followed by a swift cooldown, would be sufficient to vitrify a human brain. That ruled out the pyroclastic flow of the eruption, a.k.a. the stereotypical rush of gas, ash and rock you see coming out of an erupting volcano, which wouldn’t be quite hot enough or dissipate quickly enough. But a sudden burst of super-heated ash could reach the requisite temperatures before vanishing. The researchers say the victim’s skull potentially played another important role in this unusual preservation. The braincase may have provided just enough protection to keep the ash cloud from completely destroying the soft tissue inside.
That’s all for this week’s science news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
