THE ODD DISCOVERY

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

I know we did a medical story last week but I wanted to share a discovery about the human body that has me and a lot of other people scratching our heads. I always tell the kids that one of the things I like about my field is that it changes all the time. What we thought last week may not be what we think tomorrow. This story definitely proves THAT scientific theory.

We all know about taste buds and the science behind how we enjoy that empanada, but there have been several interesting changes lately in our understanding of taste receptors. For one thing, the Japanese have discovered a new taste receptor in addition to sweet, sour, bitter and salty. They called it umami. And more recently, we’ve been told that the diagram we all saw in biology that isolated the different taste receptors to different parts of the tongue is wrong. Your taste buds for the different flavors are actually scattered all across the tongue.

But now, scientists have come up with a real shocker. You have bitter taste receptors in your lungs. And we still don’t know why. But what the researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore learned about the how these receptors work could give us a new and effective treatment for asthma and other lung diseases.

The finding was so unexpected, the doctors didn’t even believe it themselves when they first identified the taste receptors on the lung bronchi. The receptors were found by accident when the doctors were looking for muscle receptors that regulate the contraction and relaxation of the lung airways. In asthma, the smooth muscles of the airways contract, which diminishes the flow of air.

The taste receptors they found in the lungs are the same as those on the tongue. The tongue’s receptors are clustered in taste buds, which send signals to the brain. The researchers say the taste receptors in the lung are not clustered into buds and they don’t send signals to the brain, but they do respond to substances that have a bitter taste.

Since most plant poisons are bitter, the researchers figured that the lung airways would contract as a warning when a bitter substance was detected. Instead, much to their surprise, the bitter compounds worked in the exact opposite way. They caused the smooth muscle to relax and opened the airway better than any known drug used for asthma.

Quinine and chloroquine have been used to treat completely different diseases (such as malaria), but are also very bitter. Both of these compounds opened contracted airways profoundly in laboratory models. Even saccharin, which has a bitter aftertaste, caused the airways to relax.

The researchers think that it’s unlikely that eating bittermelon will help your asthma, but they do think that bitter compounds could be made into aerosols and then used in an inhaler.

So why do the lungs have bitter taste receptors? No one knows, but it’s the perfect example of the great advances in science being made when someone says “Hmmm . . . . .that’s odd . . . . . “

This is a slide of lung taste receptors through a microscope. Red bands are receptors, blue dots are nuclei. (Credit: University of Maryland School of Medicine)

JUST ANOTHER NAIL

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

There’s not much interesting happening in the sky tonight as far as satellites go and since the medicine file is bulging, I thought we’d do a health story.

So . . . you’re still smoking, eh? The lung cancer, the colon cancer, the strokes , the heart disease, none of that is enough to stop you. Because everybody dies, right? But wouldn’t you like to live out your last years and NOT be a dribbling vegetable?

According to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, heavy smoking in middle age is associated with more than double the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia two decades later.

Smoking is responsible for several million deaths per year from causes such as heart disease and cancer, according to background information in the article. Researchers in Finland analyzed data from 21,123 members of a health care system who participated in a survey between 1978 and 1985, when they were 50 to 60 years old. Diagnoses of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia were tracked from Jan. 1, 1994 (when participants were an average of 71.6 years old), through July 31, 2008.

A total of 5,367 participants (25.4 percent) were diagnosed with dementia, including 1,136 with Alzheimer’s disease and 416 with vascular dementia. Those who smoked more than two packs per day in middle age had an elevated risk of dementia overall and also of each subtype, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, compared with non-smokers. Former smokers, or those who smoked less than half a pack per day, did not appear to be at increased risk. Associations between smoking and dementia didn’t vary by race or sex.

Smoking is a well-established risk factor for stroke, and may contribute to the risk of vascular dementia through similar mechanisms, the authors note. In addition, smoking contributes to oxidative stress and inflammation, believed to be important in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. "It is possible that smoking affects the development of dementia via vascular and neurodegenerative pathways," the authors write.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the amount of midlife smoking on long-term risk of dementia and dementia subtypes in a large multiethnic cohort," they conclude. "Our study suggests that heavy smoking in middle age increases the risk of both Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia for men and women across different race groups. The large detrimental impact that smoking already has on public health has the potential to become even greater as the population worldwide ages and dementia prevalence increases."

New research finds that heavy smoking in middle age appears to be associated with more than double the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia two decades later. (Credit: iStockphoto/Mark Fairey)

So what are you waiting for? Stub out that coffin nail and make it your last one!

TALAYERU

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone! Remember I told you last week that most of the ‘satellites’ that you see pass over your heads at night aren’t satellites at all but space junk? Well, that certainly holds true tonight. Sixteen objects will pass over your heads between 6:39 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. and only three of them are satellites.

The first one is TRMM which stands for Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission. TRMM is looking down and not up, but what it’s spying on has important consequences for you because they use the data from TRMM to predict weather and track typhoons. TRIMM will appear in the northwest just before 7:00, track toward the east and will only get 30 degrees above the horizon. At magnitude 2.6, it won’t be particularly bright.

The second satellite is Helios-1B and despite its name, it’s not a Sun observer. It will appear above the southeastern horizon at about 7:20 and track toward the northeast. That should tell you it’s a spy satellite, but it’s not Russian, Chinese or US. That spy satellite was launched by the French. Sacre bleu!

It won’t be very bright, but that’s OK because at virtually the same time as it’s tracking 45 degrees above the eastern horizon, the International Space Station will appear above the southwestern horizon (7:20 p.m.). It will track 30 degrees above the horizon and disappear in the southeast only three minutes later, but it will shine at an incredible -2.3 magnitude making it very easy to see if the clouds let you.

The other 13 objects are all third stage rockets. And of course, that’s only the big stuff you can see. There’s an INCREDIBLE amount of junk up there and thanks to a sharp-eyed reader who saw this information and sent it to me, I can now tell you that someone has plans to do something about it. And no, it’s not NASA.

TALAYA IN SPACE

How do you get rid of the small debris in space? It’s estimated that there are 10 million individual pieces of debris in orbit, ranging from defunct satellites and spent fuel tanks, to collision fragments and lost tools.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and a 100 year old Japanese maker of fishing nets, the Nitto Seimo company plan to place an ultra-thin metal net in space. It will be cast by the satellite that launches it and it will unfurl until it’s more than a mile in diameter.

Technical details are scarce, but the talaya is apparently made up of “three layered metal threads, each measuring 1mm diameter and intertwined with fibers as thin as human hair”.

As the metal net captures the litter, it will become electrically charged and be pulled back into the atmosphere by the Earth’s magnetic field.  Then the net and the metal junk it contains will burn up in the upper atmosphere. 

The Nitto Seimo company became famous in 1925 for inventing the first machine to make strong knotless fishing nets.  The company and the Japanese space agency plan to launch the talaya into space in about two years. 

So when you go out and watch the ISS pass overhead tonight, just imagine the approaching day when the talayeru satellite casts its net over some very strange fish!

WHAT’S UP?

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone! Although there are no guarantees, it looks like we’ve returned to our normal ‘dry season’ weather. Clear skies and gentle breezes, the ‘personification’ of the tropics. And you can bet our friends in more northern climes are envious as they dig out from the snowstorm of the century (so far, at least).

But what was with that horrible weather here last week? All the mushrooms in my back yard say that it was NOT ‘dry’ season last week. That, my friends, was a blizzard. It was a huge winter storm that was so powerful that it punched all the way down to 13 degrees north. That misty ‘rain’ that fell from the totally overcast sky most of the time wasn’t rain. Raindrops are never that tiny. That was melted snow.

I saw in the news this morning that several reptiles died in a zoo in northern Mexico. Neglect? Starvation? Nope. They FROZE to death in MEXICO. My friend who lives in Australia has been fortunate to avoid the massive flooding and Cyclone Yasi, but she’s been complaining about the heat. It’s been in the 40’s south of Sydney where she lives. And in case your Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion skills are a little rusty, 40 degrees C. is 104 degrees F!

Let’s see. Blizzards in the north (and even here sometimes!) and heat waves in the south. Aren’t you glad you live in Paradise?

And since the blizzard is gone and the skies have cleared, it’s a fine time to go star-gazing. Of course, from my inbox, a lot of you like to satellite-gaze too. I use the marvelous website www.heavens-above.com for all my satellite information and I’ve been visiting there for many years now. Most satellites pass over us because we’re so close to the equator. But that’s not all that’s up there.

Orbiting space objects are only visible for a two-hour window after sunset and before sunrise because the Sun’s light has to shine on them in order for us to see them. If you and some friends go outside and keep a close watch on the sky between 6:46 and 8:04 tonight, you’ll see nineteen ‘satellites’ pass over your heads.

But here’s the interesting part. Only two of them are satellites. The other 17 are junk. When you put most satellites in orbit, the third stage booster rocket goes into orbit too and typically, the third stage rockets are much bigger, brighter and easier to see than the satellites themselves.

So which ones are the satellites? Well, between 7:12 and 7:21 you can wave to the Russians as Cosmos 2242 passes overhead to the east. Cosmos 2242 will appear in the south, pass 65 degrees overhead to the east and disappear in the northeast. Remember what I told you about satellites that travel from south to north or north to south? Yup, that’s a spy bird and it probably takes pictures of Anderson or Big Navy every time it passes during the day.

The other satellite is the last one you’ll see tonight. It will appear in the western sky at 8:04 and climb to 65 degrees above the western horizon before it disappears into the Earth’s shadow.

That’s the Swift satellite and it’s looking out, not down. It’s a US science satellite that’s telling us all about gamma-ray bursts, those mysterious and massive energy eruptions in deep space. Swift has allowed astronomers to pin down most of the sources for these astounding and brief energy bursts.

So have a look for those moving spots of light tonight. Science research, spying on the neighbors and pure junk.