April 2011

Mothballs: A Danger to Babies

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Mothballs have always been disgusting to me. My dear grandmother used to keep them in her home and I always associate the smell of them with visiting her trailer, the scent merging with the bean bag toss and other few games she kept on hand for us girls.

It turns out that my olfactory dissatisfaction was right on the nose. Some ingredients in mothballs have been proven to be deadly. Recently a baby’s death was attributed to mothballs, as were two instances of brain damage. The ingredient, naphthalene, causes damage to red blood cells. The other active ingredient often found in moth balls, paradichlorobenzene, is also considered toxic.

MSG probably won't kill you

   

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    Anyone who has ever watched the popular Internet short, Teen Girl Squad, the rather sadistic cartoon about various ways that the teens die (pecked to death by a bird, etc…really, it’s not as morbid as it seems) knows that one of the ways to die is to be MSG’d! I’m moving to Thailand next year and have been warned that one of the most common staples of cuisine is the dreaded MSG.  Since I don’t want to die like a cartoon stick figure or fall asleep after like I do when I eat MSG-flavored cheap Chinese food, I thought I would learn about the health risks of this well-known, but little understood, food enhancer.

20,000 New Species of Ocean Life Discovered

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After an entire decade of collecting data, the world finally issued its first ocean census last year, and the results are nothing short of amazing. Estimates of known species went up from 230,000 to 250,000, indicating that at least 20,000 species we didn’t know about before have been discovered. (Of course, researchers still maintain that there are hundreds of thousands of species—even millions—that we still have yet to catalog at all.)

New Particle Discovered

While this news sounds like something one might hear in an Iron Man sequel, researchers believe they may have discovered a new particle, or force of nature.  An atom smasher (something I must admit that I’ve never even heard of) from Fermilab physics laboratory in Batavia, Illinois called the Tevatron (which sounds like an extra from Transformers) has stimulated thousands of particle collisions, making what scientists believe may be a new particle.

It should be noted that these findings are not conclusive, and that the new particle has yet to be proven for sure. If it proves to be true, however, it means big news for the science community. It may result in the complete transformation of cosmology and high energy physics, say some researchers.

Your Brain on Politics

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When you try to understand why someone who is obviously intelligent and well informated still has such a different perspective than yours, sometimes you suspect that their brain must work differently than yours. A recent study on brain differences between Democrats and Republicans suggests that you may be right if your disagreement is a political one.

Half-lives of Some Radioisotopes

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The radioactive isotopes of the elements vary enormously in their half-lives or the amount of time it takes for half of a particular isotope to decay into another isotope. The main radioactive elements released from the Fukushima nuclear disaster vary in half-life from a few days for Iodine – 131 to 30 years for Cesium 137. Basically, some areas around the plant will have to be abandoned for decades.