Danger Dust

What happens to a dead body in an extremely cold environment? Does it decompose? How do these conditions affect how forensic scientists understand when the person died?

Estimating time of death, also called the post-mortem interval, is a complex task. It plays an important role in forensic investigations, as it can provide critical insights into the timeline of events leading up to a person’s death. This information can narrow down potential scenarios and suspects, aiding in the resolution of criminal cases.

A multitude of factors are at play at a death scene, ranging from environmental conditions to the individual’s health status prior to death. Historically, scientists have estimated time of death by observing post-mortem physical and biological changes in the body, such as stiffening, fluid collection and cooling.

These methods are limited, however, by their variability and dependence on external factors. Calculating the post-mortem interval became more precise with the advent of molecular biology. But it’s still a challenging task, especially in extreme cold weather conditions. There is often a lack of obvious signs of decomposition on a frozen body during the first months after death.

Out-of-body experiences, such as near-death experiences, can have a "transformative" effect on people's ability to experience empathy and connect with others, a scientific paper from University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers explains.

"Empathy is a fundamental aspect of human interaction that allows individuals to connect deeply with others, fostering trust and understanding."

How out-of-body experiences affect empathy

Weiler's paper examines the possibility that the dramatic increases in empathy seen in people who undergo out-of-body experiences may result from what is known as "ego dissolution"—the loss of the sense of self. In these instances, people feel they have been severed from their physical form and have connected with the universe at a deeper level.

Sometimes known as "ego death" or "ego loss," this state can be brought on by near-death experiences, hallucinogenic drugs and other causes. But people who undergo it often report that their viewpoint on the world, and their place in it, is radically changed.

Exploring the transformative potential of out-of-body experiences: A pathway to enhanced empathy

Highlights

• Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) have a profound impact on individuals’ lives.

• A persisting effect of OBEs is heightened prosocial behavior such as empathy.

• We propose that OBEs may engender these changes through ego dissolution.

• Ego dissolution fosters a sense of unity and interconnectedness with others.

• The temporoparietal junction and the Default Mode Network may mediate this process.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763424002331?via%3Dihub

Illegal mining for critical minerals needed for the global renewable energy transition is increasingly driving deforestation in Indigenous lands in the Amazon.

In recent years, these illegal miners, who are often self-employed, mobile and working covertly, have expanded their gold mining operations to include cassiterite or “black gold”, a critical mineral essential for the renewable energy transition. Cassiterite is used to make coatings for solar panels, wind turbines and other electronic devices. Brazil, one of the world’s largest exporters of this mineral, is now scrambling to manage this new threat to its Amazon forests.

Added pressure

When crackdowns on illegal gold mining took place in Brazil in the 1970s and ’80s, miners moved en masse to nearby Guyana and Suriname, taking their environmentally destructive technologies with them. Illegal miners of cassiterite are now following a similar pattern, showing that the global effort to reduce deforestation cannot simply focus on a single commodity as a driver of deforestation on the ground.

On its 150th anniversary, the crash will be remembered with a series of events and the dedication of a memorial plaque at Thorpe St Andrew. Beyond the anniversary, the disaster can also help us understand which people British society chose to remember, then and now, and how difficult pasts might be addressed.

The focus on the Thorpe crash obscured a deadly situation: working on the railways was far more harmful than travelling on them. In 1874, 211 passengers died on Britain and Ireland’s railways. In contrast, 788 workers were killed. This proportion continued deep into the 20th century. So why wasn’t more heard about staff casualties, at the time and since?

Some of the reasons why passenger crashes like Thorpe were such big news remain in effect today. They were undoubtedly spectacular, and often happened in publicly accessible locations, so people and press could get to the wreckage. They affected relatively large numbers of people at once. Crashes were also rare – railway travel was, and is, incredibly safe.

In contrast, railway worker accidents were not newsworthy. They happened daily, mostly in ones and twos and largely out of sight of the public. Though cumulatively far more numerous, they offered no spectacle.

Hopes that device may improve diagnosis and monitoring of conditions such as lung and kidney disease

Scientists say they have created a “smart mask” that can analyse the wearer’s breath and detect tell-tale signs of disease.

Researchers hope the device – which can beam its data to an app over Bluetooth – will offer an affordable and convenient way to capture and immediately analyse breath biomarkers related to respiratory and metabolic processes.

They say it has the potential to improve efforts to diagnose conditions such as lung disease early and to monitor conditions and support tailored treatment plans.

Improving indoor air quality is essential in preventing occupational lung diseases, especially in at-risk industries, through proper ventilation, protective equipment and strategic preventive measures.

How Air Quality Affects the Lungs

Poor air quality can negatively affect the lungs. Short-term effects can result in frequent coughing, difficulty breathing and wheezing. A toxic atmosphere can also elicit immediate symptoms such as chest pain and phlegm production.

Top Industries at Risk of Lung Disease

Due to air pollution in natural spaces, outside occupations are at risk of lung diseases. However, volatile organic compounds are more common indoors, with levels up to a thousand times higher than outdoors. This covers a variety of industrial spaces, including warehousing, administrative offices, hospitals and schools.

A study on adult asthma decided to investigate the occupations associated with three different subtypes. It first looked into atopic asthma, which is a condition triggered by allergens. Chemical industry workers have an increased risk of this subtype, along with food processors like bakers and waiters. 

Conclusions:  Silica dust exposure correlates with an increased risk of developing UC, especially in men, and the risk seems to increase with the duration and degree of exposure. Conversely, silica dust exposure correlates positively with the risk of developing CD in women.

Strengths and limitations of this study

• This case–control study includes anyone who was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis in Sweden in the years 2007–2016, and not just a selection.

• Sweden maintains high-quality registers that cover the entire population, together with unique personal identification numbers that can link patient data across different nationwide registers.

• The diagnoses were based on the data recorded in the national non-primary outpatient visits register, which is significantly more accurate than diagnoses based on questionnaires.

• This study lacks information on potential confounders such as smoking habits; however, cases and controls are matched based on age, sex and geographical area and therefore one could assume the distribution of these confounders among the cases and controls.

Silicosis is claiming thousands of lives in Tanzania. Workers in cement plants and those employed in the concrete blocks manufacturing value chain are particularly vulnerable to this deadly disease as many work without adequate safety gear.

Conducted by the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), the study emphasizes that cement manufacturing processes generate dust containing silica and other toxic materials that can severely impact the respiratory systems of exposed workers. 

In Tanzania, respiratory diseases rank among the top ten causes of death. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) accounts for six percent of deaths, while lower respiratory infections account for five percent, according to the report.

What was odd about H1N1 Russian flu pandemic

Here the story takes yet another turn. Microbiologist Peter Palese applied what was then a novel technique called RNA oligonucleotide mapping to study the genetic makeup of the new H1N1 Russian flu virus. He and his colleagues grew the virus in the lab, then used RNA-cutting enzymes to chop the viral genome into hundreds of pieces. By spreading the chopped RNA in two dimensions based on size and electrical charge, the RNA fragments created a unique fingerprint-like map of spots.

Much to Palese’s surprise, when they compared the spot pattern of the 1977 H1N1 Russian flu with a variety of other influenza viruses, this “new” virus was essentially identical to older human influenza H1N1 strains that had gone extinct in the early 1950s.

So, the 1977 Russian flu virus was actually a strain that had disappeared from the planet a quarter century early, then was somehow resurrected back into circulation. This explained why it attacked only younger people – older people had already been infected and become immune when the virus circulated decades ago in its earlier incarnation.

But how did the older strain come back from extinction?

A sobering history lesson

The resurrection of an extinct but dangerous human-adapted H1N1 virus came about as the world was scrambling to prevent what was perceived to be the imminent emergence of a swine H1N1 influenza pandemic. People were so concerned about the possibility of a new pandemic that they inadvertently caused one. It was a self-fulfilling-prophecy pandemic.

A fuel tanker has collided with another truck in Nigeria, causing an explosion that killed at least 48 people, according to the country’s emergency response agency.

The fuel tanker was also carrying cattle in the Agaie area in north-central Niger state and at least 50 of them were burned alive.

With the absence of an efficient railway system to transport cargo, fatal truck accidents are common along most of the major roads in Nigeria – Africa’s most populous country, with more than 220 million residents.

According to experts, the main causes are reckless driving, poor road conditions and poorly maintained vehicles.

In 2020 alone, there were 1,531 petrol tanker crashes resulting in 535 fatalities and 1,142 injuries, according to Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corps.

Occupational Disease and Women: From the Radium Girls to Garment Workers

All occupational diseases start somewhere. Sometimes they have a well-known history and treatment, as with certain cancers, tuberculosis, and more common stress-related ailments and fractures.

Coal miners develop pneumoconiosis, also known as black lung. Meatpacking and poultry-plant workers get repetitive stress injuries. Other occupational ailments are so specific they almost sound comical: Mad hatter’s disease, which afflicted Victorian-era hat makers who fell victim to mercury poisoning that damaged the nerves and brain (“mad as a hatter,” get it?); workers and artists who used lead-based paint and found themselves poisoned and in pain had painters’ colic; and as potters worked at their kilns, they breathed in tiny shards of silica dust, which lodged in and scarred their lungs, giving them potters’ rot.

No matter what an occupational disease is called, the reality has always been uglier. Sometimes capitalism extracts its pound of flesh metaphorically, and sometimes more literally, but it’s always the workers who pay the price.

Silica Dust

Silica is a mineral found in many common products. Fine silica dust can penetrate deep into the lungs. Prolonged silica dust exposure can contribute to serious health complications, including COPD, emphysema, lung cancer and silicosis.

Silica-Related Diseases

Silica dust exposure may contribute to several serious, debilitating and life-altering health conditions. Lung cancer and silicosis are among the more severe conditions caused by silica dust.

Health Conditions Related to Silica Dust

Autoimmune disorders

Bronchitis

Cardiovascular impairment

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Emphysema

Kidney disease

Lung cancer

Silicosis

Pulmonary silicosis is a debilitating condition that causes the formation of silicotic nodules in the lungs. These lesions tend to group in the upper lobes. They can lead to impaired lung function and eventually death. Silica dust exposure is the only cause of silicosis.

Could raw milk — or a cat — help explain how a person who had no contact with animals caught the virus?

News that a person in Missouri contracted H5 bird flu despite having no known contact with infected animals or birds — in other words, no evident route of infection — raises pressing questions public health officials are surely scurrying to answer.

The rationale for that urgency is this: An unexplained H5 infection raises the possibility of person-to-person spread of a flu virus that has never before circulated in humans, and to which people would not have immunity. And this with a dangerous flu virus that scientists have long feared could someday trigger a pandemic.

To be clear, it is far too soon to conclude this infection can’t be linked to some direct or indirect exposure to infected animals or birds, or to some farm product contaminated with the virus. 

But there are, as we noted, questions that need to be answered, and the sooner the better. Here are five.

By vastly understating the number of heat-related deaths, medical officials make it harder to improve heat safety and save lives

Federal records say that heat caused or contributed to at least 2,300 deaths in 2023. But the counts rely on death certificates filled out by coroners, medical examiners and other doctors, who often don’t consider heat’s potential lethality before certifying cause of death.

Heat is regularly omitted from death certificates of people like Gomez, who was not killed directly by heat but whose heart problems may have been exacerbated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says heat and other extreme weather should be noted on death certificates. The CDC says its tallies are likely severe undercounts and in 2017 urged that natural disasters including heat be included on death certificates even if the event affected a death indirectly.

OP: @[email protected]

“It can resemble overtraining in athletes,” says Professor Nina Vøllestad.

Researchers can argue about a lot. But in one area, researchers worldwide have been remarkably unanimous:

Physical activity is healthy for both body and mind.

Even though intense training can hurt in the moment, the activity has a positive impact on everything from the heart and lungs to cognitive abilities and mood.

Similar positive effects are linked to activity on other levels, such as social activities or various forms of mental training.

But for ME/CFS sufferers, and some patients with other illnesses like long Covid and fibromyalgia, this is often not the case.

Instead, fairly mundane activities can send them to bed for days, with symptoms like extreme fatigue, flu-like feelings, pain, brain fog, and – paradoxically – sleep problems.

This is called PEM – post-exertional malaise.

Post-exertional malaise (PEM)

• Exercise-induced worsening of symptoms is a characteristic feature of ME/CFS. It has also been reported among some long Covid patients and people with fibromyalgia.

• The phenomenon is often referred to as PEM (post-exertional malaise). Some also call it PESE (post-exertional symptom exacerbation) or PENE (post-exertional neuroimmune exhaustion).

• PEM involves a worsening of symptoms after physical, mental, or emotional exertion that would not have caused problems before the illness.

• PEM can be triggered by cognitive, physical, emotional, or social activity.

• PEM can cause a wide range of symptoms. The most common are extreme fatigue, feeling like you have the flu, body aches, sleep disturbances, and cognitive problems like brain fog.

• The symptoms are often delayed and are typically worst 12 to 48 hours after the activity. They can last for days or even weeks. In the worst case, PEM can lead to long-term worsening of the illness.

The 1970s: a critical decade

One company intimately involved with the emerging science of climate change was Exxon (now ExxonMobil). Scientists working for this oil and gas giant were modelling Earth’s climate in the 1970s to understand how the increasing carbon content of the atmosphere would affect temperatures – and Exxon’s future as a business.

According to a study published in 2017 that involved scouring the company’s internal documents, Exxon scientists acknowledged back then that climate change was real and overwhelmingly caused by burning the same fossil fuels Exxon sold.

“Yet over 80% of Exxon’s editorial-style paid advertisements over the same period specifically focused on uncertainty and doubt, the study found.”

Exxon knew better – a lot better. An investigation published last year showed that forecasts of the future climate made by Exxon scientists in the 1970s were remarkably accurate. The company knew where the world was headed by continuing to burn coal, oil and gas and instead endeavoured to cover it up.

How differently history might have unfolded if the fossil fuel industry hadn’t obscured what was happening to the climate for several decades. John Grant, a sustainability expert at Sheffield Hallam University, argues that the crisis could have been solved by now – and the enormous potential of renewable energy realised much sooner.

Instead, a selection of companies, chiefly concerned with maximising profit, were allowed to decide the fate of all Earth’s inhabitants. Perverse as that may seem, our economic system enables this by leaving the means of producing the things people need (like energy) in private hands.

Amitav Ghosh, an author of 20 historical fiction and non-fiction books on colonialism and other topics, locates in this story the seeds of the climate crisis . “Colonialism, genocide and structures of organised violence were the foundations on which industrial modernity was built,” he writes. By making such destruction economically rational, capitalism encouraged activities that gradually degraded Earth’s living systems.

Published online 2021 Oct 9

Silicosis, an occupational menace is an irreversible lung disease caused by inhalation of tiny particles of crystalline silica. 

With heavy exposure, silica may pass into the bloodstream and be deposited elsewhere. Extrathoracic silicosis is less documented in the literature and is always associated with pulmonary silicosis. These calcifications can be seen in splenic hilum, liver, lymph node and paravertebral regions.

Silicosis with splenic involvement is believed to be secondary and is often regarded as 'metastatic'. Both hematogenous and retrograde lymphatic spread is possible.

Hematogenous spread occurs as a result of direct spread from bloodborne embolic lesions following the rupture of dust-laden hilar node into a pulmonary vein.

Lymphatic spread maybe anterograde or retrograde. Three mechanisms have been described. Firstly, silica may enter pulmonary lymphatics, that drain into the thoracic duct and then to the bloodstream.

Secondly, it may drain from the diaphragmatic surfaces of the inferior lobes through vessels situated in the ligamentum pulmonale into abdominal pre-aortic nodes.

Finally, retrograde lymph flow from posterior mediastinal nodes into peripancreatic nodes, and the spleen has been implied.

Splenic silicosis should be considered in the differentials of splenic calcifications, especially when there is a history of occupational exposure to silica.  The typical calcification can be found in the liver, spleen, abdominal, axillary, and cervical lymph nodes of silicotic patients, and is always accompanied by similar intrathoracic nodal calcification.

Highlights

• The GSL has reached historically low levels.

• As And Li levels in GSL exceeded EPA residential regional screening levels.

• The oxidative potential (OP) of dust from GSL is higher than the OP in other regions.

• The OP of the GSL dust was associated with metals, including Cu, Mn, Fe, and Al.

• The choice of OP assay and extraction solvent affects the OP activity of redox-active species.

Our results show that the concentration of As and Li in most of the GSL dust samples exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) soil residential regional screening levels, and the OPAA and OPDTT of dust samples from GSL playas were generally higher than the OP of other regional playas.

Our findings also indicated that the OP of the GSL dust was associated with metals, including Cu, Mn, Fe, and Al.

This is the first study evaluating the oxidative potential of dust from the GSL, which improves our understanding of how increasing aridity, particularly desiccation of saline lakes, affects air quality and public health.

Worn around the neck, the smart choker captures micromovements in the throat, which are then picked up by the strain sensor as an electrical signal and fed into brain-inspired computer software models for processing and speech recognition. It can pick up even silently mouthed words and broadcast it, which could help someone who is unable to speak following laryngeal surgery, for example.

Ultrasensitive textile strain sensors redefine wearable silent speech interfaces with high machine learning efficiency

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41528-024-00315-1

If you organized the plastic pollution that entered the environment in 2020 in a line, it could circle the Earth more than 1,500 times. Simply dumped into a pile, the refuse would fill up New York City’s Central Park in a layer as high as the Empire State Building.

Put another way, that’s about 57 million tons (52 million metric tons) of plastic waste that was not properly disposed of—and pieces of it could now be floating in the ocean, sitting at the top of a mountain or even infiltrating your bloodstream. In a new study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, scientists tallied these numbers, creating the first-ever global plastics pollution inventory.

Through a subtle effect, a yellow pigment found in Cheetos snack food enables light to travel straight through tissue

To see what’s going on beneath the skin, doctors depend on an array of expensive imaging techniques—x-rays, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, endoscopy, etc. However, a team of materials scientists has found a simpler way to see into the body—of mice at least. Applying a common pigment renders the skin of the animals temporarily transparent, the researchers report today in Science, revealing the organs beneath. (And just in case you still have your appetite: The pigment is one of those used to give the snack food Cheetos its distinctive orange color.)

Light travels through water at three-quarters its speed in a vacuum, making water’s index of refraction 1.33. Air has a refractive index slightly above one. When light passes through materials with different refractive indices, its path bends. It’s the same principle that allows the lenses in your glasses to focus light onto your retinas.

In tissues, the lipids that make up cell membranes have a refractive index of about 1.4, higher than the surrounding water. So, the cells act like so many randomly oriented lenses that scatter light in all directions.

Existing techniques can render tissues—and even entire mice—transparent by removing the lipids and leaving a watery gel, allowing light to pass through without scattering. But because these techniques destroy cell membranes, they can’t be applied to living animals.

In a new bid to finally defeat bovine tuberculosis (TB), the United Kingdom plans to accelerate research on cattle vaccines, test more cattle, and end the controversial culling of wild badgers, which can spread the disease to cows. The bacterial disease poses a serious threat to dairy and beef farmers, because cattle infected with TB give less milk, provide lower quality meat, and must be slaughtered to prevent spread of the disease.

One concern is that culling can backfire; if less than 70% of badgers living near a farm are killed, infected survivors are more likely to disperse and carry the disease to other farms. Some researchers and activists believe widespread vaccination would be more effective. Since 2010, it has been possible to immunize badgers with the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine used to prevent TB in humans, because the pathogens are closely related. Such efforts have remained small scale, because vaccinating badgers requires a special license and training.

In the past two months alone, the flaming carcasses of electrocuted birds have ignited at least three wildfires in Colorado.

While the phenomenon sounds straight out of a cartoon, it's actually more common than you'd think. It's a big enough problem that electric utility companies brainstorm efforts to mitigate bird electrocution.

Without wasting more of their own saliva on elaborate discussion, Hoerman and his colleagues from the department of dental research at the Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois, got down to work. They analyzed samples from more than 200 patients and healthy controls, and found that the saliva of patients with untreated prostate cancer showed a significant increase in the levels of enzymes called acid phosphatases.

Governments have a duty to protect their citizens. While they won’t go as far as telling us what we can and cannot put in our homes, we do expect them to ensure that the buildings we live in are safe from fire.

The final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry confirms that this was not the case in 2017 when 72 people lost their lives to a fire that engulfed their home in west London.

In 2006, the government permitted the use of combustible insulation foams on high-rise buildings. It was a cheap way to save energy.

But the presence of combustible insulation and cladding panels on the outside of buildings completely circumvents compartmentation. It allows fire to spread from flat to flat around the outside of a building. As fire spreads up and across the walls, it successively ignites the contents of individual flats while filling each flat with toxic smoke.

Inhalation of toxic smoke is one of the primary causes of fire-related deaths. In his introductory statement to the final publication of the Grenfell Tower inquiry report, chairman Martin Moore-Bick said that “all those who died in the building were overcome by toxic gases”.

When certain types of plastics burn, they release hydrogen cyanide as well as carbon monoxide. As the fire grows, it becomes limited by the air supply, and the amount of both toxicants increases by a factor of ten to 50. Some flame retardants, added to the product in order to pass the regulatory test, slow ignition but result in much more toxic, thicker, blacker smoke, even when there is plenty of air. When these products burn without enough air, the toxicity is even greater.