Between March and July 2021, cases of the bacterial infectious disease sprung up in Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas, with the disease being fatal for two of those affected. Usually, cases of melioidosis occur in the United States after traveling to regions where the pathogen is prevalent. However, none of the patients had undertaken any previous international travel.
When the genomes of the bacterial strains (Burkholderia pseudomallei) were sequenced, they showed a high level of concordance, suggesting a common source of infection. The bacterial strain is similar to those that are found in Southeast Asia above all. An imported product from there was taken into consideration as the trigger./.../
Aroma Spray as a Trigger
In October, the cause of the melioidosis was finally identified in the house of the patient from Georgia: an aromatherapy spray. The genetic fingerprint of the bacterial strain matched with that from the other patients. The common trigger was thus discovered./.../
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Drinking coffee has been associated with a wide range of health benefits. But will it help you live longer?
Full Story: Live Science (8/14)
#The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings by Maria Popova)
“Pink sadness… is the sadness of shame when you have done nothing wrong, pink sadness is not your fault, and though even the littlest twinge may cause it, it is the vast bushy top on the family tree of sadness, whose faraway roots resemble a colossal squid with eyes the size of soccer balls.”Goethe’s color wheel, from his 1809 theory of color and emotion.
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Physics Duo Finds Magic in Two DimensionsBy CHARLIE WOOD In exploring a family of two-dimensional crystals, a husband-and-wife team is uncovering a potent variety of new electron behaviors.
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 | Help Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura Overcome Astronomical OddsBy PRADEEP MUTALIK In honor of the actor and activist Nichelle Nichols, this month’s puzzle imagines a
Star Trek adventure in which her character, Lieutenant Uhura, faces a life-and-death conundrum.
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 | Secrets of the Moon’s Permanent Shadows Are Coming to LightPodcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT;
Story by JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN Robots are about to venture into the sunless depths of lunar craters to investigate ancient water ice trapped there, while remote studies find hints about how water arrives on rocky worlds.
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Good Things Come in Threes
Physicists observed 270 rare “WWW” events in which the W boson particle appears in trios. This was slightly above the prediction by the Standard Model of particle physics, but not enough to overturn the theory, reports Emily Conover for Science News. If the Standard Model does eventually fail, there are clues that the W boson will be what breaks it. In April, physicists found that the particle is 0.1% heavier than the influential theory predicts, as Charlie Wood covered for Quanta.
Resurrecting Tasmanian Tigers
Scientists announced plans to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction by gene-editing stem cells from a closely related species of marsupial alive today, the fat-tailed dunnart. The researchers hope to see the first baby thylacines born within 10 years, reports Adam Morton for The Guardian. De-extinction efforts can’t perfectly resurrect lost species, in part because it’s often impossible to get the animals’ full genetic code. The resulting creature is kind of a proxy — and that may be good enough for the envisioned purposes, as Yasemin Saplakoglu wrote for Quanta in May. |
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