Health & Science

How to avoid the flu

Want to avoid the flu this season? Wash your hands often, and keep them away from your face. “It sounds so simple as to be innocuous,” yet several recent studies uphold this basic tenet of hygiene, says The New York Times. University of California at Berkeley scientists found that a third of people with the flu had contracted it by touching a contaminated surface with their hands. People often touch their mouths and eyes with their hands, providing an entry point for infection. When researchers filmed college students while they typed on their laptops, subjects touched their eyes, noses, or lips once every four minutes on average over a three-hour period. In college dorms equipped with hand sanitizers, students are 20 percent less likely to get sick. In similarly equipped elementary schools, kids miss 20 percent fewer school days; in homes, the risk of catching a stomach ailment from a sick child drops by 60 percent. Of course, hand washing and use of sanitizers won’t protect you from being “splattered” when someone coughs or sneezes in your face; 52 percent of flu victims are infected this way, the Berkeley study found. But short of spending the next six months under your bed, frequent washing is the one proven method of reducing your chances of getting the flu, whether it’s the usual seasonal variety or swine flu.

A foreign snake invades Florida

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Wildlife officials in South Florida have watched with horror as the Burmese python, a giant, introduced snake, has gobbled its way across the state in recent years; native birds, deer, even alligators have been found in the reptile’s gullet. That may be nothing compared to Florida’s newest invader, the African rock python, a snake “so mean, they come out of the egg striking,” herpetologist Kenneth Krysko tells National Geographic News. “This is just one vicious animal.” Like its Burmese cousin, the rock python was likely imported illegally as a pet and released; six have been found since 2002, including a pregnant female and two youngsters, which suggest a growing resident population. Biologists hope to eliminate the snake before it reaches the vast Everglades, as the Burmese python already has. There’s also concern that the two pythons might meet and interbreed, creating a new species even more powerful and adept at spreading, says Krysko. “We can’t rule out the possibility.”

One small step for mice

Mice cannot yet fly, but with a little help from NASA, they can now levitate. In an effort to study how prolonged weightlessness might affect future astronauts, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed a “variable gravity simulator” that can hold mice aloft for hours at a time; previously only such creatures as grasshoppers and frogs had that privilege. The device consists of a liquid helium–cooled magnetic coil that creates a superstrong magnetic field, which acts on the water molecules in the mice, suspending the creatures in air. The first subject, a 3-week-old pup, “didn’t like it very much,” lead scientist Yuanming Liu tells the Los Angeles Times. “Without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented.” Subsequent mice adjusted to weightlessness after a few hours and ate and drank normally. Using the device, Liu says, researchers hope to learn how to prevent bone loss, a hazard for astronauts who might spend months in a low-gravity environment en route to Mars. Levitating humans, while theoretically possible, would require a magnetic coil so massive it’s not practical.

A new global warming threat

The next casualty of global warning could be your beer. A team at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute has determined that over the past five decades, Saaz hops, the crucial ingredient for the Czech pilsners beloved by connoisseurs, have been badly damaged by rising temperatures. Not only has the yield waned; the acid content, the key to a distinctively bitter pilsner taste, has fallen by 0.06 percent a year since 1954. The study—based on data about weather, crop yields, and hop quality—also suggested that a more dramatic drop in quality is still to come. Nor is the problem limited to Czech beers, crop specialist Francesco Tubiello tells New Scientist. “The famous hop-growing regions of eastern Germany and central Slovakia are facing the same situation.’’ In a warmer world, he warns, good beer might just not taste the same.

Bad news for small guys

Sorry, gentlemen, but size does matter, at least to some women. Researchers interviewed 1,000 Czech women about their ability to achieve a vaginal (as opposed to a clitoral) orgasm, and one-third of the subjects responded that their odds of success increased when a longer-than-average penis was involved. Still, two-thirds of the women said penis size didn’t matter. The study drew criticism from some female-sexuality advocates, who said the focus on penis size promotes ignorance about the clitoris, where most of the nerve endings in that region are located. “To achieve the full pleasure of orgasm, these nerve endings must be stimulated,” Rosemary Coates of the World Association for Sexual Health, tells Australia’s ABC Science. “I think these authors have clitoral envy.” Most women, she noted, do not have orgasms during intercourse, regardless of penis size.