ScienceIQ.com

A Hurricane In Brazil?

Hurricanes are terrifying. They rip trees right out of the ground, hurl cars into the air, and flatten houses. Their winds can blow faster than 100 mph. Some hurricanes have been known to pull a wall of water from the ocean 20 feet high ... then fling it inland, inundating miles of coast. No other storms on Earth are so destructive. Or so ...

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AHurricaneInBrazil
Geology

When This Lake 'Burps,' Better Watch Out!

Nearly twenty years ago, two lakes in Cameroon, a country in Africa, 'burped,' killing hundreds of people. What makes a lake burp? Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun are unusual lakes. They each formed in the ... Continue reading

LakeBurps
Physics

Ultraviolet Light

Ultraviolet light is a form of radiation which is not visible to the human eye. It's in an invisible part of the 'electromagnetic spectrum'. Radiated energy, or radiation, is given off by many ... Continue reading

UltravioletLight
Biology

What We Learned From The Songbirds

Once, neuroscientists believed that our complement of nerve cells was created prenatally and during the first years of life, and that no new neurons could be generated. Now we know that this belief ... Continue reading

WhatWeLearnedFromTheSongbirds
Astronomy

Right Ascension & Declination

Right Ascension (abbreviated R.A.) and Declination (abbreviated Dec) are a system of coordinates used by astronomers to keep track of where stars and galaxies are in the sky. They are similar to the ... Continue reading

RightAscensionDeclination

Who was Typhoid Mary?

WhowasTyphoidMaryMary Mallon lived in New York about 100 years ago, and worked as a cook. It seemed that every family she worked for suffered an outbreak of typhoid fever! The Dept. of Public Health found that she harbored the bacteria salmonella typhi, which causes typhoid fever. Even though there were no antibiotics in those days, doctors did know how to culture bacteria from samples of blood, saliva, or feces. Mary was not an educated person, and couldn't believe she was really making people sick, so she refused to give up being a cook. Finally she was more or less imprisoned in a hospital for the rest of her life.

How could it happen that Mary Mallon was contagious for typhoid fever but not sick? Scientists agree that after recovering from an attack of typhoid fever, a few people harbor the salmonella as a film on their gallstones, hidden from the action of their immune system. Such people get well because their immune systems kill the salmonella that try to escape to other parts of their bodies. (People who have recovered from typhoid are immune afterward.) However the bacteria can still be spread to other people and make them sick.

It isn't clear whether everyone who suffers from gallstones can become a 'Typhoid Mary', or if there also needs to be something special about the strain of salmonella typhi that infects them.