A picture of snot

 This photo appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. Yes! It’s snot! Of course, the NEJM calls it “nasal mucus.” To get a photo like this, you must let the mucus dry then use “phase-contrast microscopy at high magnification” to take the picture. The pattern is called “ferning,” which simply means that the design is fern-like.

Mucus is mostly water, plus electrolytes, “mucin glycoproteins,” fats, and some other proteins. Apparently, if you’ve got allergies or a cold or similar nasal problem, the ferning doesn’t look so nice. Our nasal mucus is an important part of the defense mechanism in our airways, so be glad you have it, even if isn’t so pretty.

I think the photo is rather comforting. It makes it seem like we live in an ordered universe, right down to our snot.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Learn to live with microbes

 As one who doesn’t believe in sanitizing everything—or, really, anything—I was heartened to read about an international project in which over 900 scientists and volunteers collected samples of microorganisms from subways in 60 cities and on six continents. They swabbed turnstiles, railings, ticket kiosks, benches and subway cars. (One researcher was thanked by a bystander for cleaning the subway.)

They found 4,246 known species of micro-organisms. Two thirds of these were bacteria and the remainder were a mix of fungi, viruses and other kinds of microbes. They also found 10,928 viruses and 748 kinds of bacteria that had never been documented. The vast majority of the collected organisms pose little risk to humans. As one scientist reported, “We don’t see anything that we are worried about. People are in contact with these all the time.” In fact, nearly all of the new viruses are likely to be bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria.

The researchers also found that each city had its own distinctive microbial signature. In fact, scientists could identify, with 88 percent accuracy, where a sample had come from. Nevertheless, they did find a “core urban microbiome” that was present in nearly every sample in every city. Half of these are bacteria that typically live in and on the human body, especially the skin. The core microbiome also contained soil bacteria and a species typically associated with the ocean.

As another scientist reported, “The amount of microbial diversity is just incomprehensibly vast.” Microbes are a natural part of our environment. You can’t avoid the little creatures and you can’t get rid of them. So don’t even try.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Gesturing: It’s linked to speech

 We Jeopardy watchers are sizing up the guest hosts who are auditioning to fill the late Alex Trebek’s shoes. My friend Betsy couldn’t stand guest host Buzzy Cohen because, she says, “his constant hand movements drive me crazy. He moves his hands to accentuate every syllable he speaks.” Well, I think Buzzy can’t help it. Gesturing is an integral part of speaking and is usually unconscious.

Gesture and language are an integrated, synchronized system in which thoughts, language, and hands are linked together. In fact, gesture and speech both originate in the same regions of our brains and both arise from a single speaking process. Each plays its own role in communication: language is linear and segmented; gesture is instantaneous and symbolic. Both reveal our thoughts.

Think about this:

• We gesture when we’re on the phone and nobody’s around to see it.
• Blind people gesture to each other.
• A woman born with no arms nevertheless senses that she’s gesturing. “When I talk, my phantoms gesticulate. In fact, they’re moving now as I speak.”

I don’t know what Buzzy Cohen’s gestures reveal about him, or whether some of his gesturing is a conscious effort on his part. Like Betsy, he doesn’t get my vote for permanent Jeopardy host, but not because of his gesturing. I didn’t even notice it.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

More sightings of blue people

My daughter Jocelyn tells me she used to see a blue woman at a market in Montana; my friend Janice reports that, when she was a child, a blue family used to attend her church in Stockton; my sister-in-law Mary sent me an article about an extended family of blue people in Kentucky. I have never seen a blue person.

 As to the blue family in Kentucky, one couple, Martin and Elizabeth Fugate, carried a recessive gene called met-H. Met-H causes a condition called methemoglobinemia, a blood disorder that causes elevated levels of methemoglobin in the blood. Methemoglobin is a form of hemoglobin that causes too little oxygen to be delivered to cells, a trait that results in blue skin. 

The Fugates had seven children, four of whom had two copies of the recessive gene. All four were blue. Because the Fugates lived in a fairly isolated region, members of the extended family began intermarrying, a situation resulting in more blue-skinned children. Who knows? Maybe some of them moved to Stockton and joined Janice's family's church, or moved to Montana and shopped at Jocelyn's market.

You can get methemoglobinemia by taking certain drugs or chemicals that oxidize hemoglobin and convert it to methemoglobin. These drugs include some antibiotics, local anesthetics, and various nitrate derivatives, such as nitroglycerin—about 90 compounds in all. If you should turn blue as a result of taking these drugs, don’t worry. It’s not permanent.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.