In A New Study of Bacteria Found in Offices, Culprits are the Chair, the Phone and the Guys

from scientificamerican.com

What is the dirtiest thing on your desk? If you work in a typical office, it’s not actually your computer mouse or your keyboard or even your desk. According to a new study, published online May 30 in PLoS ONE, it’s your phone—but your chair’s not far behind.

Before you drop that receiver or leap out of your seat, hold that thought for just a second. “Dirty” is a messy word. It doesn’t necessarily mean that will make you sick. For this study, researchers measured the abundance of bacteria. Plenty of species are dangerous—take the drug-resistant bug MRSA for example, which can be found in healthcare and community settings. But most are relatively neutral, and many are important members of our own internal and external ecosystems, our microbiomes, keeping our metabolic and immune functions running well.

We, however, are just starting to piece together this invisible landscape. “Humans are spending an increasing amount of time indoors, yet we know little about the diversity of bacteria and viruses where we live, work and play,” Scott Kelley, of San Diego State University’s biology department and co-author of the new study, said in a prepared statement.

For the study, Kelley and his colleagues used genetic sequencing to sample bacteria from five surfaces in 30 offices in three large cities: New York City, San Francisco and Tucson.

They found bacteria from 549 different genera, most of which hailed from the skin, mouth and nose, but some of which also generally live in the digestive tract. The most common major groups included Proteobacteria (which includes the bacteria that cause cholera as well as salmonella and E. coli poisoning), Firmicutes (which includes staph and listeria bugs) and Actinobacteria (which includes some bacteria that have been the source of antibiotics). With deep genetic sequencing, the group also managed to detect some rare specimens, such as those that are more commonly found in hot springs, which could eventually help researchers study how these hardy bacteria spread across the globe.

See why guys might have more microbial matter and which city had the dirtiest office, New York, San Francisco or Tucson...

One Scientists Says He Knows What Plants "Know"

Perhaps don't share this Kirkus review with your vegan friends, lest they feel compelled to become "airatarians."

What A Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses, by Daniel Chamovitz

How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it actually feel an insect’s tiny, spindly legs? And how do cherry blossoms know when to bloom? Can they actually remember the weather?

Director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University, Chamovitz realized early in life that "the genetic difference between plants and animals is not as significant as [he] once believed.” Unlike animals, which can move to search for food, shelter or a mate, plants are confined to one spot. "Because of this,” writes the author, “plants have evolved complex sensory and regulatory systems that allow them to modulate their growth in response to ever-changing conditions." Through extensive research and scientific models, Chamovitz explains in accessible language how plants have somewhat human-like sensory responses to stimuli. Plants "see" by showing evidence of phototropism, the bending of a plant toward what is now known as blue light, and plant growth is affected by red and far-red light. When leaf-eating insects attack a tree, the affected tree emits volatile chemicals into the air. Through "smell," this effectively warns neighboring trees of a possible attack. Using a Venus fly trap as a model, Chamovitz proves plants feel specific kinds of "touch”—a fly trap will not shut when rain drops hit it, but only when two of its tiny hair-like projections are touched within seconds of each other. By comparing human senses to the abilities of plants to adapt to their surroundings, the author provides a fascinating and logical explanation of how plants survive despite the inability to move from one site to another.

Backed by new research on plant biology, this is an intriguing look at a plant's consciousness.

Crossing the Sun: The Last Transit of Venus until 2117

From Scientificamerican.com

By Jay Pasachoff: the Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Solar Eclipses, Passachoff  has seen 55 solar eclipses, as well as transits of Venus and Mercury.

On June 5 in the Americas and June 6 in the rest of the world, people will be able to see one of the rarest predictable events in astronomy: a solar transit of the planet Venus. Over a six-hour period the disk of Venus will be silhouetted against the sun. Seeing it safely requires a special eye-protection filter, available for a dollar or so—alternately, a telescope or binoculars can safely project an image onto a wall or sheet of paper. But if you miss it, your next chance won't come until the year 2117.

Every century or so, the relative orbital motions of Earth and Venus bring them into perfect alignment with the sun, producing a pair of transits separated by eight years. Only six transits have been observed in history: in 1639; 1761 and 1769; 1874 and 1882; and 2004. Observing them was once the "noblest problem in astronomy" (as an English Astronomer Royal put it), because until the 20th century it was the only way to determine the distance from Earth to the sun. Hundreds of expeditions went as far north and as far south as possible to make giant triangles with Venus and thereby maximize the precision of the measurement. The most famous was probably Captain Cook's voyage to Tahiti in 1769.

Image Credit: Jay M. Pasachoff, David Butts, Joseph Gangestad, and Owen Westbrook (Williams College Transit of Venus Team) with John Seiradakis and George Asimellis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece); expedition run with Bryce Babcock (Williams College) and Glenn Schneider (University of Arizona)

Read about VenusTransit, an APP that let's you view the occurence.

Read more of this story on the Transit of Venus

The Gray Divorcés

from wsj.com

For years, 51-year-old Dawn and her husband of two decades, Tim, had buried their differences over finances, child-rearing and religion. But when the last of the Wisconsin couple's three daughters was finishing high school in 2009, those differences were all that Dawn could see. "I had gone back to school to advance my career as a paralegal, and his work had dwindled, so he was just basically hanging out with his buddies," she says. "We had nothing to talk about, and when we did, it was bickering."

They had stayed together all those years because of the kids, but now nothing was left. "He was so uncompassionate, and I had turned to my religion, and he would never go to church with me," she says. "I realized that I was alone in the marriage and would be better off with someone whose values and interests were more like mine." She seized the moment and left, filing for divorce.

For the new generation of empty-nesters, divorce is increasingly common. Among people ages 50 and older, the divorce rate has doubled over the past two decades, according to new research by sociologists Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin of Bowling Green State University, whose paper, "The Gray Divorce Revolution," Prof. Brown will present at Ohio State University this April. The paper draws on data from the 1990 U.S. Vital Statistics Report and the 2009 American Community Survey, administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, which asked all respondents if they'd divorced in the past 12 months.

Though overall national divorce rates have declined since spiking in the 1980s, "gray divorce" has risen to its highest level on record, according to Prof. Brown. In 1990, only one in 10 people who got divorced was 50 or older; by 2009, the number was roughly one in four. More than 600,000 people ages 50 and older got divorced in 2009.

What's more, a 2004 national survey conducted by AARP found that women are the ones initiating most of these breakups. Among divorces by people ages 40-69, women reported seeking the split 66% of the time. And cheating doesn't appear to be the driving force in gray divorce. The same AARP survey found that 27% of divorcés cited infidelity as one of their top three reasons for seeking a divorce—which is not out of line with estimates of infidelity as a factor in divorce in the general population.

So what is going on with these baby boomers? Are they finally seeking adventure, now that their kids are out of the house? Are the women exacting their revenge, at last, against the feminine mystique?

The trend defies any simple explanation, but it springs at least in part from boomers' status as the first generation to enter into marriage with goals largely focused on self-fulfillment. As they look around their empty nests and toward decades more of healthy life, they are increasingly deciding that they've done their parental duty and now want out. These decisions are changing not just the portrait of aging people in the U.S., as boomers swell the ranks of the elderly, but also the meaning of the traditional vow to stay together until "death do us part."

"Some of those marriages that in previous generations would have ended in death now end in divorce," says Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies marriage and divorce. In the past, many people simply didn't live long enough to reach the 40-year itch. "You can't divorce if you're dead," says Ms. Stevenson.

read the rest of the story at wsj.com

Basque Roots Revealed Through DNA Analysis

from sciencedaily.com

The Genographic Project has announced the most comprehensive analysis to date of Basque genetic patterns, showing that Basque genetic uniqueness predates the arrival of agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula some 7,000 years ago. Through detailed DNA analysis of samples from the French and Spanish Basque regions, the Genographic team found that Basques share unique genetic patterns that distinguish them from the surrounding non-Basque populations.

Published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, the study was led by Lluis Quintana-Murci, principal investigator of Genographic's Western European regional center. "Our study mirrors European history and could certainly extend to other European peoples. We found that Basques share common genetic features with other European populations, but at the same time present some autochthonous (local) lineages that make them unique," said Quintana-Murci. "This is reflected in their language, Euskara, a non-Indo-European language, which altogether contributes to the cultural richness of this European population."

The genetic finding parallels previous studies of the Basque language, which has been found to be a linguistic isolate, unrelated to any other language in the world. It is the ancestral language of the Basque people who inhabit a region spanning northeastern Spain and southwestern France and has long been thought to trace back to the languages spoken in Europe prior to the arrival of the Indo-European languages more than 4,000 years ago. (English, Spanish, French and most other European languages are Indo-European.)

Genographic Project researchers studied mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which has been widely applied to the study of human history and is perhaps best known as the tool used to reveal 'Mitchondrial Eve,' the female common ancestor of all modern humans who lived in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago. It has also been used to study regional variation both within and outside Africa, providing detailed insights into more recent migration patterns.

The Genographic Project, launched in 2005, enters its eighth year this spring. Nearly 75,000 participants from over 1,000 indigenous populations around the world have joined the initiative, along with more than 440,000 members of the general public who have purchased a testing kit online, swabbed their cheeks and sent their samples to the Genographic lab for processing. This unprecedented collection of samples and data is a scientific resource that the project plans to leverage moving forward.

Genographic Project Director and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Spencer Wells noted, "The Basque research is a wonderful example of how we are studying the extensive Genographic sample collection using the most advanced genetic methods. In some cases, the most appropriate tool may be mtDNA, while in others the Y-chromosome or autosomal markers may be more informative. Ultimately, the goal of the project is to use the latest genetic technology to understand how our ancestors populated the planet."