Month: November 2016

 
The Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis) is one of humankind’s oldest foes. The parasite is transmitted by ingesting worm larvae in contaminated drinking water. The worms may have been the “fiery serpents” mentioned in the Bible, and evidence of the parasite has even been found in Egyptian mummies.

After ingestion, the larvae burrow through the stomach and into the abdominal cavity. There they mate, after which the females migrate toward the skin’s surface, exiting through a painful, burning eruption. Sufferers attempt to lessen the pain by cooling the infected region in a pool of water—often a common water source for the local community—which inadvertently continues the worm’s life cycle.

But soon the Guinea worm’s reign of human suffering may finally be at an end. The parasite is poised to become only the second human pathogen eradicated. (The first was smallpox, declared eradicated in 1980.) In the past 30 years, cases of Guinea worm have fallen from approximately 3.5 million infections per year to a mere 19 cases in three countries in 2016. This dramatic decline is due largely to efforts by the Carter Center, which began their efforts to control Dracunculus in 1986.

Despite all of the progress, there’s one last serious hurdle to overcome: other animals spreading Guinea worm. Recent work has shown that dogs can be infected with Guinea worm, and may be contributing to the maintenance of the worm in nature and its spread to humans in Chad, where more than half of 2016’s cases have occurred (11 cases in all, with an additional three in Ethiopia and five in South Sudan). Two new papers suggest additional animal carriers—frogs and fish—may also be adding to the problem.

Reducing Guinea worm infections has so far focused on preventing the transmission cycle by eliminating consumption of contaminated water. To do this, scientists have used a multi-pronged attack: They educate people about how Guinea worm is transmitted; instruct them not to enter bodies of water if they have a worm emerging from their body; and provide filters for drinking water to keep copepods (and thus the Guinea worm larvae) from being ingested. Teams have also provided clean water sources in some cases, such as new wells, and treated water sources with larvicide to kill any existing worm larvae.

The strategy requires close surveillance of affected areas to determine if there are new Guinea worm cases. This approach has been extremely successful but was stymied in Chad by the finding of dogs infected with Guinea worm. Infected dogs could release the worms into water sources, re-contaminating the drinking water, and starting the cycle in humans all over again. And according to Donald Hopkins, special advisor for Guinea worm eradication with the Carter Center, people may have also become infected directly by eating undercooked fish or frogs which were harboring Guinea worm larvae. The worm could then carry out its life cycle within humans, much as if they were ingested with water. These reservoirs also worsen ongoing infections in dogs, which re-establish Guinea worms in the water supplies. Dogs could also eat infected fish or frogs directly from water sources, or ingest entrails from fish discarded by fishermen after gutting.

Several interventions in Chad have been established to prevent Guinea worm transmission. Parasitologist Mark Eberhard, a co-author on the two new studies identifying Guinea worm infections in frogs and fish, tells mental_floss that teams in the country implemented new health messages recently, telling individuals “to cook your food well and to bury entrails, and not let dogs eat fish or other animal viscera. However, such attempts to change behavior are not only difficult but take some time to penetrate fully at the community level.”

 
Hopkins tells mental_floss that another step they’re taking is educating communities about dog infections. They’re working to stop that cycle by advising people to take two important steps: in addition to burying entrails to make sure dogs can’t get to them, they suggest tethering dogs that have an emergent worm so they can’t contaminate the water. Both tactics appear successful, according to Hopkins. “We can inspect a sample of communities in endemic areas to see whether or not they’re burying fish entrails,” he says. “The program has shown them to dig deep holes and put covers on them, so these dogs cannot dig these fish entrails up. That’s doing very well. Our samples have been showing now for more than a year and a half that more than 80 percent of individual samples in these communities are burying these entrails.”

Similarly, education on dog Guinea worms is improving. “We’re working with communities that, as soon as they see a worm coming out of a dog, they tether the dog. The country has also offered reward equivalent to $20 USD for reporting infected dogs to the program and tethering infected dogs,” Hopkins says. The reward covers the cost of feeding the dog other food besides the possibly infected leftover entrails. “The latest figures on dogs so far this year show that 77 percent of those dogs have been tethered.”

In previous countries where Guinea worm has been eliminated, once human infections had ceased, a three-year monitoring period was enacted to be sure the worm was truly gone. Eberhard notes that “no country certified has had reinfection.” With Chad, that waiting period will have to see not only no new infections in humans, but also in dogs. Hopkins says the program had previously seen sporadic infections in dogs “in Mali, Ghana, India, Pakistan, and a few other countries, but the infections in dogs died out once transmission in humans was stopped. In Chad, the difference is that we have more dogs than people infected.” Still, Hopkins anticipates that the interventions put into place will work to break that cycle and finally end the parasite’s presence in Chad.

The final stretch of this eradication campaign may be one of the most trying. Like polio—another infection nearing eradication, which re-emerged in Nigeria on the Chad border in 2016 after a two-year absence—careful surveillance and close contact with the affected populations are key to finding new cases. We are close to the end, but the final push will require vigilance and quick responses to stop any new infections from spreading.

Today would have been Mark Twain’s 181st birthday.

Thomas Edison once said, “An average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.”

Edison and Twain were close friends. In 1909, Edison visited Twain’s estate in Redding, CT and filmed the famous author. The silent footage is the only known recording of Twain in existence. It first appeared in a 1909 production of Twain’s “The Prince and Pauper,” and it shows Twain wearing his trademark white suit, puffing a cigar. Twain would die one year later.

If you’re looking for similar recordings of Twain’s voice, don’t hold your breath. In 1891, Twain tried to dictate his novella, “An American Claimant,” into a phonograph, but he gave up after burning through 48 wax cylinders, now lost. Later in 1909, Twain read his stories into a phonograph at Edison’s laboratory in New York. Those recordings were destroyed in a fire in 1914.

We started from the branches; now we’re here. Researchers say the remains of the human ancestor nicknamed “Lucy” include heavily built arms and weaker legs more like those of tree-dwelling chimpanzees than like those of modern humans. They published their findings in the journal PLOS One.

Lucy’s remains have captivated scientists since they were first unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974. She and other Australopithecus afarensis were the first human ancestors to walk upright. Aside from this, Lucy’s day-to-day life has remained something of a mystery, as has her death.

Some researchers think she met her demise after falling out of a tree. A controversial study published earlier this year concluded that a fracture in Lucy’s upper arm could have been caused by a fall from a great height. Project leader John Kappelman said Lucy’s transitional existence may have been her downfall. “It may well have been the case that adaptations that permitted her to live more efficiently on the ground compromised her ability to move safely in the trees — and may have predisposed her kind to more falls,” Kappelman told Science magazine.

Not everyone agreed. “Terrestrial animals like antelopes and gazelles, elephants and rhinos and giraffes — all these bones show very similar fracture and breakage patterns as Lucy,” paleoanthropologist Don Johanson, a discoverer of Lucy, noted in Science. “You can be sure they didn’t fall out of trees.”

Now, Kappelman and his colleagues are picking up the other end of the story. Computed tomography (CT) scans of Lucy’s bones showed greater density in her arms than in her legs, which suggests she was using her upper limbs far more often.

“It is a well-established fact that the skeleton responds to loads during life, adding bone to resist high forces and subtracting bone when forces are reduced,” Kappelman said in a statement. “Tennis players are a nice example: Studies have shown that the cortical bone in the shaft of the racquet arm is more heavily built up than that in the nonracquet arm.”

Kappelman believes his team’s new findings support his earlier hypothesis. “It may seem unique from our perspective that early hominins like Lucy combined walking on the ground on two legs with a significant amount of tree climbing,” says Kappelman, “but Lucy didn’t know she was ‘unique’—she moved on the ground and climbed in trees, nesting and foraging there, until her life was likely cut short by a fall—probably out of a tree.”

In the United States alone, roughly 750,000 auto mechanics spend long shifts diagnosing, repairing, and preventing motor vehicle problems. But thanks to some stereotypical portrayals in media and a complicated vocabulary of car parts, drivers can sometimes feel like their lack of understanding may prompt technicians to take advantage of them. That’s not the case, mechanics say—the techs are here to help. To get a better idea of what their job really entails, mental_floss spoke with several mechanics at both independent repair shops and dealerships. Here’s a glimpse at what goes on after your car goes in.

1. THEY WISH YOU’D STOP WIPING BOOGERS ON YOUR SEAT.

A car can often resemble someone’s mobile living room, full of decorative accents, music, and occasionally dried snot. Charles, a mechanic who works at a Volkswagen dealership and runs The Humble Mechanic blog, says he’s seen his share of nose gold while working on vehicles. “People seem to like picking their nose and wiping it on the seat,” he says. To do a proper job, techs would prefer you bring in your vehicle without bodily fluids or trash inside. “Sometimes there’s a bunch of dirty clothes over the spare, or fast-food wrappers on the floor that we ask customers to remove. A lot of cars are clean, but people can be gross.”

2. THERE’S A SPECIAL BOOK THAT TELLS THEM WHAT TO CHARGE—EVEN IF IT’S TOO MUCH.

Ever walk away feeling like you’ve overpaid for a repair? It’s possible, but it’s not entirely the shop’s fault. Most every mechanic working on a flat rate (as opposed to a per-hour rate) references an industry trade manual that estimates how long a typical repair should take. If you’ve paid, say, $200 for a two-hour job that an experienced mechanic can get done in 30 minutes, you’re still charged by the book—and you don’t get a refund.

The auto tool industry may share part of the blame. “The way it becomes unfair is when a mechanic buys a new specialty tool that may cost $300 but that pays for itself quickly,” says Ryan, a former mechanic in Colorado. “It means they can do the job in less time, but the customer still pays for full time.”

3. THEY CAN FIND MICE AND SQUIRRELS STUCK IN YOUR AXLES.

Depending on what part of the country you live in, a car’s warm underbelly can be attractive to rodents and other animals. Charles has seen acorns socked away under hoods and once pried a squirrel from the front of a grill. “The biggest thing we see [in North Carolina] is chewed wires from mice,” he says. “They’ll make a nest in the air box. I’ve also had to clean deer guts off.” If you’re going to be storing your car for an extended period of time, Charles says some kind of rodent deterrent spray might help.

4. THEY MIGHT RUN SOME ERRANDS IN YOUR CAR.

While few mechanics actually take vehicles out for joy rides, the fact that they don’t get paid for the time it takes to test drive one means your spotless new Honda might develop a surprise ketchup stain on the driver’s seat. “Basically, every vehicle needs to be driven to make sure the problem is resolved,” Ryan says. “If you’re headed out to lunch and you need to confirm that, it makes sense to drive it down the road.”

5. THEY MIGHT RESCUE YOU IN A ROADSIDE EMERGENCY.

While their individual morality mileage varies, many mechanics feel duty-bound to pull over when they spot a stranded driver. “I do a lot of highway driving in the winter and the rule of thumb is if you see someone stranded on the highway, you stop and check on them,” says Ryan M., a mechanic in Winnipeg. “I’ve also pulled lots of vehicles out of ditches and off curbs.”

6. DEALERSHIPS HAVE ACCESS TO RESOURCES THAT PRIVATELY-OWNED SHOPS DON’T.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you should take your out-of-warranty vehicle in for a repair at a cheaper, locally owned shop over the dealer-branded shingle, here’s something to keep in mind: Many of those smaller outfits can’t afford the kind of information provided by car manufacturers to help successfully diagnose and treat a problem. “We’re able to go deep into the Volkswagen brand,” Charles says. “There are a lot of resources we have access to that an independent place wouldn’t. We can get access to the car’s engineers if we need that. The brand is an ally. A small shop isn’t going to spend $15,000 a year [for that data] to specialize in one kind of car. Once it’s outside their scope of knowledge, it makes more sense to go to a dealer.”

7. YOU’RE TECHNICALLY NOT ALLOWED IN THE GARAGE. EVER.

You’ve probably heard advice about making a mechanic show you a defective part to guarantee they’re not simply making up work to do. That involves a trip beyond the forbidden door marked “Do Not Enter.” But according to Ryan, you’re not actually supposed to be back there for any reason. “Insurance companies don’t want customers in the garage, ever,” he says. “It’s not that dangerous, but it’s not supposed to happen.”

8. THEY SOMETIMES MAKE THEIR OWN TOOLS.

While mechanics start out by buying their own tools—some even investing tens of thousands in supplies—there will always be instances where they’ll need to improvise. “A tool might be missing, or not put back in the right place,” Charles says. “Or a company just might not make what you need. I have a whole drawer full of cut-up sockets and wrenches. Making a custom tool is fun.”

9. THEY USE A COOKIE SHEET TO STAY ORGANIZED.

While cell phones have become handy to help keep track of how a part needs to be re-assembled, some mechanics still like to stay organized by laying out pieces in a specific order. “If I’m working on a vehicle I’ve never seen before, and it’s a complicated job or a job spread out over multiple days like a transmission rebuild or something like that, I’ll take a cookie sheet and magnets and lay things out spatially to stay organized,” Ryan M. says. “You can also mark parts with a Sharpie.”

10. THEY DON’T ALWAYS PERFORM EVERY LITTLE TASK.

Cars brought in for maintenance are supposed to undergo a litany of small adjustments, but that laundry list can sometimes get skipped over depending on how pressed for time your technician is. “Stuff like lubricating door hinges or latching mechanisms gets missed all the time,” Ryan says. “It doesn’t affect performance at that moment, but it can over time.”

11. THEY’RE IMPRESSED BY DRIVER MACGYVERS.

Not everyone can rush to a repair shop when a problem crops up, necessitating some improvisational skills. “I once had someone rig up a dipstick stop with a beer bottle cap,” Charles says. “Someone else used a chewing tobacco lid for a coolant cap. And we had someone else keep the driver’s door shut by rolling both windows down and securing it with a belt.” Less impressive: tin foil in place of a gas cap.

12. IT’S OK TO MAKE SILLY NOISES FOR THEM.

Cars make all kinds of odd sounds, which means drivers are often left to try and replicate them. Mechanics prefer this over you trying to explain the noise verbally, no matter how silly it makes you feel. “I’d rather hear a funny noise come out of you than waste time trying to figure out what you mean by ‘buzzing, but it’s like squishy if that makes sense,’” Ryan M. says. “Make the damn noise!”

13. SEARING HOT OIL BURNS ARE NO FUN.

A garage is a seriously hazardous hub of activity, with mechanics working alongside one another tending to multi-ton vehicles raised above their heads. While major injuries are uncommon, dealing with chemicals is a common source of pain. “Hot coolant and hot oil are the two main things I’ve seen people get hurt the most with,” Charles says. “That’s a weekly occurrence.” Other pitfalls: dropping heavy wrenches on your toes, or having someone fail to [use] the brakes before backing out, running down a co-worker. “A guy broke his arm that way.”

14. THEY MIGHT WATCH YOUR KIDS GROW UP.

The best mechanics, Charles says, play the long game. By being attentive and engaged with customers, they’ll often see their clients’ offspring returning with cars of their own. “A kid could come in at 10 and all of a sudden he’s 16 with his first car,” he says. “Then he’s in college and his mom wants a new car. I’ve had families of people with four or five Volkswagens and I’m working on all of them.” That personal touch also extends to tokens of appreciation. “Sometimes I even get cookies.”

15. THEY LIKE TO GO HOME AND WORK ON CARS SOME MORE.

Surprisingly, a number of mechanics don’t get their fill of greasy hands and wrench lacerations during the day. According to Charles, having a personal vehicle to tinker with is an entirely different experience than working on a customer’s ride. “Wrenching on cars all day at work is similar to working on an assembly line,” he says. “Car comes in, gets fixed, goes out. Car comes in. At home, it’s 180 degrees from that and relaxing. We all like to tinker.”

All images courtesy of iStock.

by Becca Stanek

Police are searching for a man who swiped $1.6 million worth of gold flakes—and then made a very, very slow escape. The heist happened on September 29, in the middle of the day in Midtown Manhattan. Surveillance video shows a man slowly approaching a momentarily unattended armored truck and grabbing a large bucket off the back of it. The New York Times reported the man “probably doesn’t know what was in [the bucket]” when he steals it—but as it turned out, he struck gold. The metal bucket was filled with 86 pounds of gold flakes.

Of course, the tremendous weight of the bucket proved problematic for executing a speedy getaway. Video indicated it took the man over an hour to lug the bucket half a mile through the streets of Manhattan, and he had to stop to “catch his breath” at one point, setting the bucket down on the sidewalk, The New York Times reported.

But apparently, slow and steady really does win the race, because the man managed to get away. Police are still searching for the thief, who they described as “a Hispanic male who is about 5-feet-6-inches tall, 150 pounds, and between 50 and 60 years old.” The gold flakes are still missing.

Also from The Week:

Marina Abramovic’s 6 Favorite Books

The Surprisingly Morbid Origins of Peter Pan

Westworld‘s Greatest Trick

Fans of David Lynch’s cult-classic television show Twin Peaks are getting more than just an impending reboot. You can now buy LEGO minifigures that let you play out the creepy plot on your own, albeit not ones approved by the show itself.

The pop-culture collectibles—spotted by NME—come from Citizen Brick, a maker of custom-printed LEGO pieces. Due to various copyright and trademark laws, it should be noted that these aren’t real LEGO products, they’re reused and repurposed LEGOs, and while it’s clear who the minifigs represent, the set is called “Double Mountain Murder Mystery Town.” But the name isn’t fooling anyone—that’s definitely Special Agent Dale Cooper wielding that coffee cup ready to be filled with hot “black as midnight on a moonless night” diner coffee.

You can buy them for $60 here. The packaging even features those trippy red curtains.

[h/t NME]

Earlier this week, pranksters in Gardner, Kansas, went a little wild. Police were notified of a potential mountain lion sighting in a local community park, so they set up two motion-activated trail cameras to monitor the area. Instead of filming the predator unawares, the Associated Press reports, they captured human hijinks: people dressed in strange costumes, lumbering in front of the camera.

Shot over the course of three nights, the footage revealed bizarre characters, including a gorilla; lions (who were wrestling, no less); a woman using a walker, holding a bow and arrow; monsters; and even Santa Claus.

“We definitely got some wild life,” Lieutenant Lee Krout, of the Gardner Police Department, commented to KMBC News—just not the kind officials were expecting. “It was actually very humorous. I mean it was quite obvious that it was people playing a joke or just having fun.”

No real mountain lions were actually spotted, although it could be argued that the costumed humans might have scared them away. And perhaps most importantly, no creepy clowns were sighted either (probably because creepy Santas are much more seasonally appropriate).

[h/t Associated Press]

Miami is about to become a major destination for burger obsessives. A popular burger blogger is opening up a museum devoted to the meaty sandwich, which he heralds as America’s first such institution.

The Burger Museum by Burger Beast—created and curated by local burger expert Sef Gonzalez, a.k.a. the Burger Beast—is opening on Friday, December 2, and will celebrate the history of burgers, served with a hefty dose of nostalgia on the side. At current count, it contains 2000 historical artifacts and ephemera from burger and comfort food restaurants across the country, all collected by Gonzalez over the past seven years. The museum’s theater will be showing Hamburger America, a documentary that highlights eight burgers from around the U.S. and their creators.

Sadly, while you can buy old-school sodas and candy in the museum shop, you’ll have to go elsewhere for the juicy burger you’re sure to be craving at the end of your visit. The 1500-square-foot museum will be located near the Miami International Airport, at the Magic City Casino, so you can pop by immediately upon hitting town. It will be open afternoons Thursday to Sunday.