All posts by Max G. Levy

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About Max G. Levy

Science Journalist

Are Forever Chemicals Harming Ocean Life?

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THE REVELATOR

Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about how dangerous PFAS chemicals travel ocean currents and harm wildlife — and what that could mean for humans.

In seabird after seabird, Anna Robuck found something concerning: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, lurking around vital organs.

“Brain, liver, kidney, lung, blood, heart,” Robuck says, rattling off a few hiding spots before pausing to recall the rest. Robuck, a Ph.D. candidate in chemical oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, quickly settles on a simpler response: She found the chemicals everywhere she looked.

PFAS — a group of synthetic chemicals — are often called “forever chemicals” due to their quasi-unbreakable molecular bonds and knack for accumulating in living organisms. That foreverness is less of a design flaw than a design feature: The stubborn, versatile molecules help weatherproof clothing; smother flames in firefighting foam; and withstand heat and grime on nonstick pans.

Through consumption and disposal, the chemicals seep into ecosystems and bodies, where they have been linked to cancers, pregnancy complications, and reproductive and immune dysfunction. Recent attention has focused on the prevalence of PFAS in drinking water.

“Over the past 10-15 years we’ve really developed this super negative picture of what PFAS do to humans,” Robuck says. “But we’ve barely scratched the surface of that in wildlife.”

Read the full story in The Revelator

Scientists Discover Exposed Bacteria Can Survive in Space for Years

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SMITHSONIAN

An experiment conducted outside the International Space Station leads to a controversial theory about how life might travel between planets

Framed by an infinite backdrop of dark, lifeless space, a robotic arm on the International Space Station in 2015 mounted a box of exposed microbes on a handrail 250 miles above Earth. The hearty bacteria had no protection from an onslaught of cosmic ultraviolet, gamma, and x-rays. Back on Earth, scientists wondered whether the germs might survive these conditions for up to three years, the length of the experiment, and if they did, what the results might tell the researchers about the ability of life to travel between planets.

Microbiologists have spent decades studying extremophiles, organisms that endure extreme conditions, to tug at the mysterious threads of how life blossomed on Earth. Some extremophiles can live unprotected in space for several days; others can endure for years, but only by carving out a home inside rocks. These findings underpin the theory that life as we know it can transfer between planets within meteorites or comets. Now, new findings published today in Frontiers in Microbiology, based on that experiment on the International Space Station, show that the bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans can survive at least three years in space. Akihiko Yamagishi, a microbiologist at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences who led the study, says the results also suggest that microbial life could travel between planets unprotected by rock.

Read the full story in Smithsonian

To Make Oxygen on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance Rover Needs MOXIE

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SMITHSONIAN

A new tool from the space agency may produce the gas, completing the next step for planning a round trip voyage

Putting boots on Mars isn’t easy, but it’s a lot easier than bringing them back.

This week, NASA launches its Perseverance rover on a one-way trip to the surface of Mars. Among many other tools, the craft carries an experimental instrument that could help astronauts in the future make roundtrip voyages to the planet. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, is small, about the size of a car battery. It’s designed to demonstrate a technology that converts carbon dioxide into oxygen with a process called electrolysis. Mars’ thin atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide, but sending anything back into space requires fuel, and burning that fuel requires oxygen. NASA could ship liquid oxygen to the planet, but the volume needed takes up a good deal of space.

MOXIE could show the way to a solution.

Read the full story in Smithsonian

Were Women The True Artisans Behind Ancient Greek Ceramics

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SAPIENS

A new paper makes the case that scholars have ignored the role of female ceramicists in Greece going back some 3,000 years—and that this failing could speak to a more consequential blind spot involving gender.

Painted over the enormous midsection of the Dipylon amphora—a nearly 2,800-year-old clay vase from Greece—silhouetted figures surround a corpse in a funeral scene. Intricate geometric patterns zig and zag across cracks in the vase, framing the scene.

The roughly 5-foot-tall amphora is one of many painted vases credited to a so-called Dipylon Master. (Dipylon is the name of the cemetery gate near where people found this vessel.) Historians have assumed that this master was a man. In fact, the assumption has long been that male artisans crafted the iconic pottery of ancient Greek society throughout its history.

After all, ancient Greece isn’t exactly known for its record of women’s rights and contributions. In Politics about 2,400 years ago, Aristotle wrote, “the male is by nature superior and the female inferior.”

“No one had really thought that women were involved in making this pottery,” says Sarah Murray, a classical archaeologist at the University of Toronto. “There was no argument. It was just taken as the default.”

Read the full story in SAPIENS

Cicadas Are Delightful Weirdos You Should Learn To Love

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SMITHSONIAN

As Brood IX takes flight for the first time in 17 years, cicada lovers have their ears open.

Around this time of year, Marianne Alleyne hosts dozens of houseguests in her basement. Far from using camping equipment or cots, they sleep upside-down, clinging to a curtain. The entomologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has collected cicadas, those bizarre and misunderstood cyclical insects, for four years.

“In Illinois, we have 20 species, and hardly anything is known about them,” Alleyne says. “We know very little about what they’re doing underground.”

Cicadas have a longstanding reputation as loud, swarming pests that keep obnoxiously particular schedules. In the United States, they got a bad rap from the beginning, as early colonists misidentified these clouds of emerging cicadas as locusts. “They were thought of as a biblical plague,” says John Cooley, an assistant professor in residence at the University of Connecticut. That impression has been a lasting one: a group of cicadas is still referred to as a plague or a cloud. “The question I get the most is ‘How do I kill them?’” Cooley says.

Read the full story in Smithsonian

Decoding the chemistry behind cicada’s bacteria-killing wings

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CHEMISTRY WORLD

Meticulously organised fatty acids are responsible for the bacteria-killing, superhydrophobic nanostructures on cicada wings. The team behind the discovery hopes that its work will inspire antimicrobial surfaces that mimic cicada wings for use in settings such as hospitals.

When in contact with dust, pollen and – importantly – water, the cicadas’ superhydrophobic wings repel matter to self-clean. These extraordinary properties are down to fatty acid nanopillars, periodically spaced and of nearly uniform height, that cover the wings.

Past work has generally only described cicadas’ wings as ‘waxy’ and not explained how these fatty acids nanopillars give rise to unique traits. Nor is it known exactly why cicada wings evolved antibacterial nanostructures. These gaps in our knowledge exist, in part, because of how diverse the cicada family is. But Marianne Alleyne’s group at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, along with colleagues at Sandia National Labs, set out to understand what role chemistry plays in the wings of two evolutionarily divergent species.

Read the full story in Chemistry World

Bioethics experts call on GoFundMe to ban unproven medical treatments

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THE VERGE

The authors worry about the spread of medical misinformation

A bioethics study published on December 8th calls on crowdfunding platform GoFundMe to ditch campaigns for unproven and unsafe medical procedures.

People turn to GoFundMe for help paying for all sorts of medical interventions. These campaigns have brought in over $650 million since 2010. But a subset of the money raised is spent on unproven and even illegal operations. Unregulated “stem cell therapies,” for example, attract harsh condemnation from the Food and Drug Administration, and Google even banned ads for the procedures. But the public fundraisers still appear on GoFundMe.

In the new paper, published in the peer-reviewed bioethics journal The Hastings Center Report, the authors argue that GoFundMe enables misinformation that enriches bad actors and can harm patients sick with cancer or other serious conditions. Between November 2017 and November 2018, GoFundMe campaigns raised over $5 million for unregulated neurological stem cell procedures, according to a recent study. Those campaigns were shared over 200,000 times on social media.

“They know this is happening. It can’t happen without their involvement,” says Jeremy Snyder, a bioethics researcher at Simon Fraser University and co-author of the report. “I think they should be ashamed of themselves for taking part in it.”

Read the full story in The Verge

Snow Strokers Provides Hope on the Slopes for Stroke Survivors

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5280

After experiencing his seventh stroke, Rick Herrmann realized he could help survivors learn (or relearn) how to ski—potentially reducing the risk of future strokes.

After his first stroke, Rick Herrmann’s world changed. After his fourth, his doctor referred him to a psychologist to assist him in pondering death. But after his seventh stroke, Herrmann relearned to ski, and began inspiring other survivors to do the same.

Herrmann first skied through adversity long before having a stroke. In ski practice as a 17-year-old, he crashed disastrously and injured his foot. That didn’t do much to stop him. “I still had a season pass so I went up skiing, I just skied on one leg,” Herrmann says. “Little did I know that 20 years later, that’d be the way I’d be skiing.”

Read the full story in 5280

How Scientists Use Climate Models to Predict Mosquito-Borne Disease Outbreaks

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SMITHSONIAN

The ebb and flow of rainy seasons corresponds with the hatching of millions of mosquitoes—and the spread of diseases they carry

Few natural phenomena pose a greater threat to humans than a swarm of mosquitoes erupting from a cluster of soil-lodged eggs. These bloodthirsty menaces can carry a host of diseases, such as Zika, West Nile and malaria, making mosquitoes the world’s deadliest animals.

Mosquito-borne diseases threaten billions of people, and while the diseases vary in biology and geography, most, if not all, are exacerbated by climate change. Scientists predict that a warming world will invite the spread of more mosquitoes, and more illness, threatening a billion more people over the next 60 years. But long-term predictions are hard to act on, and public health experts believe short-term forecasts could better kick-start programs to save people’s lives today.

For the last 20 years, scientists studying weather patterns have pieced together how real-time data can help predict mosquito-borne disease outbreaks weeks or even months before the insects emerge from the ground. These tools may provide a mechanism to prevent millions of deaths, tracking monsoons and other rain cycles to forecast mosquito hatching events.

Read the full story in Smithsonian

Mosquito-borne diseases get a boost from climate change

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MASSIVE SCIENCE

Bugs like it hot, and evolve faster when there’s lots of carbon dioxide

We often think of climate change in terms of extreme weather, but the impacts of global warming will extend far beyond natural disasters. Scientists suggest climate change will also make more of the world hospitable to mosquitoes—and the diseases they carry. To make matters worse, new research shows that climate change may also be supercharging mosquito evolution.

Zika, West Nile, and dengue are just a few of the deadly viruses that depend on mosquitoes to spread. Human diseases like these are also carried by animals like birds and rodents, who don’t always show symptoms. But if a mosquito bites an infected animal, it can later transmit the disease to other animals, including humans. That’s why many disease prevention efforts focus on controlling mosquito populations—a task that’s about to become a lot harder.

Read full story in Massive Science

Republished in Pacific Standard Mag