Oil Spills, COVID, and Animal Abilities
Oil Spills Helped by Sunlight
A new study shows that sunlight may aid cleaning up oil spills much more so than previously thought. Let’s look at how this works: when sunlight hits plots of oil in the sea, a chain of chemical reactions occur, including one known as photo-dissolution (the process of turning the insoluble oil into water-soluble products). It is still unknown, however, how often this occurs in oil spills.
To find out the factors of this process, two chemists, Danielle Haas Freeman and Collin Ward, studied the effect of sunlight by placing oil on glass plates and using simulated sunlight from LED’s. They discovered that the different wavelengths of light, the season and/or latitude, and different thicknesses of the oil proved different outcomes of the photo dissolution. They estimate from their discovery that the process of sunlight irradiation has actually dissolved between 3-17% of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. I hope this percentage increases as time goes on.
D.H. Freeman and C.P. Ward. Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea. Science Advances. Published online February 16, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abl7605.
More Side Effects of COVID-19
There have been countless studies about the lasting health effects of COVID-19, often regarding the lasting loss of taste and smell, shortness of breath, damage to the lungs and heart, and fatigue, but the psychological effects are still lesser known. This is in part due to the fact that many mental health impacts show up months after the infection.
A recent large-scale study looked at millions of people who use the US Department of Veterans Affairs health system to find that those who contract COVID-19 are at a much higher risk for brain fog, depression, substance use disorders, and other mental illnesses. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that the data is skewed towards a certain type of person: white males in their sixties. Additionally, the health records studied were mostly before the vaccine was available.
Now for the results: when compared to those in the pandemic who did not get COVID-19, those who were infected were 46% more likely to be diagnosed with a neuropsychiatric disorder. The risk of brain fog specifically was 80% higher and those infected were also 86% more likely to have been prescribed a type of neuropsychiatric drug. This is an absolutely shocking contrast and I wonder if future covid patients will show the same neurological symptoms.
M. Wadman. COVID-19 Patients Face Higher Risk of Brain Fog and Depression, Even 1 Year After Infection. Science. February 16, 2022. doi: 10.1126/science.ada1381.
Lizard Tails: The Science Behind Their Detachable Tails
Lizards intentionally lose their tails as a defense mechanism, but how does their tail only detach at the right moment and doesn’t just fall off at any moment? Well, there must be some type of balance between the two.
Let’s look at what a lizard tail is made of: inside, there are segments that connect in the same way that a phone charger plugs into an outlet. Each segment is called a fracture plane: the point where the tail can detach. Each segment has prongs (bundles of muscles situated in a circle) between them that fit into a socket. The prongs are covered in bumps that look like small mushrooms.
Yong-Ak Song and his colleagues studied how this tail structure allowed lizards to detach their tails. In the study, they amputated the tails of three different types of lizards and used microscopes to look at the separated appendages. Their findings: each of the mushroom-like bumps is covered in little holes, and on the walls of sockets there seemed to be small indentations where the prong's micropillars were. The researchers later discovered that both the small holes and large spaces in between the micropillars allowed the speed of the tail fracture to be slowed down. Just imagine how their tails have changed over years and years in the process of evolution and how they might continue to evolve.
N.S. Baban et al. Biomimetic fracture model of lizard tail autotomy. Science. Vol. 18, February 18, 2022, p. 770. doi: 10.1126/science.abh1614.