Marsquakes, Vaccine Politics and Mammoth Microbiomes
A common nasal spray shows promise in reducing COVID risk, but vaccine access remains tangled in policy in the U.S.
SCIEPRO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week with a quick roundup of some of the latest news.
First, let’s talk about Mars and its surprisingly lumpy interior. Late last month NASA shared what its now-defunct InSight lander found out about the Red Planet’s insides. In a study published in Science researchers reported on data from the seismometer that InSight placed on Mars’s surface in 2018. By 2022, when the mission ended, the seismometer had recorded more than 1,300 “marsquakes.” Because a quake’s seismic waves behave differently based on what kinds of material they’re passing through, the shake-ups allowed scientists to study the planet’s core, mantle and crust. According to the new study the Martian mantle is full of large lumps, some as big as 2.5 miles across. The researchers think they’re seeing the rocky remains of ancient collisions between Mars and errant space objects. They say some of those impacts generated enough energy to melt huge spans of the planet’s surface and mantle into oceans of magma, providing an opportunity for chunks of rock to push deep inside the Martian planet.
Now for some health news. According to a study published last Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine a common nasal spray could provide some protection against COVID. In a study of 450 adults who used either a nasal spray containing the antihistamine azelastine or a placebo three times a day for 56 days, the over-the-counter medication was associated with a 67 percent lower risk of catching COVID. The five folks who caught COVID while using the allergy spray tested positive for less time on average. In general, azelastine users had fewer confirmed respiratory infections during the course of the study.
On supporting science journalism
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Now, this study was fairly small, and it’s also important to note that the research was funded by a German pharmaceutical company that made the azelastine spray used in the study. So for now the best way to prevent a COVID infection is still vaccination, including getting an annual booster to maintain your protection. Unfortunately, there’s currently a lot of mixed messaging about who’s eligible to receive a fresh COVID shot in the U.S. While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his FDA commissioner have stated that anyone who wants a shot will be able to get one, many Americans might now only be able to access COVID boosters as an off-label medication, which would likely mean insurance wouldn’t cover the vaccination. And potential confusion over who’s paying for the jab and how would surely make it harder to just stroll into a pharmacy for one.
Speaking of vaccines: Here is Florida State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo speaking at a news conference last Wednesday.
[CLIP:Joseph Ladapo speaking at a news conference: “The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law.”
The audience cheers.]
Feltman: That means children in Florida would be able to attend public school without receiving any immunizations.
While all states currently allow exemptions from school vaccine mandates for medical reasons and most offer religious or personal exemptions, if not both, Florida would be the first state to do away with mandates entirely.
Meanwhile, the governors of Oregon, Washington and California have announced a joint partnership between the three states called the Western Health Alliance. In a press release published last Wednesday, the trio cited concerns that the CDC now “peddles ideology instead of science” and pledged to work together to develop immunization guidelines based on the advice of medical experts.
We’ll be talking more about fall vaccinations and how to get them in a future episode, so let us know if you have any questions. You can email us about COVID vaccines (or anything else) at ScienceQuickly@sciam.com. And if you are looking for more information on recent shakeups in public health leadership in the U.S., check out last Friday’s episode.
In other perhaps more personal health news your phone habits could turn into a literal pain in the butt. A study published last Wednesday found that people who used smartphones while on the toilet had a 46 percent higher risk of hemorrhoids. That’s after the study authors controlled for other possible risk factors such as age and fiber intake. And you didn’t have to dig too deep into the study to figure out a plausible explanation: 37 percent of the bathroom phone users studied spent more than five minutes on the toilet at a time, on average, while just 7.1 percent of the no-phone group reported the same length of stay. According to the Mayo Clinic, sitting for prolonged periods of time, and especially doing so on the toilet, is associated with developing hemorrhoids.
The new study only surveyed 125 adults, but this isn’t the first research that’s come out linking scrolling with anal and rectal ailments. A study published in the Turkish Journal of Colorectal Disease back in 2021 looked at 882 people admitted to an outpatient clinic with hemorrhoids and compared them with a control group of 802, asking both to report on their bathroom and cell phone habits. The researchers found that every additional minute spent scrolling on the toilet made a study subject more likely to fall into the hemorrhoid category. Other studies have found that cell phones are often bacterial hotbeds, at least in part because of our tendency to surf the Web while pooping. So if you’re looking to do something simple to improve your health, consider going screen-free the next time you’ve gotta, you know, go.
Speaking of bacteria: a study published last week in Cell sheds new light on mammoth microbiomes. Researchers analyzed microbial DNA found on the bones and teeth of 483 specimens. The studied mammoth remains come from various parts of the world and range in age from more than one million years ago to just a few thousand. Once the researchers filtered out microbial species that would plausibly move in on the tooth and bone samples after an animal’s death, they identified six microbial groups that likely paired up with mammoths in life. The researchers say some bacterial lineages seem to have co-existed with the animals for hundreds of thousands of years. One genus they found is closely related to a pathogen that recently plagued African elephants. Another strain was reportedly determined to be a distant relative of a microbe that causes tooth decay in humans today.
We’ll wrap things up with one more animal story. Have you ever noticed that squirrels have thumbnails? Me neither, but apparently, it’s important.
A study published last Thursday in Science investigates how having thumbnails—as opposed to claws or hands with no thumbs at all—gives some rodents an evolutionary advantage when it comes to acquiring food that could help explain how these mammals spread all over the world in so many different varieties. Thumbs that feature short nails instead of claws simplify the process of handling and eating nuts. Most primates and some rodents are the only mammals to have gone the thumbnail route, and the two lineages seem to have developed this trait independently. By studying 433 rodent genus groups using specimens from Chicago’s Field Museum, the researchers found that modern rodents can likely trace their short, nut-friendly thumbnails to a single common ancestor.
That’s all for this week’s science news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk about the infamous red meat allergy that’s spreading via tick bite.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
