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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 19, 2000)
Wednesday ld,U. 7 for Olytn Wednesday, July 19,2000, science Page 3 TECHNOLOGY THE BATTALION f*ets are dttcr^y snUcrcrS/ Up The truth about cats and dogs (and ticks and pollen and ragweed...) Stuart Hutson The Battalion It is that sniffing, scratching, wa- iring-eyes time of year. People are not ie only ones affected by the on- ilaught of allergens waiting at the oorstep. Midsummer is the worst ime of year for pets who suffer from ie pains of allergies. "Any animal can get allergies, not st humans, and especially dogs and :ats," said Dr. Christine Rees, a pro- 'essor of veterinary medicine at Texas &M's small animal clinic. "I have a fiend that just examined a polar bear in Georgia for allergies." Midsummer provides an over- ibundance of fleas, ticks, grass and eed irritants. Rees said pet allergies can be di- ided into four categories: flea and idon Evans will compete r tick allergies, inhaled allergies, food rs at the U.S. Olympic Trial: allergies, and contact allergies. Evans echoed Ramzy lents about having Nelson: )r advice. "It's always comfortingt( >ach there because you can til nout some things that yoiirt irough while you're waraik vans said. "Any questions)'« glat before the race, it's im right there." m eac Cambell's Texas e simple: one-touch tackiest ble receiver except thecentei •eking, and two continuous . The field resembles an i only 45 yards long. 0 or more players fromAtf ? safety Blake Robertson,A ? didated, Robertson hasconf i-grade year, s you get a feel for your post ertson said. "It helps with# /er and how to cover." ague also gives players a chi aey normally would notgetti i an advantage to see the res i," Robertson said. "Itis' allenges outside your distrii ity Interscholastic League^' chool football coaches from: during the off-season in an eague. Therefore the playep roaches or coach themselve W’fa'l an A tick allergies Rees said allergic reactions to the bites of fleas, ticks and other insects are the most common complications seen by veterinarians. "The animals are allergic to a toxin found in the saliva of the adult fleas and ticks," she said. "This basically causes a histamine reaction in the skin." A histamine is a chemical re leased by a cell when the cell comes in contact with a specific triggering I chemical, such as a flea's toxin. His- ■ I famine reactions are meant to protect against specific poisons that animals ll Uwlv/( encounter, but in the case of allergic reactions, histamines are over-re- leased and cause severe inflamma tion and irritation. "Young or immature fleas don't have this toxin, so they don't cause the allergic reaction," Rees said. "So, when you buy a flea and tick killer, make sure that it specifically kills adults." See 7 on 71 'IK She also suggested using preven tive measures such as flea dips and in door/outdoor pesticides to rid both the home and the yard of the pests. Rees said this year is worse than most because of the wet weather dur ing the early spring months. "Wet weather makes it easy for [in sects] to propagate," she said. "It pro vides ample moisture for nesting places and egg laying and so on." ■ TythdUA allergies While inhaled allergens account for most allergies among humans, they are the second most prevalent al lergies for dogs and the third most prevalent allergies for cats. These allergies may be caused by anything, including dust, pollen, grasses or weeds, that irritate nasal passages and skin. "The important thing with these is that they are correctly diagnosed," Rees said. "To do this, we first perform a skin test for 65 different irritants, just like a doctor would on a human, and then we do a subdermal test for de layed reactions where we inject an amount under the skin and then wait about 20 minutes to see if it has any negative effects." She said that a veterinarian would then prescribe an antihistamine pill or allergy shot depending on the strength and type of reaction to an al lergen. Though the prescription is of ten very effective, Rees said pet own ers can take other steps to help reduce inhaled allergies. "Besides vacuuming and other wise cleaning, you could use a hepi- filter to help out the air quality," she said. "You can also wipe the animal's feet every time it comes in from out doors. It turns out that if a dog walks through something it is allergic to, it will keep getting exposure to whatev er sticks to its feet and enhance the re action." allergies While not associated with sea sonal changes, food allergies are the second most common allergy among cats and the third most com mon among dogs. "A food allergy is when an animal develops a bad reaction to a specific protein, carbohydrate or fatty acid within a food," Rees said. "Sometimes this happens when an animal has been eat ing the food for years. We are not really sure why it happens." The allergy usually mani fests itself through a skin rash or irritation. "The key here is also to diagnose as quickly as possible and then eliminate whatever is causing the al lergy, but this can be tricky because I have seen an- v. imals become allergic , to as many as five dif- ^ . , ferent food ingredients at the same time," Rees said. "An other difficulty is the timing. Sometimes an animal will have a reaction within six hours. Sometimes it takes two to three days." These allergies, however, may sometimes have odd results. "A guy once brought in a dog whose head was tremendously swollen like a balloon because the guy had fed the dog eggs," she said. Contact allergies A contact allergy oc curs when an anima has skin contact with a chemical that induces a rash or other negative reaction. These chemicals may range from poison ivy to household cleaners. "People should always be careful when using cleaners around animals," Rees said. "One of the most common irritants is the pow dered carpet deodorizers that dogs and cats get all over themselves." [q^ken to visit the veterinarian "You should pay a visit to the vet erinarian any time you see your dog or cat licking, biting, or scratching themselves to the point of hair loss or irritation," Rees said. "It may be an al lergy, or it may be something more serious. The only way to help out either one is for the animal to be seen by a trained specialist." A&M physicist search for invisible matter Patrice Pages The Battalion Texas A&M physicists are trying to show that a big part of the universe may I be taken up by WIMPs. Since the 1930s, physicists have be lieved that the stars, planets and oth er miscellaneous items they see taking up the night sky make up only 10 percent of the uni verse's matter. The stars would not move the way they do if the visible matter were the only matter in the universe. Something else exerts a gravitational force on these stars; cosmol- ogists call it "dark matter." For many years, cosmolo- gists thought dark matter was i simply objects not radiating light, such as planets, small stars and black holes. However, the measured • number of these objects is not large enough to account for all dark matter. Cosmologists have therefore theo- Irized that previously undiscovered I particles compose the remaining amount of matter. Such particles would be very heavy, but would still interact very weakly with surrounding matter. These particles are dubbed Weak Inter acting Massive Particles, or WIMPs. "WIMPs are something you know must exist but it is so hard to get hold of them," said Maria Isaac, a physicist at the University of Califomia-Berkeley. James White, a Texas A&M physi cist, said that in the Milky Way — or any spiral-shaped galaxy — WIMPs are expected to surround the galaxy in a sphere. "The galaxy was initially spher ical," White said. "Particles mak ing ordinary matter, as well as WIMPs, were all distributed randomly in this sphere. Then ordinary matter start ed to condense by i swirling to the center of i the sphere, making a spi- | ral-shaped disk — the vis ible part of our galaxy. WIMPs instead are clumps of matter that could not condense and stayed in the initial sphere." White is setting up an experi ment to detect WIMPs passing through the Earth. The core of his experiment is a tank of liquid argon. If a WIMP goes through the tank, it creates an electrical signal. During the 1990s, many experi ments were set up to detect these mys terious WIMPs, but only two experi ments have showed results. The first experiment, called the Dark Matter experiment (DAMA), claimed to have detected WIMPs. The second, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), did not see a single WIMP. "The big issue of these experiments is that the rate [of WIMPs] is so low that you are worried about the background (interference)," said Dan Akerib, a pro fessor of physics at Case Western Re serve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and a researcher with CDMS. The background is interference that can create false positives caused by cosmic rays from space or natural ra dioactivity from radioactive materials surrounding the experiment. In an attempt to reduce back ground, most of the experiments take place deep underground where cos mic rays cannot reach. The CDMS has been working 30 feet underground. However, starting fall of 2001, the experiment will move to a deeper site 2,000 feet un derground. White will perform extensive studies of the different sources of background af fecting the planned site of his experiment in a salt mine in Carlsbad, N. M. "This fall, I am going to put a pro totype down there and measure the background rate. I think our back ground will be much lower than in the DAMA experiment, but only when I measure the background rate with the prototype can I tell how sensitive it will be," White said. He said his detector will try to mea sure the change in the number of WIMPs passing through the earth dur ing different times of the year. "The least we can do is what the DAMA experiment already achieved," White said. "If they are seeing some thing, we should see the same thing with a different apparatus. And if noth ing else, we can verify the results." White hopes to run his experi ment soon in order to get new results on this very hot topic. "This detector has the potential to compete with the most sensitive experi ments in the world. So I would like to make a large version of this [experiment] running in time before new discoveries are made, in particular by the new ver sion of the CDMS detector," he said. SCI F.Y.I. Here's the idea. You write in with ques tions about how, when or why things work or hap pen — and I find the an swers. Questions can be anything from "How does a car battery work?" to "Why is the sky blue? (or around here, red)." To start things off, we will begin with a question asked by almost every freshman who has had the misfortune of crossing the wrong street. Question: What is that weird steam coming from manholes like the one near the Northside parking garage? And why does it smell so bad? — Stuart Hutson, senior journal ism major Answer: Well, I'm glad I asked that. In the past, students have con cocted a myriad of theories, ranging from a gaggle of underground pot smokers to sewer gas. According to Chuck Sippial, vice president of administrations and former director of the physical plant, the steam is actually evapo rating ground water. The central physical plant pumps hot steam all the way over to another facility on West Campus via a system of underground pipes. Sip pial said this steam is sometimes as hot as 650 degrees Fahrenheit when it first leaves the plant. Ground water that collects around these pipes gets heated up and evaporates out through the grates and manholes that we see all over campus. This is why the steam is usually more prevalent after it rains. Hong Bin Zhan, an A&M pro fessor of hydrogeology, said the un usual smell is most probably due to a small amount of sulfur in the ground water. "The water here has about 8.8 milligrams of sulfate in every liter of water," Zhan said. "It is not a dan gerous amount, but it is probably enough to cause the smell." Sulfur is most commonly associ ated with the smell of rotten eggs, which I hope you will agree is more like the smell of the steam than that of pot smoke, not that you would know what that smelled like any way... Got the idea? Good. Question: So, how do I ask a question? Answer: Just email your ques tion to scifyi@hotmail.com along with your name, classification (se nior, junior, sophomore or fresh man) and major. It's that simple. king e ilth issues IS lO does ^ Scientists find sleeping improves brain functioning (AP) — Getting a good night's sleep after trying to master a tough new task might just re inforce what you have learned. European researchers say dreaming might be the brain's way of replaying experiences and lessons so that they are fixed in the memory for use later on. The scientists used advanced imaging tech nology and found that the same regions of the brain that are buzzing while we learn a new task are also active while we dream. This heightened activity was observed during the brief but active stage known as rapid-eye movement, or REM, sleep. The study was published in the August is sue of Nature Neuroscience and was led by Pierre Maquet of the University of Liege in Bel gium. Animal studies had shown similar results. Rats that ran new routes through mazes showed increased activity in the same portions of their brains when they slept afterward. But the human brain is more complex. "It is wonderful to see such results demon strated in humans for the first time," said David Silbersweig, co-director of the function al neuroimaging research laboratory at the New York-Comell Medical Center. Humans spend one-third of their lives asleep, but sleep's purpose is poorly under stood. Among other things, scientists believe Humans spend one-third of their lives asleep, but sleep's purpose is poorly understood. dreaming may help sort out emotions, impres sions and other ideas. In the study, 18 volunteers ages 18 to 25 spent several hours learning how to quickly recognize symbols as they flashed on a com puter screen and press the same symbol on a keyboard. During the test, the activity in several re gions of their brains was monitored by PET scans, which reveal how the brain is function ing by watching its use of glucose and oxygen, the fuels of brain cells. Groups of volunteers were tested in sever al ways. Those who took the computer test for several hours, slept and retook the test when they woke up scored the highest, with even faster reaction times after they slept. PET scans showed that during REM sleep their brain activity and blood flow were simi lar to when they were taking the test. Researchers said the volunteers might have been practicing the test in a REM dream and storing what they learned. However, Maquet's team could not identify the precise cellular mechanisms in volved. Nor are all memories consolidated only during REM sleep, the researchers said.